The sick part is they did it nearly a year ago and have been accessing information ever since.
Comments »French Banks Are Having Trouble Raising $48 Billion to Make Coupon Payments in the First Quarter of 2012
Is Free Speech and the First Amendment Under Attack ?
I’ve been trying to ignore this reoccurring story, but it is starting to irk me given the recent passing of NDAA 1867.
Comments »Fukushma Linked to 14k U.S. State Side Deaths
Similar to radiation deaths seen after Chernobyl 14k Americans are believed to have died from the results of the Fukushima disaster. The death toll may rise according to the study.
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpAqiGSp29c&feature=related 450 300] [youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp7aDJLUf-U&feature=fvsr 450 300]Comments »
El-Erian Drops the Bomb: 1 in 3 Chance of a ’08-’09 Meltdown
“The head of the world’s biggest bond fund said he sees a more than 1-in-3 chance that the eurozone will break apart and trigger a financial crisis akin to the one that devastated the global economy in 2008.
“It would be the equivalent of a sudden stop” in which financial markets seized up, Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California, said. “It would be really, really messy.”
The global economy suffered its worst recession since World War II after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008 triggered steep falls in global stock markets. Gross domestic product in the U.S., the world’s largest economy, shrank by 5.1 percent.
El-Erian said in a Bloomberg interview that the crisis in Europe is no longer just about what will happen to periphery nations like Greece. “It is now a crisis for the eurozone as a whole,” he said.
He said the most likely outcome — with a 1 in 2 chance — is that European policy makers “get their act together” and manage the transition to a smaller currency union. The least likely is that the 17-nation euro zone stays intact: the possibility of that occurring is just 15 percent, he said……..”
Comments »CA’s Attorney General Files a Lawsuit Against Fannie and Freddie
Richard Russell is Dreadfully Bearish
Read an excerpt from his recent Dow Theory letter here.
Comments »DRUG WARS: Cocaine On Baby Changing Tables–Substance Found On 9 In 10 Public Tables
Researchers in the UK have found that 92 percent of over 100 public baby changing tables carry traces of cocaine. Say what?
The study was conducted by a team of Real Radio journalists from a local station in North West England. While not the most science-y of scientists, they used specialist wipes to test facilities in shopping centers, hospitals, police stations, courts, churches, supermarkets and department stores.
Their efforts were fueled by last month’s announcement that the UK is the cocaine capital of Europe. Changing tables are only the latest germy hotspot being tested.
As Jezebel’s Margaret Hartmann points out:
“Considering that money (and plenty of other things we touch) are coated in traces of the drug too, it seems unlikely that the contamination is solely due to addicts doing lines off of Koala Kare changing stations. Though, you should still be cautious about putting your precious child directly on those tables, because according to our scientific research they’re coated in baby poop.”
So thank you British journalists. We were already icked out about putting our kids down on those stations. Now, we’re thinking a nice quiet corner of a bookstore, a hidden booth at a restaurant, a park bench… really anywhere, may be a better bet.
Via Jezebel
Comments »ECB: Yes, This Really Could Be Like Lehman Again
Coincidence or Not ?: NDAA Passed on the 220th Anniversary on the Ratification of the Bill of Rights
The point of no return
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7IvLEpjPmc 450 300] [youtube://http;//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igt-jW4e8ts 450 300] Comments »Who Needs Democracy in the EU ?
This is the new Germany. No rules, no voting, and no recourse.
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPcWHBPYOSU 450 300] Comments »John Paulson Does It Again; One of the Top Ten in Exposure to BofA
Investigators Say Lawmakers Received VIP Discounted Loans From Country Wide
Why did they not get the same type of NINJA loans the lower class got ? “Friends of Angelo” and other public officials got preferential treatment and discounted loans.
Does this prove fraud ? Think about it when lenders and banks said they had no idea of the day to day operations of lending or that the poor were getting loans that would blow up on them.
Comments »Clashes in Egypt Erupt Again
A year after a street vendor set himself on fire, kicking off the Arab Spring, Egypt and many middle eastern countries see violence.
Comments »Mormons Ponzi Schemed $200+ Million From the Faithful
Lunch Break: Fun With Youtube
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV0pl9yiURY 450 300]
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6bvfGPqiOk 450 300] Comments »Credit Agricole and Commerzbank Take Emergency Measures to Stay Alive
FLASH: European Yields Decline
SHOCK: Nearly 1 in 5 Women Report Being Raped or Attempt
An exhaustive government survey of rape and domestic violence released on Wednesday affirmed that sexual violence against women remains endemic in the United States and in some instances may be far more common than previously thought.
Nearly one in five women surveyed said they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape at some point, and one in four reported being beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report.
“That almost one in five women have been raped in their lifetime is very striking and, I think, will be surprising to a lot of people,” said Linda C. Degutis, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducted the survey. “I don’t think we’ve really known that it was this prevalent in the population.”
The study, called the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, was begun in 2010 by the C.D.C. with the support of the National Institute of Justice and the Department of Defense. The study, a continuing telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 16,507 adults, defines intimate partner and sexual violence broadly.
The surveyors elicited information on types of aggression not previously studied in national surveys, including sexual violence other than rape, psychological aggression, coercion and control of reproductive and sexual health.
They also gathered information about the physical and mental health of violence survivors.
Sexual violence affects women disproportionately, the researchers found. One-third of women said they had been victims of a rape, beating or stalking, or a combination of assaults.
The researchers defined rape as completed forced penetration, forced penetration facilitated by drugs or alcohol, or attempted forced penetration. By that definition, 1 percent of women surveyed reported being raped in the previous year, a figure that suggests 1.3 million American women annually may be victims of rape or attempted rape.
That figure is significantly higher than previous estimates. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network last year estimated that 272,350 Americans were victims of sexual violence. And only 84,767 assaults defined as forcible rapes were reported in 2010, according to national statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
But men also reported being victimized in surprising numbers.
One in seven men have experienced severe violence at the hands of an intimate partner, the survey found, and one in 71 men — between 1 and 2 percent — have been raped, many when they were younger than 11.
A vast majority of women who said they had been victims of sexual violence, rape or stalking reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, as did about one-third of the men.
Women who had experienced such violence were also more likely than women who had not to report having asthma, diabetes or irritable bowel syndrome. Both men and women who had been assaulted were more likely than those who had not to report frequent headaches, chronic pain, difficulty sleeping, limitations on activity, and poor physical and mental health.
“We’ve seen this association with chronic health conditions in smaller studies before,” said Lisa James, director of health for Futures Without Violence, a national nonprofit group based in San Francisco that advocates for programs to end violence against women and girls. “People who grow up with violence adopt coping strategies that can lead to poor health outcomes. We know that women in abusive relationships are at increased risk for smoking, for example.”
The survey found that youth itself was an important risk factor for sexual violence and assault. Some 28 percent of male victims of rape reported that they were first assaulted when they were no older than 10.
Only 12 percent of female rape victims were assaulted when they were 10 or younger, but almost half of female victims said they were raped before they turned 18. About 80 percent of rape victims reported that they were raped before age 25.
Rape at a young age was associated with another, later rape; about 35 percent of women who had been raped as minors were also raped as adults, the survey found.
More than half of female rape victims had been raped by an intimate partner, according to the study, and 40 percent had been raped by an acquaintance; more than half of men who had been raped said the assailant was an acquaintance.
The public release of the report was postponed twice, most recently on Nov. 28. The findings are based on completed interviews lasting about 25 minutes each; they were conducted in 2010 with 9,086 women and 7,421 men.
Comments »Germany blocks ECB, France wants last resort lending
Comments »BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Germany’s chancellor and central banker urged Europe to stick to stricter budget discipline and forget about one-shot solutions after financial markets judged that another EU summit had failed to resolve the euro zone’s debt crisis.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann, speaking separately, rebuffed pressure for the European Central Bank to intervene decisively to stop the crisis escalating.
Merkel told parliament on Wednesday it would take years, not weeks, to overcome the debt problems but Europe would emerge stronger “if we have the necessary patience and endurance, if we do not let reversals get us down, if we consistently move towards a fiscal and stability union”.
“The German government has always made it clear that the European debt crisis is not to be solved with a single blow. There is no such single blow,” she said.
Weidmann, an influential voice in the ECB, made clear his opposition to ramping up purchases of troubled euro zone states’ debt, saying he was “no fan” of the existing limited bond-buying program and even its supporters were growing skeptical.
He also said the Bundesbank would only provide fresh funds for the International Monetary Fund to help fight the euro zone crisis if countries beyond Europe did so too.
The euro fell below $1.30 for the first time since January, stocks slid and Italy had to pay a euro era record yield to sell bonds as nervous investors awaited a possible credit rating downgrade for one or more euro zone countries.
Rome had to pay 6.47 percent to sell 3 billion euros of 5-year bonds, highlighting fierce market pressure ahead of a year in which Italy has a gross funding goal of 440 billion euros, starting in late January.
Safe-haven German Bund futures rose by more than one full point due to renewed doubts about the effectiveness of last week’s agreement on deeper fiscal union.
Ireland’s European Affairs Minister, Lucinda Creighton, said last week’s summit agreement by 26 European Union states, with Britain dissenting, to negotiate a new fiscal pact to enforce EU budget rules more strictly was not going to stop the rot.
“Having the fiscal compact in place by March is desirable but I don’t think it’s going to save the euro,” she told reporters on a visit to Paris.
“Ideally (I would like to see) a very clear declaration from the ECB that it is prepared to do whatever is necessary to save the currency, and it is the ultimate backstop,” Creighton said. “I don’t think we’re there yet but I feel we will end up there.”
Ireland and France saw eye-to-eye about the need for the central bank to act as lender of last resort, but there was no consensus on this yet, she said. Paris has toned down calls for ECB action, stressing its respect for the bank’s independence partly in deference to its close alliance with Germany.
Creighton warned that the crisis was likely to accelerate when countries such as Italy and Spain went to market in January and February to raise funds. “They will be challenged. We’ve yet to see the scale of that challenge,” she said.
Weidmann told journalists the ECB’s mandate prevented it from embarking on unlimited bond purchases and experience showed this would inevitably lead to inflation anyway.
“I think the idea is astonishing that one can win confidence by breaking rules,” he said.
