Sunday, February 15, 2009

WHO'S INSOLVENT...! NAH, YOU'RE KIDDING. DIDN'T YOU KNOW THAT "BANKS" HAVE ALWAYS BEEN LEGALLY INSOLVENT? IT'S TRUE. THEY ONLY HAVE 5% MAX. ON HAND...


Copyright (C) 2009 by F. Scott Sinclair. All Rights Reserved. Please click on the photograph to enlarge the picture. It's a pleasant experience to wander about the Nan River on a typical sun clad day. Resting and relaxing on a floating restaurant at noon is quite a spectacular experience. After sipping a cold brew, or cool Pepsi, it's refreshing and peaceful to soak in the lovely scenery...including the Buddhist temple across the river. At nighttime, you can stroll along the concrete sidewalk down the river to the local Night Bazaar and have dinner by the river, or listen to hawkers selling their wares. Or just people watch, if nothing else. A nice way to let the woes of the real world float away: out of sight, out of mind.
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Large U.S. Banks on Brink of Insolvency, Experts Say

By Steve Lohr

Some of the large banks in the United States, according
to economists and other finance experts, are like dead
men walking. A sober assessment of the growing
mountain of losses from bad bets, measured in today's
marketplace, would overwhelm the value of the banks'
assets, they say. The banks, in their view, are insolvent.
Continue

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The Oligarchy's Bailout Ball

You know what they say -- half a million dollars just doesn't
go as far as it used to.
By Michael Winship
"These guys won't be happy until the government agrees to relieve
them of every last one of their lousy loans and investments
at inflated prices, recapitalize every major bank and
brokerage and insurance company on sweetheart terms
and restore them to the glory days, so they can once
again earn inflated profits and obscene pay packages by
screwing over their customers and their shareholders."
Continue

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Looting Social Security

By William Greider

To understand the mechanics of this attempted swindle,
you have to roll back twenty-five years, to the time
the game of bait and switch began, under Ronald Reagan.
Continue

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Worst Than The Great Depression?

' Worst Economic Collapse Ever' Must Watch 11 Minute Video

In 2009 were going to see the worst economic collapse ever,
the Greatest Depression, says Gerald Celente, U.S. trend
forecaster. He believes its going to be very violent in the
U.S., including there being a tax revolt. Continue

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Who is Pulling Geithner’s Strings?

By Cliff Kincaid

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday
carefully read from a teleprompter and provided
what his flack said was a “comprehensive” plan. It
was not comprehensive in any way. It seemed so
amateurish and shallow that the market dropped
and commentators and senators were almost
incredulous at the lack of detail. Continue

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Obama’s voodoo economics

Deficit Nonchalance

By Paul Craig Roberts

The fiscal year 2009 federal budget deficit that
Obama is inheriting, and adding to, will be ten
times larger in absolute terms than Reagan’s
biggest and a much larger share of GDP in
up no alarms. Continue

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Obama, like Bush, is Throwing Public Money into a Black Hole

By Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay

Tuesday, February 10, may be the date when the
U.S. economy officially entered into an economic
depression. This was when President Obama's Treasury
Secretary, Timothy Geithner, announced that
the Obama administration was about to expand
Bush's Secretary Paulson's $700-billion plan to
rescue large U.S. banks from insolvency. Continue

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Geithner's Debut: "Not Ready for Prime Time"

By Mike Whitney

Tuesday was Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's
coming out party. He was supposed to outline
Obama's Financial Stability Plan to the Senate
Banking Committee. Wall Street was looking for
clarity, but it didn't get it. Instead, they got 25
minutes of political posturing and blather. The
markets went into freefall. By the end of the day,
the Dow was down 382 points. It was a complete
fiasco. Continue

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Serve Republicans For Breakfast,Don’t Take Them To Dinner

By David Michael Green

Pogressives who believed Obama might be the
second coming of Bobby Kennedy are rapidly
being disabused of their fantasies. Continue

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Fixing the Economy: Of Fences and Futures

By Robert Freeman

To attract the money to run the government,
the Treasury will have to raise interest rates
on government bonds to stratospheric levels.
This will kill off any possible recovery, consigning
the U.S. economy to a self-reinforcing downward
spiral of insufficient demand, inadequate investment,
crumbling infrastructure, declining productivity,
and competitive obsolescence. Continue

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The Recovery Plan From Hell

What Wall Street Wants

By Michael Hudson

Tuesday’s announcement of the Obama-Geithner
recovery plan is basically an extension of the
Bush-Paulson plan – yet more giveaways to
financial insiders, with a view to concentrating
the U.S. banking system into a cartel of just a
few large banks. Continue

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Capitalism’s Self-inflicted Apocalypse

By Michael Parenti

If the paladins of Corporate America want to
know what really threatens “our way of life,”
it is their way of life, their boundless way of
pilfering their own system, destroying the
very foundation on which they stand, the
very community on which they so lavishly
feed. Continue

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IT COULDN'T HAPPEN HERE

BY TED RALL

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By Mike Whitney
The global economy is decelerating at the
fastest pace on record. 40 percent of global
wealth has been wiped out. The banking system
is insolvent, unemployment is soaring, tax
revenues are falling, the markets are in shock,
housing is crashing, deficits are soaring, and
consumer confidence is at its lowest point in
history. Continue
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In an age of illusion, the guise of truth is often heresy
By Darryl Schoon
The fact that in 2008 bankers became victims
in the game they created has profound implications
for capitalism itself. Capitalism, which began
in 1694 with the issuance of debt-based money
from The Bank of England, has now over three
hundred years later reached its last and final
stage. Continue
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As The Economic Situation Declines, He Has To
Stop Centrist Diddling
By Danny Schechter
Today, we seem to be at the beginning of a new civil
war, a great economic war with fresh details trickling
out every day about how bad it is, and how bad it may
get. Many banks are insolvent and companies bankrupt.
Millions are out of work. No one knows what will happen.
Even as the Stimulus bill was passed, no one is confident
it will stem the tide of economic decline. Continue
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By Joe Brewer
It's time to tell the truth about tax cuts. This phrase
dominates political discourse and is coughed out
every time a conservative public figure opens his
mouth. It is treated like the basis of sound reasoning,
yet no one points out what should be obvious - that
"tax relief" and "tax cuts" are just code words for
destroying the capacity of government to serve the
public. Continue
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By Robert Reich
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By William Rivers Pitt
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By Gary Kamiya
2008 was the worst year in history for newspaper
publishers, with shares dropping a stunning 83
percent on average. Newspapers lost $64.5 billion
in market value in 12 months. Continue
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By Martin Jacques
The business and political elite are flying blind.
This is the mother of all economic crises. It has
barely started and remains completely out of
control. Continue
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Bill Moyers interviews former chief economist of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF)Must watch / read
video and transcript"There comes a time in every
economic crisis, or more specifically, in every struggle
to recover from a crisis, when someone steps up
to the podium to promise the policies that — they
say — will deliver you back to growth. The person
has political support, a strong track record, and
every incentive to enter the history books. But
one nagging question remains. Can this person,
your new economic strategist, really break with
the vested elites that got you into this much
trouble?" Continue
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Geithner gets the keys to the henhouse
By Mike Whitney
Geithner did us all a big favor on Tuesday by
exposing himself as a stooge of the banking
industry. Continue
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By Paul Craig Roberts
The Bush/Obama bailout/stimulus plans are not going
to work. Both are schemes hatched by a clique of
financial insiders. The schemes will redistribute
income and wealth from American taxpayers to
the shyster banksters, who have destroyed American
jobs, ruined the retirement plans of tens of millions
of Americans, and worsened the situation of millions
of people worldwide who naively trusted American
financial institutions. Continue
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By Tom Whitehead
Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5,
has warned that the fear of terrorism is being
exploited by the Government to erode civil
liberties and risks creating a police state. Continue
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of Living Permanently Changed
VIDEO
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and Two Dozen People Power the Web Giant
VIDEO
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Finance Capitalism Hits a Wall
By Prof. Michael Hudson
The financial “wealth creation” game is over. Economies
emerged from World War II relatively free of debt,
but the 60-year global run-up has run its course.
Finance capitalism is in a state of collapse, and
marginal palliatives cannot revive it. The U.S.
economy cannot “inflate its way out of debt,” because
this would collapse the dollar and end its dreams of
global empire by forcing foreign countries to go their
own way. Continue
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Greed and Corruption Jailing Kids for Cash
By Amy Goodman
As many as 5,000 children in Pennsylvania have been
found guilty, and up to 2,000 of them jailed, by two
corrupt judges who received kickbacks from the
builders and owners of private prison facilities
that benefited. The two judges pleaded guilty in a
stunning case of greed and corruption that is still
unfolding. Continue
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Late Night Political Jokes - Late Night Jokes Updated Daily

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY NOVELIST F. SCOTT SINCLAIR

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A CONVENIENT (I HOPE) TABLE OF CONTENTS OF
F. SCOTT SINCLAIR'S NOVELS
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