Big Brother

2009-07-08T16:24:00.001-07:00

Radicalism Goes Mainstream

by Gary DeMar

Why does the Left sympathize with radical Islamic extremists? Over the July 4th weekend a story about how a recent New York City Council resolution that recommend the city’s school system shut down to commemorate two of the most important Muslim holidays was picked up by Islamic groups and declared as a victory for Allah and Islam. Why would these nut-balls do such a thing? By “nut-balls,” I mean the New York City Council. This is the same New York City that went through the horrors of 9–11. What are these people thinking? Even Mayor Bloomberg has better sense. Give him time. It won’t be long before he capitulates. “Righteous violence” has always been rationalized by the Left going back to early Union violence because it was a means to bring down the establishment:

The use of violence was justified, many in the New Left comforted themselves, because theirs was a violence to end all violence, a liberating and righteous violence that would rid the world of a system that deformed and destroyed people. Such glorious ends justified, even ennobled, violent means.[1]

Organizations like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) used violent rhetoric almost from their inception in the early 1960s. John Lewis, the very liberal Democrat representative from Georgia, boasted when he addressed the March on Washington in August 1963, “We will march through the South, . . . the way Sherman did. We shall pursue our own ‘scorched earth’ policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground—nonviolently. We shall crack the South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of democracy.”[2] From September 1969 to May 1970 radical leftists in the United States “committed about 250 attacks, or almost one terrorist bombing a day (government estimates put that number much higher). During the summer of 1970, there were twenty bombings a week in California.”[3]

If this isn’t enough, there was a bizarre link between the Weathermen, the SDS, and Charles Manson. Bernardine Dohrn, who is married to ACORN leader Bill Ayers and is an Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law and the Director of Northwestern's Children and Family Justice Center, was a member of the Weather Underground who made the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. At a 1969 “War Council” meeting held in Flint, Michigan, organized by the Weathermen, she told the crowd of about 400: “Offing those rich pigs with their own forks and knives, and then eating a meal in the same room, far out! The Weathermen dig Charles Manson.”[4]

For a time Manson was the darling of anti-war protester Jerry Rubin. Rubin wrote of Manson in We Are Everywhere: “His words and courage inspired us. . . . Manson’s soul is easy to touch because it lays quite bare on the surface.”[5] Rubin later admitted that he was angered by Manson’s “incredible male chauvinism.” High praises for ritualistic, political murder but indignation for male chauvinism. Typical. A reporter for the Los Angeles Free Press expressed similar sentiments when he found out that Manson was “both anti-Jewish and anti-black.”[6]

Why did some on the radical left see Manson as a hero? Perhaps it was because Manson articulated the same rhetoric of violence that spewed forth from the SDS and Weathermen and actually put their views into action as a way to bring down “the system.” Manson believed that the Tate-LaBianca murders he orchestrated would start a race war. Manson had acted upon the radical revolutionary tactics that Tom Hayden, Huey Newton, and Bernardine Dohrn had been suggesting for quite some time.

It is significant that Timothy McVeigh and Islamic extremists share the rhetoric of 1960s radicals. Two years before he blew up the Morrow building, McVeigh wrote a letter to the Union-Sun & Journal (Lockport, New York): “We have no proverbial tea to dump; should we instead sink a ship full of Japanese imports? Is a civil war imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn’t come to that, but it might.” Compare McVeigh’s rhetoric with that of Hayden: “Violence can contribute to shattering the status quo.”

The bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City was a desperate and radical response directed at “the establishment.” It’s conformity to liberal resistance tactics is frightening—but no liberal reporter is likely to make the connection. The Left has worked too long to establish itself as a political and cultural force to admit that its history is filled with incendiary rhetoric and real violence. Did Bin Laden follow the Left’s tactics in his assault on America? Are radical Islamic Muslims following a similar plan?

The American Left is trying to destroy our nation in hopes of building a new one by capitulating to what they believe are common goals with radical Islamists and by undermining the core values of America through the tactics set forth by Saul Alinsky (1909–1972) in his Rules for Radicals. It was Alinsky who wrote, “Do one of three things. One, go find a wailing wall and feel sorry for yourselves. Two, go psycho and start bombing—but this will only swing people to the right. Three, learn a lesson. Go home, organize, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegates.”[7] Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are students of Alinsky’s methods.

Hillary had met Alinsky at Methodist church outing when she was a teenager. They were impressed with one another. In late 1968, Alinsky offered Hillary Rodham a job working for him. She had insider aspirations. She wrote her Senior Thesis on Alinsky in 1969: “There is Only the Fight . . .”: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model. While Alinsky believed that “the system” could only be changed from the outside, Hillary believed it could be changed from the inside. She, and many others like her (e.g., Ayers and Dohrn), took Alinsky’s “radical” methods and made them mainstream. “Seventeen years later, another young honor student was offered a job as an organizer in Chicago. By then, Alinsky had died, but a group of his disciples hired Barack Obama, a 23-year-old Columbia University graduate, to organize black residents on the South Side, while learning and applying Alinsky's philosophy of street-level democracy. The recruiter called the $13,000-a-year job ‘very romantic, until you do it.’” The rest, as they say, is history.

For the most part, Alinsky’s methods were not that radical. There was nothing wrong with going to law school, as Clinton did, or working for “street-level democracy.” The methodological predecessor to Alinsky, Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), “used the sixteenth-century Reformation as a paradigm for his notion of the ‘organic intellectual’. Gramsci’s assertion that ‘all people are intellectuals, but not all people have the function of intellectuals in society’ directly parallels Martin Luther’s emphatic insistence that ‘all believers are priests, but not all believers have the function . . . of priests in the church.’”[8] It’s unfortunate that much of the church was silent as Gramsci, Alinsky, and other intellectuals laid the groundwork for today’s mainstream radicalism. Alister McGrath’s comments ought to be heeded:

If Christianity is to survive and flourish, it needs organic theologians, not well-intentioned yet tunnel-visioned students of Richard Hooker or Thomas Aquinas, who know their ideas backwards, yet can neither critique nor apply them, nor even see the need to do so. Nor does it need theologians who simply mimic the alien values of western academic culture, which scorns commitment and excoriates religion. Happily, there are many theologians within the academic system whose loyalties lie beyond it. Our quarrel is not with academic excellence, but with academic introversion. Gramsci was no friend of the church in his time; perhaps now, his ideas might come it its aid.[9]

“And his master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light” (Luke 16:8).

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Endnotes
1 Richard J. Ellis, The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1997), 137.
2 John Lewis, “A Serious Revolution,” in Massimo Teodori, ed., The New Left: A Documentary History (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), 102.
3 Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 188.
4 Vincent Bugliosi, with Curt Gentry, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1974), 222. Rothman and Lichter tell it a little differently in Roots of Radicalism: “Dig it: First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach. Wild!” (42).
5 Jerry Rubin, We Are Everywhere (New York: Harper & Row, 1971). Quoted in Bugliosi and Gentry, Helter Skelter, 221–222.
6 Bugliosi and Gentry, Helter Skelter, 222.
7Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (New York: Vintage Books, [1971] 1989), xxiii.
8 Alister E. McGrath, The Future of Christianity (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 146.
9 McGrath, The Future of Christianity, 153. Saul D. Alinsky

Article posted July 7, 2009

2009-07-06T16:25:00.001-07:00

Atlas Shrugs

« Bo's Hos | Main | Obama drafts executive order to allow indefinite detentions .... for whom? For you? »

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Charter of Dhimmitude: Execution of "US Muslim Engagement", Obama Creates New Office for Outreach to the Ummah: Farah Pandith

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) says jump, and BO says, how high, master? Obama had the OIC head, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, at the White House, where he "urged the U.S. to quickly appoint an envoy to the Islamic bloc" -- which prompted BHO to create "a new office that is responsible for outreach with Muslims around the world".

In keeping with instituting Obama's US MUSLIM ENGAGEMENT, a charter of dhimmitude, we are to be conditioned to respect Muslim immigrants and accept their culture. President Hussein is more than comfortable with this deal with the devil as he seeks to institute an Islamo-Christian ethic, destroying the very foundation of this great country. Never mind that Muslims go after and annihilate the Christians in every country they finally dominate. This is of no import.

America only has to look to Europe to see the devastating consequences of what is proposed in the implementation of the US Muslim Engagement.

Since taking office Obama has focused on three things - the transformation of our capitalistic economy to a form of socialist statist fascism, the abdication of American sovereignty to a trans-nationalism (one world-er) and the advancement of the worldwide domination of Islam, the ultimate goal of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). There is conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact - the global jihad is conspiracy fact. And the OIC is behind it.

Obama invited the "secretary general" to the White House on the Islamic leg of his apology tour of Europe. Obama refused Sarkozy's offer to visit Normandy, choosing instead to tour the mosques of Turkey and attend the second forum of the OIC arm, the "alliance of civilizations" (AoC).

The Alliance of Civilizations [was] created to oppose the clash of civilizations, that is jihad. On 13 November 2006, the High-Level Group of the Alliance of Civilizations presented its report which sums up the request of the OIC at its Mecca Summit 9, in 2005, after the Cartoons affair. First, it adopts the Islamic view of history and politics by claiming that everything was fine between the three monotheistic religions until the 19th century, when the evil of European colonialism and Zionism destroyed this harmony. Then it affirms that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the main source of Christian-Muslim antagonism, not the jihadist war and ideology that deny for others the right to exist. It proclaims that this conflict “remains one of the gravest threats to international stability” and formulates recommendations that again echo the OIC requests. Such views mirror Hitler accusing the Jews of fomenting World War II, or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, praised in the Hamas charter, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood which denies Israel’sright to exist. (Bat Ye'or)
The Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, reconnoitered with Obama during the official reception of the AoC given by the Turkish Prime Minister, Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (who famously said that "there is no moderate Islam" just days before Barack Hussein's visit). Obama reiterated to the Secretary General the willingness and readiness of the US Administration to explore areas of cooperation with the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

New U.S. Special Representative Announced for Muslim Outreach

Washington — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has appointed Farah Pandith to serve as special representative to Muslim communities, in charge of a new office that is responsible for outreach with Muslims around the world.

According to a notice published by the State Department June 23, Special Representative Pandith and her staff will carry out Clinton’s efforts to “engage with Muslims around the world on a people-to-people and organizational level.”

The Organization of the Islamic Conference Urges Obama to Appoint US Envoy and Obama bows to OIC

(CNSNews.com) – Buoyed by the presence in the White House of a president who wants to prioritize relations with the world’s Muslims, the head of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) visited both Washington and Brussels this week, and urged the U.S. to quickly appoint an envoy to the Islamic bloc.

OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu was in Washington on Tuesday when the State Department, in an internal memo, announced that it has selected a “special representative to Muslim communities.”

The department chose not to announce the move publicly, but State Department spokesman Ian Kelly on Thursday acknowledged that Farah Pandith has been chosen for the position. Pandith, a Muslim of Kashmiri origin, served as “senior advisor for Muslim engagement to the assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs” in the Bush administration.
hsanoglu told the Turkish Anadolu state news agency this week that he had told Clinton that the U.S. should immediately appoint a special envoy for its relations with the Islamic world.

The two were scheduled to have met, but the event was cancelled because of Clinton’s recent elbow fracture and surgery.

Instead they held a “comprehensive” telephone conversation and “exchanged views as to the ways and means of furthering the engagement between the OIC and the U.S. in the coming period,” the OIC said in a statement.

[...]

From Washington, Ihsanoglu went to Brussels where he announced plans to open a representative office to the European Union, with a key function of combating “Islamophobia.”

The OIC, a 57-member bloc of Muslim majority states that wields increasing clout at the United Nations, already has permanent missions in the U.N. cities of New York and Geneva, and “OIC groups” in Washington, Vienna and Paris.

Headquartered in the Saudi city of Jeddah, the OIC has existed for 40 years, but in recent times has become much more visible in the West, largely as a result of its controversial
campaign against the “defamation” of Islam.

It has steered more than a dozen resolutions on the subject through the U.N. Opponents of the drive, including religious freedom and free speech advocates, see it as an attempt to shield Islam and Islamic practices from criticism.

Ihsanoglu, a Turk, told the Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman that “fighting anti-Islam propaganda” will be among the main aims of the office in Brussels.

The paper noted that major incidents considered to be “Islamophobic” had occurred in Europe, citing the furor over Danish newspaper cartoons satirizing Mohammed.

While in Brussels, Ihsanoglu met the E.U.’s external relations commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and said they discussed Obama’s speech in Cairo. Ihsanoglu had been in the audience when the president spoke.

“Obama’s speech was historic and did not resemble any other speeches in the past,” he told the Anadolu agency on Wednesday. “There has never been a speech delivered to the Muslims that was so constructive and positive as Obama’s speech.”

OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu speaks to Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saudi al-Faisal during the Islamic bloc’s third extraordinary conference in Mecca in December 2005. (Photo: OIC)
‘The most democratic religion’

While in the U.S. this week, Ihsanoglu met with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a member of a “leadership group” driving the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project and a strong backer of Obama’s outreach.

In April, Albright was quoted by the Voice of America as telling a meeting of OIC ambassadors that she had no doubt Islamic countries could be democracies.

“Actually, in my study of religions, in many ways Islam is maybe the most democratic religion because there is nobody between you and God. So I do not think that is something that can be used as reason not to have Muslim democracies.”
Madeline Albright's impossibly stupid remark reflects an illogical, frightening dhimmitude at the "leadership level". How does one look at an Islamic country and make a statement like that?

Where's Muslim outreach to the West -- where is the self criticism? It's all their way or the highway.

Flemming Rose, courageous publisher of the Danish Cartoons, spoke out against the malevolent objectives of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Regular Atlas readers are very aware of the dastardly aims of the OIC and how they have managed to infect and infiltrate the EU, the UN, and now the White House.

An Islamist New World Order

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) member-states at the Durban II gathering in Geneva is pushing for "a new world order" that would expand and impose "nondemocratic and illiberal values on the West," says the Danish editor who in 2005 commissioned and published a series of cartoons, one of which depicted the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban that led to worldwide Muslim rioting.

Flemming Rose, editor of Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest-circulation newspaper, is visiting Israel under the auspices of the Hebrew University's Shasha Center for Strategic Studies, headed by former Mossad director Efraim Halevy. He's here to lecture on how nations need to find the right balance between religious sensitivities and freedom of expression.

Rose says the OIC is trying to use Durban II to rewrite the rules of human rights and international law in a way that undermines the values of liberty enshrined in the Western canon - including the US Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It's all part of an ongoing Muslim campaign that has been making significant strides, says Rose.
Bat Yeor wrote of the OIC:

The OIC is one of the largest intergovernmental organizations in the world. It encompasses 56 Muslim states plus the Palestinian Authority. Spread over four continents, it claims to speak in the name of the ummah (the universal Muslim community), which numbers about 1.3 billion. The OIC’s mission is to unite all Muslims worldwide by rooting them in the Koran and the Sunnah — the core of traditional Islamic civilization and values. It aims at strengthening solidarity and cooperation among all its members, in order to protect the interests of Muslims everywhere and to galvanize the ummah into a unified body.

The OIC is a unique organization — one that has no equivalent in the world. It unites the religious, economic, military, and political strength of 56 states. By contrast, the European Union represents half as many states and is a secular body only, and the Vatican — which speaks for the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics — is devoid of any political power. Many Muslims in the West resist the OIC’s tutelage and oppose its efforts to supplant Western law with sharia. But the OIC’s resources are formidable.

[...]

The OIC regularly reiterates its commitments to protecting the political, historical, religious, and human rights of Muslims in non-OIC states, especially Muslims who form the majority in specific regions of non-Muslim countries — such as the southern Philippines, southern Thailand, and western Thrace in Greece — as well as Muslims in places like the Balkans, the Caucasus, Myanmar, India, and China. The OIC supports Hamas and the Palestinians in their struggle to destroy Israel, as well as the Muslim fight for “legitimate self-determination” in “Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.” It has condemned the “continual Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan,” and it expresses its full solidarity with “the just cause of the Muslim Turkish people of Cyprus” and with Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, whom many hold responsible for encouraging the massacres in Darfur. The seat of the OIC is in Jeddah, but the organization regards that location as temporary: Its headquarters will be transferred to al-Kods (Islamized Jerusalem) when that city has been “liberated” from Israeli control.

In its efforts to defend the “true image” of Islam and combat its defamation, the organization has requested the UN and the Western countries to punish “Islamophobia” and blasphemy. Among the manifestations of Islamophobia, in the OIC’s view, are European opposition to illegal immigration, anti-terrorist measures, criticism of multiculturalism, and indeed any efforts to defend Western cultural and national identities. The OIC has massive funding from oil sources, which it lavishly spends on the Western media and academia and in countless “dialogues.” It influences Western policy, laws, and even textbooks through pressures brought by Muslim immigrants and by the Western nations’ own leftist parties. Hence, we have seen Kristallnacht-like incitements of hate and murder against European Jews and Israel conducted with impunity in the cities of Europe — where respect for human rights is supposed to be one of the highest values.
More at Atlas on the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

THE OIC'S BLUEPRINT FOR GLOBAL DOMINATION TAKES HOLD OF AMERICA

Posted by Pamela Geller on Saturday, June 27, 2009 at 01:28 AM in OIC: Oppression and Submission, President Hussein | Permalink

2009-07-05T06:29:00.000-07:00

DG Counter-terrorism Publishing

Featuring counter-terrorism research, articles, and education. I have one authorized internet site (www.daveg.us/this one). Supporters of Islamic terrorist groups have bought old domains, hacked, and are doing everything possible to smear my name and reputation. This is terrorism. They will not win.Dave G.

2009-04-02T15:59:00.001-07:00

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US MARKETS

This week the G-20 meets. There will be several serious items on the agenda but the most important is the fate of the dollar as a world reserve currency. The US elitists needless to say want the dollar to retain its standing and the Europeans, Chinese, Iranians and Russians want a new international trading unit. Foreigners have lost respect, trust and confidence in the dollar and in American financial management. They are tired of taking losses and subsidizing the incredible American lifestyle. There is no consistency and the insiders are propping up the financial community, and not the economy. They disagree with zero interest rates and the wanton increase in money and credit displayed by the US and England.

The Fed’s Ben Bernanke’s plan of throwing money at everything doesn’t work and the European Illuminists know that. Treasury Secretary little Timmy Geithner is viewed as an incompetent with a poor record. Thus, America is stuck with the monetizing twins Ben and Timmy. As we said in previous issues the first $300 billion for buying Treasuries will be followed by another $1 trillion and eventually $5 trillion or more. Inflation is going to go through the roof. It is no wonder foreigners are upset. They now know the longer they wait and hold dollars the more expensive it will be for them.

From here on out things are going to get a lot nastier. They are not going to be dictated to by the US anymore. They are tired of the blatant corruption and arrogance that passes for diplomacy. The US is entrapped by their own debt and they cannot extricate themselves. Most everyone wants a change. As a result of this warfare worldwide, people are going to lose assets, the exception are gold and silver, which will carry them through.

During the remainder of the year the US dollar should continue to trend downward as we wrote five months ago. That will be in spite of another $200 billion of de-leveraging from Hedge Funds.

You have to keep in mind those foreigners own more than 50% of US debt securities worth almost $3 trillion.

Free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing will be a major subject as many nations begin to subsidize domestic industries and put tariffs on goods. The elitists do not want tariffs, but we believe they are inevitable.

The Chinese are big US debt holders, and they have warned the US to stop creating more excessive debt, because they believe it will lead to devaluation. China is making a request that the dollar be replaced as the world’s reserve currency at the G-20 meeting. The Chinese are bringing this up in spite of the fact that the US made a special deal with them, secretly, that their Treasury holdings are convertible into US factories, buildings, land and other tangible items via eminent domain.

In another unilateral move China is in the process of replacing the dollar as a reserve currency in Asia, supplanting the yaun in its place. China is beginning to impose yuan hegemony over Asia. This is very problematic for the US and its economic, financial and political policies in the region. Our guess is if China doesn’t get what it wants out of the G-20 meeting it will start dumping Treasuries. That means more monetization by the Fed and more hyperinflation. Due to corporate greed and via plans for world government, the world financial scene has been turned upside down and as a result the dollar has become unreliable. If China successfully follows this course it could be Asia uses the yuan and the rest of the world the dollar or a basket of currencies. All in all we will have a better idea at the end of the week. If the dollar falters because a new currency unit is going to be introduced that should send gold and silver higher

Monetization of Treasury debt is as bad as it gets $300 billion is a considerable amount of money and as we said last issue we could easily exceed $5 trillion. This is an act of total desperation. There is no question the US is in serious trouble. Foreigners either do not have the dollars to invest or they won’t invest and the Fed is the only entity that can take on that volume of debt in today’s markets. It just shows again that the US government, along with Wall Street and banking is out of control. What they are doing is not going to work and they know it. No matter how much money they print all they are doing is addressing past debt, as a result the Fed is sacrificing the dollar. Yes, we know there will be $200 billion more in de-leveraging this year, but that won’t keep the dollar from falling. The British and the Swiss are also monetizing, a path others will follow, which will give gold and silver a field day. Prices in England are about to fly again and this month they should begin to rise in the US again. As this takes place wages are not increasing.

We now have government by bankers and Wall Street steeped in abject corruption. Bypassing Congress and the people, secretly issuing trillions of dollars in money and credit and we don’t, as far as they are concerned, have a need to know.

Just to give you an idea of the insider dealing, Bank of America is aggressively bidding for toxic debt in the open market knowing that our Treasury will pay more for the debt then BoA paid. Banks are front running the Treasury’s program.

It was quite shocking to the world when outgoing Czech PM Topolanek, charactered the US plan to combat the deepening depression as the road to hell.” At the same time in England the British member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan said what England was doing was inflationary. As a result the dollar took a hit but did recover somewhat later in the week. There was the usual smoke and mirrors and propaganda that everyone was working together and that all would be well.

Politicians worldwide are hearing from their constituents and we could well see an open revolt at the G-20 meeting. They expect up to 500,000 demonstrators.

Citizens worldwide are being robbed of their buying power as inflation like a thief in the night steals their money. The spending levels of the past of 72% of GDP are history. We are now at 70% and headed to 64.5%. Banks once encouraged borrowing, but not any more as they cut credit losses. We need savings and debt limitations along with purging and that is the opposite of what government, banking and Wall Street want. They want to delay the pain indefinitely and that only makes the problem worse.

It has been 20 months since the financial and economic underpinnings of America started to really come unglued. Yet we can’t get an honest answer out of anyone in Washington or New York. We were promised a new era of accountability, transparence and forthrightness and we’ve received nothing except you don’t have a need to know or it is a state secret. We cannot even find out how much money is left in the $700 billion financial-rescue program. If you back into the numbers you come up with about $53 billion, which means 92% has been committed. The Treasury has yet, even upon request, provided an official accounting. This past week our Treasury Secretary Tiny Tim twice officially refused to say what was left. When he spoke before the CFR, Council on Foreign Relations, he even refused to answer. The retort was very, very, reasonable amounts of money. He told CNBC the same thing. There is no honesty even among peers.

With that in mind, this same Treasury Secretary wants to give the Fed the power not only to seize all banks, but also private business, such as AIG and anything else within their sight.

The plan so far, if you can call it that, is seizure of companies by government; then these tasty morsels will be sold off at bargain basement prices to fellow Illuminists. The question is can these entities be sold off quickly enough, or before Congress cuts off the government’s funding?

Government, controlled from behind the scenes by JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, wants to seize anything it wants, hence Treasury’s new demand for new regulatory powers. It is a race against time before the derivative monster collapses and takes everything else with it, except gold and silver. Doesn’t anyone realize all this government, corporate and individual debt can never be repaid? It is a giant scam. Even the derivatives that were written were naked. There is nothing in the till; it is empty. These Illuminists want to nationalize everything in sight, like good fascists, and then sell all of it back to what is supposed to be private interests for a pittance. As for more money for little Timmy and his gang of crooks, it is a long shot. The American public knows what is going on and is furious and disgusted. Ask any Congressmen – or lady. Worse yet Congress and any citizen with half a brain knows the money is all gone and is never coming back. Wait until the public finds out that the government is on the hook (i.e. the taxpayer) for an additional $340 billion to AIG, they will go berserk, especially during a depression.

Coming full circle, fellow Illuminists in Europe and Asia feel betrayed by American elitist intrigues. This might be why both the US and UK are finding it hard to sell debt. It could be payback time. The ghost of Brittan Woods is coming back to haunt those who for so long have controlled our government. Then again it could be this all is but an act and an excuse to take the world economic and financial system down.

In spite of the uproar we do not see the G-20 making any changes just yet, and as a result the dollar will remain under massive pressure. Russia and China, among others, will press for a new system, which includes gold backing. It will come in time and it won’t be voluntary. The US Illuminists will fight it every step of the way.

Some very sophisticated people have gotten the impression from business people and investors that the US does not have enough political will to take on the banking crisis once and for all. In what could be called a purging of the system. It is not a case of political will; it is a case of planning for world government. We cite again the factor most all experts leave out and that is the Illuminati and the part it plays in all of the things that affect our lives, our economy, our financial being and our government. You cannot come to the proper conclusions unless everything is factored in and that is where the elitist’s plans come apart.

The most recent move toward world government began with the end of gold backing on the dollar on 8/15/71 and the introduction of free trade and globalization at about the same time. That is also when policy shifted to consumption and financial services. That is also when money and credit issuance began to be the method of making economy work.

Thus, for 35 years Americans went on a consumption binge enjoying the best living standards in history. Over two years ago the system began to backfire. Global economic imbalances characterized by over consumption and over production emerged worldwide. Better yet, all those profits from exports from the second and third world were recycled to the US and Europe to fund ever more spending. When calamity struck in the summer of 2007 there was simply nowhere to hide. There has since then been very little selling of dollar denominated assets, particularly Treasuries and Agencies. That has now changed. We do not see dumping as yet, but we are seeing an absence of buying.

Now, the worst is yet to come, and it will stretch far into the future as loss of confidence and trust deepens, creditors and investors will begin dumping dollar-denominated assets. The bond market and banks are particularly vulnerable, because not only will we have a lending pull back, but weak bank balance sheets will be shot full of holes again. In addition real interest rates will be forced higher due to lack of lending, as well as a crowding out by the major presence of government in the debt market. We do not see massive dollar dumping, but we do see persistent selling.

These developments will make it very difficult for Treasury to fund its needs, which can only mean continual monetization. Inflation is going to become massive due to issuance and monetization.

The canard is being floated again this week by the internationally controlled media. That is the threat of gold sales. Like clockwork we see this every time the elitists want gold prices lower. The plan would be to sell 403 tons of gold. The last time this happened gold fell slightly and then after the sale, exploded.

What tougher rules on financial markets is about is centralized control of all markets - an international blueprint for a one-world financial control for all countries. It is about control, not tougher regulations. A few years down the line the elitists want a global financial regulator to relieve you of part of your sovereignty in financial matters.

Little Timmy Geithner informs us that some financial institutions will need further substantial government aid while warning against any attempt to tax investors who join a federal program to buy tainted assets from banks.

Simon Property Group (SPG) has defaulted on their debt on Westbury Mall, which means no mall in the country is safe. SPG is the bluest of the blue chip mall REITs.

There is $3.5 trillion in commercial real estate outstanding and half could easily go under.

Again we warn you, if you have cash values in life and annuity products get out now and switch to gold and silver related assets. You will be sorry if you don’t.

Goldman Sachs is now a reporting bank because they are now a commercial bank and no longer an investment bank. Goldman has $30.2 trillion of derivatives with only $162.4 billion in assets. That is leverage of 186 to 1. JP Morgan Chase is leveraged 50 to 1, BofA 26 to 1. We call this totally outrageous.

In the third quarter commercial banks lost $3.4 billion in interest rate derivatives and they will probably lose a net $9 billion in the fourth quarter. These banks control $200.4 trillion in these derivatives. In fact, the top five banks control 96% of the total. This is a massive concentration of risk. We also expect some counterparties could fail to deliver causing major losses. Elsewhere in the issue we’ve listed exposure for the top banks.

Bank credit as a result is limited and in some cases is non-existent. Many corporations are not borrowing at all. This is not good for an economy that is attempting to recover and even worse for the stock market.

Just months before the start of last year's stock market collapse, the federal agency that insures the retirement funds of 44 million Americans departed from its conservative investment strategy and decided to put much of its $64 billion insurance fund into stocks.

Switching from a heavy reliance on bonds, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation decided to pour billions of dollars into speculative investments such as stocks in emerging foreign markets, real estate, and private equity funds.

The agency refused to say how much of the new investment strategy has been implemented or how the fund has fared during the downturn. The agency would only say that its fund was down 6.5 percent - and all of its stock-related investments were down 23 percent - as of last Sept. 30, the end of its fiscal year. But that was before most of the recent stock market decline and just before the investment switch was scheduled to begin in earnest.

As you can see this was a political decision to try to keep the stock market from falling. Our guess is they have lost half their funds.

The amount of Manhattan office space available for rent in the first quarter rose to 12 percent and rents fell as companies fired workers, FirstService Williams said.

The share of empty space plus occupied offices available for lease climbed from 10.9 percent at the end of 2008, the property broker said in an e-mailed statement today. The average rent sought by landlords fell to $65.18 a square foot from $74.49 in the fourth quarter, the company said.

Lincoln National Corp., the insurer seeking $3 billion in U.S. capital, fell the most in four months after withdrawing its application for the government program to sell debt with a federal guarantee.

Lincoln dropped $2.44, or 24 percent, to $7.93 at 9:32 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, leading the decliners in the KBW Insurance Index. The company had slid almost 45 percent this year before today.

The insurer has cut jobs and slashed its dividend to preserve capital after the value of its investments dropped, and the U.S. Treasury has yet to rule on Philadelphia-based firm’s application to sell preferred shares to the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Lincoln said March 27 it didn’t meet qualifications for the Treasury’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program backing corporate debt.

“Liquidity needs at the holding company come at a time when Lincoln will likely face further pressure of subsidiary capital levels,” said Thomas Gallagher, an analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG, in a note to investors. Gallagher today downgraded Lincoln to “neutral” from “outperform” based on the withdrawn application. “This tension is manageable at present, but could become more challenging if equity and credit markets weaken substantially.”

Vacation and investment-home sales fell to 30% of all new-home transactions in 2008, the National Association of Realtors said Monday. In 2007, second homes accounted for 33% of all home sales.

Boston’s John Hancock Tower, the tallest skyscraper in New England, may be sold to lenders led by Normandy Real Estate Partners for about half the $1.3 billion paid in 2006 by Broadway Partners, which defaulted on its loan.

The building will go on the auction block tomorrow in New York under state rules that govern mezzanine loan foreclosures. Mezzanine loans are intended to fill the gap between a first mortgage and the borrower’s cash down payment.

While mezzanine lenders seeking to foreclose must hold an auction of ownership interests, they start out ahead of other bidders because they are credited the unpaid balance of their loan as part of their bid. Normandy controls about $472 million of loans on the Hancock Tower, according to people familiar with the financing, who asked to remain anonymous.

By the time the process gets to a public auction, the most likely winner will be the senior-most foreclosing mezzanine lender, said David Furman, a real estate partner at law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. It is allowed to credit bid the amount of its loan; therefore, it can usually outbid everyone else.”

Barron’s venerable Alan Abelson cites Merrill’s David Rosenberg, “…the official keepers of the books have been unusually aggressive in constructing seasonal adjustments for February's economic data.

To illustrate, the seasonal adjustment for new-home sales was the strongest since 1982; for durable- goods orders, the strongest since they were first released in 1992; the retail-sales figures for February were flat (or, as David says, flattering) after such adjustment, but unadjusted fell 3%, the biggest drop on record. He also notes dryly that the 40,000 raw non-seasonally adjusted housing-start total for February "all of a sudden becomes a headline-adjusted annual rate figure of 583,000."

Which makes David think that come the inevitably sharp downward revisions of such distorted data, first-quarter real GDP is likely to suffer a 7.2% drop. Which, together with the 6.3% skid in the fourth quarter of 2008, would be the worst back-to-back contraction in the economy in 50 years.

Starting at any time from 1980 up to 2008, an investor in 20-year treasuries, rolling them over every year,

beats the S&P 500 through January 2009! Even worse, going back 40 years to 1969, the 20-year bond investors still win, although by a marginal amount. And that is with a very bad bond market in the '70s.

Let's go back to the really long run. Starting in 1802, we find that stocks have beat bonds by about 2.5%, which, compounding over two centuries, is a huge differential. But there were some periods just like the recent past where stocks did in fact not beat bonds.

Look at the following chart. It shows the cumulative relative performance of stocks over bonds for the last 207 years. What it shows is that early in the 19th century there was a period of 68 years where bonds outperformed stocks, another similar 20-year period corresponding with the Great Depression, and then the recent episode of 1968-2009.

http://www.frontlinethoughts.com/gateway.asp?ref=reprint

Prieur du Plessis of Investment Post Cards cites Congressman Ron Paul: “People will start to abandon the dollar as current and past economic policies create a steep rise in interest rates. If you are in Treasuries, you will need to be watchful and nimble to time your escape…The current stimulus measures are making things a lot worse.

“The US government just won’t allow the correction the economy needs.’ He cites the mini-depression of 1921, which lasted just a year largely because insolvent companies were allowed to fail. ‘No one remembers that one. They’ll remember this one, because it will last 15 years.’”

http://www.investmentpostcards.com/2009/03/29/words-from-the-investment-wise-for-the-week-that-was-march-23-%E2%80%93-29-2009/

The Obama administration used the threat of withholding more bailout money to force out General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Rick Wagoner, marking one of the most dramatic government interventions in private industry since the economic crisis began last year…

The move also indicates that the Treasury Department intends to wade more deeply than most observers expected into the affairs of the country's largest and oldest car company.

If you can believe this: US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Sunday that 135 billion dollars remained from a 700 billion dollar fund approved by Congress to shore up the financial sector reeling from crisis.

Geithner, on ABC News’ “This Week”, also said, “Some banks are going to need some large amounts of assistance.” Much more money and time is needed to sanitize toxic assets.

AIG crisis could be tip of an insurance iceberg; The company's situation reflects problems throughout the life insurance industry as investments suffer. Further strain could bring about a second financial crisis. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-aig30-2009mar30,0,1747696.story

The problem in the US since 1973, except during the reign of Reagan & Volcker, is declining US real wages and living standards. US socialistic spending & programs, with the Fed papering over the unaffordable spending, accelerated lower living standards, fomented bubbles, concentrated wealth & income and created unserviceable debt for both the private and public sectors.

The US cannot recover until either real wages increase or necessity of life costs, including housing, fall to an equilibrium with US income. For the sake of simplicity, we won’t address the debt issue here.

Bailouts to date do nothing to increase US jobs or productivity but perversely encumber future income and will likely reduce US living standards via inflation and lower productivity.

Project for a New American Century is now called, the Foreign Policy Initiative, in the hope we would all forget they were wrong about everything and lied to us every step of the way.

The Neocons are back. The same Republicans who sold the country on the war in Iraq have formed a new group called the Foreign Policy Initiative. Is this group going to catch on? Rachel Maddow is joined by thinkprogress. org’s Matt Duss.

The ''neocons'' , the authors of the worse foreign policy blunders in at least a generation.

One of the people named this week to President Obama's new Task Force on Tax Reform is a member of the AIG board of directors.

Martin Feldstein, a professor of economics at Harvard University, has been on the board of American International Group since 1988. He also was a prominent economic adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Asked about the AIG connection, a senior administration official said Friday that the White House declined to comment on the story.

Like the others named to the tax reform task force, Feldstein also serves on Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which is headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

Citigroup Inc. and Wachovia Corp., the bank purchased by Wells Fargo & Co., reached an agreement with California regulators under which their brokerage units will return $4.7 billion to buyers of auction-rate securities.

Wachovia agreed to repurchase $1.5 billion of the debt, while Citigroup agreed to repurchase $3.2 billion of auction-rate obligations it sold to customers in California, said Preston DuFauchard, Corporations commissioner.

About 20 banks and securities firms have agreed to repurchase more than $50 billion in debt to settle claims they improperly marketed the investments as safe, cash-like investments. Banks managing frequent auctions of the securities abandoned the $330 billion market in February 2008, leaving thousands of investors stuck.

The World Bank and OECD warned surging unemployment may inflict another blow on the global economy as they cut their economic outlooks for emerging and rich nations.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in Paris that the economy of its 30 members will contract 4.3 percent this year and predicted unemployment in the Group of Seven will reach 36 million late next year. The World Bank lowered its growth forecast for developing countries this year by more than half to 2.1 percent.

Sun-Times Media Group Inc., which publishes newspapers in the Chicago area, filed voluntary petitions under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

Riviera Holdings Corp., the casino operator, missed a $4 million interest payment and said it may be forced to seek bankruptcy protection as Las Vegas endures the worst gambling slump on record.

Ford Motor Co., adjusting incentives as the U.S. recession deepens, said it will cover payments for as long as 12 months on new vehicles for buyers who lose their jobs.

The program will also offer no-interest financing through Ford Motor Credit Co., the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker said today in a statement. The offers start today and run through June 1, covering Ford, Lincoln and Mercury autos.

As we predicted, the new military strategy announced by President Barack Obama in Afghanistan marks a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan and the official transformation of Pakistan into a theater of US military action.

Prepared behind the backs of the American people and with contempt for anti-war opinion expressed in the presidential election, Obama's plan calls for replicating in Afghanistan Bush's military "surge" in Iraq and launching military strikes at will in Pakistan. It confirms that Obama's candidacy was not a move towards peace, but the expression of a struggle inside the American ruling elite over the strategic priorities of US imperialism. Obama served as the front man for those who believed the Pentagon had focused too much attention on Iraq and that the main target of military violence should be Central Asia.

Obama is preparing a bloody pacification campaign in Pakistan and Afghanistan, aiming to exterminate those sections of their populations that interfere with US control of the area. There will be a heavy price paid by the American people as well, in thousands of military casualties, the squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars, and an increased risk of terrorist attacks on Americans, as Washington reinforces the widely held perception that it is waging war on the Islamic world.

Rick Wagoner will leave his post as CEO of bailed-out General Motors with a $20 million retirement package, the company's financial filings show.

Although the Treasury Department has barred GM from paying severance to Wagoner or any other senior executive, Wagoner is eligible to collect millions in retirement benefits from his former employer, according to the documents reviewed by ABC News.

A former AIG executive could be brought up on federal fraud charges for his role in precipitating the global economic crisis, according to published reports.

FBI investigators and federal prosecutors are eyeing Joseph Cassano, 54, whose shady investments cost the insurance giant hundreds of billions of dollars, according to ABC News.

Cassano, who grew up in Brooklyn and now lives in London, earned upwards of $300 million running the company's now-infamous Financial Products division. That department insured what have since become more than a trillion dollars in virtually worthless bank loans.

"He almost single-handedly is responsible for bringing AIG down, and by reference the economy of this country," said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) told ABC.

Prosecutors are still trying to determine if Cassano's actions are criminal.

President Obama has ordained that you, the US taxpayer, will guarantee GM warranties. The old Soviet Union didn’t go this far, did it?

The WSJ lists the commissars that decided the fate of GM and will dictate policy henceforth. Steven Rattner, a former investment banker who is heading the administration's auto restructuring; chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers; and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner were among those gathered around the polished wood table of the Roosevelt Room in the White House's West Wing. They were there to decide under what conditions the government would continue to prop up once-powerful Detroit car companies GM and Chrysler LLC.

White House economic adviser Mr. Summers led a conference call at 8:30 p.m. Sunday with lawmakers who had expressed strong interest in the auto bailout. At one point during the call, Mr. Summers told lawmakers the administration was pushing for the Fiat-Chrysler deal to include "building an energy-efficient vehicle in this country," Sen. Bob Corker said.

Sen. Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, said he told Mr. Rattner on Monday that he was alarmed that the administration would dictate what kind of vehicles would be constructed. "Deciding what vehicles and plants will survive is setting industrial policy," the senator said… [Be afraid; be very afraid.] This sounds like Joe Stalin.

Responding to their plea for $21.6 billion more in taxpayer cash, President Obama yesterday declared "the end of that road" for GM and Chrysler. In the next

breath, he seemed to put Washington and Detroit on a new road of politicized industrial policy.

Sacking a CEO for appearance sake was the easy part. Good luck trying to get the unions to make concessions on wages and legacy costs, and bondholders to agree to reduce the debt burden.

Bankruptcy or not, the larger problem here is Washington's industrial policy. Even if Chrysler merges and GM restructures, Mr. Obama wants the companies to make the kind of cars the political class favors, whether or not consumers want to buy them. "The United States of America will lead the world in building the next generation of clean cars," the President said yesterday. He didn't mention a goal of profitability. To that end, Treasury tapped Fiat's know-how in small vehicles for Chrysler and wants GM to move in this direction…

In other words, Mr. Obama's industrial policy vision runs directly counter to a strategy that would get the companies back to profitability as soon as possible. To help them sell those unwanted cars, Mr. Obama yesterday was already pledging that taxpayers will cover new-car warranties. And he urged Congress to pass a new "incentive program" (read: subsidy) for "cleaner car" purchases.

AIG Was Responsible For The Banks' January & February Profitability.

During Jan/Feb AIG would call up and just ask for complete unwind prices from the credit desk in the relevant jurisdiction…The size of these unwinds were enormous, the quotes I have heard were "we have never done as big or as profitable trades - ever".

Allowing for significant reserve release and trade PnL, I think for the big correlation players this could have easily been US$1-2bn per bank in this period."…

AIG, knowing it would need to ask for much more capital from the Treasury imminently, decided to throw in the towel, and gifted major bank counter-parties with trades which were egregiously profitable to the banks, and even more egregiously money losing to the U.S. taxpayers, who had to dump more and more cash into AIG, without having the U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner disclose the real extent of this, for lack of a better word, fraudulent scam…

What this all means is that the statements by major banks, i.e. JPM, Citi, and BofA, regarding abnormal profitability in January and February were true, however these profits were a) one-time in nature due to wholesale unwinds of AIG portfolios, b) entirely at the expense of AIG, and thus taxpayers, c) executed with Tim Geithner's (and thus the administration's) full knowledge and intent, d) were basically a transfer of money from taxpayers to banks (in yet another form) using AIG as an intermediary.

For banks to proclaim their profitability in January and February is about as close to criminal hypocrisy as is possible. And again, the taxpayers fund this "one time profit", which causes a market rally, thus allowing the banks to promptly turn around and start selling more expensive equity (soon coming to a prospectus near you), also funded by taxpayers' money flows into the market. If the administration is truly aware of all these events (and if Zero Hedge knows about it, it is safe to say Tim Geithner also got the memo), then the potential fallout would be staggering once this information makes the light of day.

Because everyone knows that AIG is essentially dead but on taxpayer life support, solons might have surreptitiously funneled billions of dollars into banks via AIG. The theory is that AIG was told to take massive hits on toxic paper so certain contra-party banks could generate earnings. More taxpayer money then flowed into AIG. Qui bono? Who has the largest derivative book?

The Atlantic’s Simon Johnson that highlights many of the themes that we have espoused: The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government…If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time…

Almost always, countries in crisis need to learn to live within their means after a period of excess— exports must be increased, and imports cut—and the goal is to do this without the most horrible of recessions… the real concern of the fund’s senior staff, and the biggest obstacle to recovery, is almost invariably the politics of countries in crisis…

Over borrowing always ends badly, whether for an individual, a company, or a country…elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever- larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed…

At the root of the banks’ problems are the large losses they have undoubtedly taken on their securities and loan portfolios. But they don’t want to recognize the full extent of their losses, because that would likely expose them as insolvent. So they talk down the problem, and ask for handouts that aren’t enough to make them healthy (again, they can’t reveal the size of the handouts that would be necessary for that), but are enough to keep them upright a little longer….

To break this cycle, the government must force the banks to acknowledge the scale of their problems. As the IMF understands (and as the U.S. government itself has insisted to multiple emerging-market countries in the past), the most direct way to do this is nationalization…

The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump “cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.” This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression, because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big. We face a synchronized downturn in almost all countries, a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances. If our leadership wakes up to the potential consequences, we may yet see dramatic action on the banking system and a breaking of the old elite. Let us hope it is not then too late.

Business activity in the Chicago area deteriorated in March to the lowest level in about 29 years, the Institute for Supply Management-Chicago reported Tuesday.

The Chicago Business Barometer, formerly known as the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index, fell to 31.4 in March from 34.2 in February.

The March index was the lowest reading since July 1980. It also was below the consensus estimate of economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires, which forecast a March barometer reading of 34.1.

The data "provided evidence of an economy that continued to deteriorate, sliding further into recession at a slightly faster rate," ISM-Chicago said in a news release.

Investors were watching the March data for confirmation that the headline index hit a "provisional low point" for the end of the recession when it dropped to a 27-year low of 33.3 in January.

However, the data "failed the test," ISM-Chicago said.

If the March figure is, indeed, the bottom, the recession would conclude in December of this year, based on the nine-month lag from the 1981-82 recession, according to ISM-Chicago.

The Chicago area job market remains grim, with the employment component of the index posting the lowest two consecutive monthly readings since such figures were tracked beginning in 1946. The employment index stood at 28.1 in March, down from 25.2 in February.

The prices-paid index accelerated downward at a "marginally faster rate," dropping to 34.1 in March, from 37.8 in February, ISM-Chicago said.

The Conference Board reported Tuesday that its March consumer confidence index remained relatively unchanged in March, at a reading of 26.0, after hitting an all-time low in February.

February's reading was 25.3, which was revised up slightly from the originally reported 25.0.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had expected the March index would come in at 27.7.

The present situation index for March fell to 21.5 from February's upwardly revised 22.3, while the expectations index increased to 28.9, from the prior month's 27.3. It was originally reported at 27.5.

"The present situation index suggests that the overall state of the economy remains weak and that more job losses are on the horizon," said Lynn Franco, who leads the private research group's Consumer Research Center.

Apprehension about the outlook for the economy, the labor market and earnings "continues to weigh heavily on consumers' attitudes," Franco said.

Looking ahead, consumers remain "extremely pessimistic" about the short-term future and do not foresee a turnaround in economic conditions over the coming six months, she said.

In the report, consumers calling business conditions "bad" rose to 51.1% of the survey from 50.5% in February, while those calling conditions "good" edged down to 6.8%, from 7% the month before.

The Conference Board also found concerns about hiring have increased, with those calling jobs "hard to get" moving up to 48.7% of respondents, from 46.9% in February. Those who deemed jobs as "plentiful" was unchanged at 4.6%.

The Conference Board's findings are based on a representative sample of 5,000 households. The cut off for responses was March 24.

Home prices continued their multiyear slide in January, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price indexes, as 14 of 20 major metropolitan areas posted price declines of more than 10% from a year earlier.

The Sun Belt continues to be hit hardest, and nationally, home prices are at levels similar to late 2003.

"Most of the nation appears to remain on a downward path, with all of the 20 metro areas reporting annual declines, and nine...falling more than 20% in the last year," said David M. Blitzer, chairman of S&P's index committee. Both composite indexes and 13 of the 20 metropolitan areas reported record year-over-year declines.

As of January, the 10-city index is down 30% from its mid-2006 peak and the 20-city is down 29%. The two indexes have fallen every month since August 2006, 30 straight.

The indexes showed prices in 10 major metropolitan areas fell 19.4% in January from a year earlier and 2.5% from December. The drop marks the 10-city index's 16th-straight monthly report of a record decline.

In 20 major metropolitan areas, home prices dropped 19% from the prior year, also a record, and 2.8% from December.

Again, none of the regions could stave off a decline from December to January. Month-to-month decliners were again led by Phoenix, which posted a drop of 5.5%. Las Vegas, which has been a close second behind Phoenix for months, showed a "marginal improvement" in monthly returns, although its results were still negative.

For the 10th straight month, no region was able to avoid a year-over-year decline. Phoenix and Las Vegas were again the worst performers, with drops of 35% and 33%, respectively, from a year earlier. San Francisco again followed, with a decline of 32%. Phoenix is down 49% from its peak in June 2006. Dallas has been the least hurt, down 11% from its peak in June 2007.

Compared with a year earlier, Dallas and Denver again had the best relative performance, with annual declines of 4.9% and 5.1%, respectively.

The data come a week after a government report that sales of previously occupied homes jumped 5.1% in February, the most in five years, driven by foreclosure sales that are sending prices plunging. The median price was down 16% from a year earlier, the second-biggest drop ever.

Redbook: US Retail Sales +0.2% First 4 Wks March Vs February,

The International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs Retail Chain Store Sales Index increased 1.1% in the week to March 28 from its level a week before, on a seasonally-adjusted, comparable store basis.

On a year-on-year basis, retailers saw sales decline by 0.2% in the latest week.

New York City business activity contracted in March, but not as rapidly as in February, a report released Tuesday said. And an overwhelming proportion of respondents expect more federal government stimulus this year.

The National Association of Purchasing Management-New York's Current Business Conditions index rose to 43.1 in March from 29.6 in February.

In addition, the Six-Month Outlook index jumped to 64.8 in March from 31.8 in February. We do not believe these statistics.

A closely followed measure of Chicago-area manufacturing and commercial activity unexpectedly fell in March to its lowest reading since 1980, an industry trade group reported Tuesday.  Economists had expected the activity index compiled by the Institute for Supply Management -- Chicago to inch upward to 34.5 from February's extremely weak 34.2.  Instead, the index often referred to as the Chicago PMI tumbled to 31.4, its worst performance since July of 1980, whenthe U.S. was locked in a wrenching and protracted recession. This Chicago report is much closer to the mark.

The U.S. recession is wreaking havoc on yet another front: the Social Security trust fund.

With unemployment rising, the payroll tax revenue that finances Social Security benefits for nearly 51 million retirees and other recipients is falling, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office. As a result, the trust fund's annual surplus is forecast to all but vanish next year -- nearly a decade ahead of schedule -- and deprive the government of billions of dollars it had been counting on to help balance the nation's books.

While the new numbers will not affect payments to current Social Security recipients, experts say, the disappearing surplus could have considerable implications for the government's already grim financial situation. More lies. -- Just as we predicted unfortunately. Get ready for a cut in SS payout of 50-63% over the next five years.

The Treasury Department has for decades borrowed money from the Social Security trust fund to finance government operations. If it is no longer able to do so, it could be forced to borrow an additional $700 billion over the next decade from China, Japan and other investors. And at some point, perhaps as early as 2017, according to the CBO, the Treasury would have to start repaying the billions it has borrowed from the trust fund over the past 25 years, driving the nation further into debt or forcing Congress to raise taxes.

The new forecast is fueling calls for reform of the Social Security system from conservative analysts, who say it underscores the financial fragility of a system that provides a primary source of income for millions of Americans.

As IBM was firing thousands of American workers last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published Big Blue's application to copyright a computerized system that calculates how to offshore jobs while maximizing government tax breaks.

Update: IBM withdraws its application, calling it an error.

In their application to patent a "method and system for strategic global resource sourcing," five Hudson Valley IBMers describe how it weighs such plans as "50 percent of resources in China by 2010," against such factors as labor costs, infrastructure and the "minimum head count to qualify for incentives."

The five Westchester County inventors, Ching-hua Chen-ritzo, Daniel Patrick Connors, Markus Ettl, Mayank Sharma, and Karthik Sourirajan, submitted the application to the patent office in September 2007, but it took a year and a half for that patent to be published online.

None could be reached by telephone Sunday except Ching-hua Chen-ritzo of Mahopac, who declined to comment, and attempts to reach IBM were unsuccessful.

Lee Conrad, national coordinator for Alliance@IBM, a group trying to unionize Big Blue, was stunned to learn of the application.

"This is obviously outrageous — a patent on how to offshore U.S. jobs," Conrad said. "IBM is obviously doing all it can to decimate the U.S. work force, and it is all the more reason why IBM should not get any tax breaks or stimulus money. They clearly are abandoning the U.S. work force."

The application says the system weighs moving into or out of a particular country against criteria such as wages, political systems, "incentive contracts" and the economic impact of "violating and/or satisfying those incentives."

In January, IBM reported that about 115,000, or 29 percent, of its global work force of about 400,000, is in the United States.

The Treasury said yesterday that it would extend its emergency program guaranteeing money market funds through Sept. 18 from the previous deadline of this month.

All funds that currently participate in the program are eligible to continue, the department said. The program, scheduled to end April 30, will be continued "to support ongoing stability in financial markets," it said.

Companies in the U.S. cut an estimated 742,000 workers in March, pointing to no relief in sight for the labor market amid the longest recession in seven decades, a private report based on payroll data showed today.

The drop in the ADP Employer Services gauge was larger than economists forecast and the most since records began in 2001. February’s reading was revised to show cut of 706,000 workers, up from a previous estimate of 697,000.

Companies are slashing staff as tight credit conditions and shrinking household wealth cause sales to shrink. The Labor Department may report in two days that employers cut payrolls in March for a 15th consecutive month, putting jobs losses in the current downturn at more than 5 million, according to a Bloomberg survey.

Mortgage applications in the U.S. rose for a fourth consecutive week as a decline in borrowing costs prompted more refinancing.

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s index of applications to purchase a home or refinance a loan rose 3 percent to 1,194.4 in the week ended March 27 from 1,159.4 the prior week. The group’s refinancing gauge gained 3.7 percent, following a 41 percent gain the prior week, and its purchase index rose 0.1 percent.

Government plans to step up purchases of mortgage-backed securities sent borrowing costs toward historic lows last week, prompting homeowners to refinance their mortgages to cut their payments. Still, rising unemployment and slumping consumer confidence signal the housing recession may last all year.

“Mortgage rates are coming down and refinancings are going to spring back,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York, said before the report. Still, “you have to be confident in your job and income prospects to buy a home and confidence is sorely lacking.”

The refinancing gauge climbed to 6,600.1 last week from 6,363.2, today’s report showed. The mortgage bankers’ purchase index increased to 268 last week from 267.8 the previous week, today’s report showed.

The share of applicants seeking to refinance loans rose to 80.4 percent of total applications from 78.5 percent.

The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate loan fell to 4.61 percent, the lowest level since the mortgage bankers group began records in 1990, from 4.63 percent the prior week.

3M Co. says it's cutting its worldwide work force by another 1,200 jobs, or 1.5 percent, because of the global economic slump.

U.S. oil demand in January fell 989,000 barrels a day, or 4.9%, from a year earlier to 19.125 million barrels a day - the lowest level in the most since 2000, revised government figures released Wednesday show.

Data from the Energy Information Administration was revised down by 2.2%, or 440,000 barrels a day, from earlier estimates.

January marks the 18th straight month of year-on-year declines in oil demand in the world's largest oil consumer. That's the longest skid since a 37-month stretch ended in April 1982, as prices soared and demand fell after the Iranian Revolution. In the past 18 months, year-on-year demand has dropped 959,000 barrels a day, hit hard first by record high prices last summer of near $150 a barrel and then by the growing global recession.

US construction spending fell a fifth month in a row during February, but the drop was much smaller than expected, with surprising resilience in the commercial and public sectors.

Total spending decreased by 0.9% at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $967.52 billion compared to the prior month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Spending fell 3.5% in January; originally, January spending was seen 3.3% lower.

Residential construction spending plunged in February, Wednesday's report said, dropping by 4.1% to $282.6 billion. Residential spending decreased 3.5% in January; it was originally seen 2.8% lower for the month. Year over year, residential spending was 29.2% below the February 2008 level.

Wednesday's Commerce data said construction spending in the private sector during February decreased by 1.6% to $665.9 billion. Spending fell 4.0% in January.

Public-sector construction spending increased 0.8% to $301.7 billion. January outlays fell 2.4%. Federal government construction outlays rose 0.8%, as, surprisingly, did state and local spending, which is much larger than federal spending, in dollars. Tax revenues to governments are flowing less freely amid the recession. Corporate profits after taxes tumbled 28% in October through December from the third quarter, a Commerce Department report issued last week said. And because their assets - homes and stock market accounts - have eroded, people possess less value for governments to tax.

The National Association of Realtors' index for pending sales of previously owned homes jumped 2.1% to 82.1 from 80.4 in January, the industry group said Wednesday, adding that the data hint at a possible pickup of sales activity in coming months.

US March 27 MBA Mortgage Applications rise a 3% vs 32.2%.

John C. Yoo, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States, was arrested on Tuesday in Milan, Italy, and is being held for possible extradition to Spain, where he and five other retired officials who served under former President George W. Bush are expected to be indicted by a Spanish court for violations of the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Yoo, 41, is a visiting professor of Law at the Chapman University School of Law in Orange County, California, on leave from the University of California Berkeley School of Law. He served in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice from 2001 to 2003. Yoo authored memos permitting the use of torture. Torture is banned by both U.S. law and international conventions.

Milan prosecutor Andrea Spolini released a statement indicating that Yoo can be held for up to 90 days awaiting an indictment in Spain under the international standard of "Rompi Testiculo."

The Justice Department is dropping all charges against former Sen. Ted Stevens, the 85-year-old Alaska Republican convicted of lying on Senate financial disclosure forms to conceal hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and home renovations from a businessman, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder said today.

Obama also is prepared to let Chrysler LLC go bankrupt and be sold off piecemeal if the third- largest U.S. automaker can’t form an alliance with Fiat SpA, said members of Congress who were briefed on the GM and Chrysler situation

A possible bankruptcy plan being discussed for General Motors includes quickly forming a new company of the automaker's most profitable parts, while a group of other units would remain under bankruptcy protection for a longer period, a source familiar with the plans told Reuters on Tuesday.

Now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s.

The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $89 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.

In a foreclosure auction today, the John Hancock Tower - a marquee building in Boston - traded at $660MM to Normandy Real Estate Partners. That same property was appraised for $1.3BN in 2006 and traded for $935MM in 2003. This is VERY negative for commercial real estate….

That combination produces a weighted average financing cost of almost 11%. A 5.6% mortgage at 11% yield is about a 70 $px, which means the value of assuming the existing financing on the Hancock Tower is close to $190MM. The real clearing level for the top commercial property in Boston was only $470MM - down 65% from 2006 levels and down 50% from 2003 levels…

The main takeaway: property values are down A LOT more than people think, especially when considering the implied value of financing. Our biggest fear is that the ‘real’ financial crisis might be ahead of us. To date, the financial crisis has been a solvency issue due to toxic paper. But if bond markets collapse globally, a far more pernicious crisis will appear. And it will be far more difficult to navigate and remedy than anything that has occurred to date.

Another Obama nominee admits to not paying taxes. The Washington Post: Sebelius admits errors, pays $7,000 in back taxes.

The political elites are eager to spend taxpayer money but are cavalier in adhering to the tax code.

A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.”

COMMODITIES

PPI reports crude inventories up 3.28 m/b, gas off 451,000 and distillates up 1.78 m/b.

GOLD, SILVER, PLATINUM AND PALLADIUM

Early Monday was surprisingly weak on all fronts. The Dow was off 162 at 7600; S&P fell 163; Nasdaq was off 160 and the FTSE 136 Dow points. The Nikkei was off 391 to 8236. The yen rose .0090 to $.9694; the euro fell .0096 to $1.3193 and the pound fell .0125 to $1.4196. The 2-year T-bill rose to 0.88% and the 10’s were 2.70%. Oil fell $1.44 to $50.94; gas fell $0.02 to $1.479 and natural gas $0.01 to $3.73. Gold fell $10.20 to $913.00; silver fell $0.025 to $13.01 and copper fell $0.06 to $1.77.

As we expected on Monday gold was soft with the spot market off $7.30 at $915.30 as silver fell $0.27 to $13.02. Tuesday should be slightly lower as well in the runup to the G-20 meeting. The insiders have been successful in containing gold and silver for now but they will be higher again soon. Today the second fixing in London came in at $928 or $13.00 higher than the close.

The dollar was strong early and got even stronger mid-day. Toward the end of the day it gave up half of its gains. The yen rose .0102 to $.9705; the euro fell .0142 to $1.3160; the pound fell .0108 to $1.4193; the Swiss franc fell .0060 to $1.1499; the Canadian dollar fell .0172 to $.7911 and the dollar index rose .52 to 85.66.

Gold open interest fell 630 contracts to 371,200, as silver OI rose 300 to 93,150. The XAU fell 2.19 to 133.95 and the HUI fell 5.61 to 319.79. Most first and second tier issues were off fractions telling us again that gold is not going much lower. The China Daily has called for China to purchase more gold.

GM’s Wagoner has been ousted by our President and ordered GM and Chrysler to overhaul their recovery plans. This can only happen in a corporatist fascist state.

Chrysler has to merge with Fiat within 30 days.

This past Saturday Barron’s said, “the numbers flowing out of Washington seem as dubious as ever, and so are the inferences being extracted from them by more than a smattering of investment strategist, money managers and, it pains us to say even journalists.” The sited deception via seasonal adjustment. These lies have cost American corporations billions of dollars of losses. We have it covered elsewhere. The point is we have been correct for over ten years and citing these official lies. It is unfortunate Barron’s and others took ten years to catch up.

The big Tocom gold shorts cut their net position by 3,191 contracts to 13,367 and they cut their silver shorts by 12 to 77.

The Dow broke down technically today falling 254 to 7522; S&P fell 256 and Nasdaq fell 260 Dow points. The 2-year T-bill fell 6 bps to 0.85% and the 10’s fell 5 bps to 2.71%.

Oil fell $3.83 to $48.55; gas fell $0.11 to $1.39 and natural gas rose $0.05 to $3.79. Copper fell $.06 to $1.77; platinum fell $15.40 to $1,112 and palladium fell $6.65 to $217.05. The CRB fell 7.09 to 215.17.

Early Tuesday was the opposite of Monday. The Dow rose 65 to 7545; S&P rose 64; Nasdaq 74 and the FTSE rose 161 Dow points. The Nikkei rose 127; the CAC rose 45 and the DAX gained 55. The yen was off .0106; the euro was up .0130 and the pound rose .0066. The 2-year was 0.85% and the ten’s 2.73%. The 1-month Libor 0.50% and the 3-month was 1.19%. Oil rose $1.48, gas rose $0.02 and natural gas rose $0.07. Gold rose $2.20 to $917.70, silver rose $0.08 to $13.11 and copper rose $0.06 to $1.83.

SPDR Gold Shares, [GLD], the largest gold ETF, added another 12.84 tonnes of allocated gold bars to its gold holdings over the past week to show 1,127.44 tonnes of gold bars held for its investors by a custodian in London. As of the Friday 3/27 close the metal held by the trust was worth $33.5 billion.

Barclay’s iShares COMEX Gold Trust [IAU] gold holdings added a small 0.92 tonnes to 67.78 tonnes of gold held for its investors. Gold holdings for the U.K. equivalent to GLD, Gold Bullion Securities, Ltd. added a large 4.14 tonnes over the past week, to show 137.16 tonnes of gold held as of Friday.

All of the gold ETFs sponsored by the World Gold Council (WGC) showed a collective increase of 16.98 tonnes to their gold holdings to 1,306.43 tonnes worth $33.8 billion USD as of the Friday 3/27 cash market close.

According to the World Gold Council, GLD’s metal holdings now rank sixth in global gold holdings having just gone past Switzerland’s 1,040 tonnes of gold reserves.

Well, consider that $40 billion is less than 20% of the current market cap of Wal-Mart, a company many people own shares of through direct and mutual fund investments, but just one of thousands of publicly traded companies. For another example, it would take about 10 or 11 times the amount of net asset value currently held by all five of the WGC ETFs in order to buy one very large, widely-owned, oil and gas company, Exxon-Mobil.

The combined NAV of all the WGC ETFs is big all right. But compared to companies that truly are widely-owned and perhaps over-owned it sure seems like the gold ETFs have a long way to go before they become “crowded.”

For now gold and silver ETFs are interesting, quickly evolving barometers, gauging whether there is more buying or selling pressure for the metals. For quite some time now there has been consistently more buying pressure than selling pressure for gold ETFs as evidenced by the amount of metal which has been added to them. And, the really quite rapid pace of metals holding ascension recently probably reflects a shift in investor thinking toward gold as an important part of a well-diversified portfolio.

Small wonder considering that gold has held up better than just about all the other portfolio denizens over the past year.

As of this past week, the amount of silver being held by the SLV custodian actually exceeded the amount of silver foreseen in the current custodian agreement, yet the sponsor of SLV, Barclays, has yet to announce any additional storage capacity to the existing agreement or a new custodian.

The details are in previous Got Gold Reports, but briefly, SLV reported holding 266,752,671.5 ounces of silver as of March 27. The current custodian agreement was for up to 264,550,265 ounces. So SLV now holds 2,202,405.5 ounces, or about 68.5 tonnes more silver than the current custodian agreement covered.

Tuesday saw a strong spot gold price up $7.90 at $923.20, although the April contract rose only $3.20. Spot silver fell $0.05 to $12.97, as April traded $0.03 lower. The shares were slightly higher with the XAU up .52 to 134.43 and the HUI up 4.94 to 324.73. Gold open interest rose 905 contracts to 372,104, as silver OI fell 232 contracts to 92,922. The big Tocom shorts cut 2,478 contracts to be net short 15,845 contracts. Their net silver short position rose by 62 to 139 contracts.

The yen fell .0209 to $.9906; the euro rose .0120 to $1.3280; the pound rose .0152 to $1.4345; the Swiss franc rose .0084 to $1.1389; the Canadian dollar rose .0026 to $.7937 and the US dollar index fell .40 to 85.47.

Oil rose $0.56 to $48.97; gas rose $0.01 to $1.40 and natural gas rose $0.04 to $3.79. Copper rose $0.08 to $1.84; platinum rose $8.60 to $1,122 and palladium fell $0.35 to $216.95. The CRB rose 5.23 to 220.40.

The Dow was up 180 just 10 minutes before the close and finished up 87 at 7609; S&P rose 93 and Nasdaq rose 161 Dow points. The 2-year T-bills were 0.80%; the 10’s were 2.68%; the 1-month Libor was 0.50% and the 3-month was 1.19%.

Early Wednesday was mixed to unchanged. The Dow fell 37 to 7523; S&P fell 36; Nasdaq fell 56 and the FTSE fell 1 Dow point. The Nikkei was up 243; the CAC was off 3 and the DAX fell 1. The yen rose .0029; the euro rose .0012 and the pound rose .0060. The 2-year was .82%; the 10’s 2.68%; 1-month Libor 0.50% and the 3-month 2.68%. Oil fell $1.19; gas fell $0.03 and natural gas fell $0.04. Gold rose $3.30 to $928.30; silver rose $0.03 to $13.01 and copper fell $0.03 to $1.82.

EUROPE

Hungary, the first European Union nation to seek an international bailout, had its foreign-debt rating cut by Standard and Poor’s as the economy endures its worst recession in 16 years.

The rating was lowered one level to BBB-, the lowest investment grade, according to a statement from S&P today. It has a negative outlook, meaning the grade is more likely to be lowered.

East Europe’s debt-laden economies have been battered by the global financial crisis, which curbed demand for their exports and shut off credit and investment. Hungary’s gross domestic product will shrink 3.5 percent this year, the central bank says. The country lined up 20 billion euros ($26.3 billion) inInternational Monetary Fund-led loans to avert a default.

European confidence fell to the lowest on record in March as the Group of 20 nations prepared to discuss this week how best to fight the deepening global recession, which has prompted job cuts across the continent.

An index of executive and consumer sentiment in the euro area declined to 64.6, the lowest since the index began in 1985, from 65.3 in February, the European Commission in Brussels said today. Gauges for industry, services and consumer sentiment all reached record lows. A separate report showed that Spanish consumer prices fell from a year earlier for the first time ever, indicating deflationary pressure that may spread.

Belgium's annual inflation rate fell to 0.62% in March from 1.93% in February, the country's economics ministry said Monday.

Spain this month became the first euro-zone economy to post an annual decline in consumer prices during the severe economic downturn, data showed Monday.
Spain's European Union-harmonized index of consumer prices fell 0.1% on the year in March after a 0.7% rise in February, preliminary data from the National Statistics Institute, or INE, showed. The decline in Spanish prices is the first since records began in 1961.

Hungary's average unemployment rate for the three months between December 2008 and February 2009 jumped as the sharp shrinking of the country's export markets hit the corporate sector, data showed Monday.

The three-month moving average jobless rate was 9.1% in December-February, up from 8.0% in the same period a year earlier and also higher than the 11-year record of 8.4% in November 2008 and January 2009, the Central Statistics Office, or KSH, said Monday.

Hungarian unemployment has been higher than that of the European Union recently. The E.U.'s unemployment rate for the registered unemployed was 8.0% in January and 8.3% for the E.U.-15, while Hungary's was 9.0%, the KSH said.

U.S. and European Union unemployment will reach 10 percent this year as the global economic slump causes the economies of the 30-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to contract, Secretary General Angel Gurria said.

This is unprecedented; we have not seen this in many decades, Gurria said in a television interview in Rome.

The OECD will release its latest forecasts on March 31 and will predict a contraction of 4.2 percent to 4.3 percent for the world’s most industrialized countries, Gurria said. That compares with its previous forecast in November for a 0.3 percent contraction. The deepening global recession means that countries need to do more to lift their economies out of the economic slump he said.

The UK and US fear deflation; Germany fears Weimar. Due to East Germany, Angela Merkel knows that socialism doesn’t work and it destroys the fabric and work ethic of a nation…Haben zie bunds?

Europe’s inflation rate dropped more than economists expected to the lowest on record in March as the economic slump intensified across the region, adding to concerns that deflationary pressures are emerging.

Inflation in the euro area slowed to 0.6 percent from 1.2 percent in February, the European Union statistics office in Luxembourg said today. The March rate is the lowest since the data were first compiled in 1996 and below the 0.7 percent forecast by economists, according to the median of 35 estimates in aBloomberg News survey.

Germany and Russia are heading to this week's meeting of the Group of 20 leading industrial and developing nations in London with similar expectations on the required actions to overcome the crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday.

Both leaders called for a modernization of the architecture of international financial markets, after a meeting in the Chancellery in Berlin.

Medvedev said he favors the creation of a modern foreign currency architecture which should also include the reserve currencies and that the G20 meeting should lay the foundation for future work. Merkel added that after the meeting in London, the work isn't done and that she wants a "fulfillment meeting" afterwards, at which the agreements and their implementation are examined.

The world is in a dramatic crisis, Germany's Merkel said, adding that protectionist trends can still be observed. The G20 meeting in London should therefore take a clear stand against protectionism.

Latvia could hit the worst point of its economic crisis in the third quarter of this year, with output shrinking 14.9% on the year, the economy ministry said Tuesday.

In a report to the government of the stricken Baltic state, the ministry upheld its forecast of a 12% fall in output this year compared with 2008. Some analysts, however, have warned that it could shrink by 15%.

The fall in Spanish retail sales picked up speed in February, pointing to a deepening contraction in household consumption.

According to data Tuesday from Spain's National Statistics Institute, or INE, Spanish February retail sales fell by 9.1% in calendar-adjusted terms, the INE said, after falling by 5.4% in January and by 6.1% in December.

"The Spanish consumer slump shows no signs of ending," said Ben May from Capital Economics in a note to investors.

Irish private-sector credit growth slowed again in February, falling to 4.8% from 6.0% in January and 6.6% in December, as mortgage growth continued to decline and term/revolving loans also fell significantly, the Central Bank of Ireland said Tuesday.

Private-sector credit fell by EUR95 million in February. A net increase of EUR58 million in residential mortgages in February was far more subdued than the increase of EUR350 million recorded in January, the bank said.

The annual rate of increase in credit-card debt declined to 3.3% in February compared with 8.2% a year earlier. Outstanding indebtedness on credit cards has generally been declining since October, with the exception of December, and fell by EUR51 million in February.

Italian retail sales rose unexpectedly in January, lifted by non-food sales in large stores, national statistics office Istat said Tuesday. An Istat official said it was possible the rise was due to an increase in the number of discount sales in the month of January.

Retail sales rose an unadjusted 0.7% on the year, rebounding after having fallen for three consecutive months. Istat also said Tuesday it has revised down its December retail sales figure to a fall of 2.1% on the year.

The data were above expectations. Economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires had expected January retail sales to show a 2.2% drop on the year and a 0.2% drop on the month.

On the month, overall retail sales rose 0.3% in January, compared with a downwardly revised 0.3% drop in December.

On the year, non-food sales in large shops rose 4.5%, led by rising sales of electronic items and household goods, which rose 2.1% and 2.4%, respectively.

Consumer prices slowed down to a record low year on year increase of 0.6% in March, down from a 1.2% year on year increase in February, according to the Flash estimate released by Eurostat.

Dutch state debt by the end of 2008 rose to 58.2% of gross domestic product, the Dutch bureau for statistics, or CBS, said in a first estimate released Tuesday.

State debt rose to EUR346.2 billion in 2008, from EUR258.8 billion the year prior, CBS said.

The significant increase was caused by the government's efforts to strengthen the financial sector, CBS said.

Sweden's economy will contract much more than previously expected this year and the country's central bank will lower its key interest rate to nearly zero, a prominent Swedish think tank said Tuesday.

The Swedish National Institute of Economic Research, or NIER, said in its latest economic outlook that Sweden's gross domestic product is likely to fall 3.9% this year.

The Swedish consumer confidence index worsened to -16.5 in March from -14.6 in February, data from the Swedish National Institute of Economic Research showed.

Economists had expected the rate to improve slightly this month to a -13.8 reading, according to a consensus from a Dow Jones Newswires poll of four economists.

Spanish housing prices fell at an 5.4% annual rate in the fourth quarter, the INE said, compared with an 3% annual rate in the third quarter.

Fourth-quarter housing prices fell 3.1% from the quarter earlier.

Spanish February retail sales fell by 9.1% in calendar-adjusted terms, the INE said, after falling by 5.4% in January and by 6.1% in December.

Germany ILO Unemployment Rate up to 7.4% in Feb from 7.3%.

Switzerland UBS Consumption Indicator decreases to 0.89 in February.

Germany's unemployment rate increased to 8.6 percent in March as the global economic crisis tightened its grip on Europe's biggest economy, government figures showed Tuesday.

The unadjusted jobless rate rose from 8.5 percent in February, the Federal Labor Agency said. A total of 3.586 million people were out of work, an increase of 34,000 compared with the previous month.

As everyone heads toward zero interest rates, Britain, the US, the Japanese, Swiss and Israelis are printing money and credit as fast as possible.

In England the BofE is looking at credit contraction and it is only increasing M3 by 5.9%. If the ECB doesn’t act quickly deflation could get quickly underway. Germany is looking at a million workers losing their jobs by fall as the German contraction reaches 7%. Next year unemployment will be 5 million. It doesn’t look good.

As we write on Tuesday, Geithner says new financial regulation is a done deal, and France’s President Sarkozy says if it is not done he will leave the meeting. This shows you how important these regulations are for the Illuminati in the lead up to a world currency and world government.

As China and the US spend furiously on stimulus, the US some 6% of GDP, France and Germany are spending only 26 billion euros and fifty bullion euros respectively. The US wants more stimulus spending from Europe and that will be discussed at the G-20 meeting, although we believe it will not be successful. If you can believe it Europeans are calling this crass Keynesianism.

The Europeans, from our viewpoint, do not seem to realize the depth to which this depression is going. If everyone had purged their economies 21 months ago the depression would have been over and the wreckage moved aside. None of the politicians would do that and hence the long drawn out depression we see ahead.

Due to Europe‘s socialist base, they have higher normal unemployment than the US, and long term unemployment benefits, that are higher so there is a built in cushion. An elaborate safety net is in place that does not exist in the US.

Europe sees inflation as the problem – the US sees deflation as the problem. Germany in particular sees debt as something to avoid as the US embraces it. What Europe is really saying is the US caused their problem so let them stimulate; we’ll do a little and that is it. Europe is a drag on the US concept of recovery. Who is right – only time will tell.

Daimler AG, the second-largest maker of luxury cars, aims to reduce labor costs by 2 billion euros ($2.7 billion) by trimming hours and wages for 73,000 non- production workers in Germany and by delaying a pay increase.

Workers in administration, sales, and research and development will be asked to work 30 rather than 35 hours a week and accept 14 percent lower wages, the Stuttgart, Germany-based automaker’s personnel chief, Guenther Fleig, said today at a news conference. The measures would reduce annual labor costs to 10 billion euros.

Daimler, also the world’s largest truckmaker, plans to delay a 2.1 percent wage increase for union workers from May to December and aims to reduce Christmas and vacation bonuses, Fleig said. A 1,900-euro profit-sharing bonus will be kept for possible payment later, in order to conserve cash, he said.

European unemployment increased more than economists expected in February to the highest in almost three years as the recession forced companies across the continent to cut output.

The jobless rate in the euro zone rose to 8.5 percent from a revised 8.3 percent in January, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. The February reading is the highest since May 2006 and exceeded the 8.3 percent rate economists forecast, according to the median of 23 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. The January figure was revised higher from 8.2 percent reported on Feb. 27.

New orders for Germany's plant and machinery industry plunged 49% on the year in February, industry group VDMA said Wednesday.

Domestic orders slipped 45%, while foreign orders were down 50% in February against the same month of 2008, VDMA said in a statement.

German Manufacturing PMI flat at 32.4 in March.

Switzerland SVME PMI remains at 32.6 in March.

German retail sales declined unexpectedly in February, signaling that household demand in Europe's largest economy remains depressed, preliminary data from the Federal Statistics Office showed Wednesday.

Retail sales fell 0.2% on the month in February from January, according to figures adjusted for calendar and seasonal effects, the statistics office said. In February 2009 there were 24 shopping days compared with 25 in February 2008.

ENGLAND

Mortgage approvals rose to their highest level in nine months in February in the first significant sign of improvement in the housing market, even as net consumer credit sank to a record low, data from the Bank of England released Monday showed.
The BOE survey showed that mortgage approvals, which are a good leading indicator of housing market activity, rose to 38,000 in February from 32,000 in January. That marks the highest level since May 2008, beating expectations they would rise to 34,000 and marking a significant rise from November's 27,000 series low.

Overall mortgage lending growth accelerated to GBP1.5 billion in February from GBP1.1 billion in January and beat expectations of GBP1.0 billion growth.

Britain may have to go to the IMF for a huge financial bailout, the influential investor George Soros warns today.

The man who made $1 billion on Black Wednesday in 1992 told The Times that Britain was particularly vulnerable to the economic crisis.

Mr. Soros – speaking days after an auction of government bonds failed for the first time in 14 years, ringing alarm bells about Britain’s ability to fund its growing debts – said that Gordon Brown might have to go begging for billions of pounds in international aid. He also warned that next week’s G20 summit in London was the last chance to avert a full-scale depression that could prove worse than that in the 1930s.

“You have a problem that the banking system is bigger than the economy . . . so for Britain to absorb it alone would really pile up the debt,” he said. Asked about the chances of Britain having to seek help from the International Monetary Fund, he said that if the banking system continued to collapse, it was “a possibility”. At this stage, he added, it was “not a likelihood”.

He was not optimistic about the G20 meeting, saying the odds were that it would fail because there were so many differences of opinion. The price could be years of economic devastation worse than the Great Depression. “It is really a make-or-break occasion.

Have voted themselves a whopping yearly pay rise of £1,468 - as the rest of the country fights to save their jobs.

As most of the UK suffers pay freezes - or even reductions - due to the dismal economic situation, MPs will see their salary jump 2.33 per cent from April 1, it emerged today.

The Westminster rise brings their parliamentary pay - before allowances - up from £63,291 to around £64,766.

News of the extra money set to pour into MPs' pockets came as the row over expenses reached boiling point today.

Humiliated Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was facing demands to resign after her husband admitted paying to watch adult films using her taxpayer-funded expenses.

UK consumer confidence increased to the highest level since May after the Bank of England cut interest rates to a record low, GfK NOP said.

The market researcher’s index of consumer confidence rose five points to minus 30 in March, the company said in a statement in London. The survey of 2,003 people was conducted between March 6 and March 15.

OECD: UK Economy To Contract 3.7% In 2009, -0.2% In 2010.

The UK sold 3.5 billion pounds ($5 billion) of six-year notes, receiving 2.23 times as many bids as securities offered, the Debt Management Office said.

UK households repaid GBP8.0 billion in mortgage loans during the final three months of 2008, the Bank of England said Wednesday.

It marks the third straight quarter in which U.K. homeowners cut their mortgage borrowing, but is a sharp step up from GBP5.9 billion in the third quarter and GBP1.8 billion in the second quarter.

It was the largest net pay down of mortgage loans in a quarter since the series began in 1970.

Manufacturing PMI rises to 39.1 in March from 34.7.

LATIN AMERICA

Approval for the government of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has declined 10 percentage points under the influence of a bleak economic outlook, according to a poll released by the Sensus opinion research institute Monday.

The poll showed approval for the government dropped to 62.4% in March from 72.5% in a previous poll held in January. The figure was the lowest seen since April 2008.

The poll Monday also showed slippage in the personal popularity of President Lula, which fell to 76.2% from an all-time high of 84% in January. According to data in Monday's poll, the decline in the government's approval rating came alongside growing concerns over unemployment and declining incomes.

The latest survey showed that 54.5% of respondents had detected a worsening of unemployment, compared with 38.5% in the previous poll. Similarly, 32.6% had detected a decline in incomes compared with 23.2% in the previous poll.

Brazil's General Price Index, known as the IGP-M, dropped 0.74% in March, compared with an increase of 0.26% in February, the private Getulio Vargas Foundation said Monday.

The latest figure was below analysts' expectations, which ranged from a decrease between 0.48% and 0.23%. The March IGP-M figure measured prices between Feb. 21 and March 20.

The rolling IGP-M inflation rate for the 12 months through March 20 was 6.27%.
Wholesale prices, which carry a 60% weighting in the overall index, were down 1.24% in March, compared with a rise of 0.20% in February.

Construction costs fell 0.17% in the period, reversing an increase of 0.35% in the previous period. Construction costs are weighted at 10% of the overall index.
On the other hand, consumer prices, which account for 30% of the overall index, picked up 0.43% in March, compared with a rise of 0.40% in the previous month.

MEXICO

Economic activity in Mexico fell more than expected in January on a surprisingly big decline in services, coupled with a slump in industrial output.
The National Statistics Institute said its IGAE indicator, which measures most of gross domestic product, fell 9.5% from January 2008 and was down 3.99% seasonally adjusted from December.

The year-on-year drop was bigger than the 5.5% median estimate in a Dow Jones Newswires survey of 13 economists.

Industrial production in January fell 11.1%, led by a drop in auto industry output, while services were down 9.1% from a year ago, and agricultural production rose 2.1%.

The surprise was the sharp drop in services, with commerce, real estate, cargo transport, credit, insurance and restaurants all down from January 2008.

The sharp economic deceleration so far this year as both external and domestic demand falter has led several economists to lower their estimates for full-year economic performance.

This week, Citigroup (C) unit Banamex cut its forecast for 2009 GDP to a drop of 3.5% from its previous estimate of a 2.4% decline.

JAPAN

Auto Production -56.2% On Year In February.

OECD Expects Japan 2009 GDP At -6.6% Vs -0.1% November Forecast.

` Exports of cars, trucks and buses tumbled 63.9% in February from the year-earlier month, falling for the fifth straight month, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association said Monday. Vehicle exports totaled 212,107 vehicles in the month, down from 587,825 vehicles in the same month last year, the association said in a press release.

Industrial output fell 9.4% in February from the previous month as the global slump further sapped demand for Japanese cars, electronics and other products both overseas and at home, preliminary government data released Monday showed.
The world's second largest economy is stumbling as output from its industrial sector, robust just a year ago, dwindles for the fifth straight month after falling a record 10.2% in January, according to a Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry official.

The fall in this key barometer of Japan's export-driven economy exceeds the 9.0% slide expected by economists surveyed by Dow Jones and The Nikkei, and illustrates the challenges facing companies such as Sony and the many smaller manufacturers that supply them.

Taken with February's 49% on-year decline in exports, a record steep fall, the industrial production figure may raise pressure on the government of unpopular Prime Minister Taro Aso to expand the fresh fiscal stimulus package it is now preparing to counter the effects of the worsening recession.

Japan’s recession deepened as the unemployment rate surged to a three-year high, wages fell and job openings plunged at the fastest pace in three decades.

The jobless rate rose to 4.4 percent last month from 4.1 percent in January, the statistics bureau said today in Tokyo. The ratio of jobs available to each applicant tumbled to 0.59 from 0.67, the biggest drop since 1974, the Labor Ministry said.

Domestic sales of new cars, trucks and buses dropped 31.5% on year in March, declining for an eighth straight month, an industry body said Wednesday.

Japan’s Tankan index of manufacturing confidence declined to a record -58 for March. Analysts are concerned that Japan’s huge excess of labor, capacity and inventory augurs for a worsening economy.

AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

Australian new home sales rose for a second consecutive month in February, according to the latest survey by the Housing Industry Association.

Total new home sales increased by 3.9% in February 2009, HIA said in a statement. Detached home sales increased by 4.7% in the month and were up by 8% over the three months to February.

The total number of Australian houses and apartments approved for construction rose a seasonally adjusted 7.8% in February from January, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday.

Australian Feb Adjusted Retail Sales Down 2.0%.

An index of job vacancies for skilled workers in Australia fell by 10.8% in March from February, and was 57.9% lower from a year ago, the Department of Employment said Wednesday.

*****

NEXT SCHEDULED ISSUES:

Every Wednesday and Saturday during the month of April 2009

2009-03-23T18:44:00.000-07:00

A LITTLE GUN HISTORY

In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
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In 1911, Turkey established gun control.. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
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Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
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China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated
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Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and ex terminated.
    ---- ------------- -------------

Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
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Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million educated people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
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Defenseless people rounded up and exterminated in the 20th Century because of gun control: 56 million.
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It has now been 12 months since gun owners inAustralia were forced by new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by their own Government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars. The first year results are now in:

List of 7 items:

Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent.

Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6 percent.

Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)!

In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent. Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not, and criminals still possess their guns!

While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed.

There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the ELDERLY. Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort, and expense was expended in successfully ridding Australian society of guns. The Australian experience and the other historical facts above prove it.

You won't see this data on the US evening news, or hear politicians disseminating this information.

Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws adversely affect only the law-abiding citizens.

Take note my fellow Americans, before it's too late!

The next time someone talks in favor of gun control, please remind them of this history lesson.

With guns, we are 'citizens'. Without them, we are 'subjects'.

During WWII the Japanese decided not to invadeAmerica because they knew most Americans were ARMED!

If you value your freedom, please spread this anti-gun control message to all of your friends.


The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no possible victory in defense. The sword is more important than the shield, and skill is more important than either. The final weapon is the brain. All else is supplemental.
SWITZERLAND ISSUES EVERY HOUSEHOLD A GUN! SWITZERLAND'S GOVERNMENT TRAINS EVERY ADULT THEY ISSUE A RIFLE.  SWITZERLANDHAS THE LOWEST GUN RELATED CRIME RATE OF ANY CIVILIZED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD!!!
IT'S A NO BRAINER! DON'T LET OUR GOVERNMENT WASTE MILLIONS OF OUR TAX DOLLARS IN AN EFFORT TO MAKE ALL LAW ABIDING CITIZENS AN EASY TARGET.

I'm a firm believer of the 2nd Amendment! If you are too, please forward.

Ray Strauss

2009-03-17T16:48:00.000-07:00

What next? We as adults have apparently been poisoned by almost every thing and we are still living. It looks like to me, the sky is falling and we are to dumb to care for ourselves and need the government to do it for us..................

Lynn

Lead is feared in children's books

By LEE LOGAN – 4 hours ago

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Could a vintage, dog-eared copy of "The Cat in the Hat" or "Where the Wild Things Are" be hazardous to your children?

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has raised that possibility in urging the nation's libraries to take children's books printed before 1986 off their shelves while the federal agency investigates whether the ink contains unsafe levels of lead.

Few, if any, libraries are complying, and many librarians are ridiculing the recommendation as alarmist. Even the nation's premier medical sleuths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, say any danger from lead in children's books is slight.

"We're talking about tens of millions of copies of children's books that are perfectly safe. I wish a reasonable, rational person would just say, `This is stupid. What are we doing?'" said Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association's Washington office.

Lead poisoning has been linked to irreversible learning disabilities and behavioral problems.

A federal law passed last summer and effective Feb. 10 bans lead beyond minute levels in most products intended for children 12 or younger. It was passed after a string of toy recalls. The CPSC is interpreting the law to include books.

CPSC spokesman Scott Wolfson said libraries can safely lend any children's book printed in 1986 or later, by which time a growing body of regulations had removed lead from printer's ink. But the commission still must study the lead content in books printed before 1986. The CPSC delayed until next year the lead testing required as part of the law.

Until the testing is done, the nation's more than 116,000 public and school libraries "should take steps to ensure that the children aren't accessing those books," Wolfson said. "Steps can be taken to put them in an area on hold until the Consumer Product Safety Commission can give further guidance."

But Jay Dempsey, a health communications specialist at the CDC, said lead-based ink in children's books poses little danger.

"If that child were to actually start mouthing the book — as some children put everything in their mouths — that's where the concern would be," Dempsey said. "But on a scale of one to 10, this is like a 0.5 level of concern."

The publishing and printing industries set up a Web site for book publishers last December to post the results of studies measuring the lead in books and their components, such as ink and paper. Those results show lead levels that were often undetectable and consistently below not only the new federal threshold, but the more stringent limit that goes into effect in August 2011.

Those findings were cited in a letter from the Association of American Publishers to the CPSC.

The American Library Association said it has no estimate of how many children's books printed before 1986 are in circulation. But typically, libraries don't have many, because youngsters are hard on books, librarians said.

"Frankly, most of our books have been well-used and well-appreciated," said Rhoda Goldberg, director of the Harris County Public Library system in Houston. "They don't last 24 years."

Also, the lead is contained only in the type, not in the illustrations, according to Allan Adler, vice president for legal and governmental affairs for the Association of American Publishers.

Sheketoff said she heard of just two libraries that started to restrict access to children's books last month. One roped off the children's section; the other covered children's books with a tarp. Both libraries, which she declined to identify, stopped after being contacted by the association, she said.

"Communities would have a stroke if public libraries started throwing out hundreds and hundreds of books just because they came out before a certain copyright date," said Margaret Todd, librarian for the Los Angeles County system, which has 89 branches and about 3 million children's books. Todd said she expects the commission to develop reasonable standards that protect children.

Nathan Brown, a lawyer for the library association, said libraries should not even be subject to the law. He argued that Congress never wanted to regulate books and that libraries do not sell books and thus are not subject to the consumer products law.

Associated Press Writer David A. Lieb contributed to this report.

--
Lynn Sadler

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. - Niels Bohr

It goes without saying that many of the unintended consequences engendered by good intentions boomerang against the party or group supposedly being assisted. J. B. White

2009-03-15T13:09:00.001-07:00

Czech President Blasts Global Warming

Czech President Vaclav Klaus says many global warming advocates are more interested in money than they are in climate change.

Speaking at the opening session of the Second International Conference on Climate Change last week in New York, Klaus who is also President pro-tem of the European Union warned that politicians have “succeeded in creating incentives which led to the rise of a very powerful [profit]-seeking group.

“These people are interested neither in temperature, CO2, competing scientific hypotheses and their testing, nor in freedom or markets. They are interested in their businesses and their profits made with the help of politicians.”

They will profit, he said, from trading the licenses to emit carbon dioxide, and from constructing unproductive wind, solar and similar equipment able to generate electricity only with high levels of subsidies.

They will also make money from doing research, writing and speaking about global warming.

At the New York conference, sponsored by the Heartland Institute and attended by more than 700 scientists, Klaus declared that “there is no fixed and stable relationship between measured temperature and CO2 emissions.

“The believers in this hypothesis are not able to explain why the global temperature increased from 1918 to 1940, decreased from 1940 to 1976, increased from 1976 to 1998 and decreased from 1998 to the present, irrespective of the fact that people have been adding increasing amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere.”

He said global warming alarmists “want to change us and our behavior. Their ambition is to control and manipulate us.”

The global warming debate “has not made any detectable progress and the much needed, long overdue exchange of views has not yet started. All we see and hear are uninspiring monologues.

“It reminds me of the frustration people like me felt in the Communist era. Whatever you said, any convincing and well prepared arguments you used, any relevant data you assembled no reaction. It all fell into emptiness. Nobody listened.

“They didn't even try to argue back. They considered you a naive, uninformed and confused person, an eccentric, a complainer, someone not able to accept their only truth. It is very similar now.”

Recalling his experience at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he said he spent three hours at a closed session with about 60 people - heads of state and “experts” like Al Gore, Tony Blair and Kofi Annan.

“It was a discouraging experience. You looked around in vain to find at least one person who would share your views. There was no one.

“All the participants of the meeting took man-made global warming for granted, were convinced of its dangerous consequences, and more or less competed in one special discipline whether to suggest a 20, 30, 50 or 80 percent CO2 emissions cut as an agreed-upon, world-wide project. It was difficult to say anything meaningful and constructive.”

Newsmax reported earlier that during the Davos conference in January, Klaus said: "I'm very sorry that some people like Al Gore are not ready to listen to the competing theories. I do listen to them.

"Environmentalism and the global warming alarmism is challenging our freedom. Al Gore is an important person in this movement."

Klaus concluded in New York: “The environmentalists speak about ‘saving the planet.’ From what? And from whom? One thing I know for sure: We have to save it - and us from them.”