Maggie's Farm

BREAKING NEWS......

OBAMA 'S LEAVING THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL TO VISIT HIS SICK GRANDMOTHER...PROBABLY THE ONE WHO KEEPS SAYING HE WAS BORN IN KENYA. BYR-BYE GRANNY...IN A CONSPIRACY ALL LOOSE ENDS ARE TRIMMED.

BREAKING NEWS.......

WHO NEEDS ICELAND?

Too Much Money Is Beyond Legal Reach
New York-based funds are abusing 'secrecy jurisdictions.'
A major factor in the current financial crisis is the lack of transparency in the activities of the principal players in the financial markets. This opaqueness is compounded by vast sums of money that lie outside the jurisdiction of U.S. regulators and other supervisory authorities.

The $700 billion in Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's current proposed rescue plan pales in comparison to the volume of dollars that now escape the watchful eye, not only of U.S. regulators, but from the media and the general public as well.

There is $1.9 trillion, almost all of it run out of the New York metropolitan area, that sits in the Cayman Islands, a secrecy jurisdiction. Another $1.5 trillion is lodged in four other secrecy jurisdictions.

Following the Great Depression, we bragged about a newly installed safety net that was suppose to save us from such a hard economic fall in the future. However, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve System, the Comptroller of the Currency and others have ignored trillions of dollars that have migrated to offshore jurisdictions that are secretive in nature and outside the safety net -- beyond the reach of U.S. regulators.
We should have learned a long time ago that totally unsupervised markets, whether trading in tulips or subprime mortgages, will sooner rather than later get into trouble. We don't have to look back very far in history to understand this.

Long Term Capital Management, a hedge fund "based" in Greenwich, Conn., but composed of eight partnerships chartered in the Caymans, was supposed to be the wunderkind of the financial world. At its peak in the late 1990s, its gross holdings were valued at $1.8 trillion. But, regrettably, its liabilities exceeded its assets and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York had to step in and rescue it when the value of its assets plummeted.
Most recently, two Bear Stearns hedge funds, based in the Cayman Islands, but run out of New York, collapsed without any warning to its investors. Because of the location of these financial institutions -- in a secrecy jurisdiction, outside the U.S. safety net of appropriate supervision -- their desperate financial condition went undetected until it was too late.

Of course, BCCI Overseas, which was part of the then largest bankruptcy in history, was also "chartered" in the Caymans.

We have to learn from our mistakes. Any significant infusion to the financial system must carry assurances that it will not add to the pool of money beyond the safety net and supervisory authority of the United States. Moreover, the trillions of dollars currently offshore and invested in funds that could impact the American economy must be brought under appropriate supervision.

If Congress and Treasury fail to bring under U.S. supervisory authority the financial institutions and transactions in secrecy jurisdictions, there will be no transparency with the inevitable consequences of the lack of transparency -- namely, a repeat of the unbridled greed and recklessness that we now face. Because of the monolithic character of world financial markets, a default crisis anywhere becomes a default crisis everywhere.
author:
Mr. Morgenthau is the district attorney for Manhattan, N.Y.

For my money there couldn't be a better world test ( the Biden pronunciamento of yesterday) for Obama, should he win, than for the US to aid Israel in taking out the Iranian nuclear plants.

It will immediate force him to defend Israel or bow to the Islams. It will define his willingnesss to sustain an ally. It will force him to use military force to keep open the Straits of Hormuz.

There are so many levels that it will force him to confront that his Marxist head will be spinning.

So Mr. President George W. Bush your duty is clear. Before you leave office, with a Marxist waiting in the wings, bomb the hell out of Iran. It will be a clarifying moment for the entire world and boy do we need one.

It will also keep Obama very busy working on the apology notes he'll immediately send out.
As for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Taiwan et. al. Sorry , but at least you had a few years of freedom.

Taliban, party all the time. AQ, ditto..... queue James Taylor's, "You've got a friend"

Villainous Company wrote an ok piece but 60% was filler and somewhat naive. This paragraph had me rolling on the floor.
“What I think is most important is that we recognize that to solve the key problems that we're facing, if we're going to solve two wars, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, if we can -- if we're going to focus on lifting wages that have declined over the last eight years and create jobs here in America, then Democrats, independents and Republicans, we're going to have to be able to work together.

I’m sorry but “working together cry” faded a long, long time ago. IF you are willing to give up a few things , like the Constitutional requirements for being President then yes, we can work together. IF Obama wins and get’s a supermajority in the Senate there will be ZERO incentive to work with the Republicans, who will be assigned to giving tours of the Capitol. In fact the Democratic Marxists will go for the jugular in every way imaginable. Personally I believe we’ll see the end of our Constitution.

I completely understand her waking up at 3AM for I have been doing the same. I can’t watch the TV. I am preparing for a revolution. It’s not paranoia when they are truly out to get you and all you have to do is go down the checklist of The National Socialist Democratic Party to see that it’s 1932 in Germany again. Think not? Ask how free the people who are asked to vote for a union are with a thug standing over their shoulder.

Plague emerges in Grand Canyon, kills biologist

One day last October, Eric York lugged the carcass of an adult mountain lion from his truck and laid it carefully on a tarp on the floor of his garage.
The female mountain lion had a bloody nose, but her hide bore no other signs of trauma. York, a biologist at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, found the big cat lying motionless near the canyon's South Rim. He was determined to learn why she died.


MORE: Experts say next epidemic will come from animals
BETTER LIFE: News and tips on flu, vaccines and more

Because the park lacks a forensics lab, he did the postmortem in his garage, in a village of about 2,000 park employees.

Epidemic experts can only speculate about what happened next. When York cut into the lion, he must have released a cloud of bacteria and breathed in. On Nov. 2, York was found dead, a 21st-century victim of plague, the disease that in the Middle Ages turned Europe into a vast mortuary. He was 37. (more)

http://tinyurl.com/663weo