Common sense has escaped the highest civilization in history….
Comments »Incredibly Excessive: 450 Million Hollow Points
Reports Says Fatal West Virginia Mine Disaster Could Have Been Prevented by Regulators
LOL: JPM Bank Reps Not Aware of Mortgage Settlement
“Mira Tanna, a housing advocate in Orlando, Fla., doesn’t expect everyone to know the details of the recently announced $25 billion mortgage settlement, but she was taken aback, she said, when two JPMorgan Chase employees who work directly with homeowners recently told her that they were not aware of the deal nor of their bank’s pledge to consider principal reduction for underwater borrowers.
A key provision of the national settlement, which resolves an investigation into wrongful foreclosures and other abuses in the “servicing” of home loans, requires Chase and four other big banks to write off about $10 billion in mortgage debt for underwater borrowers through principal reductions. The deal was announced about two months ago, and the banks said that principal reductions would become available beginning in March.
Two weeks ago, Tanna said she called the Chase Homeownership Center in Orlando to ask whether her client, a 75-year-old Orlando woman, might qualify for principal reduction. She needed an answer right away. The client, who asked that her name not be used in this story, had just been offered a loan modification by Chase with affordable monthly payments — about one-third of what she had been paying — but with a catch: a balloon payment of about $200,000 due when the loan matures in 2036. That’s much more than the $120,000 that the house is currently worth. The client had one week to decide whether to accept or reject the modification….”
Comments »French Energy Company Total Tanks as Fears Arise Over a Possible BP Style Gulf Oil Leak
“Shares of French energy giant Total tanked 7% thanks to a gas leak from the company’s Elgin Franklin field in the North Sea.
Obviously investors are concerned about some kind of Macondo-like fallout.
JPMorgan analyst Nitin Sharma points out that Total has suffered an absolute loss of market value of $7.8 billion.
But Sharma thinks there are some major differences between BP’s Macondo spill and this gas leak.
While Total has said that they have noticed a sheen on the ocean’s surface, Sharma says natural gas will bubble to the surface and then disperse. The most crucial thing at this point would be to avoid an ignition point. “Most condensate (very light oil) will also evaporate into the air, helped by higher prevailing ambient temperatures. Macondo leaked light oil, which accumulated as slicks at the surface and then spread.”
Second, he says this has happened post-Macondo at a time when the industry is much better prepared to deal with a spill and capable of preparing a relief well.
Finally, Sharma says the Elgin Franklin field is much shallower water but the real problem will likely be when Total has to drill a relief well since their reservoir is deeper below the seabed than BP’s Macondo reservoir:
“The Elgin Franklin field is located in a water depth of 93m (305 feet). The Macondo well was drilled in a water depth of around 1,522m (4,993 feet). The main Elgin Franklin reservoir is high pressure, high temperature and located at a depth of around 17,400 feet (c.5,300m). The Macondo reservoir was 13,000 feet below the seabed – so Elgin Franklin’s reservoir is actually deeper (this may have implications for the time required to drill a relief well).”
The cause of the leak has not yet been found but Sharma maintains that the market is over-reacting to the news.”
Comments »Citibank Reveals That Spain’s Finances are a Mess and Understated
“Here’s What’s In Citi’s Gloomy New Report On The Crisis In Spain
Earlier we mentioned how Citi top economist Willem Buiter had a big warning about Spain.
We’ve now seen a copy of the report, and get tell you some more details.
Here is our bullet-pointed summary of the report:
- Spain’s public finances are worse than officially stated. Already there have been upward revisions to debt-to-GDP, and the number could rise as high as 90% when all the various categories of debt are added together.
- The fact that GDP assumptions are badly missing estimates makes this all worse.
- Although Spain’s banks get a lot of attention for being ugly, the non-financial sector is doing badly as well. Households are overleveraged.
- The new government delayed reform legislation too long, missing the ‘honeymoon period’.
- Spain’s PM Rajoy is alienating partners in Germany and France by announcing revised deficit targets without consultation.
- The decline in Spanish land prices is not over.
- The spending problems in various autonomous regions are big, and the central government cannot control them.
Buiter’s Conclusion:
Spain is likely, in our view, to be pushed into a troika (EC, ECB, IMF) programme of some kind during 2012……”
In Perspective: A Look @ the National Debt as If it Were Your Own
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0LOXUEsBlI 450 300]
Comments »Identity Theft Shifts to Kids Under 18
“Axton Betz had just rented her first off-campus apartment in West Lafayette, Ind. when the power company told her she needed to pay a $100 deposit to turn on the electricity. Betz, who was 19 at the time, assumed they required the large deposit because she had no credit history. But, for safe measure, she requested a copy of her credit report. “I thought it would be just one page on student loans,” Betz says. Instead, she found 10 pages of defaulted credit cards – showing someone had been using her identity since she was 11 years old.
- iStockPhoto
Stealing social security numbers to buy cars, apply for credit and obtain driver’s licenses has now shifted to a new demographic: those under the age of 18. Credit companies and other firms are responding offering monthly services promising identity-theft protection for children. According to the Federal Trade Commission, there is a market for this: 19,000 child identity theft complaints were reported in 2009, the most recent data available, up 217 percent since 2003. What’s more, a study done by the Carnegie Mellon CyLab showed children are 51 times more likely to have their identity stolen than adults. And while most of these stolen IDs are used by undocumented immigrants or organized crime rings, there’s also the chance a child’s own parents could use their kid’s digits, says Bo Holland, CEO of AllClear ID, an identity protection company.
Prompted by those numbers, on Monday Equifax launched a family plan that keeps tabs on the identities of two adults and up to four children. The service, which costs $29.95 a month, alerts parents by e-mail or text message whenever someone tries to use any of the family’s IDs. It also scans the Internet for personal information found on websites and monitors the adults’ files from the three credit bureaus. Earlier this month, AllClear ID debuted a free ID theft mobile app for the iPhone and iPad that lets a parent make sure her child’s identity hasn’t been compromised. (There’s also an option for daily monitoring, which costs $14.95 a month.) And AllClear formed a partnership with the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance to let consumers see the reports of stolen data that, before now, were only shared with companies….”
Comments »{XXX PHOTO XXX} An Unfortunate T-Shirt Hits Florida Streets In Wake Of Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin Killing
Expanding the definition of “cracker,” a t-shirt featuring the photo of the man who shot Trayvon Martin is now available for purchase.
As seen (above), the shirt has a picture of George Zimmerman and the words “Pussy Ass Cracker.” Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Hispanic, killed Martin, 17, last month while acting as a neighborhood watch captain in Sanford, Florida.
The shirt’s “pussy ass cracker” line is apparently a reference to lyrics from the rapper Plies’s song “100 Years,” which bemoans stiff sentences handed out by racist judges.
Comments »Water Shortages Threaten Farmers and the Greater CA Economy
“FIVE POINTS, Calif.—Sharp cutbacks in water for farmers threaten to trigger renewed layoffs in a large swath of California, eating into the state’s $40 billion-a-year agriculture industry and damping its nascent economic recovery.
Amid an unusually dry winter, managers of the federal Central Valley Project, which delivers mountain water for agriculture, late last month announced an initial reduction in farmers’ water allowance for this year to 30% of the allotment in the driest southern reaches of the valley, down from 85% last year. Now farmers and local agriculture officials are taking in the economic impact they face.
Officials of the 614,000-acre Westlands Water District, near Fresno, say farmers there are expected to leave tens of thousands of acres fallow, only a year after California experienced one of its wettest winters on record.
“Being a farmer in California is worse than going to Las Vegas,” said Mark Borba, as he inspected a barren field he may leave without crops this year because of the water reductions. Mr. Borba, co-owner of Borba Farms, which gets water from the district, expects to reduce his cotton crop by 38% to 1,480 acres from 2,400 last year.
The Central Valley, which is 450 miles long and about 50 miles wide, is home to most of California’s agriculture industry. With much of the valley semi-arid, farms there for decades have depended on irrigated water from the Northern California mountains, but those supplies have long been subject to sharp fluctuations. Environmental regulations have made the water supplies from year to year even more unpredictable.
The mountain snowpack stood at 45% of normal as of last Wednesday, compared with 139% a year ago, according to official estimates. Reservoirs remain full enough from 2011 precipitation so that restrictions aren’t expected to spread to the household water tap yet, officials said….”
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Psychologist Labels Sandusky as a Likely Pedophile in 1998 Investigation of Misconduct
Laws Will Always be Broken When There is No Consequences for Your Actions
Documentary: War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death
Always ask questions !
Complicit behavior, being spun, or acting indifferent has only allowed the best of us to have blood on our hands.
Keep in mind 90% when you watch this……
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTK6sUiUBr4 450 300] Comments »FLASH CRASH in Apple’s Stock; Stock Halted
“Apple shares where halted due to volatility.
The stock crashed down to $542.80 before trading was stopped.
Apparently it was…”
Comments »Big Brobama is Watching and Collecting
WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. intelligence community will now be able to store information about Americans with no ties to terrorism for up to five years under new Obama administration guidelines.
Until now, the National Counterterrorism Center had to immediately destroy information about Americans that was already stored in other government databases when there were no clear ties to terrorism.
Giving the NCTC expanded record-retention authority had been called for by members of Congress who said the intelligence community did not connect strands of intelligence held by multiple agencies leading up to the failed bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas 2009.
“Following the failed terrorist attack in December 2009, representatives of the counterterrorism community concluded it is vital for NCTC to be provided with a variety of datasets from various agencies that contain terrorism information,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in a statement late Thursday. “The ability to search against these datasets for up to five years on a continuing basis as these updated guidelines permit will enable NCTC to accomplish its mission more practically and effectively.”
The new rules replace guidelines issued in 2008 and have privacy advocates concerned about the potential for data-mining information on innocent Americans.
“It is a vast expansion of the government’s surveillance authority,” Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said of the five-year retention period….”
Comments »Chinese Banks Misclassified 20 Percent of Their Outstanding Loans; Understating the Risk
The Town Hall of Portugal Faces Default With $12 Billion in Debt
“Portugal’s town halls face default amid 9 billion euros ($12 billion) of debt unless the government provides aid soon, said Fernando Ruas, president of the nation’s association of municipalities.
“At a company we call it insolvency,” Ruas said in a telephone interview from Lisbon on March 21. “It could happen that some town halls could have to restructure their debt if the government doesn’t intervene.”
Ruas blamed a decline in money transfers from the government in Lisbon to municipalities for their growing financial woes. Portugal last year became the third euro-area country to request external aid, following Greece and Ireland. Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho is cutting spending and raising taxes to meet the terms of the 78 billion-euro rescue.
“A sharp decrease in money transfers has made it harder for many town halls to comply with their ongoing commitments,” said Ruas. His association estimates town halls face about 9 billion euros in liabilities. About 1.5 billion euros of the total is in bills to suppliers overdue by more than 90 days while the remainder is mostly made up of debt to banks, he said….”
Comments »Study: America’s Real Fiscal Gap is $211 trillion, 35% Chance of Default Within 30 Years
By James Pethokoukis
This new fiscal study—from Richard W. Evans and Kerk Phillips of Brigham Young University and Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University—is worrisome, to say the least:
Most developed countries appear to be running unsustainable social policies. In the U.S., federal liabilities (official debt plus the present value of projected non-interest expenditures) exceed federal assets (the present value of projected taxes) by $211 trillion or 14 times GDP. Closing this fiscal gap requires an immediate and permanent 64 percent hike in all federal taxes. … Our simulations, calibrated to the U.S. economy, produce an average duration to game over of about one century, with a 35 percent chance of reaching the fi scal limit in about 30 years. … When our economy reaches game over, the government is forced to default on its promised payment to the contemporaneous elderly.
Read the rest here.
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