Nick Turse, TomDispatch.com: "In May, the US economy lost 345,000 nonfarm jobs, pushing the unemployment rate from 8.9 percent to 9.4 percent. According to official statistics, 14.5 million Americans are now looking for work and, as a recent headline at Time.com put it, 'The jobs aren't coming back anytime soon.' In fact, a team of economists at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank recently reported that 'the level of labor market slack could be higher by the end of 2009 than at any other time in the post-World War Two period.'"
http://www.truthout.org/061809U
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The Federal Reserve System's Party Line
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north721.html
Who Will Regulate the Regulators?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo173.html
On Jack Welch and Ben Bernanke
http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs120.html
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A fake financial fix
Cato Institute
by Mark A. Calabria
06/18/09
The Obama administration yesterday presented a misguided, ill-informed remake of our financial regulatory system that will make crises more likely and more costly. Our financial system, particularly our mortgage system, is broken — but the Obama plan ignores the real flaws to focus on more convenient targets. Instead of putting an end to bank bailouts, the plan makes bailouts a permanent feature of our regulatory landscape. In fact, it extends the possibility of taxpayer-funded bailouts to any company choosing to become a financial-holding company. This will likely include every large insurer, as well as major consumer-finance companies like GMAC. Of course, the administration tells us that bailouts won’t be needed — because the same regulators who missed the signs of the current crisis will get added powers to prevent the next one...
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10300
Obamanomics: The good, the bad, the weak
Mother Jones
by Nomi Prins
06/17/09
The administration’s new 88-page white paper, titled ‘Financial Regulatory Reform: A New Foundation,” focuses more on alterations than true reform. Some of them are useful, like requiring lenders to keep a stake in the loans they make, and requiring banks to keep adequate capital on hand. The bill would also regulate a portion of the problematic financial instruments known as over-the-counter derivatives. But other aspects are ill advised, like giving the Federal Reserve more oversight, creating an uber-regulator, and allowing Wall Street’s biggest players to keep their hands in every pot imaginable...
http://tinyurl.com/m2j69g
Where are they now?
AntiWar.Com
by Philip Giraldi
06/23/09
One of the most galling aspects of the failure to confront the war-crimes perpetrators is that not only have they not been vilified, they have, in most cases, been rewarded. George Tenet, the CIA director notorious for his ’slam-dunk’ comment, a man who cooked the intelligence to make the war possible to curry favor with the White House, is now professor in the practice of diplomacy at Georgetown University and has generously remunerated positions on the boards of Allen & Company merchant bank, QinetiQ, and L-1 Identity Solutions. He sold his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, which has been described as a ’self-justifying apologia,’ in 2007 for a reported advance of $4 million. His book, ironically, admits that the U.S. invaded Iraq for no good reason. James Pavitt, who was the point man responsible for the ‘enhanced interrogation’ program as Tenet’s deputy director for operations, is currently a principal with the Scowcroft Group. Cofer Black, who headed the Counter-Terrorism Center, which actually carried out ‘enhanced interrogations,’ is vice chairman of Blackwater Worldwide (now called Xe) and chairman of Total Intelligence Solutions, a Blackwater spinoff...
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2009/06/22/where-are-they-now/
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=financial+system
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=mortgage
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bailout
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=taxpayer
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=derivatives
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=US+economy
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=unemployment
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Wall+Street
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Federal+Reserve
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bernanke
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=regulator
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bush+legacy
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=George+Tenet
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=James+Pavitt
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Cofer+Black
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=war+crimes
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Counter-Terrorism+Center
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=interrogat
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Blackwater
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jack+Welch
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Nick+Turse
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=com/north
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=com/dilorenzo
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=com/higgs
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Mark+A.+Calabria
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Nomi+Prins
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Philip+Giraldi
