the mage
Nov 9, 2007, 3:52 PM
Dreary but oh so important to your future forecasting, from within America not out...
http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/
BERNANKE WARNS OF ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN
DISSECTOR WARNS: HEED THESE WARNINGS
I know this economic news is a bummer and not something most of us want to hear while impeachment resolutions are being filed and Pakistan seems on the edge of civil war, and a Bush veto at lost last has been overidded on abi-partisan basis in Congress. (And on Friday morning when I read that Mukasey was backed in the Senate, a dicey Trade deal with Peru passed in the House, Bhutto placed under house arrest with repression tightening in Pakistan, and U.S. retailers reporting the worst October in many years at the malls. Only possible good news: an indictment of Bernie Kerik, Rudy Guiliani’s buddy-police commish in NYC.)
But journalists are taught to follow the money and even though many of you have yet to feel this crisis or pay through the nose for it as we will
We have to keep tracking it because its implications are huge even though I feel like that sky is falling prophet that we have all been taught to laugh at.
The President of France, the mad Sarkozy, here to make nice to America, has warned the US government to stop the devaulation of the dollar or risk triggering an economic war. Already seven nations want to stop doing business in dollars.
And the latest news from Washington and Wall Street is grim, grim, grim. Do I have your attention yet?
IN DC, as the NYT reports: Fed Chairman Says Economy Likely to Slow
Ben S. Bernanke cited the housing meltdown, tighter credit and rising oil prices, but he gave no signal that the central bank would cut rates again.
MARKET FALLS
ON WALL STREET, Bloomberg reports:
Stocks extended their losses as a lackluster forecast from Cisco Systems Inc. made investors wary of technology stocks. The major indexes each lost more than 1 percent, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq giving up more than 3 percent.
Bernanke, appearing before Congress’ Joint Economic Committee with the Fed’s economic forecast, said the central bank is tracking developments closely but didn’t offer solid evidence the bank is prepared to further cut interest rates. Cisco’s sales forecast further dampened investor enthusiasm as investors worried about spending.
The market’s renewed slide comes a day after stocks tumbled amid concerns about continuing credit woes, a weakening dollar and rising oil prices.
The market also had fresh reason for concern about toxicity within the credit markets. Morgan Stanley issued a detailed accounting of its exposure to subprime debt, pleasing investors by eliminating some of the uncertainty that has wracked Wall Street to varying degrees in recent months. But Morgan said late Wednesday its fourth-quarter profit could be reduced by $2.5 billion in write-downs related to troubles in the credit market, a reminder of the widespread damage from soured loans.”
Another $2.5 BILLION but gang that’s just a small piece of the problem. Not real Money. Smile.
A later report explained that “BanksFace $100 Billion of Writedowns on Level 3 Rule (Update3)
$500 BILLION IN LOSSES IS THE NEW NUMBER
Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) — U.S. banks and brokers face as much as $100 billion of writedowns because of Level 3 accounting rules, in addition to the losses caused by the subprime credit slump, according to Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc….
“This credit crisis, when all is out, will see $250 billion to $500 billion of losses,'’ said one analyst, who’s based in London. “The heat is on and it is inevitable that more players will have to revalue at least a
decent portion'’ of assets they currently value using “mark-to-make believe.'’
AND THERE WAS THIS BLOW AT THE WHITE HOUSE.
WASHINGTON — President Bush suffered the first veto override of his seven-year-old presidency Thursday as the Senate enacted a $23 billion water resources bill despite his protest that it was filled with unnecessary projects.
The 79-14 vote included 34 Republicans who defied the president. Enactment was a foregone conclusion, but it still marked a milestone for a president who spent his first six years with a much friendlier Congress controlled by his Republican Party.
Mukasey Nomination Now Up for a Vote…..Generals Fear Al Qaeda Resurgence after our surgence in Iraq.
REMEMBER: PAKISTAN IS A NUCLEAR POWER
Meanwhile, what next in Pakistan, our ally numero uno in the war on terror/war of error’?
Veteran Pakistani journalist writes on the MaximNews Network:
UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network / - 08 November 2007 — Pakistan’s elections will he held by mid-February, state media quoted Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf hours after President Bush spoke with the General asking him to hold elections and take off his uniform.
Gen. Musharraf is under growing pressure from the United States and his domestic opponents to end the emergency declared Saturday and hold elections in January, as originally planned.
According to reports some 4,000 protestors have been incarcerated by the Musharraf regime in a crackdown on lawyers, poetical workers, human rights activists.
News reports from Islamabad say the centre of the capital is virtually sealed off. All roads leading to President House and the Supreme Court are inaccessible.
The General has barricaded himself in. Even the army tennis courts which stand next door to the entrance to the Prime Minister’s residence are under guard.
The law courts have ground to a halt. Half the country’s Supreme Court judges have been dismissed including the top judge, Iftikhar
In the five days since emergency rule, it seems the protests are growing but only very slowly and tentatively.
Meanwhile the New York Times reported Thursday that military attachés from the United States and several other Western nations are discreetly contacting senior Pakistani generals and asking them to press General Musharraf, the president, to back down from the emergency decree he issued Saturday night, according to a Western diplomat.
And while this going on so-called “zealots” are on the move:
General’s troops routed by zealots imposing Sharia on tourist haven
Zahid Hussain reports for The Times of Londonfrom Islamabad
Dozens of Pakistani security forces policing a former tourist haven surrendered to militants yesterday, raising the stakes in the country’s political crisis. The police officers and troops, outnumbered and demoralised, laid down their arms before hundreds of pro-Taleban extremists who are imposing Islamic law in an area beloved of Western hikers.
The surrender, in the scenic Swat Valley, was deeply symbolic at a time when President Musharraf is pleading for continued Western support as a key regional ally.
General Musharraf argued last week that he was imposing martial law to help the fight against extremists. Yesterday’s cave-in illustrated the limits of Pakistan’s efforts to combat the spread of militancy. And the unwillingness of those in uniform to fight allies of al-Qaeda in northern Pakistan contrasted with the brutal repression by the security forces of lawyers on the streets of the capital.
NEW WORLD ORDER TURNS UGLY
Sidney Blumenthal writes on Salon:
Every aspect of Bush’s foreign policy has now collapsed. Every dream of neoconservatism has become a nightmare. Every doctrine has turned to dust. The influence of the United States has reached a nadir, its lowest point since before World War II, when the country was encased in isolationism.
NOW HE TELLS US
The Times of London: Blair ‘knew Iraq had no WMD’
TONY BLAIR privately conceded two weeks before the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein did not have any usable weapons of mass destruction, Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, reveals today.
His revelations, taken from a diary that he kept as a senior minister during the months leading up to war, are published today in The Sunday Times. They shatter the case for war put forward by the government that Iraq presented “a real and present danger” to Britain.
Cook, who resigned shortly before the invasion of Iraq, also reveals there was a near mutiny in the cabinet, triggered by David Blunkett, the home secretary, when it first discussed military action against Iraq.
The prime minister ignored the “large number of ministers who spoke up against the war”, according to Cook.”
The Bottom Line he House of Commons was knowingly misled.
And in our own House of non-commoners: more impeachment talk.
When Dennis Kucinch introduced an impeachment resolution against Dick Cheney, I scratched my head asking, what about his boss? Maybe he heard me
Presidential hopeful Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who brought an impeachment resolution against Vice President Dick Cheney to the House floor on Tuesday, says he is also planning a similar resolution to impeach President Bush.
The news came during a conference call Kucinich held with supporters Monday evening, although technical problems kept most on the call from being able to hear the congressman.
But activist David Swanson, who spoke directly with Kucinich during the call, summarized the contents of his conversation in an email:
“He is going to introduce a privileged resolution on the floor of the U.S. House Tuesday morning to force a vote on his resolution to impeach Cheney,” confirmed Swamson. “While that bill includes offenses related to Iraq and Iran, Kucinich plans to focus his remarks on Iran and the fact that the current Pentagon bill includes funding to retrofit bombers to carry 15-ton bombs.”
Concerning the possible resolution against Bush, Swanson said Kucinich “wanted to let everyone know that he will not only continue pushing for the impeachment of Cheney but will also take up the impeachment of Bush with a new resolution.”
Hey Dennis: Can’t you get a phone that works?
THE “SECRET ROOM”
I told you about that AT&T whistle blower who exposed the ways they were intercepting emails for the government. I didn’t tell you about “THE SECRET ROOM.” Scary.
NOT TO BE OUTDONE
ISRAEL: IDF facility tapped all calls from Israel abroad until 2004
Watch (or hear) the two-minute video of the broadcast on the Haaretz webpage — much more info (or disinfo) there than in the story, including the familiar line that eavesdropping helped “national security”…. I’m sure that by 2004 the program *was* anachronistic! So who would you guess is doing the wiretaps now?
Haaretz.com/Channel 10 daily feature for November 6, 2007.
For thirty years, the Israel Defense Forces military censor operated a special surveillance facility in the center of Tel Aviv, officially designed to tap the phone conversation of foreign journalists reporting to their home countries.
The underground facility remained in operation until 2004, but only recently, it was revealed that the soldiers serving in it did not limit their eavesdropping to the journalists’ conversation alone.
Among the conversations tapped were those prime ministers held with world leaders and even private conversations by ordinary citizens.
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/105147.html
PROGRESS IN SMALL INSTALLMENTS
Egyptian Police Sentenced In Landmark Torture Case
Washington Post: CAIRO, Nov. 5 — An Egyptian judge sentenced two police officers Monday to three years in prison for presiding over the 2006 torture of a 21-year-old minivan driver in a Cairo police station.
The abuse of Emad el-Kabir became a landmark in Egyptian rights cases – not because of the police torture, which rights groups say occurs daily here, but because police recorded the torture on a cellphone video camera.
THIS IS HORIFFIC: AIDS RESEARCH MAY HAVE SPREAD AIDS
The NY Times reported “In Tests, AIDS Vaccine Seemed to Increase Risk”
In a puzzling and potentially troubling development, an AIDS vaccine tested in a closely watched trial might have increased the risk among vaccine recipients of becoming infected with H.I.V., researchers reported yesterday at a scientific meeting in Seattle.
The Mail & Guardian in South Africa reported:
Cold virus suspect in Aids vaccine failure
A cold virus used to make an experimental HIV vaccine that was discontinued in September somehow may have caused volunteers to be more susceptible to the Aids virus, the vaccine’s developers said on Wednesday. Researchers were doubly dismayed when it appeared that those who had been vaccinated were more likely to become infected.
Post
http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/
BERNANKE WARNS OF ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN
DISSECTOR WARNS: HEED THESE WARNINGS
I know this economic news is a bummer and not something most of us want to hear while impeachment resolutions are being filed and Pakistan seems on the edge of civil war, and a Bush veto at lost last has been overidded on abi-partisan basis in Congress. (And on Friday morning when I read that Mukasey was backed in the Senate, a dicey Trade deal with Peru passed in the House, Bhutto placed under house arrest with repression tightening in Pakistan, and U.S. retailers reporting the worst October in many years at the malls. Only possible good news: an indictment of Bernie Kerik, Rudy Guiliani’s buddy-police commish in NYC.)
But journalists are taught to follow the money and even though many of you have yet to feel this crisis or pay through the nose for it as we will
We have to keep tracking it because its implications are huge even though I feel like that sky is falling prophet that we have all been taught to laugh at.
The President of France, the mad Sarkozy, here to make nice to America, has warned the US government to stop the devaulation of the dollar or risk triggering an economic war. Already seven nations want to stop doing business in dollars.
And the latest news from Washington and Wall Street is grim, grim, grim. Do I have your attention yet?
IN DC, as the NYT reports: Fed Chairman Says Economy Likely to Slow
Ben S. Bernanke cited the housing meltdown, tighter credit and rising oil prices, but he gave no signal that the central bank would cut rates again.
MARKET FALLS
ON WALL STREET, Bloomberg reports:
Stocks extended their losses as a lackluster forecast from Cisco Systems Inc. made investors wary of technology stocks. The major indexes each lost more than 1 percent, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq giving up more than 3 percent.
Bernanke, appearing before Congress’ Joint Economic Committee with the Fed’s economic forecast, said the central bank is tracking developments closely but didn’t offer solid evidence the bank is prepared to further cut interest rates. Cisco’s sales forecast further dampened investor enthusiasm as investors worried about spending.
The market’s renewed slide comes a day after stocks tumbled amid concerns about continuing credit woes, a weakening dollar and rising oil prices.
The market also had fresh reason for concern about toxicity within the credit markets. Morgan Stanley issued a detailed accounting of its exposure to subprime debt, pleasing investors by eliminating some of the uncertainty that has wracked Wall Street to varying degrees in recent months. But Morgan said late Wednesday its fourth-quarter profit could be reduced by $2.5 billion in write-downs related to troubles in the credit market, a reminder of the widespread damage from soured loans.”
Another $2.5 BILLION but gang that’s just a small piece of the problem. Not real Money. Smile.
A later report explained that “BanksFace $100 Billion of Writedowns on Level 3 Rule (Update3)
$500 BILLION IN LOSSES IS THE NEW NUMBER
Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) — U.S. banks and brokers face as much as $100 billion of writedowns because of Level 3 accounting rules, in addition to the losses caused by the subprime credit slump, according to Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc….
“This credit crisis, when all is out, will see $250 billion to $500 billion of losses,'’ said one analyst, who’s based in London. “The heat is on and it is inevitable that more players will have to revalue at least a
decent portion'’ of assets they currently value using “mark-to-make believe.'’
AND THERE WAS THIS BLOW AT THE WHITE HOUSE.
WASHINGTON — President Bush suffered the first veto override of his seven-year-old presidency Thursday as the Senate enacted a $23 billion water resources bill despite his protest that it was filled with unnecessary projects.
The 79-14 vote included 34 Republicans who defied the president. Enactment was a foregone conclusion, but it still marked a milestone for a president who spent his first six years with a much friendlier Congress controlled by his Republican Party.
Mukasey Nomination Now Up for a Vote…..Generals Fear Al Qaeda Resurgence after our surgence in Iraq.
REMEMBER: PAKISTAN IS A NUCLEAR POWER
Meanwhile, what next in Pakistan, our ally numero uno in the war on terror/war of error’?
Veteran Pakistani journalist writes on the MaximNews Network:
UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network / - 08 November 2007 — Pakistan’s elections will he held by mid-February, state media quoted Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf hours after President Bush spoke with the General asking him to hold elections and take off his uniform.
Gen. Musharraf is under growing pressure from the United States and his domestic opponents to end the emergency declared Saturday and hold elections in January, as originally planned.
According to reports some 4,000 protestors have been incarcerated by the Musharraf regime in a crackdown on lawyers, poetical workers, human rights activists.
News reports from Islamabad say the centre of the capital is virtually sealed off. All roads leading to President House and the Supreme Court are inaccessible.
The General has barricaded himself in. Even the army tennis courts which stand next door to the entrance to the Prime Minister’s residence are under guard.
The law courts have ground to a halt. Half the country’s Supreme Court judges have been dismissed including the top judge, Iftikhar
In the five days since emergency rule, it seems the protests are growing but only very slowly and tentatively.
Meanwhile the New York Times reported Thursday that military attachés from the United States and several other Western nations are discreetly contacting senior Pakistani generals and asking them to press General Musharraf, the president, to back down from the emergency decree he issued Saturday night, according to a Western diplomat.
And while this going on so-called “zealots” are on the move:
General’s troops routed by zealots imposing Sharia on tourist haven
Zahid Hussain reports for The Times of Londonfrom Islamabad
Dozens of Pakistani security forces policing a former tourist haven surrendered to militants yesterday, raising the stakes in the country’s political crisis. The police officers and troops, outnumbered and demoralised, laid down their arms before hundreds of pro-Taleban extremists who are imposing Islamic law in an area beloved of Western hikers.
The surrender, in the scenic Swat Valley, was deeply symbolic at a time when President Musharraf is pleading for continued Western support as a key regional ally.
General Musharraf argued last week that he was imposing martial law to help the fight against extremists. Yesterday’s cave-in illustrated the limits of Pakistan’s efforts to combat the spread of militancy. And the unwillingness of those in uniform to fight allies of al-Qaeda in northern Pakistan contrasted with the brutal repression by the security forces of lawyers on the streets of the capital.
NEW WORLD ORDER TURNS UGLY
Sidney Blumenthal writes on Salon:
Every aspect of Bush’s foreign policy has now collapsed. Every dream of neoconservatism has become a nightmare. Every doctrine has turned to dust. The influence of the United States has reached a nadir, its lowest point since before World War II, when the country was encased in isolationism.
NOW HE TELLS US
The Times of London: Blair ‘knew Iraq had no WMD’
TONY BLAIR privately conceded two weeks before the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein did not have any usable weapons of mass destruction, Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, reveals today.
His revelations, taken from a diary that he kept as a senior minister during the months leading up to war, are published today in The Sunday Times. They shatter the case for war put forward by the government that Iraq presented “a real and present danger” to Britain.
Cook, who resigned shortly before the invasion of Iraq, also reveals there was a near mutiny in the cabinet, triggered by David Blunkett, the home secretary, when it first discussed military action against Iraq.
The prime minister ignored the “large number of ministers who spoke up against the war”, according to Cook.”
The Bottom Line he House of Commons was knowingly misled.
And in our own House of non-commoners: more impeachment talk.
When Dennis Kucinch introduced an impeachment resolution against Dick Cheney, I scratched my head asking, what about his boss? Maybe he heard me
Presidential hopeful Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who brought an impeachment resolution against Vice President Dick Cheney to the House floor on Tuesday, says he is also planning a similar resolution to impeach President Bush.
The news came during a conference call Kucinich held with supporters Monday evening, although technical problems kept most on the call from being able to hear the congressman.
But activist David Swanson, who spoke directly with Kucinich during the call, summarized the contents of his conversation in an email:
“He is going to introduce a privileged resolution on the floor of the U.S. House Tuesday morning to force a vote on his resolution to impeach Cheney,” confirmed Swamson. “While that bill includes offenses related to Iraq and Iran, Kucinich plans to focus his remarks on Iran and the fact that the current Pentagon bill includes funding to retrofit bombers to carry 15-ton bombs.”
Concerning the possible resolution against Bush, Swanson said Kucinich “wanted to let everyone know that he will not only continue pushing for the impeachment of Cheney but will also take up the impeachment of Bush with a new resolution.”
Hey Dennis: Can’t you get a phone that works?
THE “SECRET ROOM”
I told you about that AT&T whistle blower who exposed the ways they were intercepting emails for the government. I didn’t tell you about “THE SECRET ROOM.” Scary.
NOT TO BE OUTDONE
ISRAEL: IDF facility tapped all calls from Israel abroad until 2004
Watch (or hear) the two-minute video of the broadcast on the Haaretz webpage — much more info (or disinfo) there than in the story, including the familiar line that eavesdropping helped “national security”…. I’m sure that by 2004 the program *was* anachronistic! So who would you guess is doing the wiretaps now?
Haaretz.com/Channel 10 daily feature for November 6, 2007.
For thirty years, the Israel Defense Forces military censor operated a special surveillance facility in the center of Tel Aviv, officially designed to tap the phone conversation of foreign journalists reporting to their home countries.
The underground facility remained in operation until 2004, but only recently, it was revealed that the soldiers serving in it did not limit their eavesdropping to the journalists’ conversation alone.
Among the conversations tapped were those prime ministers held with world leaders and even private conversations by ordinary citizens.
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/105147.html
PROGRESS IN SMALL INSTALLMENTS
Egyptian Police Sentenced In Landmark Torture Case
Washington Post: CAIRO, Nov. 5 — An Egyptian judge sentenced two police officers Monday to three years in prison for presiding over the 2006 torture of a 21-year-old minivan driver in a Cairo police station.
The abuse of Emad el-Kabir became a landmark in Egyptian rights cases – not because of the police torture, which rights groups say occurs daily here, but because police recorded the torture on a cellphone video camera.
THIS IS HORIFFIC: AIDS RESEARCH MAY HAVE SPREAD AIDS
The NY Times reported “In Tests, AIDS Vaccine Seemed to Increase Risk”
In a puzzling and potentially troubling development, an AIDS vaccine tested in a closely watched trial might have increased the risk among vaccine recipients of becoming infected with H.I.V., researchers reported yesterday at a scientific meeting in Seattle.
The Mail & Guardian in South Africa reported:
Cold virus suspect in Aids vaccine failure
A cold virus used to make an experimental HIV vaccine that was discontinued in September somehow may have caused volunteers to be more susceptible to the Aids virus, the vaccine’s developers said on Wednesday. Researchers were doubly dismayed when it appeared that those who had been vaccinated were more likely to become infected.
Post