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POPSBlackwater Busted, Prince Has "Compliance Challenges" Makes one smile. The arrogant Prince of Blackwater just got nailed with a big fine from the same corrupt Federal government they contracted with. The "war on terrorism" is so profitable. What happened to all the hardware that ended up on the black market in Iraq? (Someone knows). "Compliance challenges", he says. More like rogue operations. This is the same company that shoots whoever is in the area and quickly leaves, whose crimes even U.S. military personnel have reported. Dirty mercenaries are never held accountable for war crimes because they are independent contractors. This is the least the State Dept has on them, just the tip of the proverbial ice berg. Iraq wants to try them there.
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POPS"Nation Finally Awful Enough to Make Social Progress" ""Today Americans have grudgingly taken a giant leap forward," Williams continued. "And all it took was severe economic downturn, a bloody and unjust war, terrorist attacks on lower Manhattan, nearly 2,000 deaths in New Orleans, and more than three centuries of frequently violent racial turmoil." Said Williams, "The American people should be commended for their long-overdue courage."
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POPS October Surprises In History During October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union came to the brink of war over nuclear-armed missiles that Nikita Khrushchev had shipped to Cuba. Those who believe that this month's collapse of global financial markets is an unprecedented disaster need to study history. In 1987, Oct. 19 became known as "Black Monday," as Wall Street investors watched the market nose-dive 22 percent and lose $500 billion in value in a single trading session -- still the biggest one-day loss of value in history. The 23rd of this month is the 25th anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon -- a radical Islamic suicide attack that killed 241 Americans. Fifteen years ago this month, there was a 19-hour gunfight in Mogadishu, Somalia, which claimed the lives of 18 U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force personnel.
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POPSFannie, Freddie, and the Left I know nothing is ever simple but this pretty well explains a lot to me and is consistent with what I see locally in my very liberal State Capital.
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POPSBailout Creating a Financial Black Hole (cont.)The latest propaganda from the government and the Illuminist think tanks tells us that, treasuries are more secure than gold because they are backed by the US government and gold has a counter party risk by whoever is storing your gold as the counter party. I’ve never heard any stupider comments. The Fed has informed Bank of America to be ready for a one-week universal shutdown of the banking system, including access to checking accounts, savings accounts and credit cards. This is why you need $5,000 in small bills in your safe at home and small denomination gold and silver coins.
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POPSFannie/Freddie Trouble Seen 9 Yrs Ago
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans. ''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.'' Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black
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POPSThe 55 trillion dollar question Will credit default swaps be the next disaster? When you put $10 on black 22, you're pretty sure the casino will pay off if you win. The CDS market offers no such assurance. One reason the market grew so quickly was that hedge funds poured in, sensing easy money. And not just big, well-established hedge funds but a lot of upstarts. So in some cases, giant financial institutions were counting on collecting money from institutions only slightly more solvent than your average minimart. The danger, of course, is that if a hedge fund suddenly has to pay off on a lot of CDS, it will simply go out of business.
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POPS Thoughts on the Bailout Defeat "A number of Republican House members and staff, along with others who are plugged in, are telling me that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will come back with a new bill that includes all the left-wing stuff that was scrubbed from the bill that was defeated today in the House. As this scenario goes, the House Democrats need 218 votes, and they have to pick up a number of black and Hispanic House members who jumped ship because the Wall Street provisions, in their view, were too benign. So things like the bankruptcy judges setting mortgage terms and rates, the ACORN slush-fund spending, the union proxy for corporate boards, stricter limits on executive compensation, and much larger equity ownership of selling banks through warrants will all find itself back in the new bill. Of course, this scenario will lose more Republican votes. But insiders tell me President Bush will take Secretary Paulson’s advice and sign that kind of legislation."
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POPSPot Advocates Fired Up by Hill Salute to Legal Booze This item, penned by Roll Call's Emily Heil and Elizabeth Brotherton, has a lighthearted tone, but it underscores that alcohol distributors, as we noted here http://www.forbes.com/businessinthebeltway/2006/05/08/beer-tradegroup-lobby-cx_atg_0509beer.html a few years back, are a serious force inside the Beltway. The legislation passed last week lauds legal liquor's generation of "billions of dollars in Federal and Sales tax revenues" annually. With the red ink flood in Washington, maybe legal pot will get a harder look from Congress.
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POPSThe Joke's On Presidente Hugo Chávez "Lo Sentimos" The holdings are part of a strategy by which the Venezuelan government infuses dollars into its dollar-starved, overheating economy. The system -- which relies on selling structured notes made up of the sovereign debt of other South American nations -- allows Venezuelan banks and individuals to buy dollars at the official exchange rate of 2.15 bolivars, about half the black-market rate. With annual inflation at 34.5%, analysts say the bolivar would be considerably weaker without the structured note sales. The Finance Ministry could hold the notes to maturity instead of unwinding them in the hope the underlying bonds recover in value. But there is a high risk that they depreciate further. The fund in which the notes are held, Fonden, finances many of the projects that Mr. Chávez touts as part of his socialist "Bolivarian Revolution."
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POPSBlue to Gray Flames "Businessmen are taking advantage of the national emergency in order to make money. They break the regulations which protect the common welfare of all—for the sake of their own personal gain. They're profiteers of the black market who grow rich by defrauding the poor of their rightful share, at a time of desperate shortage. They pursue a ruthless, grasping, grabbing, antisocial policy, based on nothing but plain, selfish greed." Rearden sat looking at him, as if studying an object seen for the first time. Somewhere deep in Rearden's mind, as a steady, gentle, inexorable beat, was a man's voice, saying:
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POPSFlip Video I received a Flip Mino as a birthday gift last month. I've played around with it, but haven't had a good opportunity to show it off with a post yet. It's SUPER easy and produces good quality videos. If you're looking for a good pocket video cam, but don't want to spend the money for the Mino, take a look at the Flip Ultra. Creative has a knock-off called the Vado on the market that's even less expensive than the Ultra. However, I am sold on Flip Video not only for the quality of the product, but because of the company's social endeavors to make the world a better place. For more information about Flip Video's commitment to social responsibility and non-profits, please visit http://flipvideospotlight.com/
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