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United States The US now presents some of the best real estate opportunities not only of all developed countries but also compared to most developing markets. Prices in a number of states have declined so much that there is deep value to be found. In fact, there are many locations around the country where properties now sell below replacement cost. As is always the case, nobody wants to even think about buying real estate now that prices in many areas have dropped by 50-60% and yields are higher than seen for decades. Yet just a few years ago at the...

This clip, taken from C-Span, from a House session dating back to March 2001, shows Ron Paul stating there is nothing to fear from a global currency.... as long as it's backed by gold, of course. Listen at 0.32 (more in your face numerology), where Paul states there being nothing to fear from a "single, worldwide currency." He then goes on to praise the wonders of globalism, which he also claims is nothing to fear. Is the establishment running scared of Ron Paul, or is that what "they" would like you to think? Is it so absurd to think they...

Investigation Into MF Global Expected to Heat UpBy BEN PROTESS December 30, 2011, 1:30 pm When customer money disappeared from MF Global over Halloween weekend, it seemed implausible the cash would remain at large come New Year’s Day. But two months later, the hunt for roughly $1.2 billion in client money continues. Some MF Global customers, including farmers and hedge funds, are still without about a third of the money in their accounts at MF Global, the brokerage firm once run by Jon S. Corzine, the former governor of New Jersey. Against this backdrop, and as 2012 gets ready to...

Feds: MF Global improperly moved customer moneyBy Azam Ahmedben Protess New York Times News Service Posted: Dec 29, 2011, 7:02 am WASHINGTON — Federal authorities investigating the demise of MF Global think that the firm began improperly moving customer money to a middleman on Oct. 27, according to people briefed on the matter. The transfers, which indicate the brokerage firm misused client funds earlier than previously believed, represent a new line of inquiry in the hunt for more than $1 billion in missing money. In MF Global's last days, the brokerage house was frantically winding down trades to shore up...

BEIJING — A rich Chinese couple who had eight babies with the help of two surrogate mothers has been forced to move out of their villa following a public uproar and could face a large fine for breaching strict family planning laws mandating only one child. The couple in the booming southern metropolis of Guangzhou had the children last year, according to state media, but the story only came to light after a picture of the children — four boys and four girls — was used by a photography studio in an advertisement. The story was first featured in the...

The UN’s global warming unit, IPCC, is so discredited that “it is not clear how much additional benefit there is to having a huge bureaucratic scientific review effort under UN auspices” said Ken Caldeira in announcing that he is resigning as one of its leading authors on the next IPCC report. The previous one won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Outside of a few skeptical bloggers, you will not see this story anywhere else. If anyone doubts there is a bias in the media for the bright and shiny object called Global Warming (aka Climate Change, Climate Disruption and...

E-Mail Clues in Tracking MF Global Client FundsBy BEN PROTESS and AZAM AHMED December 20, 2011, 9:00 pm Federal authorities investigating the collapse of MF Global have uncovered e-mails that detail the transfers of money in the firm’s last days, including transfers that contained customer money, according to people close to the investigation. One e-mail chain refers to the transfer of roughly $200 million that MF Global owed JPMorgan Chase on Oct. 28 — the firm’s last business day before it filed for bankruptcy. In that chain, a senior official in the firm’s Chicago office was told to make the...

Bradley Abelow, President, MF Global Inc., is a Senior Advisor at the Firm. Mr. Abelow was a Partner at NewWorld before joining MF Global, where his long-time associate Jon Corzine is CEO. Prior to co-founding NewWorld, he was Chief of Staff to Jon Corzine, then Governor of the State of New Jersey, where he oversaw state-level environmental programs, and earlier served as Treasurer of New Jersey. Before that, Mr. Abelow was a General Partner and Managing Director of The Goldman Sachs Group, where he held a variety of senior leadership positions. Mr. Abelow has been active in environmental matters for...

"does not represent a way forward for Canada" In a move that was at least partially expected from Steven Harper's Conservative government, Canada has chosen to exercise her right to withdraw from the global warming scam's centerpiece 'acheivement' to this point, the 1997 Kyoto agreement... they are first nation to do so: _______________________________________________________________________ "Kyoto, for Canada, is in the past, and as such we are invoking our legal right to withdraw from Kyoto," (Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent) said in Toronto. He said he would be formally advising the United Nations of his country's intention to pull out. (Kent) said the...

The House Agriculture Committee is questioning former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine on the bankruptcy of the financial firm and a dispute over $1.2 billion in missing funds. According to the Committee's website, the purpose of the hearing is "to examine the facts and circumstances that led up to the bankruptcy, and the efforts underway to recover customer funds and return them to their rightful owners." The former Senator and New Jersey governor is at the center of a dispute over $1.2 billion in missing customer funds. The trading firm’s bankruptcy is the 8th largest in the nation's history.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Jon Corzine, the former chief executive officer of the bankrupt broker MF Global, apologized for his firm's failure Thursday and told a House committee that he doesn't know where the missing money went. "I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date," said Corzine, in prepared testimony to the House Agriculture Committee on Thursday. He also apologized "to all those affected." "My sadness, of course, pales in comparison to the losses and hardships that customers, employees and investors suffered as a result of MF Global's bankruptcy,"...

OTTAWA -- Republicans turned up the heat on U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday to reverse his decision to delay what was described at a congressional hearing as the safest oil pipeline ever proposed. A parade of witnesses appeared at a House sub-committee meeting on energy to defend the safety and economic benefits of the Keystone XL pipeline, and to warn of the consequences should it rupture. And in between partisan sniping between Democrats and Republicans, pipeline junkies learned Alberta-based TransCanada Corp. has adopted 57 additional safety measures, including 21,000 censors linked to satellites to detect problems. "This is the...

They come out from under their rocks every time we have a few tornados and never miss an opening when it comes to exploiting popular ignorance. An AP column last Friday titled Science panel: Get ready for extreme weather opened by asserting – “Think of the Texas drought, floods in Thailand and Russia's devastating heat waves as coming attractions in a warming world. That is the warning from top international climate scientists and disaster experts after meeting in Africa.” And of course their thesis is that this weather is the fault of mankind. They fail to mention that for the...

MF Global proves Enron-era accounting lives onBy Nanette Byrnes | Reuters – 2 hours 14 minutes ago REUTERS - The off-balance-sheet accounting methods that Enron and Lehman Brothers made famous in their epic failures years ago have a modern-day poster child: MF Global . Like its predecessors, the bankrupt brokerage formerly run by Jon Corzine took advantage of an accounting maneuver to keep certain financial obligations off its books, making the firm look less indebted and thus less a risk than it really was. On Thursday, Mary Schapiro, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, told a committee of Congress...

MF Global Money Found in Britain?By: Ben Protess and Azam Ahmed The New York Times Published: Tuesday, 29 Nov 2011 | 7:01 AM ET About $200 million in customer money that vanished from MF Global is believed to have surfaced at JPMorgan Chase in Britain, according to people briefed on the matter. The discovery could be the most significant breakthrough in a monthlong hunt for the missing funds. During MF Global's [MFGLQ 0.00 --- UNCH (0) ] last chaotic days, the brokerage firm overdrew an account at JPMorgan [JPM 29.16 0.68 (+2.39%) ], according to another person who is close...

....Rick Perry says he would consider pulling the United States out of the U.N. altogether. ....One of the loudest U.N. critics among the candidates is Perry, the Texas governor who has recently slipped in the polls. "I think it's time for us to have a very serious discussion about defunding the United Nations," he declared in October. Romney, the former Massachusettsgovernor, in 2007 characterized U.N. failures as "simply astonishing" but has been more measured during the current campaign. U.N. supporters say that when the candidates bash the world organization, they are simply playing to the most conservative Republicans: the primary...

Screw you, Jon Corzine. All 1,066 employees of the bankrupt trading house MF Global got the boot yesterday in a pre-holiday massacre that left workers without severance and benefits -- and they blamed only one man for their woes. ... If Corzine were around, DiMatteo told Bloomberg News, “I would punch him in the face.” ... Bankruptcy trustee James Giddens is still trying to find about $600 million in missing customer money. Forensic probers are trying to account for the brokerage firm’s assets, and federal agencies are investigating whether MF mixed company funds with money missing from customer accounts.

, Nov. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- In the run-up to the international climate negotiations in Durban later this month, China has responded to efforts to ban the trading of widely discredited HFC-23 offsets by threatening to release huge amounts of the potent industrial chemical into the atmosphere unless other nations pay what amounts to a climate ransom. China's threat comes after the European Union and other nations moved to ban HFC-23 credits from internal carbon markets in recognition of the perverse incentives created by these credits under the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The vast amounts paid for...

Corzine lobbied feds to ease regsBy MARK DECAMBRE and KAJA WHITEHOUSE Last Updated: 11:42 PM, November 3, 2011 Months before the stunning collapse of MF Global, the embattled brokerage firm mounted a full-court press to compel regulators to allow it to tap customer funds to invest in the kind of dicey sovereign debt that led to its demise. The lobbying effort was in response to new rules that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, run by chairman Gary Gensler, was planning to impose on broker-dealers, restricting them from making investments with client money in sovereign debt securities. Broker-dealers are allowed to...

NBC Nightly News Blames Halloween Snowstorm on Global Warming By Noel Sheppard Created 11/03/2011 - 11:12am You knew some major news outlet was going to blame this weekend's east coast snowstorm on global warming. On Tuesday, the folks on the NBC Nightly News did precisely that (video follows with transcript and commentary): BRIAN WILLIAMS, anchor: Everybody out East said the same thing about this freak snowstorm, `This kind of thing didn't used to happen. This never happened before.' And while that is true, it may also be true that we'll all have to start getting used to this kind of...