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Minneapolis, Minn. — Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and labor groups say they have agreements with the Vikings that they hope will increase city support for a new stadium on the current Metrodome site. The agreements call for union labor to be used on any stadium, with unions committing to no work stoppages.

Sound bites from the left. Sound bites to the right; here I am, stuck in the middle with you (STEALERS WHEEL). The House Budget Committee was in full political regalia as posturing for the home folks and November’s election was in full force. Most of the questions are redundant or ridiculous and in some cases, both. An exception was Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, who asked Mr.Bernanke if the FED‘s policies had corrupted the BOND markets that they stopped sending a credible signal. It has been a consistent theme of NOTES that the BOND market is broken as an indicator of...

There’s talk abound about the possibility of exchange controls. The ability to slow the inflow and outflow of funds is being discussed from Greece to Germany and Switzerland. It is no secret that many citizens in the peripheries are moving EUROS out of their domestic banks and into German, Swiss ans British domiciled entities. The German paper HANDELSBLATT had an article during the weekend suggesting that the SNB and Swiss government are readying a plan to undertake exchange controls and a true negative interest rate regime. The overly strong SWISS FRANC has placed a great deal of stress on the...

Major League Baseball player Wilson Ramos kidnapped in Venezuela.As of this writing there is still no news of any groups, or individuals, claiming responsibility or demand for ransom as of yet.Also, as of this writing,- while much reporting in the MSM has covered the increase in ransom kidnappings in Venezuela, none are reporting on the link between ransom kidnappings to finance "jihad", or the cooperation between Islamists and the drug cartels.  Kidnappings are on the rise in Hugo Chavez's Hizbullah-Iran friendly Venezuela.Under Chavez, Venezuela has become an Islamist jihadist sanctuary.As Islamists have increasingly made in-roads into Latin America many violent acts of terror, typical of jihad-terror...

When you get to look behind the curtain, sometimes you wish you never did. When I say we NEED a major reform of the MONETARY SYSTEM, I do not use those words lightly. I am also not a street hawker who feels I have to yell like one of those used-car salesmen to sell you something you don’t want nor need driven by a little old lady who never dies. I hate to bring this up but it appears that we have little hope of saving Europe and the whole shift away from the mark-to-market accounting that was swept in...

The blood of the ongoing murder of migrant blacks in Tripoli has a name on it many will never see: President Barack Obama and his Foreign Policy. Gadaffi is gone; his family safely ensconced in Algeria and the Obama-supported rebels left in charge are now conducting a “large scale cleaning in the areas under their control with the extermination of all blacks in the capital”, according to The Independent. Without the permission of Congress and minus the blessing of We the People, Obama took the US to war in Libya. He sided with the rebels and ultimately, in effect the...

...Yes, the Republicans can now, pretty much, put the kibosh on the Obama agenda with big victories in the House and Senate, but is that enough to turn things around? In a word–no....Former Bush economic advisor Marc Sumerlin talked about the upcoming Fed QE about a month ago on CNBC, “To me, it starts to get interesting at six to seven trillion dollars,” Sumerlin said...

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has finally bro ken his silence about the $100 million mosque he wants to build in the shadow of Ground Zero. But his op-ed article in The New York Times didn't clear up much. Rauf says that Cordoba House -- as it apparently has now been rebranded from Park51 -- will "clearly identify all of [its] financial backers." But when? The imam pledges to "seek the support of [9/11] families." But what took so long, when it was their opposition that prompted public outrage over the project? And then there are the issues raised in just...

No wonder the guys who want to build that Islamic center near Ground Zero are quiet as mosque mice about financing: Turns out, as The Post first reported, their own financial records are, well, a bit short of blue chip. Indeed, Sharif El-Gamal, who owns the site -- as The Post's Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein reported Sunday -- owes nearly a quarter of a million dollars to the city in back payments. His firm, 45 Park Place Partners, simply skipped its property-tax bills in January and July, according to the Finance Department. Gamal's folks say he delayed payments while...

DETROIT — General Motors Co. will buy AmeriCredit Corp. for $3.5 billion, a deal that allows the automaker to expand loans to customers with poor credit and offer more leases, key areas where GM must grow to accelerate its car sales. But the acquisition, announced Thursday, also means that GM, which is 61 percent owned by the U.S. government, is getting back into the business of making risky loans. AmeriCredit is an independent auto financing company that already works with about 4,000 GM dealers.

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-obama-and-president-medvedev-russia-us-russia-business-summit Home • Briefing Room • Speeches & Remarks The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release June 24, 2010 Remarks by President Obama and President Medvedev of Russia at the U.S.-Russia Business Summit U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D.C. 3:08 P.M. EDT PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, good afternoon, everybody. It is a pleasure to be here with my friend and partner, President Medvedev, and I want to thank him again for his leadership, especially his vision for an innovative Russia that’s modernizing its economy, including deeper economic ties between our...

Senator Christopher Dodd's massive financial regulatory reform bill is back and it's even uglier than before for startup companies trying to raise seed capital. Ugly for startups? A bill that means to address "too big to fail" and systemic risk to the financial system? Yes. And we're not talking about some indirect, attenuated, downstream effect from new regulation of big banks or Wall Street investment firms. The bill directly targets the way startups raise capital. This "reform" occupies only a few pages in Sen. Dodd's massive bill, at Section 926, entitled "Authority of State Regulators Over Regulation D Offerings" (pages...

The California High-Speed Rail Authority has long touted the wonderful fantasy of high-speed trains. On the authority's Web site, viewers are shown a sleek, ultramodern train zooming through a backdrop of green rolling hills and lush scenery, all at speeds up to 225 miles per hour. Not only is high-speed rail fast, but you'll be able to hop on a high-speed train without going through those bothersome security checkpoints they have in airports, resulting in a travel time from San Francisco to Anaheim of under three hours. Is anything missing from this picture? Only reality. When the imagination of dazzling...

You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil. The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan. The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil...

GEORGE SOROS’ BACKGROUND: To give you an idea about this guy, here’s a news nugget from a while back, this guy can make money in a heartbeat, and pump it into far-left causes with no effort, generally using “shadow corporations”, and “dummy corporations” to do his bidding.

Let us assume all parties agree that we need to reform our health care system despite the fact that 80% of Americans are at least somewhat satisfied with their health care and their health care insurance [according to a recent Washington Post - ABC News poll]. However, reform must not be a slash-and-burn revolution but rather a rational, judicious evolution of an industry which is far too profit oriented and ineffectively regulated. For the vast majority of Americans a true health care “crisis” does not exist. It’s instructive to examine the statistics concerning the millions of uninsured. According to the...

Families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks are trying to sue the government of Saudi Arabia, the country from which 15 of the 19 hijackers came from. The legal team has new documents outlining the Saudis’ history of bankrolling terrorism and extremism, helping to expose the pattern of deception used by the Saudis to portray themselves as a staunch ally of the United States. The legal team, for example, has a sworn statement from someone in Afghanistan who says he personally saw a representative of Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence, give a check for $267 million...

H.R. 1728 passed the House by an overwhelming majority in a record three days time. Now it’s in the Senate and is widely expected to pass quickly as well. Why the rush? Is AIG planning to hand out zillions in bonuses again? My guess would be that our elected representatives and their banking benefactors would prefer that we don’t know anything about it. Consider this scenario: You own a house. You want to sell it. Someone wants to buy it. You decide to sell it to the person who wants to buy it and carry the paper yourself for whatever...

Ford Motor Co. is offering a new incentive plan, including 0% financing and a job-loss assurance program, to try to jump-start slumping vehicle sales and boost consumer confidence. The auto maker will offer 0% financing through its finance arm and will cover payments for up to 12 months on any new Ford, Lincoln or Mercury vehicle if customers lose their jobs. The offer will run through June 1. Rival Chrysler LLC began offering 0% financing, along with rebates, employee pricing and discounts up to $6,000 in January as it looked to clear out dealers' inventories and boost sales. So far,...

Dancing on a Precipice: The Tenuous Balance in Global Finance /snip Why didn’t the total collapse in private flows lead financing for the US current account deficit to dry up? That, after all, is what happened in places like Iceland — and Ukraine. My explanation is pretty straightforward. Central banks were the main source of financing for the US deficit all along. Setting Japan aside, the big current account surplus countries were all building up their official reserves and sovereign funds — and they were the key vector providing financing to the deficit countries." --------------------------------------- The implications of this are...

I keep hearing about how people are starved for loans, and that we'll have a credit freeze if the bailout passes. However, I bought a new car yesterday evening, and I was able to get quick financing from Honda. I therefore submit unto you all this question: are you or anybody you know having trouble getting a loan?

On the night of Sept. 16, Barack Obama will not be in Cincinnati, Ohio, or Lebanon, Va., or Grand Rapids, Mich., or any of the other swingiest regions of the swingiest swing states. Instead, the Democratic presidential nominee will start his evening at a 46,000 square-foot mansion in Beverly Hills, then proceed to the posh Beverly Wilshire hotel, where rooms start at $495 a night. Needless to say, Obama won't be prospecting for votes in the Golden State, where he currenty leads Republican rival John McCain by an insurmountable 15-point margin. He'll be mining for money. It wasn't supposed to...

Obama’s Creative Campaign Financing Adds Misuse of Tax Exempt Church Resources At a time when money from Washington lobbyists and special interests is polluting the political process more than ever, the question for campaigns isn’t just whether they can compete financially — it’s how they do it. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, E-mail of June 12 2007 We should indeed look at “how they do it” because this E-mail itself may have been an illegal lottery. Furthermore, one of last year’s “Dinner with Barack” lotteries announced a winner before the entry deadline, which suggests that not all participants had an...

The following unsolicited bulk E-mail from Obama for America demonstrates Obama’s total contempt for the intelligence of the American voter by claiming that Obama is rejecting Federal election funding out of an idealistic desire to fix a “broken” campaign system. The truth is that his rejection of Federal funding frees him to accept unlimited six figure bundled contributions such as those enumerated below, without any limit on what he can spend to get elected. Since we announced our decision not to accept taxpayer funds for the general election, tens of thousands of people like you have come forward to declare...

Quasi-fiscal scoundrels 4: helping banks When I hear or read the words ‘off-balance-sheet financing’ or ’special purpose vehicle’, warning lights begin to flash and I grab for my obfuscatometer. Off-balance-sheet financing is any form of funding that avoids placing the owners’ equity, liabilities or assets on the balance sheet of a firm or other legal entity. The most common way to achieve this is by placing those items on some other entity’s balance sheet. A standard approach is to create a special purpose vehicle (SPV) and place assets and liabilities on its balance sheet. An SPV is a firm or...

Democratic Party officials want a federal judge to order an investigation into whether Sen. John McCain violated election laws by withdrawing from public financing, saying federal regulators are too weak to act on their own. A lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission, to be filed Monday in U.S. District Court, questions the agency's ability to enforce the law and review McCain's decision to opt out of the system. The Republican presidential candidate, who had been entitled to $5.8 million in federal funds for the primary campaign, decided earlier this year to give up that money so he could avoid strict...

<p>As Marc Ambinder reports, the McCain campaign raised only $4 million online and through direct mail. Barack Obama, meanwhile, has over 1.3 million donors, a number that will surely increase if he wins the Democratic nomination. So far, McCain has caught a lucky break.</p>

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) will file a complaint against Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) Monday, charging that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is breaking the law by trying to get out of a public financing agreement. In a Sunday afternoon conference call with reporters, DNC chairman Howard Dean said McCain's attempt to withdraw from a loan agreement that hinged on an acceptance of public financing speaks directly to McCain's "integrity." "This is a classic example of someone who talks one way and does another when it benefits him," Dean said. On the call, Dean...

Barack Obama has made a historic presidential run this cycle primarily on the basis of changing the political culture in Washington. His unbelievable success has ironically set a trap for a potential general-election run. Obama has to choose now between keeping his word, or conveniently breaking it and exposing himself as just another self-serving politician: A year ago, at the beginning of his bid to secure the clean-up-Washington mantle, Barack Obama made a pact with John McCain that, if the two were to be their party's nominees, each would accept public financing for the general election. That agreement sounded far-fetched:...

Last Sunday's Million Mom March, the gun-control protest organized (as the major media is finally admitting) by the sister-in-law of Hillary Clinton's longtime lawyer pal and hatchet woman, surly Susan Thomases, may not do the Democrats much good this year. ...It doesn't take a weatherman to figure out that the average citizen doesn't want national policy determined by packs of weeping women led by a shrill, dimwitted talk-show host (Hillary sycophant Rosie O'Donnell).

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DONORS WHOSE addresses turn out to be tenements. Dishwashers and waiters who write $1,000 checks. Immigrants who ante up because they have been instructed to by powerful neighborhood associations, or, as one said, "They informed us to go, so I went." Others who say they never made the contributions listed in their names or who were not eligible to give because they are not legal residents of the United States. This is the disturbingly familiar picture of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign presented last week in a report by the Los Angeles Times about questionable fundraising by the New York...

Details of the reports are at the FEC link..... Hunter for President Inc. SUMMARY 5. Covering Period 04/01/2007 Through 06/30/2007 6. Cash on Hand at BEGINNING of the Reporting Period   272,552.19 7. Total Receipts This Period   814,417.18 8. Subtotal (6 + 7)   1,086,969.37 9. Total Disbursements This Period   874,042.48 10. Cash on Hand at CLOSE of the Reporting Period   212,926.89 11. Debts and Obligations Owed TO the Committee   0.00     Itemize all on SCHEDULE C or SCHEDULE D 12. Debts and Obligations Owed BY the Committee   0.00     Itemize all on SCHEDULE C...

The organizer of the Million Mom March scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C., this Sunday, Mother's Day, is the sister-in-law of first lady Hillary Clinton's closest friend and political advisor and has served as publicist for CBS News anchor Dan Rather. As reported by columnist Tony Blankley in yesterday's Washington Times, virtually all major media coverage of march organizer Donna Dees-Thomasas has failed to disclose that she is the sister-in-law of Susan Thomasas, Mrs. Clinton's chief political advisor and close friend."To deny the readers (and viewers) such necessary -- and available -- information is to breach ... the moral...

Hello, Mr. & Mrs. Joe Six-pack. My name is Kerry and I’m writing on behalf of the Kerry For Elected Office Committee. You may not know this but there are evil forces at work in America. They’ve infiltrated our government at all levels. And they want to take away your favorite government program. They want to cut the money for your children’s schools. They want your parents to lose their homes. They want to pollute the air, the water and the soils of Earth and any other planets we can get to in the universe. These people are so evil...

While I disagree with some of the material in this book as well as some of the sourcing I do recommend it for those interested in understanding terrorism. It deals with the money flow that is at the heart of modern terrorism whether it is narco-terrorism or Islamic terrorism. It is complementary to The Looming Tower and Jihad Incorporated. The author, "Loretta Napoleoni, a former Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and Rotary scholar at the London School of Economics, is an expert on international terrorism who has worked as an economist...

Hillary Clinton may not have killed it herself, but she delivered the coup de grace to public financing of presidential campaigns by refusing federal matching funds for both the primaries and the general election. The increasingly irrelevant fund had been on life support since the 2004 election, when both candidates eschewed its spending limits for private financing: The public financing system for presidential campaigns, a post-Watergate initiative hailed for decades as the best way to rid politics of the corrupting influence of money, may have quietly died over the weekend. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York became the first...

IRAN SEEKS NEW TECHNOLOGY FROM N. KOREA LONDON [MENL] -- Iran has discussed additional missile technology and systems from North Korea. Western intelligence sources said an Iranian delegation has arrived in North Korea for talks on ballistic missile development. The sources said the delegation was comprised of senior officials authorized to acquire warhead and missile technology from Pyongyang. "North Korea has been testing nuclear warheads as well as new missiles," an intelligence source said. "Much of that development has been financed by Iran, which now wants the technology for its programs." The official North Korean news agency reported that the...

For the first time in its 103-year history, the Ford Motor Company is mortgaging its assets, including factories, equipment, office buildings, patents and trademarks, and stakes in subsidiaries like Volvo, in order to raise $18 billion to overhaul itself. The amount Ford is borrowing exceeds the total market value of all its outstanding stock by more than $2 billion. Although other auto companies have put up manufacturing equipment and other types of collateral over the years to secure loan, Ford has never done so before. For many decades, its credit was so good that it could easily borrow without pledging...

Korea not a Terrorist-Free Zone: Lawmaker A number of suspected Islamist extremists have turned up in Korea over the past few years, it emerged Tuesday. According to a report on terrorist activities by the National Intelligence Service submitted to Uri Party Lawmaker Won Hye-young, one foreigner who was allegedly in contact with violent Islamist organizations in the former Soviet Union entered the country on a fake passport in November 2002 and worked for a small firm here before being rumbled and deported. Nizar Nawar, the principal perpetrator of an April, 2002 suicide bombing at a synagogue in Tunisia, also lived...

Saddam's Wife, Daughter on Wanted List Saddam's Wife and Daughter, New Leader of al-Qaida in Iraq Among 41 on Iraq's Most-Wanted List By BUSHRA JUHI The Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein's wife and eldest daughter are among 41 people on the Iraqi government's most wanted list, along with the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, a top official announced Sunday. The photo of the daughter of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Raghad, is seen on the Iraq government's new list of wanted outlaws at a press conference, Sunday, July 2, 2006,in Baghdad, Iraq. Iraqi National Security Advisor Dr....

MANY READERS have been sharply critical of our decision to publish an article Friday on the U.S. Treasury Department's program to secretly monitor worldwide money transfers in an effort to track terrorist financing. They have sent me sincere and powerful expressions of their disappointment in our newspaper, and they deserve an equally thoughtful and honest response. The decision to publish this article was not one we took lightly. We considered very seriously the government's assertion that these disclosures could cause difficulties for counterterrorism programs. And we weighed that assertion against the fact that there is an intense and ongoing public...

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- The Minnesota House gave the Twins stadium hopes a big lift Wednesday, voting 76-55 in favor of an open-air ballpark that would be paid for mostly by taxpayers. The focus now shifts to the state Senate, where the proposed increase in the county's sales tax could run into some early trouble. The Senate Taxes Committee, headed by a lawmaker opposed to the plan, will begin its deliberations on Thursday. The downtown Minneapolis stadium project would cost $522 million -- three-fourths from a higher Hennepin County sales tax -- and would allow the Twins to leave...

A high-priced fundraiser Monday night in Beverly Hills for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger featured special guest Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whose appearance Democrats and some government watchdogs say skirted the federal campaign finance law he helped enact. McCain, the maverick Republican who once called Democratic Gov. Gray Davis' fundraising conduct "disgraceful,'' was the star attraction at an event that allowed guests who contributed or raised $100,000 or $50,000 to take photos with the governor and attend a private reception, according to the invitations. Some of the money was expected to go to Schwarzenegger's re-election campaign and some to the state...

Ostensibly the reasons were because some staff members of various Senators were unprepared, and need to devote their attention to the Harriet Miers hearings. But the hearing has not yet been rescheduled. Here and here are two recent articles I have written on Saudi Arabia that underscore the need for these hearings, and for passage of the Act.

Have some extra money? Air America scandal apologist Bill Press seems to be having trouble raising $2 million needed for his stalled syndicated talk show. Perhaps you can help. Is the former CNN "Crossfire" host and California Democratic Party chairman willing to take it from just about anybody? So far, he's raised just a quarter of the necessary amount, with funding from dubious sources. No wonder he was so quick to defend Air America in the midst of its sleazy scandal, it must have seemed a minor issue to the longtime Democrat operative....

The 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border is a pure disconnect, at least in terms of transportation. Both countries have highway routes designed long before the possibility that the economies of the two nations would someday integrate under a North American Free Trade Agreement. The result is that NAFTA land trade must zigzag through obstacle courses as raw materials and components go to factories and final products are shipped to markets. The best-positioned border-crossing ports, such as Laredo, are overcrowded. The others are underused. The governments of both nations understand the competitive necessity to build better highway connections. The cost is prohibitive, however,...

Disrupting financial support for the insurgency is a key element in the overall strategy to defeat terrorists in Iraq, and the U.S. government is pursuing several initiatives to track and limit the flow of funds, Defense Department officials told two congressional subcommittees here July 28. Daniel Glaser, assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes; James Roberts, acting deputy assistant secretary for special operations and combating terrorism; and Caleb Temple, operations director for the Defense Intelligence Agency's Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism, outlined the sources of insurgency funding sources and efforts being made to stop that funding. The...

In the wake of recent bombings in London and Egypt confirming the vulnerability of even relatively vigilant societies to Islamofascist terrorism, the question occurs: Are we serious about fighting this menace with every instrument at our disposal? A test of the seriousness of the U.S. Senate will be offered as soon as today [July 26]. Senators will be asked to choose between two amendments to the defense authorization bill (S.1042) bearing on one of this country's most powerful and yet largely unutilized tools: Denying U.S. investment capital, technology and other commercial benefits to state-sponsors of terror. To be sure, successive...

U.S. House freshmen are depending much more on political action committees to fuel their re-election campaigns. In the first quarter of this year, 43 percent of the newcomers' re-election campaign dollars came from PACs, a 15 percent increase from when they ran as non-incumbents, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. "More of the early money, raised particularly by freshmen, comes from PACs than it does from individuals," Steven Weiss, spokesperson for the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), told Cybercast News Service. "That says that politicians are very reliant on PACs to receive an early boost in...