The politics of greed is what keeps this world wrapped in corruption. If you want to stick around for a while longer, I suggest you educate yourself and try to do something constructive to help save what little good, honesty, and trust we have left.

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Go to 13244
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=8478
Borrowers Buried By Fees
04-21-2008
NY Times

SLOWLY but surely, a handful of public-minded bankruptcy court judges are drawing back the curtain on the mortgage servicing business, exposing, among other questionable practices, the sundry and onerous fees that big banks and financial companies levy on troubled borrowers.

It isn’t a pretty sight, if you are a borrower. But shining a light on this dark corner certainly qualifies as progress.

The cases come out of bankruptcy courts in Delaware, Louisiana and New York, and each one shows how improper, undisclosed or questionable fees unfairly penalize borrowers already struggling with mortgage debt or bankruptcy.

Given the number of new borrowers falling daily into the foreclosure mire, dubious practices by servicers are beyond troubling. Foreclosure filings rose 57 percent in March over the same period in 2007, according to RealtyTrac, the real estate and foreclosure Web site. It also said that banks repossessed more than 50,000 homes last month, more than twice the amount of one year earlier.

If even one of those repossessions was owing to improper fees or practices, that would be one too many.

The case out of the Eastern District of Louisiana, overseen by Judge Elizabeth W. Magner, is especially depressing. It involves Dorothy Chase Stewart, an elderly borrower and widow whose original loan of $61,200 was serviced by Wells Fargo. Judge Magner cited “abusive imposition of unwarranted fees and charges,” and improper calculation of escrow payments, among other things. She found Wells Fargo negligent and assessed damages, sanctions and legal fees of $27,350.

The heart of the case is that Wells Fargo failed to notify the borrower when it assessed fees or charges on her account. This deepened her default and placed her on a downward spiral that was hard to escape. And Wells Fargo’s practice of not notifying borrowers that they were being charged fees “is not peculiar to loans involved in a bankruptcy,” the court said.

During a 12-month period beginning in 2001, for example, Well Fargo assessed 13 late fees totaling $360.23 without telling Ms. Stewart or her late husband, whose name was on the loan before he died. Even though the terms of the mortgage required that Wells Fargo apply any funds it received from the Stewarts to principal and interest charges first, the late fees were deducted first. This meant that the Stewarts’ mortgage payments were insufficient, making them fall further behind — and keeping them subject to more late fees.

Then there were the multiple inspection fees Wells Fargo charged the borrowers. Because its computer system automatically generates a request for property inspections when a borrower becomes delinquent — to make sure the property is being kept up — the $15 cost of the inspections piled up. The court noted that the total cost to the borrower for one missed $554.11 mortgage payment was $465.36 in late fees and property inspection charges.

FROM late 2000 and 2007, Wells Fargo inspected the property on average every 54 days, the court found. But the court also determined that inspections charged to Ms. Stewart had often been performed on other people’s properties. Of the nine broker appraisals charged to Ms. Stewart from 2002 to 2007, two were said to have been conducted on the same September day in 2005 when Jefferson Parish, where the Stewart home was located, was under an evacuation order because of Hurricane Katrina.

The broker appraisals were conducted by a division of Wells Fargo that charged more than double its costs for them, the court found. It concluded that the charges were an undisclosed fee disguised as a third-party vendor cost and illegally imposed by Wells Fargo. The bank also levied substantial legal fees and failed to credit back to the borrower $1,800 that had been charged for an eviction action but that had been returned by the sheriff because it never occurred.

While Wells Fargo claimed that the borrower owed $35,036, the judge said the actual figure was $24,924.10. The judge ordered Wells Fargo to provide a complete loan history on every case pending with her court after April 13, 2007.

A Wells Fargo spokesman said the bank “strongly disagrees with many aspects of the recent bankruptcy rulings in New Orleans and plans to appeal these matters. Wells Fargo continuously works to enhance its bankruptcy procedures to comply with the requirements of the bankruptcy courts throughout the country.”

The second illuminating case emerged in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware and involved a problem that lawyers representing troubled borrowers say they often encounter: fees levied after a borrower has satisfied all obligations under a Chapter 13 bankruptcy and the case is discharged.

Mortgage lenders argue that their contracts allow them to recover all the fees and costs they incur when a borrower files a Chapter 13 bankruptcy plan, even those not approved by the court and charged after a case is resolved. But borrowers contend that because such charges have not been approved, they should be disallowed.

Judge Brendan Linehan Shannon put forward this example: If a lender imposed $5,200 in charges on a borrower to cover weekly property inspections and the court disallowed $4,000 of it, lenders still contend that they have the right to try to collect fees after the case concluded that the court did not approve.

“This cannot be,” the judge wrote. “If the court and the Chapter 13 Trustee fully administer a case through completion of a 60-month Chapter 13 plan, only to have the debtor promptly refile on account of accrued, undisclosed fees and charges on her mortgage, it could fairly be said that we have all been on a fool’s errand for five years.”

Finally, borrowers can be cheered by an opinion written this month by Cecilia G. Morris, bankruptcy judge in the Southern District of New York.

The case involved Christopher W. and Bobbi Ann Schuessler, borrowers who had $120,000 of equity in their Burlingham, N.Y., home when their bank, Chase Home Finance, a unit of JPMorgan Chase, moved to begin foreclosure proceedings. The couple had filed for personal bankruptcy protection, which automatically prevents any seizure of their home.

But the bank moved for a so-called relief from the bankruptcy stay, and claimed the couple had no equity.

The Schuesslers got into trouble because Chase had refused a mortgage payment they tried to make at a local branch. Testimony in the case revealed a Chase policy of accepting mortgage payments in branches from borrowers who are current on their loans but rejecting payments from borrowers operating under bankruptcy protection.

The Schuesslers did not know this. When Chase rejected their payment, they briefly fell behind on their mortgage, according to the court documents. Then Chase moved to begin foreclosure proceedings.

“Without informing debtors, Chase Home Finance makes it impossible for JPMorgan Chase Bank branches to accept any payments,” Judge Morris wrote. “It appeared that Chase Home Finance intended to commence an unwarranted foreclosure action, due to ‘arrears’ resulting from Chase Home Finance’s handling of the case in its bankruptcy department, rather than any default of the debtors.”

COURT documents also state that Chase was unable to show that it had tried to communicate with the borrowers before it began efforts to seize their home. The judge concluded that the way Chase deals with bankruptcy debtors is an abuse of the process. She instructed Chase to pay the borrowers’ legal fees.

Thomas Kelly, a Chase spokesman, conceded that the bank had made some mistakes in the Schuessler case, especially the fact that the branch teller had not advised the borrowers where to send their payment when it was rejected.

“Payments from customers in bankruptcy require special handling under bankruptcy law so tellers are requested to tell customers to mail in the payment or call the toll-free number on the back of the form,” he said. “In light of the judge’s concerns we are reviewing our practices.” He also said the bank had followed industry practice in moving to foreclose quickly “so we could meet the guidelines for servicing loans for investors.”

“These cases clearly indicate that bankruptcy courts are no longer being fooled by the maze of fees, firms and flim-flams of the mortgage servicing industry,” said O. Max Gardner III, a lawyer who represents borrowers in Shelby, N.C. “The servicers and their lawyers should recognize the clear and present danger of these decisions while they still have time to turn their ships around and do the right thing.”



Go to 13243
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=8481
Internet Has 3 Years Before Facing Assimilation
04-21-2008
Truth News
Kurt Nimmo

Multinational corporate telecom monster AT&T wants you to know the internet as we know it will be dead in a mere three years.

“Speaking at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, warned that the current systems that constitute the Internet will not be able to cope with the increasing amounts of video and user-generated content being uploaded,” reports Andrew Donoghue for CNet News. “The surge in online content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting the Internet today,” he said. “In three years’ time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today.”

If you believe this I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn. But then the telecom multinats will say and do whatever is required in order to sell their vision of the future — a centralized, gated, pay-per-view, and censored internet, a model based on television, the medium with hundreds of channels and nothing on.

Cicconi, who was speaking at the event as part of a wider series of meetings with U.K. government officials, said that at least $55 billion worth of investment was needed in new infrastructure in the next three years in the U.S. alone, with the figure rising to $130 billion to improve the network worldwide. “We are going to be butting up against the physical capacity of the Internet by 2010,” he said.

In other words, in order to avoid this supposed physical capacity, Mr. Cicconi wants the government — i.e., you and me, the perpetually fleeced commoners — to pay for a new infrastructure, one with controls built-in, as behemoth corporations never pay for infrastructure if they can avoid it. And thanks to no shortage of corporate “lobbyists” prowling about the whorehouse on the Potomac, you can bet your bottom dollar they won’t. Of course, Cicconi does not say you and I will pay for the new Borg internet. But then he does not have to. Corporate socialism is rife these days.

“As our titanic democracy is sinking and the band of trivia and denial plays on, each Internet connection can function as an intellectual life preserver,” writes Mark Klempner. “The net has also proved invaluable as a way for concerned citizens to offer support to each other, and to act together for political and social change.”

It is precisely this organizational and political aspect of the internet our rulers loathe and fear, thus the pell mell rush to defang the medium under a Chicken Little mantra — the bandwidth sky is falling and we have to do something about it. Or rather massive corporations sucking up government contracts have to do something about it.

Mr. Cicconi and AT&T are serving notice: we have three years to get our act together.



Go to 13242
http://st0ckman.blogspot.com/2008/04/inhaled-chip-lately-chemtrails.html
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Inhaled a chip lately? Chemtrail's & Government

Psychotronic (mind control) technologies are mentioned in this study, but not in much detail because that information is classified. The report explores how the weapons system must be able to access what should be private. We read:


The target acquisition system must provide decision makers the capability to detect changes in the personal values of an adversary. Changes in a leader’s emotions, thoughts, or frame of reference are of interest to the strategic attack system. Techniques that get into the ‘head’ of an adversary to obtain valuable information require revolutionary advances. Finding plausible methods for accomplishing this task is the focus of the classified ‘Information Attack’ white paper.(24)


The Air Force would only classify a weapon that can read your thoughts, emotions, and intentions if our country already had this weapon in 1995 or intended to possibly develop it. The sprayed bio-implants and other spy devices are describe below:


Ground-based platforms in 2025 rely heavily on micromechanics and nanotechnology to shrink platforms to microscopic sizes. These platforms could be inserted via human agents, through water or food supplies, or through aerial seeding operations using UAVs. Microsensors thinner than human hairs could transmit data to the Delphi database via UAV or satellite relay. A swarm of ground-based microsensors could ensure constant data transmission of local conditions and activity levels near and inside an LOV.(25)


An LOV stands for “Locus of Values.” An LOV can be a hard target: something physical, or an LOV can be a soft target. “The LOV is that which an adversary holds dear . . . . Soft LOVs are intangible things: Systems, knowledge, or ways of thinking.”(26) A UAV is a unmanned aerial vehicle.

In the document, all the sensors are called “unattended ground sensors,” even the bio–implants. In one of the graphics, arrows very blatantly point to unattended ground sensors that are located in the crotch areas of a couple of men.(27) In another graphic, the arrows point to sensors in a man’s shoulder and his wrist. When I read this, my mind flashed on Denzel Washington digging a microchip out of his shoulder in the movie, The Manchurian Candidate. Besides the bio-implants, The Air Force study discusses dropping “grain-sized” sensors from the air to form a surveillance network on the ground, and microsensors can be surreptiously put into homes or appliances.

Micromachining of sound sensors has improved since Air Force 2025 was written. In 2003, the military revealed that they had a sensor network that could be dropped from the air:


In tests, it has dropped tubes containing 10 to 20 sensors from an airplane. Once they hit the ground, the tubes explode, sending the sensors flying. Then they establish connections among themselves and monitor enemy vehicle or troop movements, sending the data wirelessly to planes overhead.(28)


It is now five years later and the sensors in a network like this are about the size of a deck of playing cards. Sensors that are not classified, that is.

Smart dust is not a sound sensor, but it is very small; it is particle size. Smart dust particles are about the width of a human hair. It can be chemically programed to target a specific substance and to self-assemble or stick to it. It changes color to indicate that it has found the targeted substance. It can be used for almost, microscopic tags placed in items or stuck to the clothing of people.(29) Mike Blair and other chemtrail-aware people have noticed that chemtrail fibers often display barbs on their surfaces.(30) In “Hit ’Em Where It Hurts,” we read:


Like prickly cockleburs, tiny sensors would cling to certain humans, effectively tagging them for continuous tracking via overhead platforms.(31)


Domestic security companies may soon be using state of the art ground sensors that can sniff a molecule out of the air and can taste and identify a molecule – “nano–noses” and “nano–tongues.”(32) These can be handy for sniffing cocaine or marijuana molecules wafting of folks as they return home or enter buildings. Nano-noses and nano-tongues can be scanned by light or energy and will change color just like the ground sensors from 2025: “When irradiated by ultraviolet or X-ray energy, these organic changes can be scanned and analyzed by overhead sensors.”(33)

Experts are working on trying to develop sensors that can identify and track people by their unique, personal odor.(34) The authors of “Hit ’Em Where It Hurts” would like sensors to become small enough in the future to be able to send them to you through the mail(35) and use “hordes” of acoustic sensors for extrapolating pictures of structures through seismic mapping in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).(36)


. . . the importance of visual sensors may decrease in 2025 as the strategic attack process relies more on nonlethal methods of attack. In this case, non-traditional sensors that can hear, smell, or taste become essential by providing important bits of data . . . to piece together the effectiveness of an attack.(37)


How could the Air Force “Hit ‘Em Where It Hurts”?


A standoff system loitering along . . . at 50,000 feet can stare 230 miles downrange at an LOV and provide continuous one meter resolution. . . . In addition, a low observable UAV that loiters directly over a specific area will carry sensors that provide continuous one centimeter resolution.(38


These UAVs are the link in the chain that connects to transatmospheric jets, space platforms, and satellites. These space-based assets would send and receive to and from super computers that are located in relay stations on the ground or in orbit. A new satellite radar called MIRIAH(39) can see through most buildings, at night, and in any weather returning a 3-D, any angle, close to real-time image. UAVs can look like dragonflies,(40) birds,(41) helicopters,(42) planes,(43) or even cubes.(44) Activists in Washington, D.C. recently spotted dragonfly UAVs surveilling a protest. They can be powered by hydrogen,(45) solar,(46) fuel-cell, batteries, or a combination thereof.(47) They can hang on an electric line to recharge(48) or be powered up by wi-fi microwave.(49) They can see you, but they can also transmit data. There is even technology that can cloak them so that you, satellites, or radar can not see them.(50)

As a more economical model, space mirrors can be used to bounce data from UAVs to ground stations.(51) A plasma mirror can also be created by a microwave heater beam station that heats the atmosphere, and this plasma area can be used just like a mirror. A Dr. Eastlund pioneered this technology. His work with the HAARP ionospheric heater was sponsored by ARCO, a major aluminum producer which is owned by British Petroleum.(52) Oddly, chemtrails have a lot of aluminum particulates.

The weapons system uses information from: Delphi databases compiled from government records and open sources; human intel on the ground (humint); real-time data from bio-implants and scattered, ground-sensor grids; visuals from sensors on satellites, jets, and UAVs; and archives on history and culture. It uses compilations of psychological beliefs, information on current and international events, knowledge from experts in their fields, past experiences in associated problem solving, and it is a system that can learn. It can “game” scenarios until it presents what it considers the best solution to a human operator and is a computer network that is widely scattered around the world, up-to-date, and “redundant.”(53)

The human operator may choose to “immediately engage or never engage,” or to use “direct or indirect tactics.”(54) He would determine whether to deploy “laser, radio frequency, or energetic particle beam” weapons against targeted people, physical objects, factories, cities, or militaries.(55) These directed energy weapons can be deployed from space, land, or sea from a variety of platforms or bounced by the previously mentioned space or plasma mirrors. Nanotechnology will allow the creation of smaller weapons for use on UAVs.(56) Directed energy weapons “. . . can be ‘tuned’ for a wider range of effects, from low-order intervention to high-order destruction.” And, they are “cost-effective.” How nice.(57)


Futuristic engagement systems and techniques such as holographic projection, noise and gravity fields, biomedical operations, psychological operations, military deception, and information attack are all possible. These innovative indirect means are discussed in the classified C2 and Information Attack white papers. As a complement to those indirect techniques, this paper focuses on target engagements that use direct attacks with lethal and nonlethal power.(58)


Did you catch that? What do they mean by “biomedical operations,” “holographic projection,” “noise and gravity fields,” or some of the other terms? These terms have to do with classified information about “getting into the head” of a person, and command and control (C2). Modern attacks on C2 degrades the enemy’s ability to make the best decisions and makes them change their decision without them realizing that they were ever manipulated.(59)

There is a saying: life mirrors art. Let’s go back to the original chapter we discussed. If the aerosol operations described in “Weather As a Force Multiplier” are just sci-fi, military daydreaming, then why are there charts within that document than can only be described as spray schedules? These charts tell the reader exactly which substances will be sprayed and during which years.


For instance, sensors along with smart dust (nanotechnology) will be sprayed in the skies from the time of the study, 1995, and will increase sharply until 2025.(60)


Did you know that nanowire arrays will soon be used in medicine to power larger biological implants? Like pacemakers . . . or maybe nano devices in the brain?(61,62) You will notice how the technology discussed in “Weather As a Force Multiplier” segues nicely with the technology discussed in “Hit ’Em Where It Hurts.”

A weapon like this can be used for covert war and the micro-management of a population. A nonlethal weapon trained upon a person all the time becomes a lethal weapon. But, we can trust men who think it is no big deal to sneak electromagnetic implants into other people’s privates, right?

The lack of respect for inalienable rights that is displayed by the Air Force officers who wrote this report is shocking. Hitler would have wet dreams about this death-squad technology. Weapons like these will always be abused by someone. That is why the weapons should not even exist.

Someone will say: ”Well, it is only to be used against The Enemy.” How do you spray only one house? How do you spray only one air supply? Shouldn’t there be some kind of ban on turning people into Borgs? It is against treaties for the military to alter the environment. Some Air Force guys happen to think that putting sensors into non-combatants and enemies alike via their food, water, and air is just dandy. Coincidentally, that scenario sure sounds like the chemtrail/Morgellons nanotechnology epidemic ripping through American bodies right now.

I am just not sure I want to give the Air Force my love.

exoticwarfare.com/locus_of_values

Posted by st0ckman



Go to 13241
http://www.rense.com/general81/sea.htm
China Crewmen Die Of
'Virus' - Peru Keeps Ship At Sea
From Patricia Doyle, PhD
4-20-8

PERU -- 2 people died on board a vessel with suspected flu virus. Ship stranded on the high seas near the port of Callao, Peru.

Peruvian health authorities declared an epidemic alert and quarantined at sea the crew of a fishing vessel in which 2 Chinese people died, apparently due to a type of influenza virus, the newspaper "La Republica" reported this Saturday [19 Apr 2008].

The alert forced the Peruvian Navy to isolate the 22 crew members of the ship on the high seas and 30 Peruvians, among sailors and health staff, who entered the ship when the death of the cook and a fisherman was reported, 9 Apr 2008.

According to "La Republica", "a strange mutant virus was the cause of the agonizing death of 2 Chinese crew of the fishing vessel 'Chan An 168', who died on 9 Apr 2008, off the coast of the port of Callao."

The vessel was isolated 12 km off the main Peruvian port and is guarded by the Navy, while Peruvian sailors and medical personnel are being observed to see if they have been infected.

Go to 13240
http://g1.globo.com:80/Noticias/Mundo/0,,MUL418593-5602,00-SUSPEITA+
DE+VIRUS+MORTAL+FAZ+PERU+ISOLAR+NAVIO+CHINES.html

Communicated by ProMED-mail

promed@promedmail.org
There is no mention of any lab tests confirming the diagnosis of any type of influenza virus etiology, let alone "a strange mutant virus". I suspect the fact that these were apparently sudden deaths of Chinese led to a perhaps understandable over-reaction by Peruvian health authorities, fearing bird flu. It must have taken the fishing vessel a number of days to reach the Peruvian coast from China, and the incubation period of human influenza is 2-5 days. Assuming the same holds for bird flu, the fatal illness was probably not contracted in China. Perhaps the cook prepared a meal from stored chicken that had been infected with bird flu before freezing, although I'd always thought that fishermen lived on fish. A violent attack of food poisoning could have been the cause. We would like to hear about the lab results. - Mod.JW

Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD
Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics
Univ of West Indies

Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message board at:
Go to 13239
http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php
Also my new website:
Go to 13238
http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/
Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
Go with God and in Good Health



Go to 13237
http://business.theage.com.au/japans-hunger-becomes-a-dire-warning-for-other-nations/20080420-27ey.html
Japan's hunger becomes a dire warning for other nations

Food fears: Being a rich nation is no protection for Japan, which faces the fallout of relying too heavily on foreign food to supply domestic needs.
Email Print Normal font Large font Justin Norrie, Tokyo
April 21, 2008

MARIKO Watanabe admits she could have chosen a better time to take up baking. This week, when the Tokyo housewife visited her local Ito-Yokado supermarket to buy butter to make a cake, she found the shelves bare.

"I went to another supermarket, and then another, and there was no butter at those either. Everywhere I went there were notices saying Japan has run out of butter. I couldn't believe it — this is the first time in my life I've wanted to try baking cakes and I can't get any butter," said the frustrated cook.

Japan's acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis.

A sharp increase in the cost of imported cattle feed and a decline in milk imports, both of which are typically provided in large part by Australia, have prevented dairy farmers from keeping pace with demand.

While soaring food prices have triggered rioting among the starving millions of the third world, in wealthy Japan they have forced a pampered population to contemplate the shocking possibility of a long-term — perhaps permanent — reduction in the quality and quantity of its food.

A 130% rise in the global cost of wheat in the past year, caused partly by surging demand from China and India and a huge injection of speculative funds into wheat futures, has forced the Government to hit flour millers with three rounds of stiff mark-ups. The latest — a 30% increase this month — has given rise to speculation that Japan, which relies on imports for 90% of its annual wheat consumption, is no longer on the brink of a food crisis, but has fallen off the cliff.

According to one government poll, 80% of Japanese are frightened about what the future holds for their food supply.

Last week, as the prices of wheat and barley continued their relentless climb, the Japanese Government discovered it had exhausted its ¥230 billion ($A2.37 billion) budget for the grains with two months remaining. It was forced to call on an emergency ¥55 billion reserve to ensure it could continue feeding the nation.

"This was the first time the Government has had to take such drastic action since the war," said Akio Shibata, an expert on food imports, who warned the Agriculture Ministry two years ago that Japan would have to cut back drastically on its sophisticated diet if it did not become more self-sufficient.

In the wake of the decision this week by Kazakhstan, the world's fifth biggest wheat exporter, to join Russia, Ukraine and Argentina in stopping exports to satisfy domestic demand, the situation in Japan is expected to worsen.

Bakeries, forced to increase prices by up to 30% in the past year, are warning that the trend will continue. Manufacturers of miso, a culinary staple, are preparing to pass on the bump in costs caused by the rising price of soybeans and cooking oil. And the nation's largest brewer, Kirin, is lifting beer prices for the first time in almost two decades to account for the soaring cost of barley.

"In the past, Japan was a rich country with a powerful yen that could easily buy cheap imports such as wheat, corn and soybeans," said Mr Shibata, who directs the Marubeni Research Institute in Tokyo. "But with enormous competition from the booming Chinese and Indian economies, that's changed forever. You also need to take into account recent developments, including the damage to crops caused by drought and other disasters in exporting countries like Australia," where the value of wheat exports has tumbled from $3.49 billion to $2.77 billion in the past three years.

The situation has been compounded by a surge in demand for bio-fuels such as ethanol, made from maize, encouraging farmers around the world to divert their efforts away from wheat and barley and into maize, further driving up prices.

Arguably Japan's biggest concern, however, is its weakening ability to sustain its population with domestic produce. In 2006 the country's self-sufficiency rate fell to 39%, according to the Agriculture Ministry. It was only the second time since the ministry began keeping records in 1960 that the population derived less than 40% of its daily calorie intake from domestically grown food.

Shinichi Shogenji, dean of the University of Tokyo's graduate school of agricultural and life sciences, said Japan's meat consumption had increased by 900% since 1955, in part because expanding incomes had enabled families to supplement the sparse national diet of rice, fish and miso soup with more Western-style food.

This trend, combined with rapid ageing and declining rural populations, had placed the country's self-sufficiency at a perilously low level, Professor Shogenji said.

In view of recent predictions by Goldman Sachs analysts that commodities could experience "explosive rallies" in the next two years, many are wondering if Japan could become an example to other rich nations that have relied too much on foreign supplies to put food on their tables.



Go to 13236
http://www.rense.com/general36/skolov32.htm
The Overthrow Of The
American Republic - Part 32
U.S./IRAQ Plots and Secret Weapons
By Sherman H. Skolnick
4-4-3

Both the U.S. and Iraq have the same secret weapon and they share in joint plots. Without publicity, the U.S. used the weapon in Persian Gulf War One. Iraq, recipient of the same technology from Daddy Bush and others when Saddam Hussein was his private business partner in the 1980s, may use it in Persian Gulf War Two.

A huge body of details, known to us, is necessary to try to understand this report by those who may not be well-informed and/or, in years past have not been much interested in knowing about these matters that we put into our reports.

A summary of some of those details:

[1] Both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were created by the American CIA, with the aid and connivance, among others, of Daddy Bush, and despite appearing to be on the outs with their creators, continue to play sophisticated "games" with the CIA and others, seldom understood by or explained to common Americans. The oil-soaked, spy-riddled monopoly press tells us all less than ten per cent of the truth, ninety per cent fairy tales, to protect The Establishment, the "powers-that-be", the Ruling Class, or whatever you call "THEM".

[2] Our reports right after the multiple bombings of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Office Building, in Oklahoma City, April 19, 1995, were often misunderstood and widely heckled by poorly informed persons. Despite that, we continue to try not to deal with readers of our reports, listeners of our radio shows, and viewers of our non-commercial tv shows, as if such persons are all eight year olds, the rotten way the press-fakers keep the public as dumb as possible.

(a) right after April 19, 1995, we wrote exclusive reports which appeared on one or more websites, years before we had our own website. (We believe they may still be archived by Brian Redman, who has been running a superior website, "Conspiracy Nation", although we are NOT conspiracy theorists.)

(b) We said that multiple weapons were used to take down the building in Oklahoma City. We later interviewed some of those who came from some distance as volunteer rescuers with their sniffing dogs, searching for possible survivors. We found later that some of them were suffering from radioactive fall-out ailments. AND, that their skilled dogs thereafter died. For various reasons becoming suspicious, the volunteers dug up the carcasses of the dead animals and a laboratory determined they had huge amounts of radioactive material in their lungs. The volunteers themselves were suffering from diseases associated with having been heavily exposed to radioactive materials. Government doctors told the volunteers if they did not SHUT UP about the subject, that their ailments would not be dealt with, that they would receive no medical attention, and doctor/hospital bills would NOT be paid.

Who among the press prostitutes mentioned the independent-minded investigators who came to the bomb site with Geiger Counters, to measure radioactive fall-out and were astounded what they found? Nuclear experts who permitted us to talk to them on the promise of extreme secrecy, informed us that the residue substance discovered in the bomb site was TRITIUM. It is described as "A rare radioactive hydrogen isotope with atomic mass 3 and half-life 12.5 years, prepared artificially for use as a tracer and as a constituent of hydrogen bombs". Excerpt of our interviews:

Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the Courts: "Why are you whispering to me?"

Nuclear expert: "You are a layman. You do not know what you are messing with in discussing tritium, sir."

Weapons experts prefer tritium because it has a half-life, when it is still potent, much, much less than better known plutonium.

The press whores, in a position to know about these things or even to ask questions, were silent and censored all mentioned of anything linked to this. If anything, they steered up know-nothings to privately blast us as "liars". The press raised no questions when the FBI, to cover up the radioactivity, quickly demolished what was left of the Murrah Building and cemented over the site, calculated to keep the radioactive residue from being further measured and detected.

[3] As we detailed in various of our stories posted on websites of pals of ours, we mentioned that starting before April 19, 1995, were efforts by dissident "flag officers", slang for Admirals and Generals, to seek to arrest their Command-in-Chief Bill Clinton, a real-life "Seven Days in May". They felt authorized under the Uniform Military Code to arrest Clinton. If he arrested them for mutiny, if they were not immediately assassinated, they were prepared to heavily document to defend themselves at Courts Martial with data proving Clinton met from time to time with the head of the Red Chinese Secret Police, Wang Jun, and turned over to him, U.S. financial, industrial, and yes, MILITARY secrets. The Red Chinese being sworn enemies of the U.S., these acts by Clinton fit the classic U.S. Constitution definition of treason (Article 3, Section 3).

[4] Right after April 19, 1995, Clinton went as a surprise on CBS's "60 Minutes" Sunday tv program, and proclaimed that the "militia" (then much in the news) were dedicated, he said, "to try to overthrow the U.S. Government", a false notion Clinton well knew. Clinton and his cronies, the Bush Crime Family, clearly had prior knowledge of the Oklahoma City Bombings. Clinton's purpose was to divert attention from the political debacle of the 1994 Congressional Election, wherein the GOP took control, after many years, of the U.S. Congress.

[5] In 1992, members of our investigative group spent about four months extensively interviewing Michael Riconoscuito. Described by those who knew him well as a weapons and electronic genius, which we verified he is/was, he ran afoul of the American CIA because he divulged to a Congressional Committee the dirty business of Daddy Business and others in the "spook" industry. [The federal jails, in various places in this nation, have put away by frame-ups, several former CIA pilots who blew the whistle on dope shipments, CIA covert operators and such, all on the outs with the spy cartel, and put in jail on long sentences. Riconosciuto was framed up on a 28 year rap.]

As we confirmed, Riconosciuto helped invent and develop a sub-atomic weapon he and others called "blue lightning". We talked to him in the Federal "Triangle", one of the few buildings in the U.S. shaped with three sides and being the Federal jail in the Windy City. He was brought to Chicago from another jail, while he waited to be brought before a very, very Special Federal Grand Jury supposedly investigating corruption of the U.S. Justice Department and the American CIA.

In charge of the Grand Jury was retired former Chicago U.S. District Judge Nicholas J. Bua. Was it a mere coincidence he was a key member of the secret group P-2 (Propagana Due), dedicated to overthrowing representative governments in Italy, France, England, and U.S? P-2 is made up of top level judges, cabinet members, legislators, media brass, and bosses of the secret political police. (A history of P-2, from various publications available through web search engines, shows they specialize, for example, in bombings to blame onto innocent dissidents.)

Get this! Former Judge Bua in 1992 was the Special Counsel for the U.S. Justice Department. Neat trick! Investigating themselves, a perfect whitewash.

Little known or understood is that every person has a fundamental right to find the foreperson of the Grand Jury and submit to that person evidence and testimony that the Grand Jury may wish to investigate. Of course, no outsider has a right to ask a Grand Juror what they are deliberating on behind the unmarked door. I located the foreperson of Bua's Grand Jury, as she was walking on the way to the secret door. I told her I and associates of mine had testimony and evidence for the Grand Jury. Bua's assistant, not wishing to know the law that applied authorizing what I was doing, tried to right there arrest me. When I told Bua, who knew me for several decades, that I will sue him and his assistant for false arrest, Bua called off his vicious dog.

[6] A secret copy of Bua's whitewash report was somehow delivered to us. We found out that Bua had without evidence he could refer to, condemned Riconosciuto and any mention of the "blue lightning" weapon. Shortlly thereafter I and an associate of mine and Riconosciuto brought a suit in the Chicago Federal District Court against Bua and others. We claimed they were unlawfully blocking our evidence and testimony before the Federal Grand Jury, an offense known as obstruction of justice. A fellow Judge of Bua, without allowing us to appear even once in his courtroom, secretly dismissed our case, stating no reason for doing so.

[7] During Persian Gulf War One, 1991, without publicity, or if ever mentioned at all, soft-pedaled, the U.S. Military used Riconosciuto's invention "blue lightning" to blast away and incinerate great numbers of Iraqi troops. Riconosciuto and others familiar with the weapon, contend it releases a form of sub-atomic power. A residue left over in or near where it is used is TRITIUM, same residue left over after the multiple blasts at the Oklahoma City bombings, April 19, 1995.

[8] For many years after the Oklahoma City disaster, I was the only one writing exclusively about how domestic dissidents whether they were fully aware of it or not, were actually surrogates for Iraq playing a dirty game in the U.S. for the American CIA and others. At the close of Persian Gulf War One, as I exclusively described, Daddy Bush, then President, quietly brought into the U.S., four thousand supposed elite Iraqi military and intelligence division defectors, some of them skilled pilots. Bush and later Clinton, were in a position to know that some of them were actually double agents.

In a heavily censored and watered down story, CBS's "60 Minutes" tv program mentioned that 550 such supposed "defectors" were housed and became residents, with their families, in Lincoln, Nebraska. Not mentioned was the real details. Namely, that 2,000 of such were set up, with federal subsidies for them and their families, housing, rent, food, and such IN OKLAHOMA CITY. AND, that they were involved in using Timothy McVeigh, and others as surrogates, whether directly or immediately known by him and others or not.

Many years after my original exclusive stories, a huge documented book came out. It documented how between 4 thousand and 13 thousand such Iraqis were brought into the U.S.and vast sums spent on them. AND YET, the report states, U.S. citizens, as former soldiers, were often being DENIED benefits from the Veterans Administration.

"Final Report---On the Bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building April 19, 1995", by The Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee, 2001, P.O.Box 75697, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73147, pages 476-477.

[9] Just prior to the Timothy McVeigh trial, his Chief Defense Counsel, Stephen Jones, filed in the Federal Appeals Court, a special petition against the trial judge, Richard Matsch. Jones sought to compel the trial judge to release records of the American CIA and others, that showed there was, among other things, an Iraqi connection, and that defendant Timothy McVeigh was a domestic dissident surrogate for Iraq apparently seeking revenge on U.S. soil against the U.S. The government and the trial Judge contended that the CIA was a different unit of the U.S. government and Jones could only seek records from the Justice Department. That is like claiming someone has money in another pocket of his jacket or pants. In his 185 page petition Jones surprisingly refers to both the public Court Record AND THE SECRET COURT RECORD as to the Iraqi connection.

The press were silent about Jones' petition which was summarily refused and denied. Recently, a group of those whose loved ones died in the Oklahoma bombings, brought a damage suit against the government of Iraq. Evidently they were seeking to get at, by way of damages, Iraq funds frozen within the U.S. jurisdiction. The monopoly press said little about this.

[10] On April 4, 2003, a spokesman purportedly for the Baghdad government, stated that the Iraqis had what he described as a non-military surprise for the U.S. Military forces acting as foreign invaders in his country. He denied it was a Weapon of Mass Destruction.

Was he hinting that "blue lightning", made available to Iraq by Daddy Bush at a time Bush was a private business partner of Saddam Hussein, would be used to teach the U.S. a lesson in how a small nation of 24 million people could resist a monstrous, well-equipped aggressor of 280 million people?

Some unanswered questions:

===Will "blue lightning", a sub-atomic weapon, apparently not as serious as a nuclear weapon, be used, for example, against the huge airport near Baghdad, once called Saddam Hussein International Airport, renamed by the U.S. Military as Baghdad International Airport? Are the makings of "blue lightning" in the tunnels and passageways under that airport?

===Will the "blue lightning" weapon, if used by Iraq, tend to unravel Daddy Bush and his crony, Bill Clinton, and their prior knowledge and complicity as to the Oklahoma City multiple bombings? And maybe, even expose Daddy Bush and monsters in the U.S. Military brass having carried out the disasters of September 11, 2001, falsely blamed on "Arabs", but calculated to destroy the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights? Remember, how to do such a thing was documented in the book "Body of Secrets" by James Bamford which came out right before 9-11, as to how the top U.S. Military in 1962, "Operation Northwoods", planned to commit horrible violence against fellow Americans to blame onto Cuba to justify the U.S. invading Cuba.

===If the truth about "blue lightning" comes out, will ordinary Americans find out what really took down, as by controlled demolitions, the World Trade Center twin towers and WTC Building 7 in Manhattan, September 11, 2001?

===Will common Americans come to understand that 9-11 is part of a long series of events, to Overthrow the American Republic?

===In the process of finding out about "blue lightning", as a direct or side issue, will common Americans come to wonder about the following:


One of the first network reporters to show up to cover the Oklahoma City bombings was Dan Raviv, CBS News International/National Correspondent. Is it just a mere coincidence that he co-authored the book about The Mossad, Israeli Intelligence, "Every Spy A Prince: The Complete History of Israel's Intelligence Community", co-authored with Yossi Melman, 1990. Also, the same two co-authored "Friends in Deed: Inside the U.S.-Israel Alliance". Did a faction in The Mossad have prior knowledge of the Oklahoma City bombings and in vain, informed Daddy Bush and Bill Clinton, who for geopolitical and other power purposes allowed it to happen? And did The Mossad have prior knowledge of 9-11 and, in vain, informed the George W. Bush White House who allowed it to happen anyway to be falsely blamed onto "Arabs"? FBI Deputy Director John P. O'Neill, a leading counter-terrorist expert, was blocked by the Bush White House from continuing to investigate Osama bin Laden. Why? Because it would lead back to the Bush Crime Family, the Carlyle Group, and others.Quitting FBI about August, 2001, O'Neill became the Security Chief of the World Trade Center, lured at the last minute into one of the buildings, and there perished.

AND, who mentions that George W. Bush's younger brother Marvin, was a director of an insurance company having coverage of the twin towers and he apparently cancelled his company's coverage BEFORE the disaster. Further, Marvin Bush was a director of a firm that arranged the security of the twin towers. [Put MARVIN BUSH into a good website search engine and see what all you pull up.]

My stories are unacceptable to the monopoly press. Do not heckle me, demanding that I make available stories like this to the newsfakers---as if I am responsible for them censoring stories like this.



Go to 13235
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=aefAJU_88vfs&refer=economy
Lenders Swamped By Foreclosures Let Homeowners Stay (Update1)

By Bob Ivry
April 4 (Bloomberg) -- Banks are so overwhelmed by the U.S. housing crisis they've started to look the other way when homeowners stop paying their mortgages.

The number of borrowers at least 90 days late on their home loans rose to 3.6 percent at the end of December, the highest in at least five years, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington. That figure, for the first time, is almost double the 2 percent who have been foreclosed on.

Lenders who allow owners to stay in their homes are distorting the record foreclosure rate and delaying the worst of the housing decline, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, a unit of New York-based Moody's Corp. These borrowers will eventually push the number of delinquencies even higher and send more homes onto an already glutted market.

``We don't have a sense of the magnitude of what's really going on because the whole process is being delayed,'' Zandi said in an interview. ``Looking at the data, we see the problems, but they are probably measurably greater than we think.''

Lenders took an average of 61 days to foreclose on a property last year, up from 37 days in the year earlier, according to RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure database in Irvine, California. Sales of foreclosed homes rose 4.4 percent last year at the same time the supply of such homes more than doubled, according to LoanPerformance First American CoreLogic Inc., a real estate data company based in San Francisco.

Reluctant Banks

``Some people stay in their houses until someone comes to kick them out,'' said Angel Gutierrez, owner of Dallas-based Metro Lending, which buys distressed mortgage debt. ``Sometimes no one comes to kick them out.''

Banks are reluctant to foreclose on homeowners for a variety of reasons that include the cost, said Peter Zalewski, real estate broker and owner of Condo Vultures Realty LLC, a property consulting firm in Bal Harbour, Florida.

Legal fees and maintaining a vacant property while paying the mortgage, insurance and taxes can add up to as much as 15 percent of the value of the home, and it may take months for the foreclosure to work through the legal system, he said.

``The end result is taking back a property that the bank will have to manage, rent out and or sell,'' Zalewski said.

In many cases, lenders also have to foot the bill for fixing up vacant homes that have been vandalized.

Empty Houses

Real estate broker Georgia Kapsalis is offering a home for sale in Birmingham, Michigan, a Detroit suburb, where the owner last wrote a mortgage check in July. He still lives in the house, she said.

``Some of the banks just don't want the houses to be empty, especially if it's in an area where there's a lot of theft or there are five other houses empty on the street,'' said Kapsalis, who works at Added Value Realty LLC in Livonia, Michigan, another Detroit suburb. ``They'll lose toilets, plumbing, appliances, everything. Banks are getting wise and allowing people to live there longer.''

Alexis McGee, president of Internet database Foreclosures.com in Sacramento, California, said she toured a property where the departing resident tried to make off with the outdoor air conditioning unit by sawing the metal legs off its concrete apron.

``People take what they want to take,'' McGee said. ``They feel that they're owed.''

Flooded Market

With home sales dropping and national inventories rising, the lenders have another reason to delay foreclosures, said Howard Fishman, a real estate investor based in Minneapolis.

``What are the banks going to do?'' Fishman said. ``They don't want the house. They have a mortgage for $1 million and the house is worth $750,000.''

In February, 5 million existing homes were sold on a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate, down 31 percent from the peak of 7.25 million in September 2005, data compiled by the Chicago-based National Association of Realtors show. More than 4 million existing homes were on the market in February, 53 percent more than the 2.6 million average of the past nine years, the Realtors reported.

``Excess inventories pose the biggest risk to the market,'' Michelle Meyer and Ethan Harris, New York-based economists at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., wrote in a report last month. ``As long as inventories are high, home prices will fall.''

New Foreclosures

Growing inventory pulled median home prices down to $195,900 in February, a 15 percent drop from the peak of $230,200 in July 2006, the Realtors said.

New foreclosures rose to 0.83 percent of all home loans in the fourth quarter from 0.54 percent a year earlier, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The civil court in St. Lucie County, Florida, is getting about 44 foreclosure cases to file every day. That's the same number it averaged in a typical month in 2005, said Clerk of the Circuit Court Ed Fry.

``It's pretty overwhelming,'' he said.

Fry said he has 12 full-time employees and two temporary workers he just hired handling nothing but foreclosures. Still, the 50-page filings sit in cardboard boxes for three weeks before the court staff can process them, Fry said. Then it takes another two months to get a date on the court docket, he said.

Mortgage servicers, who collect monthly payments and are responsible for starting the foreclosure process, also were caught short-staffed, said Grant Stern, a mortgage broker and owner of Morningside Mortgage Corp. in Miami Beach, Florida.

`Moral Hazard'

``The most experienced people you can bring in are origination people,'' Stern said. ``But for a bank it's a moral hazard to have the same people who originated the loans now modifying those loans. That wouldn't be desirable. Once around is enough.''

The five largest servicers -- Countrywide Financial Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., CitiMortgage Inc., Chase Home Finance Inc. and Washington Mutual Inc. -- together manage more than half the home loans in the U.S., according to New York-based National Mortgage News, an industry publication.

While more than 100 mortgage originators have suspended operations, closed or sold themselves since the beginning of 2007, mortgage servicing units are expanding.

Chase Home Finance, a unit of New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the fourth-largest U.S. servicer, expects to spend $200 million more servicing loans in 2008 than it did last year, said spokesman Thomas Kelly.

Delayed Foreclosure

Kelly wouldn't say how many Chase borrowers have quit paying their mortgages and remain in their homes.

Efforts to keep borrowers paying their bills have slowed the foreclosure process, Mark Rodgers, a spokesman at CitiMortgage, a division of New York-based Citigroup Inc., said in an e-mail message.

``In a number of cases, we have delayed foreclosure proceedings to allow our loss mitigation teams additional time to explore potential solutions to keep distressed borrowers in their homes,'' Rodgers said.

Joe Ohayon, vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage in Frederick, Maryland, a unit of San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, said trying to modify loan terms case by case adds time to the foreclosure process.

``Foreclosure is only a last resort after all available options for keeping the customer in the home have been exhausted,'' Ohayon said in an e-mail message.

Affordable Payments

Olivia Riley, a spokeswoman at Seattle-based Washington Mutual, said in an e-mail that the company's goal is to keep customers in their homes ``with payments they can afford.''

Representatives for Calabasas, California-based Countrywide, the biggest U.S. mortgage servicer last year, didn't respond to requests for comment.

Few mortgage companies will admit they allow homeowners to stay in their homes without paying their bills.

``No servicer will say you can live rent-free for six months, go ahead,'' said Paul Miller, a mortgage industry analyst at Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co. in Arlington, Virginia. ``Eventually, the servicers will clear these guys out.''

Homeowners usually get 90 days to resume paying before foreclosure proceedings begin with the filing of a complaint or notice of non-payment.

State laws determine the length of time between the filing and an auction of the house. In most states, it's two to six months, according to Foreclosures.com. In Maine, it can be up to a year and in New York, 19 months; in Georgia, it's as quickly as one month, and in Nevada, it can be 35 days, according to the database.

Borrowers in California who fight foreclosure can stretch the process to 18 months, said Cameron Pannabecker, chapter president of the California Association of Mortgage Brokers and president of Cal-Pro Mortgage Inc. in Stockton.

That doesn't take into account the woman he knows who hasn't made a mortgage payment in eight months and hasn't heard from her lender, Pannabecker said.

``Now she's afraid to mail in a payment for fear it'll come to somebody's attention,'' he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Ivry in New York at bivry@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 4, 2008 12:04 EDT



Go to 13234
http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=88164
Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 8:47 am Post subject: Israel Profits While U. S. Goes Without
Thanks To Lawmakers
Israel Profits

We are asking ALL members of both House and Senate Appropriations Committee to Vote NO on $30 billion for Israel . It is like pouring gasoline on a fire. If you defy your fellow Americans and yield to AIPAC Israel’s lobby, you will be asked to:

1. Return any or all money you may have received from Pro-Israel Pac Funds.

2. Resign from office..

3. Cancel any possible captivating to AIPAC that may have existed in the past.

Recently Congress gave themselves a bad name for giving the Holocaust Museum $44.9 million using money borrowed from China instead of using this money for bridge repair.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs said $44,284,654 was given to Congressional Candidates by Pro-Israel Pac Funds from 1978-2004. What Say You?

The American Society of Civil Engineers states: Of our nation’s 590,750 bridges 27 per cent could be

Dangerous to drive on. Our money should go for bridge construction – Not Israel .

Carl Greeley



Go to 13233
http://www.rense.com/general81/sub.htm
Sub-Prime Crisis Moves US
Toward A Different Future
By Terrell E. Arnold
4-17-8

In the past few weeks we have watched frantic movement of the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury to stanch the financial bleeding of major American financial institutions that gambled quite freely on a gigantic pyramid. If asked, any official of one of those institutions might look you in the eye and say "there is no pyramid," then explain that what they did was produce securities that were based on reasonable risks backed by collateral of the most reliable form: mortgages on identified parcels of developed American real estate." Indeed, the real estate, per se, was not the problem.

However, their paper was not land titles or mortgage documents themselves; it was a security backed by bundles of so-called "sub- prime" mortgages, but the bundles-based securities had received AAA, that's triple A ratings by the country's leading rating agencies. Those ratings were based on the apparent notion that bundling the underlying mortgages would spread the risks of loans to "subprime" borrowers, and in any case it would take a bundle of defaults for the risks to be significant. The ratings, as it emerged after the fact, were also made by organizations that had a vested interest in the outcome.

After that balloon burst, in a late March 2008 interview with Deborah Solomon for the New York Times, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill blew the raters' assertions out of the water by saying: "If you have 10 bottles of water, and one bottle had poison in it, and you didn't know which one, you probably wouldn't drink out of any of the 10 bottles." By this measure, the ratings themselves were a sham. Bundling would be risk enhancing, not risk mitigating, and that is the way markets for those securities have responded to defaults.

From the beginning the high risk mortgages in the bundles, many written
for a favorable "come on" rate to the borrower, were scheduled to move upward to higher interest rates. Over time, average returns on these mortgages would be greater than that of fixed rate mortgages; that represented good business for the lenders, and of course for their hedge fund collaborators. It was an incredible pyramid built not on the Giza stone that would make it last for millennia, but on the sands of economic vulnerability and risk that would bring us to where we are. Through an incredible permutation, high risk loans at the lender-borrower level were transformed into allegedly risk-free and highly profitable CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) at the top.

To be sure, the probability that one of a bundle of ten mortgages might go belly up was materially higher than the risk that all ten would fail, so bundling appeared to be a risk mitigation strategy. However, that risk mitigation potential was intrinsically low because all ten were in a high risk, sub-prime category for which a default could be triggered by an economic slowdown, worst case a recession, or significant increases in mortgage interest rates. Those higher rates began to kick in at about the same time an economic slowdown caused real estate values to falter. Facing higher interest rates and disappearing equity, borrowers began to default in large numbers. At that point, at least in market perception, the AAA-rated bundles were suddenly worthless. The problem was compounded by a surge in defaults on fixed rate mortgages that also was triggered by sharp declines in the market value of the properties involved.

As real estate values-the heart of most personal asset pools-went galley west, it was time for everybody to register shock and for affected financial institutions to run for cover. However, the immediate official concern was not about homeowners but about the builders of the sub-prime pyramid. As IMF analysts put it in their March 2008 World Economic Outlook, the United States was "plagued by profound errors in risk management among its leading financial institutions."

While we taxpayers were never asked, the Fed and Treasury moved briskly to bail out one of the major gamblers, Bear Stearns, to the tune of $19 billion that we are unlikely ever to see again. In the above-cited New York Times interview, Paul O'Neill also shot down that maneuver, saying: "They saved the financial system from a panic collapse. I reject the notion that they helped Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns was destroyed." He may be right in the sense that Bear Stearns may never recover from the loss of market confidence in its judgment, but if the bailout actually staved off a financial collapse, our money may have been well spent.

However, Bear Stearns was not alone. Too many people had put too many eggs in one speculative basket. Even the peaks of the pyramid builders, Citibank, Morgan-Stanley and others, wrote off multi- billion dollar exposure strings that would boggle the mind, while a stock market built on the unrealistic profitability of such gambling, threatened to collapse if its wanton expectations were not assuaged. As reported in Timesonline, the Wachovia bank suddenly had to raise $8 billion to cover losses, heavily in the California sub-prime market. According to a Wachovia official, "the propensity to default rises dramatically once equity in a borrower's property falls to zero". That propensity appears to have applied with equal rigor to more affluent fixed rate mortgage borrowers.

The damages were not confined to the United States. The sub-prime based securities were attractive to foreign investors as well. In truth the crisis is a vivid demonstration of how easily both risks and opportunities move in today's international markets. British, German, French, Japanese and other banks had bitten into this sweetbread, and they were now carrying bundles of this paper that marketwise were worthless and asset wise represented a mess of bad investment judgment calls that had to be explained to shareholders. In a report on the global implications of this crisis, the Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) of the International Monetary Fund, IMF analysts estimated that the global losses associated with or otherwise contributing to the crisis approached a trillion dollars, the great bulk but not all of it in the United States.

Assessment of this crisis and what to do about it dominated discussions in meetings this past weekend of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington, with discussions of the advanced economy Group of Seven on the side. The IMF report appears to have dominated the discussion without leading to any fresh courses of action for dealing with the crisis. That was because each G-7 member-and others to be sure-naturally sought to protect its own position in the matter, while the general opinion appears to have been that it was mostly up to the United States to clean up its own mess, even if others had to clean up pieces of it. As the Governor of the People's Bank of China put it in his written statement, "The biggest risk to the global economy remains the financial crisis emanating from the U.S. sub-prime mortgage sector." He may have said that looking uncomfortably over his shoulder at China's trillion dollar plus foreign exchange holdings, mostly in dollars.

The crisis has underscored the increasingly discomfiting reality that the global financial system consists of an aggregate of national systems that do not add up to a global financial manager. The IMF and the World Bank, originally created in 1945 with a view to provision of global financial management, have not gotten very far. Sixty plus years later, there still is no international banker or lender of last resort. More depressing, there is no global banking rule maker or regulator. The global system is actually based on the coincident, case by case evolved compatibility of nearly 200 national systems.

But there is more to the story. The sub-prime crisis grew in the context of real and portentous developments across global trade, financial and economic systems. The Fed, Treasury and Wall Street, distracted by their own crisis, probably have had little time to focus on the tectonic plate shifts in the global system that probably mean they cannot go home again. The epicenters of international trade and finance simply are shifting. In essence, a good part of the wealth that might be needed to finance a recovery is in the wrong places or pockets, mostly in Asia, and when the dust settles, the global configuration will be different.

Some say the first effects of the crisis will be downsizing or consolidation. That would mean the write-offs of major institutions would just disappear, making the global asset pool cleaner but smaller. That could also mean that the great bulk, if not all of the transactions of banking and other financial institutions would show up on their books, making the system transparent by shedding a multitude of off balance sheet transactions that dominated the sub- prime securities mess.

Whatever the approaches, the system is unlikely ever to be the same again, because the facts underlying global developments are profound. For starters, the solutions do not lie merely with changes in liquidity. They lie with recognition and adjustments around real changes in global economic structures including the scale and distribution of productivity and wealth. The sub-prime crisis simply adds to the adjustments already made necessary by those global changes.

The first base in this new configuration is what has been happening to the dollar. Mirroring the dynamics and strength of the American economy, the dollar has been the dominant world currency ever since World War II. It has served as medium of exchange, as the core of many personal asset hoards, and as a reserve currency for countries with weak or US trade-linked national monetary systems. Of long term importance, international oil prices have been stated in dollars, a nod both to the historic strength of the dollar and the dominant US roles in oil trade.

However, as other economies have grown, diversified and prospered the dollar has faced rising competition from the Japanese Yen, then the Euro and, most recently, from the Chinese Renmembi or Yuan and the Brazilian Real. These new challenges reflect both the growing global strength of other economies and accumulating flaws in the strength of the American economy, notably continuing Federal deficits, rising international debt and growing import dependence. Those developments weakened the Dollar by exposing it to the competition of other currencies, reduced its traditional role as a stabilizing international trade benchmark, and sent its value plunging as resource prices rose in response to increasing global demand for oil and industrial materials.

To the degree that the United States is able to reduce its debt, curb its appetites for imported goods, adjust its affluent lifestyles, extricate itself from absurd levels of military expenditure, and restrain inflation, in short, put its economic house in order, declines in the value of the Dollar can be mitigated. However, the declining role of the Dollar in the world economy appears persistent.

Moreover, the exposure of Americans to foreign exchange risks they never experienced before is an already visible consequence of the change. The as yet incomplete Iranian and other oil exporter efforts to switch to Euro-denominated oil prices will only make US exchange risk exposure worse. Whereas the United States in the past has enjoyed comfortable trade surpluses while trading partners carried discomfiting deficits, the shoe is now tightly on the other foot.

These gross shifts have been developing for decades. In every year since 1990 real GDP growth in leading developing countries has been faster than in advanced countries. In the years since the mid-1990s, China has grown faster than either the United States or the European Union and it has overtaken Japan as the global second place national economy. Those tendencies have grown since the beginning of the new century. In terms of GDP stated at purchasing power parity, the United States is now not only behind the European Union, it is being rapidly overtaken by Asian economies. World Bank estimates show that the Asian combination of China, Japan and India exceeds the United States and is breathing down the neck of the European Community for global first place. With the numbers for smaller Asian economies such as Malaysia, Asia is already globally in the lead.

Estimated GDP in 2007 at Purchasing Power Parity

(Billions of Current Dollars)

World - 65,820

European Union ­ 14,450

United States ­ 13,860

China ­ 7,043

Japan ­ 4,346

India ­ 2,965

Germany ­ 2,833

United Kingdom ­ 2,147

Russia ­ 2,076

France ­ 2,067

Brazil ­ 1,838

Italy ­ 1,800

This list of ten accounts for more than 80% of world GDP, while the United States alone accounts for 20%. As a rude benchmark of the change, in the early 1990s the United States accounted for 30% or more of global GDP. That means the relative weight of the US in the world economy has declined in a decade by roughly the GDP (at purchasing power parity) of China and India combined.

These developments affect every political, economic and financial calculation for the future. The most unfortunate feature of the immediate crisis is that it was precipitated by a combination of greed and runaway risk miscalculation. It probably cannot be rectified without substantial losses by many financial and banking institutions, not all of them large and multinational. It has already caused enormous hardship for a multitude of homebuyers, and in a recessionary period there is more of that to come. This is as much a crisis of expectations as it is a problem of ability to pay. The default on fixed rate mortgages is due to diminished expectations, the loss of asset value.

It remains to be seen whether the bailouts being contemplated in Washington will rescue the institutions involved or the homebuyers. Advance signals indicate the institutional players will fare best, and one hopes they will emerge leaner and more prudent. At the same time, it seems clear enough that the best interests of troubled homebuyers lie with a solution that enables them to hold on to their real estate and wait out the restoration of their equity as markets rebound. It also remains to be seen to what extent the crisis will result in more effective regulation and oversight of banking and other financial institutions, including the rating organizations who blessed the sub-prime fiasco with AAA ratings. There were lessons learned on all sides here, but they will take some digesting.

Global changes may be slowed while this American misadventure works itself out. But those global changes are pervasive and enduring. It is not in the interest of humanity at large to have the development of other economies truncated by American efforts to feed its excesses. The elitist reaction to that might be the famous remark of Marie Antoinette "Let them eat cake." However, in a world where easily half of humanity is hungry and a slice of that population wants to correct the defect by violent means, assuring that there is enough to feed everybody is the more humane and prudent choice. Aggravating food scarcity by turning basic foodstuffs into motor fuel is neither an economic nor a humanitarian response. It does show that in a pinch national needs take precedence over global ones.

America's real choices and opportunities have evolved in a compelling fashion over the years since World War II. As the most advanced nation left standing at the end of that conflict, The United States saw work to do. The home agenda was to bring itself out of a war economy and into a peacetime environment. The foreign policy agenda was to promote and support the recovery of post war Japan and Europe and, in some measure, their surroundings. Happily, those two agendas combined at the level of good policy is good business. The country had virtually automatic markets for everything it could produce. Altruism and self interest combined in a most productive manner. The relatively affluent American society was a natural dividend, and it remained so, even as the restored economies became increasingly productive and competitive.

But things began to change, especially with the end of the Cold War. The containment strategy that ultimately dominated the US Cold War posture actually provided an umbrella for potentially pre- emptive military moves that positioned the US virtually everywhere any economic resource of importance could be had. The altruistic agenda slowly fell behind the self-interested one as global resource procurement and market competition became more forceful.

When the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) surfaced in the early Bill Clinton presidency with plans to invade Iraq and with a global military power agenda, the altruistic side of American foreign policy had pretty well atrophied. The game had become power maintenance by military dominance. The PNAC designers appeared to have no clear-cut economic agenda, but their military scheme, if it succeeded, would have provided more than adequate cover for a self-centered and pre-emptive resource acquisition strategy. As perceived by other advanced and advancing nations, this scheme drove 21^st century global resource acquisition strategies toward a nineteenth century capitalist model. One only has to look at Darfur, the Congo, Zimbabwe, and much of Central Asia as well as the Middle East to see how neo-colonial present day resource acquisition has become.

That others, e.g., China, India, Brazil, other advancing countries, are coping more or less successfully with this resource acquisition environment is part of America's current problem set. Prices are rising globally for virtually everything. In the case of foodstuffs, the increases are devastating. This faces US policy makers with across the board price inflation for most goods and services at a time when the US economy is diving toward a recession made worse, if not actually driven, by the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

The global tragedy of the sub-prime mess is that the securities that were designed to exploit the eventual high rates of return on those mortgages were of little to no benefit to global economic advancement. What their failure has done is to seriously distract US policy managers from the vital business of working through the large and fundamental changes that are occurring in the US economic environment. In the end, the sub-prime mess is likely to accelerate the transition of the US economy to a new position in the global system. Unless several major world economies-Japan, European Union, China, India, Brazil, and others-suddenly contract instead of continuing to grow at faster than US rates, the US weight in the global system will continue to decline; the Dollar will continue to play a reduced role in the global trade and payments system.

Such is the price of success. An economic diversification that the United States led through the early post World War II years has now caught on. The only thing that could prevent the US role in this future system from declining would be for the rest of the system to fail. The real policy challenge for US leadership therefore is to face this prospect, assess the realistic weight of the United States in likely future configurations, and try to maximize the US opportunity in them.

A military power strategy won't cut it. We are already going deeply into debt to sustain the present military posture. Other countries are not enamored of a US trying to run the world at the real or implied point of a gun. The system now needs truly global leadership. The United States can lead in that direction, helping to create and strengthen the institutions that will provide global leadership in the common interest. It is not leading now; it is forcing or trying to force global conformity to a self-centered US model, and that strategy eventually will fail. Such failures as the sub-prime fiasco only hasten the time when the present US model must be abandoned.



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