Iran Stops Selling Oil in U.S. Dollars
December 9th, 2007Via: Reuters:
Iran has completely stopped selling any of its oil for U.S. dollars, an Iranian news agency reported on Saturday, citing the oil minister of the world’s fourth-largest crude producer.
The ISNA news agency did not give a direct quote from Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari. A senior oil official last month said “nearly all” of Iran’s crude oil sales were now being paid for in non-U.S. currencies.
For nearly two years, OPEC’s second biggest producer has been reducing its exposure to the dollar, saying the weak U.S. currency is eroding its purchasing power.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who often rails against the West, has called the U.S. currency a “worthless piece of paper.”
Foes since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Tehran and Washington are also at odds over Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme as well as over policy in Iraq.
“In line with the policy of selling crude oil in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, currently the sale of our country’s oil in U.S. dollars has been completely eliminated,” ISNA reported after talking with Nozari.
Nozari told ISNA: “In regards to the decrease in the dollar’s value and the loss exporters of crude oil have endured from this trend, the dollar is no longer a reliable currency.”
Straight Talk on the Mortgage Mess from an Insider
December 8th, 2007This is a good one. Highly recommended.
Via: Market Watch:
The ‘Pay-Option ARM implosion’ will carry on for a couple of years. In my opinion, this implosion will dwarf the ’sub-prime implosion’ because it cuts across all borrower types and all home values. Some of the most affluent areas in California contain the most Option ARMs due to the ability to buy a $1 million home with payments of a few thousand dollars per month. Wamu, Countrywide, Wachovia, IndyMac, Downey and Bear Stearns were/are among the largest Option ARM lenders. Option ARMs are literally worthless with no bids found for many months for these assets. These assets are almost guaranteed to blow up. 75% of Option ARM borrowers make the minimum monthly payment. Eighty percent-plus are stated income/asset. Average combined loan-to-value are at or above 90%. The majority done in the past few years have second mortgages behind them.
Research Credit: PD
Bush Gives Wrong Phone Number for Subprime Mortgage Bailout Hotline
December 7th, 2007Fire up the calliope music.
Via: CNN:
Harried homeowners seeking mortgage relief from a new Bush administration hotline Thursday had to contend with a bit of temporary misdirection from the president himself.
As he announced his plan to ease the mortgage crisis for consumers, President Bush accidentally gave out the wrong phone number for the new “Hope Now Hotline†set up by his administration.
Anyone who dialed 1-800-995-HOPE did not reach the mortgage hotline but instead contacted the Freedom Christian Academy — a Texas-based group that provides Christian education home schooling material.
The Merk Hard Currency Fund
December 7th, 2007WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
If you’re looking for a comprehensive hedge for your U.S. Dollar exposure, the Merk Hard Currency Fund deserves serious consideration. The fund holds a basket of currencies, sovereign debt and gold. See: Fund Facts. Expenses: 1.3%.
I don’t have any relationship with Merk Investments.
Research Credit: Eileen
The Dollar’s Perfect Storm Worsens
December 7th, 2007WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
If ECB raises and the Fed cuts…
I’m not going to see more panicked emails, am I?
Via: MSN:
On Nov. 13, I wrote that the U.S. dollar was being pummeled by a perfect storm. Just three weeks later, the storm is even stronger. The force of the winds punishing the dollar is building, and there’s a real danger that the currency will tumble out of control.
What has changed so much in just three weeks? Inflation in Europe has picked up and is now above the range the European Central Bank has said it will tolerate. There’s a good chance the bank will raise short-term interest rates to 4.25% from 4% when it meets Thursday.
With U.S. interest rates on hold or headed lower, the result would be another big boost to the euro, another hit to the dollar, a continued move away from the U.S. dollar by central banks in Asia, Russia and the Middle East, and higher prices for gold and, more importantly, oil.
That’s a lot of fallout from just one quarter-point increase, but the global economy and financial markets are so precariously balanced that any increase in wind velocity can cause massive damage.
So just how good a chance is the “good chance” that the European Central Bank will raise interest rates Thursday?
Here’s the situation the bank faces. You be the judge.
Inflation on the uptick
Inflation jumped to 3.3% in Germany, the European Union’s biggest economy, in October. That has led economists to raise their estimates for inflation for the European Union as a whole to 3%. Before the data from Germany, the consensus forecast for EU inflation stood at 2.7%.
Even 2.7% would have been worrisome: It would have been a slight advance from October’s 2.6% and left the trend headed uncomfortably higher.
And the 3% inflation figure isn’t an isolated number. Other inflation indicators are pointing upward, too. Money-supply growth, which the bank uses to judge the likelihood of future inflation, has been running way above the bank’s target of 4.5%. The bank calculates a 4.5% level of growth in the money supply is not inflationary.
But, the money supply grew by 12.3% from October 2006 to October 2007 — the sharpest growth since July 1979. That was on the heels of an 11.3% year-over-year growth in September.
Forcast: House Prices to Fall 30% in Some States
December 7th, 200730% sounds like an upbeat assessment to me.
Via: Reuters:
Housing markets from Punta Gorda, Florida, to Stockton, California, will crash and suffer price drops of more than 30 percent before the housing crisis is over, a report from Moody’s Economy.com said on Thursday.
On a national level, the housing market recession will continue through early 2009, said the report, co-authored by Mark Zandi, chief economist, and Celia Chen, director of housing economics.
The report paints a worsening picture of the hard-hit housing sector, which is in the midst of its worst downturn since World War II.
Top UK Analyst: Britain Could be Heading for a Another Housing Market Crash
December 7th, 2007Hint: Feel free to substitute “Britain” with any other English-speaking country. Saves time when reading through all the housing doom news from around the world.
Via: Reuters:
Britain could be heading for a another housing market crash if thousands of buy-to-let investors ditch their properties as prices tumble, according to top fund manager Nicola Horlick.
The City “Superwoman” reckons defaults on buy-to-let mortgages, which make up around a tenth of the market, could be the trigger for a slump as investors cut their losses and let banks repossess their properties if house prices fall.
“If you’ve borrowed 90 percent of the money and you’ve only put in 10 percent yourself but prices fall 12 percent, it’s in your interest just to leave it in the hands of the bank isn’t it?” Horlick told Reuters in an interview.
A raft of surveys have already shown house price inflation easing as homebuyers find it more costly to take out loans, and data from mortgage lender Nationwide showed prices last month fell at their sharpest rate in 12 years.
Alberta Government Admits NAFTA Superhighway
December 7th, 2007Via: Rogue Government:
Alberta’s government web site admits to the existence of a NAFTA superhighway. While establishment media hacks continue to deny plans for a continental highway, it is curious that a government web site would openly admit to the existence of it. It is also curious how these liars can get away with calling presidential candidate Ron Paul a conspiracy theorist for citing readily available information. One of the driving forces behind the formation of a NAFTA superhighway is NASCO a non profit organization dedicated to expanding our current highway infrastructure so goods can be more easily traded within the coming North American Union.
What’s funny about NASCO’s web site is that they deny the existence of a continental superhighway but openly admit to it at the same time. Take for example the following taken from their myth vs fact section.
MYTH: NASCO is spearheading the creation of a NAFTA Superhighway?
FACT: Founded in 1994, NASCO is a nonprofit organization that is working to bring together the public and private sectors along a common corridor. The organization is striving to:
1) solve critical infrastructure problems in innovative ways;
2) maximize the efficient use of our existing resources;
3) better utilize critical diminishing funding for transportation infrastructure; and,
4) employ technology along our existing infrastructure to improve security.
How is it a myth if the goal of this organization is to expand and make improvements on I-35 which is referred to by the Alberta government as the NAFTA superhighway? Why is it that they have a logo that represents the flags of Mexico, Canada and the U.S.? This is a clear cut case of double think. They deny the existence of a NAFTA superhighway, but admit openly that they are doing all sorts of things to ensure that I-35 is improved upon to be used as the NAFTA superhighway.
NYPD Intelligence Division Officer: “We Are in the Business of Scaring People”
December 7th, 2007Seeing these fascist pigs standing around reminds me of the film, Michael Collins; where the IRA started walking up to British agents and shooting them where they slept and stood. (See: The Cairo Gang Assassinations.)
Obviously, I’m not suggesting that you should shoot these fascist pigs, because that would be a waste of your time and energy. The state will just mint more fascist pigs after it tortures and kills you for your effort.
For Americans, taking your money off the table harms the people who are behind all of this madness much more than shooting their minions.
Via: Popular Mechanics:
No one sees them coming. There are no flashing lights, no sirens. The black Suburban simply glides out of Fifth Avenue traffic and pulls into a no-parking zone in front of the Empire State Building. Moments later, four men spill out in combat helmets and heavy body armor: Two carry submachine guns; the others, snub-nosed shotguns.
Camera-toting tourists stop jabbering and stare at this intimidating new presence, their faces a mixture of curiosity and fear. Even jaded New Yorkers, many of whom work inside the midtown Manhattan landmark, look impressed.
A stone’s throw down the sidewalk, Abad Nieves watches the scene unfold. Nieves is a detective with the Intelligence Division of the New York Police Department (NYPD). Casually clad in slacks and a black leather jacket, he monitors the response of people loitering in the area. Is anyone making notes or videotaping? Does anyone seem especially startled by the out-of-the-blue appearance of a heavily armed NYPD squad?
On this day, Nieves doesn’t see anything overly suspicious, but he is pleased that the deployment created a strong impression. Known as a Hercules team, it makes multiple appearances around the city each day. The locations are chosen either in response to specific intelligence or simply to provide a show of force at high-profile sites.
“The response we usually get is, ‘Holy s—!'” Nieves says. “That’s the reaction we want. We are in the business of scaring people–we just want to scare the right people.”
…
“Clearly, New York is way in front on this,” says Brian Michael Jenkins, a terrorism expert with the Rand Corp. “As the threat gets more diffused, we are going to have less of the kind of intelligence that can be picked up by the feds. We are dealing now with threats that are deliberately operating under the radar. Therefore, we have to aim the radar lower, to the local level.”
CIA Destroyed Videotapes of Torture Sessions
December 7th, 2007Here’s one for your no-shit-Sherlock file folder.
But don’t expect the Associated Press to mention that these tapes would have been prima facie evidence of atrocities, for which the perpetrators might have faced trial under international law.
Via: AP:
The CIA videotaped its interrogations of two top terror suspects in 2002 and destroyed the tapes three years later out of fear they would leak to the public and compromise the identities of U.S. questioners, the director of the agency told employees Thursday.
The disclosure brought immediate condemnation from Capitol Hill and from a human rights group which charged the spy agency’s action amounted to criminal destruction of evidence.
The Senate Intelligence Committee promised a full review of the situation. [SIC: It pains me to even quote this gibberish. —Kevin]
CIA Director Michael Hayden said the CIA began taping the interrogations as an internal check on the program after President Bush authorized the use of harsh questioning methods. The methods included waterboarding, which simulates drowning, government officials said.
“The Agency was determined that it proceed in accord with established legal and policy guidelines. So, on its own, CIA began to videotape interrogations,” Hayden said in a written message to CIA employees, obtained by The Associated Press.
The CIA decided to destroy the tapes in “the absence of any legal or internal reason to keep them,” Hayden wrote. He said the tapes were destroyed only after it was determined “they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative or judicial inquiries.”
“The tapes posed a serious security risk,” Hayden wrote. “Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them and their families to retaliation from al-Qaida and its sympathizers.”
Hayden said House and Senate intelligence committee leaders were informed of the existence of the tapes and the CIA’s intention to destroy them. He also said the CIA’s internal watchdog watched the tapes in 2003 and verified that the interrogation practices were legal.
