Ben 'Bernank' Is Ready to Go Beyond $600 Billion

on his way to outdo Rudolf E. A. von Havenstein .

Bloomberg reports that Ben 'Bernank' is ready and willing to go beyond $600 billion:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke defended the Fed’s decision to purchase $600 billion in Treasury securities and didn’t rule out expanding the program, in an interview for CBS television’s “60 Minutes,” the network said.

“He explains why the Fed announced its intention to buy $600 billion in Treasury securities, defending against charges the move will lead to inflation and not ruling out the purchase of more,” according to a press release today from CBS.

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Nancy, Harry, and Barry Full Steam Ahead in Lame-Duck Congress

and the world becomes crazier by the day.

When the election result came in and confirmed the massive defeat for the Democrats, many people thought the Democratic leaders and the Obama White House would move to a more moderate position and collaborate with Republicans.

I didn't think so at all. Instead, I thought Nancy and Harry and Barry would go full-steam ahead with their progressive, ultra-left and statist agendas during the so-called "lame-duck" session.

Sure enough. Right after the election, Barry ordered Janet to go ahead and sexually molest airline passengers in the name of national security. (Now TSA is doing the same at Grayhound Bus Stations, supposedly as a test.)

Then, the cyber "security" bill passed the Senate committee with bipartisan support that will give the Department of Homeland Security an incredible, tremendous power over the Internet.

Then they passed the food "safety" bill that will be implemented by the inept FDA and supported by Obama's food czar, a former Monsanto exec. Expect more food poisoning, and sharply increased food cost. If you take supplements and vitamins to protect and improve your health, hoard them now.

Now, it's Harry's turn. He has introduced 4 different version of the immigration "reform" bill, the DREAM Act, and they are going to be voted on, without any committee hearing.

As if we need any more stimulation, Ben at the Fed is bombarding the financial markets with several billion dollars almost every single day while dumping the raw data of 2007-2010 bailout of the financial firms.

Speaking of dump, WikiLeaks dumped the diplomatic cables of the US government, and indicating the next target to be a big US bank (everyone thinks it's Bank of America, who already hired a "legal swat team") its founder Julian Assange has become the target of assassination.

All I wanted was a quiet, uneventful, peaceful holiday season.

But you can always count on Barry to ... go on another vacation! I hear that he and his family are going to Hawaii. Probably staying at the same vacation rental that rents for several thousand dollars a night, enough to make a mortgage payment in California, and probably several months of payment in many other states.

(Oh wait, Barry is willing to delay the vacation until Christmas Eve to negotiate a tax cut deal with Republicans. Oh what a noble sacrifice by the nation's multi-millionaire president!)

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Ruling Class (and Wannabes) Calling for Assange's Assassination

What's his "crime", other than making the ruling class look like a bunch of bumbling idiots?

Oh I see, that's really a serious crime, isn't it, to reveal the emperor with no clothes?

But calling for his assassination (and not to mention Huckabee's idiotic idea of "treason" - Assange is not a US citizen) over a bunch of diplomatic cables?

Or is it because of Assange's hint that the next up will be a US bank, which everyone took to mean Bank of America? Did the Fed order UK to arrest Assange to protect one of the largest Fed member banks?

Zero Hedge's Tyler Durden says it all:

Once again, it only goes to show that if you threaten to take down a government nobody cares; do the same with a bank, and one's arrest becomes imminent.

The political left's hypocricy shines through yet again. Just imagine what they would be saying, if the leak was made during the sorry reign of Bush the Lesser.

Except, as usual, Glenn Greenwald, who had this to say in his 12/1/2010 post:

...as soon as Scott Ritter began telling the truth about Iraqi WMDs, he was publicly smeared with allegations of sexual improprieties. As soon as Eliot Spitzer began posing a real threat to Wall Street criminals, a massive and strange federal investigation was launched over nothing more than routine acts of consensual adult prostitution, ending his career (and the threat he posed to oligarchs). And now, the day after Julian Assange is responsible for one of the largest leaks in history, an arrest warrant issues that sharply curtails his movement and makes his detention highly likely.

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Xtranormal Technology Inc. - Brilliant, Just Brilliant

Many of you may already have seen the animation video of two animal characters discussing Ben "Bernank" and QE2. Here's another one I saw at Zero Hedge, explaining the "Buy the dip" scheme that has been made possible by Ben's QE2 and NY Fed's POMO. (Caution: foul language. Definitely not PG-13)

What's causing this almost sudden burst of 3D-animation vids on topics ranging from TSA groping, QE2, stock market, and the Federal Reserve? It's because there's a platform now for just about anyone to use to create a video. You just have to know how to type, and points that you want to make.

Pick a character (or two). Type in the dialog. Click a button to generate a video. Upload, share it with the world.

The company behind this brilliant, enabling, game-changing technology is Xtranormal Technology Inc., a privately-held company based in Montreal, Canada.

(I want to work for this company. Hire me, and I can help you expand in Asia! Just give me the founder stocks...)

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Amazon.com Defers to Senator Lieberman and Stops Hosting WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks 1, Amazon 0.

Amazon.com, capitulating to the pressure from neocon Senator Joe Lieberman, forced WikiLeaks to stop using Amazon's computers to distribute State Department communications and other documents that are "embarrassing" [to who?]. No comment from Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos on complying with Lieberman's request.

Well, I wouldn't feel so bad any more if Congress decides to tax sales of goods and services over the Internet and hit the bottom lines and the top lines of Internet retailers like Amazon. I think I will cancel my subscription at Amazon...

WikiLeaks apparently responded by saying:

"If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books," WikiLeaks said in another tweet.

After a few hours of down-time and after Amazon.com lost my respect, WikiLeaks reopened on servers in Sweden. And WikiLeaks to Amazon:

"WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free – fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe."

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WikiLeaks' Julian Assange Interview with Forbes

Brilliant.

"[I]n order for there to be a market, there has to be information."

"For a market to be free, people have to know who they're dealing with."

"WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical."


An Interview with Wikileak's Julian Assange (Andy Greenberg, 11/29/2010 Forbes)

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Federal Reserve Dumps $3.3 Trillion Bailout Data

from December 2007 (now official start of the recession that supposedly ended in June of 2009) to July 2010.

And who were the lucky winners of near-free money?

A lot of financial sites are busy crunching the numbers released by the Fed. I'll wait for them to finish the work, but here's one of the early results from Zero Hedge on the question of "cui bono?" in the Fed's purchase of MBS:

The answer to the question: European banks.

From the Fed's press release which re-writes history, the bailout was about helping Americans:

The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday posted detailed information on its public website about more than 21,000 individual credit and other transactions conducted to stabilize markets during the recent financial crisis, restore the flow of credit to American families and businesses, and support economic recovery and job creation in the aftermath of the crisis.

Well, the Fed has failed so far; "the flow of credit" isn't flowing to families and businesses, unless it's to the families of big business execs and to the big businesses on Wall Street and Main Street.

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Ulsterman Report: White House Insider "Media Elected Obama"

..not the American people (in case you haven't figured that out).

The latest from Ulsterman's White House Insider series tells us how the (mainstream) media went out of their way to shield and protect the Candidate Obama, and to make sure John McCain would be selected as the Republican candidate. The Obama camp didn't want Romney, because "Romney came off polished, confident..." and too much like Obama.

About selling the "Obama" brand to gullible American voters (boy they were duped..):

The threats to Obama [that resulted in Obama getting Secret Service protection] were a creation by Plouffe [David Plouffe, Obama's chief campaign manager for 2008 election], and the campaign was very proud of itself over that one. It put all the other candidates into a corner. It guilted the voters – or a lot of them anyways. Enough of them to make a big difference. It made Barack Obama the legacy candidate – the guy who could be the first Black president – if some crazy racists didn’t go and try and harm him first.

The best campaigns often are the most simple. Americans get simple. We –expletive- thrive on simple, right? And I’m here to tell you, as a candidate, I don’t know many more who have been more simple than Barack Obama. Hope – Change – and don’t forget I’m the nice Black guy. That was about it – and it worked. Man did it work.

About McCain:

Toward the end of…2008, no – 2007, McCain’s campaign was in the –expletive- toilet, right? And Romney was shaping up to be the frontrunner going into 2008. That had the higher ups in the Obama camp very concerned. If we got by Hillary, then the only guy who might challenge us money-wise would be Romney. He had some bucks, he had inroads with the large donor Republicans. The contradiction between him and Obama was not stark enough. Romney was by far the bigger threat – much more so than McCain…

...well like I was saying, go back to the last months of 2007. McCain is barely hanging on. He’s got no money, staff are leaving him. The guy is in big trouble. Normally the media would be writing the guy off, right? They would be piling on him left and right - or simply ignoring him altogether. But they didn’t do that, did they?

...I was told that very specific pro-McCain stories were being given to various media figures, emphasizing McCain as this guy who wasn’t giving up – the underdog candidate going against the big money machine of Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.

Well they were all over the media for about a month or two heading into New Hampshire. Right? Look at how tough John McCain is; he never gives up, etc. Those stories, at least the idea of them, originated from the Barack Obama campaign. We were the ones who pushed the media to report them.

About how Obama was able to survive the Reverend Wright story (remember him?):

That whole cluster-expletive- church that Obama went to for what…30 years? No – 20 years? What other candidate gets away with a story like that in a primary race? There was no “ he said she said” crap with that story – everyone could hear and see what that guy was saying! Here is this pastor of this church who is screaming down America, a guy who Obama calls his spiritual guide or mentor or whatever, who rips on America after 9-11…I mean how in hell does a candidate survive that? It just doesn’t happen. No way. Impossible, right? Obama was done. It was over. He finally got burned on something. You just don’t recover from something like that. That’s what we all thought. Oh –expletive- it’s –expletive- over. A distant second on the concern scale for the campaign was Palin. That one spooked us a bit – but not like the Wright fiasco. We really thought it was over right there – but Obama survived it. Not because of him, or the campaign, but because the media provided cover through the whole thing. In the end, the media said it was not a story, and pushed Obama to the finish line. No way a candidate should have survived that. No -expletive- way.

Stay tuned for the second part at Ulsterman's site.

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Food "Safety" Bill (S.510) Easily Passed Senate

Thank you, Monsanto, for looking after us.

By the vote 73 to 25, the Senate passed a food "safety" bill that will give the FDA a huge power and create another immense chunk of federal bureaucracy to be paid somehow by the taxpayers, again.

It is about food "safety", just as the health care "reform" bill was about "reform" and the financial "reform" bill was about "reform".

Big Ag Business and the federal government 1, the rest of us 0.

I am one of the minority who believes it is none of the government's business what we eat, what we grow, whom we choose to buy from. For more of the minority view, see here.

The apologists for the bill argued that the amendments would pass that would alleviate the burdens on small farms. Well, guess what? They all failed, except one; the only amendment that passed was the amendment that would exempt small operations from having to file a food safety plan. (Is this a Soviet Union or what?)

Now the federal government's hold on our lives are nearly complete. Our financial lives are regulated, our health is regulated, now our food is regulated. What's left? Maybe the air that we breathe and CO2 that we breathe out, by passing the climate bill.

At what point does it become utterly pointless to try to fight?

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Drudge and Alex Jones 1, Big Sis and Obama 0

November 24 was a National Opt Out Day at the nation's airports in protest against the new TSA sexual harassment aka naked body scans and heavy, intrusive patdowns with a dirty pair of latex gloves.

It was apparently a non-event; no serious disruption was reported. And statist MSM pundits who welcome and support fondling by strangers so that they can feel "secure" say the protesters were a minority paid by Koch brothers to stir up trouble for the hard-working government.

Uh huh.

It turns out that the day was a non-event because the TSA backed down at the busy airports. Naked body scanners were turned off, and intrusive groping was replaced by a regular patdown.

Matt Drudge and Alex Jones won in their relentless campaign against the TSA.

From Infowars.com:

Despite the establishment media presiding over another mass hoax in claiming that Americans were completely happy with invasive airport security measures, contrary to polls showing a majority in opposition, and that the national opt out day was a failure, the fact that the TSA was forced to change its policy by mothballing naked body scanners and curtailing aggressive pat downs clearly goes to show that the man who almost single-handedly drove the issue, Matt Drudge, fought the TSA and he won.

The big networks and the so-called progressive borg hive, who instantly tried to spin the lack of delays at airports over Thanksgiving as proof that the opt-out protest had failed, conveniently failed to mention the fact that major airports across the country had deliberately mothballed their naked body scanners in a crass PR ploy aimed at deflating the momentum behind the demonstration.

Early reports began to pour in from Twitter users who said that body scanner machines were roped off and out of use in airports such as LAX, Seattle, San Jose and Columbus, Ohio. They also said that pat downs had reverted back to the standard procedure and were not the new grope downs that the TSA had announced a couple of weeks before.

The New Jersey Star-Ledger subsequently reported that, “The majority of Newark’s full-body scanners were idle throughout much of the day, depriving most passengers of the chance to opt out of the controversial screening procedure even if they had wanted to.”

At the nation’s busiest airport, Atlanta-Hartsfield, there was,”limited, if any, use of the controversial full-body scanners,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Later reports confirmed that, the TSA had “backed down and resorted to using the old screening procedures — metal detectors and less-intrusive pat-downs.”

...In addition, many people took part in the protest by avoiding airports altogether. Traffic was jammed on the highways, with the Massachusetts Turnpike playing host to a 30-mile hold-up. According to AAA, more drivers were on the road than ever before during a Thanksgiving holiday.

The establishment media echo chamber attempted to pull a hoax by claiming that the vast majority of Americans were completely happy with having their genitals groped by federal goons and naked pictures taken of their children. In reality, after Drudge relentlessly drove the issue, polls of Americans that were previously in support of body scanners had reversed dramatically and the ACLU received an avalanche of new complaints.

Janet Napolitano, aka Big Sis, and Obama have both said that naked body scanners and intrusive patdowns are the only way to prevent terrorist attacks.

Apparently, PR consideration was more important than prevention of terror attacks.

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Shanghai Index Down 3%

It looks ugly. "Turnaround Tuesday" may not come.

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UK Telegraph: "Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world"

Remember the "global warming" disaster in Copenhagen last year?

So-called scientists, politicians, and representatives from big business who are very keen on profiting from the "global warming" to the tune of $12 trillion dollars are flying in on their fancy jets to Cancun, Mexico, to hold another "climate" conference in a super-fancy resort built on a strip of land that used to be a ecologically sensitive mangrove swamp with pristine beaches and rainforests.

These so-called scientists are already lecturing us that the developed countries like UK should be put on a rationing system just like during the World War II and halt any growth for 20 years to save the planet from the "global warming".

Talk about hypocricy.

And PR disaster.

UK's Telegraph reports:

In a series of papers published by the Royal Society, physicists and chemists from some of world’s most respected scientific institutions, including Oxford University and the Met Office, agreed that current plans to tackle global warming are not enough.

Unless emissions are reduced dramatically in the next ten years the world is set to see temperatures rise by more than 4C (7.2F) by as early as the 2060s, causing floods, droughts and mass migration.

As the world meets in Cancun, Mexico for the latest round of United Nations talks on climate change, the influential academics called for much tougher measures to cut carbon emissions.

In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years.

This would mean a drastic change in lifestyles for many people in countries like Britain as everyone will have to buy less ‘carbon intensive’ goods and services such as long haul flights and fuel hungry cars.

Prof Anderson admitted it “would not be easy” to persuade people to reduce their consumption of goods

He said politicians should consider a rationing system similar to the one introduced during the last “time of crisis” in the 1930s and 40s.

This could mean a limit on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models. Food that has travelled from abroad may be limited and goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.

...Prof Anderson insisted that halting growth in the rich world does not necessarily mean a recession or a worse lifestyle, it just means making adjustments in everyday life such as using public transport and wearing a sweater rather than turning on the heating.

Sure, sure. I'm sure he will be delivering his excellent paper in a super-fancy resort in Cancun, if he can take the time off from his golf on a course designed by Jack Nicklaus or relaxing in a jaccuzzi eating shrimp.

By the way, Cancun means "a nest of serpents". Indeed.

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UK MEP Nigel Farage Tells European Parliament: Just Who the Hell Do You Think You Are?

Nigel Farage, UK Independent Party (UKIP) Leader and a Member of the European Parliament, told the chamber who sat in disbelief - "Euro game is up."

In their desperation to preserve their dream, they want to remove any remaining traces of democracy from the system. And it's pretty clear that none of you have learned anything...

Just who the hell do you think you people are? You are very, very dangerous people indeed. Your obsession with creating this Euro state means that you are happy to destroy democracy, you appear to be happy for millions and millions of people to be unemployed and to be poor. Untold millions must suffer so that your Euro dream can continue. Well it won't work!

Watch the reaction of his fellow Members of European Parliament...

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WikiLeaks Strikes Again, and It's A Quarter-Million Confidential State Department Documents

According to New York Times, which is one of the three papers in the world that have received the WikiLeaks' leaks (the other two being The Guardian of UK and Der Spiegel of Germany),

WASHINGTON — A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at back-room bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats.

Some of the cables, made available to The New York Times and several other news organizations, were written as recently as late February, revealing the Obama administration’s exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to revealing secret documents. WikiLeaks posted the first installment of the archive on its Web site on Sunday.

What's amusing to me is the bit of information about how the State Department tried to "make a deal" with foreign countries. The "deal" offered by the US was either bribery using aid money or bribery using Obama as an "incentive":

Bargaining to empty the Guantánamo Bay prison: When American diplomats pressed other countries to resettle detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of “Let’s Make a Deal.” Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested that accepting more prisoners would be “a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe.”

Neocon Senators like Claire "I love TSA love pats" McCaskill (D) and Lindsey "Let's attack Iran" Graham (R) are of course squawking again about prosecuting the leakers. I'd say let's arrest all these bungling, clueless US government officials squandering a huge wad of money and goodwill across the globe.

I wonder if Slovenia agreed... (I'm sure these girls want to meet Obama...)

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Janet Napolitano Bans Parcels from Japan in Response to the Ink Cartridge Bomb from Yemen

This is beyond absurd.

The ink cartridge bomb was allegedly shipped from Yemen. And what does Janet Napolitano do, in addition to having the TSA sexually harass and molest air travelers in the US?

She bans non-commercial parcels from Japan sent via Japan Post.

Mr. Ken Adachi at Educate-Yourself says Janet Napolitano has quietly set up a new regulation on November 17 that:

blocks the shipping of any NON COMMERCIAL parcel into the United States that weighs more than 0.9 pounds (under 16 ounces) without first supplying the Social Security number (or taxpayer ID number) of the RECEPIENT of the package (and it's likely that the new DHS shipping restriction will soon also apply to detailed ID requirements on the part of the person sending the package as well).

The non-bomb in the ink cartridge was from Yemen, and Napolitano goes and stops parcels sent from friends and relatives in Japan to their fiends and relatives in the US. How is that going to stop "terrorism"?

I checked the Japan Post website, but the announcement says nothing about supplying the Social Security number of the recipient. Instead, it says any item mailed by air that weighs more than 16 ounces will be suspended for shipment until further notice:

November 12, 2010

Japan Post Service Company (Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo-to, Representative Director: Shinichi Nabekura) has announced that, due to the elimination of air flights for the delivery of postal items over 453 grams (16 ounces) in weight following the recent anti-terrorism airport security enforcement on the part of the USA, these postal items will be suspended for shipment for the time being starting from November 17, 2010.

We will make a relevant announcement once the situation changes.

There goes my end-of-the-year package I've been waiting for from my relatives in Japan.

This new harassment from the DHS applies to air parcels from other countries, not just Japan. What's really irritating about it is that it targets ordinary people by restricting the application of the rule to non-commercial shipment.

Well, what else could we expect from the corporatist administration like this one?

There are alternatives, albeit more expensive than Japan Post. So far, Fedex and UPS are not stopping the shipment from Japan, and Fedex doesn't require the Social Security number of the recipient as long as the package is a gift and that the declared value of the content is less than $100.

Kuroneko Yamato, DHL Japan require the Social Security number of the recipient, but they are not stopping the shipment.

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