28
Oct
Why Are We In Denial About The Coming Economic Collapse?
From iTulip.Com: The only serious journalism I’m reading these days is done by comedians. Maureen Dowd is already funny, but when Stephen Colbert does her column it’s like Mad Max turning on the nitro while chasing gasoline thieves in the last of the Interceptors.
EUROPE BRACES FOR MORE SUBPRIME PROBLEMS
HOW YOUR NEWS DISSECTOR DISCOVERED JOURNALISM
DAVID HOROWITZ GOES TO WAR
I was in Graz, Austria last week talking about my film IN DEBT W ETRUST at a conference/festival on democracy. On the way to the meeting inside a mountain used by the Nazis as a bomb shelter and weapons factory employing slave laborers, in WW !!, I passed an Austrian Bank called Bawag that suffered $1 billion in losses in connection with a Wall Street scandal involving the looting of a firm named REFCO. (Refco was connected to that controversial loan to Hillary Clinton in Arkansas in 1978. That was the $1000 investment that turned into $100,000 in a year.) The Bank has since been sold while court cases continue.
On the way home, I sat with a very engaging and smart retired Austrian arts dealer who told me he believes that the economic system is on the edge of collapse but says he wonders why Americans are in denial about these problems. He thinks there is a lag between the news reports we are reading now and when most Americans will be inpacted by the crisis He says the most Americans will face the reality in 2008–which, of course, just happens to be an election year.
Europeans may be more aware of this than we are. I was talking about the subcrime scandal touched on in my film IN DEBT WE TRUST. The press in Europe is very aware of it and worries about its global fallout. The International Herald Tribune in Paris put the story as its lead on page one. This was the headline: “EUROPE FEELS CHILL OF SUBPRIME FIASCO. Economic Forecasts Show Continent Still Vulnerable.”
The Financial Times published in London, went further in editorial titled “CREDIT SQUEEZE-THE DISASTER MOVIE.” They compared the credit “squeeze” (does that term sound familiar) to “the plot of a hundred disaster movies.” They said, “the longer this goes on, the greater the risk to the real economy.” I enjoyed this because months ago, CNN Money compared In Debt We Trust to the horror Movie Carrie commenting my documentary is ‘even scarier.” The Economist compared the subriime scandal to a “toffee apple with a maggot at its core.” All of these news outlets say this scandal is not going away anytime soon.
Paul Krugman commented in the New York Times, “Maybe the subprime disaster will be enough to remind us why financial regulation was introduced in the first place.”
FORECLOSURES IN CALIFORNIA
More lose home from foreclosures than from Fire, although 12000 homes are still threatened in the conflagration. See my piece on the TWO DISASTERS on our Mediachannel.org home page.
LA TIMES: The third quarter’s total surpasses 24,000, which is a record. ‘It’s working its way to the Westside,’ an agent says.
Californians lost their homes to foreclosure in record numbers for a second straight quarter, and the trend is creeping into affluent communities, figures released Friday show.
Foreclosures statewide hit a new high of 24,209, besting the previous record by 39%, according to DataQuick Information Systems. Default notices — the first step toward foreclosure — rose to 72,571 for the three months ended Sept. 30, breaking a record set in 1996.
Separately, the Census Bureau reported that the nation’s homeownership rate fell for a fourth straight quarter, the longest decline since 1981. The agency said foreclosures helped push the number of vacant homes to a record 17.9 million.
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Merrill Lynch, the nation’s largest broker, on Tuesday reported its first loss in about six years, saying bad judgment and weak risk management strategies forced it to write down almost $8 billion of mortgage and related assets, well above its own previous estimate.
Merrill shares fell almost 8% to a near two-year low of $62” . Note: Merrill did another write down a week later of $4.5 billion. The Financial Times commented: “The sense that valuation is still matter of “pick a number and divide by the chief trader’s golf handicap” seems to be pervasive. Can you believe this? Even Hollywood couldn’t make up something as fiip as that,
At least Merrill confesses to “bad judgment.” (Merill’s CEO is expected to resign today.) Some how I think it was more than just poor judgment I think this is another instance of “Greed Gone Wild” to quote former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney who also spoke at the Elevate Democracy conference.]
SPEAKING OF MCKINNEY
French citizens are attempting to use their laws to prosecute former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld while he was visiting Paris in “Old Europe, “to quote a favorite putdown of his. USA Daily reports:
American and European rights groups filed a legal complaint in France accusing former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of responsibility for torture in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay.
The complaint was filed with the Paris prosecutor’s office as Rumsfeld arrived in France for a visit, according to the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and two Paris-based groups, the International Federation of Human Rights and the League of Human Rights.
Lawrence Di Rita, former Pentagon spokesman under Rumsfeld, said: “These assertions have no merit, and they have been completely dismissed when made in other jurisdictions.”
“Complaints such as this have zero foundation in the truth or the facts as presented in countless investigations,” he said
The rights groups say their complaint could go forward because people suspected of torture can be prosecuted in France if they are on French soil. .
Of course done of us have forgotten this Donald’s contribution to the defense of freedom..and it reminded me of some questions that Cynthia McKinney had the guts to ask him while she was in Congress—which may be one reason that she no longer is:
ANTI-WAR PROTESTS AND THEIR COVERAGE
Shebar writes: Thousands”? Thousands here, thousands there, pretty soon you’re talking about some serious change. But this reporter doesn’t seem capable of doing even simple arithmetic! United for Peace & Justice ( http://www.unitedforpeace.org/) is claiming that 100,000+ marched. (Not enough, it seems. No doubt heavy rains along the East Coast didn’t help.)
Thousands Protest Iraq War Across U.S.
Sunday October 28, 2007 2:01 AM
By JASON DEAREN
Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Thousands of people called for a swift end to the war in Iraq as they marched through downtown on Saturday, chanting and carrying signs that read: “Wall Street Gets Rich, Iraqis and GIs Die'’ or “Drop Tuition Not Bombs.'’
The streets were filled with thousands as labor union members, anti-war activists, clergy and others rallied near City Hall before marching to Dolores Park.
As part of the demonstration, protesters fell on Market Street as part of a “die in'’ to commemorate the thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi citizens who have died since the conflict began in March 2003.
The protest was the largest in a series of war protests taking place in New York, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities…
MILITARY LAWYER BREAKS RANKS
The Independent reports:
The whistleblower, an army major inside the military court system which the United States has established at Guantanamo Bay, has described the detention of one prisoner, a hospital administrator from Sudan, as “unconscionable”.
His critique will be the centerpiece of a hearing on 5 December before the US Supreme Court when another attempt is made to shut the prison down. So nervous is the Bush administration of the latest attack – and another Supreme Court ruling against it – that it is preparing a whole new system of military courts to deal with those still imprisoned.
The whistleblower’s testimony is the most serious attack to date on the military panels, which were meant to give a fig- leaf of legitimacy to the interrogation and detention policies at Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. The major has taken part in 49 status review panels.
FALL INTO THE GAP: AP, Gap Vows Action After Child Labor Report
Gap Promises Action After British Newspaper Finds Subcontractor in India Using Child Labor
LONDON (AP) — Clothing retailer Gap Inc. said Sunday that it will convene all of its Indian suppliers to “forcefully reiterate” its prohibition on child labor after a British newspaper found children as young as 10 making Gap clothes at a sweatshop in New Delhi.
Lawrence Di Rita claims that the latest legal complaint brought against Rumsfeld has “… no merit” and like past complaints “have been completely dismissed when made in other jurisdictions;’ and,`complaints such as this have zero foundation in the truth or the facts presented in countless investigations.”
October 29th, 2007 at 2:56 amIf Di Rita’s statement is true, then why did the Bushcons engage in a massive campaign effort, since 2003, to: a) control leaks on torture and abuse that was occurring in Guantanamo and Iraq, and b) stymie those “countless investigations” of Rumsfeld? It stands to reason that if Rumsfeld greenlighted a huge budget for propaganda, personnel and materials intended for areas G & I, and stamps it w/ a security clearance of top secret or above, it’s because Rumsfeld was aware that he was acting outside of any foreign or domestic law!
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney is coming to the small mill town of Fort Mill, SC this Thursday from 6 to 7:30. She will speak at an event sponsored by the York County (SC) Greens at Jerusalem Baptist Church at 1003 Steele Street.
The website Palmetto Scoop has blasted the Greens for bringing her to South Carolina, and has called Bryan Smith, a candidate for Town Council in this small town, a “nut case” for working with McKinney.
Seems *some* folks didn’t get the memo about “Southern Hospitality”.
More details can be found at www.yorkgreens.com
October 29th, 2007 at 12:45 pm