American consumers shopped more for bargains at the start of the U.S. holiday season and spent significantly less than a year ago, according to early data released on Sunday.Consumers said they will have spent nearly 8 percent less on average, or about $343 per person, over the weekend that includes U.S. Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and runs through Sunday, according to the National Retail Federation.While traffic to stores and retail websites rose to 195 million people from 172 million in... Read Full Story
The following information may be the most important we have ever published. One of our Intel sources, highly placed in banking circles, tells us that on 1/1/10 all banks that have received TARP funds have been informed by the Federal Reserve that they must further restrict any commercial lending. Loans have to be 75% collateralized, 50% of which has to be in cash, which is a compensating balance.The Fed has to do one of two things: They either have to pull $1.5 trillion out of the system by ... Read Full Story
Frankly, I cannot believe that I have to write the words that follow. I just learned that Martin Armstrong is being moved, possibly as early as Monday, from his current holding facility to a much higher security facility, MDC Brooklyn, which is similar to the facility he was in when he was in solitary confinement and where he was beaten nearly to death! This goes against the prison’s own rules and is against the law as he has two Habeas cases open in the Supreme Court.Why would this be... Read Full Story
The economic meltdown has hit non-college grads much harder than the educated. And conservatives are very good at exploiting their anger and unease. ToolsYou know how bad the economy is, right? Maybe your 401(k) has tanked. Perhaps you were out of work for a few months. You could have a mortgage under water. Or your health insurance has an impossibly high deductible. Yeah, we're all singing the blues.I've gotten out my violin to play a mournful accompaniment to our collective angst.Wait, wha... Read Full Story
*The following lays out the sequence of the events following the 1929 stock market crash. Phase 1"A flight from questionable securities into strong securities." This occurred during the initial stock market crash in 1929. The stock market recovered 50% of its losses into April 1930. Then as the bear market resumed, all securities, except for the gold shares, were sold regardless of quality. Following the stock market peak in October 2007, this flight from questionable securities into strong ... Read Full Story
Mark Pittman, the award-winning investigative reporter whose fight to open the Federal Reserve to more scrutiny led Bloomberg News to sue the central bank and win, died Nov. 25 in Yonkers, New York. He was 52.LINK HERE
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A year ago, the world reacted with astonishment as Iceland technically went bust. It seemed inconceivable that a modern democratic nation could have such parlous finances that only an emergency $6billion bail-out from the International Monetary Fund enabled its economy to keep functioning. This week, we witnessed a similar crisis in the Middle East but on a far, far more dangerous scale, as Dubai effectively defaulted on £48billion of loans. Unless its more prudent and oil-rich neighbou... Read Full Story
(snippet)The International Monetary Fund has also issued a number of blunt warnings about developments in eastern Europe. The Austrian Standard quotes IMF economist Christoph Rosenberg, who declares that the recent recovery of financial markets in the region is almost exclusively due to the increased appetite for risk on the part of investors and has little to do with any improvements in the real economy. Rosenberg warns of a new stock market bubble, which will have dire consequences when it... Read Full Story
The United States does not control its own destiny. Rather it is controlled by an international financial elite, of which the American branch works out of big New York banks like J.P. Morgan Chase, Wall Street investment firms such as Goldman Sachs, and the Federal Reserve System. They in turn control the White House, Congress, the military, the mass media, the intelligence agencies, both political parties, the universities, etc. No one can rise to the top in any of these institutions withou... Read Full Story
