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BACHELORS always seemed to have it made. With only themselves to support, they could flash their cash and trick out their apartments in such a way that James Bond himself would feel at home shaking himself a martini in their ultra-cool, chick-magnet pads.

Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar burnt more than £1million to keep his daughter warm during a single night on the run, it has emerged. The infamous cocaine baron lit a bonfire using wads of U.S. dollars at a mountain hideout while he was being hunted by authorities, his son has claimed. Sebastian Marroqumn, who has changed his name from Juan Pablo Escobar, said his father burnt the notes when he realized daughter Manuela was suffering from hypothermia...

The Government Will Default On Its Debts Economics / Great Depression II Nov 02, 2009 - 08:01 AM By: Gary_North The governments of every major nation are going to default on their debts. There are two relevant questions: (1) How? (2) When?Establishments around the world all deny this. They have gained power and wealth by means of the expansion of government. They have justified their success by insisting that the government-business alliance is the only way to establish economic growth and economic security for the masses. This claim rests on a more fundamental claim, namely, that an unhampered free market...

No one saw the truck drive off, it left the alley between the bank and another business. You could pick up the cash and no one would see you. What should you do?

Bank Of England Called On To Increase QEThe Bank of England has been urged to increase its quantitative easing (QE) programme to a total of £225bn – more than the gross domestic product of Greece. By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor Published: 8:56PM GMT 31 Oct 2009 The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee, which is meeting this week, will be pushed by economists to raise the amount of bonds and gilts it plans to buy by a further £50bn, following the recent news that unlike almost any other major economy Britain remains mired in recession. The increase would mean the Bank would...

High-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior officials and use of White House facilities in exchange for thousands of dollars in donations, documents reveal. During his first nine months in office, President Obama has quietly rewarded scores of top Democratic donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with administration advisers and invitations to important speeches and town-hall meetings. High-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior White House officials in exchange for pledges to donate $30,400 personally or to bundle $300,000 in contributions ahead of the 2010 midterm elections, according to internal Democratic National Committee documents...

Gold Gives A Precious Insight Into Economy What a strange and fascinating commodity gold is – a store of value that is no one's liability, which cannot be printed or debauched by governments but which, with no income stream, has no objective value. A simultaneous hedge against both deflationary slump and inflationary spiral, it is little wonder gold should be the investment of choice for the Armageddon crowd. By Tom Stevenson Published: 6:26PM BST 24 Oct 2009 Gold attracts conspiracy theories like no other asset. Google "Yamashita's Gold" and enter into a half-plausible thriller of Japanese wartime loot and abandoned...

A tip from an Albuquerque aircraft charter company led Moriarty Police to an airplane with an unusual cargo— suitcases full of more than $1 million in cash. Moriarty Police Chief Bobby Garcia said the two currency-filled suitcases seized from an airplane at the city's airport on Nov. 27 weighed more than 300 pounds. They contained $1,169,896, Garcia said Wednesday. No arrests have been made in the ongoing investigation. The events that led to the cash seizure began when a private plane requested an emergency landing at the Moriarty Municipal Airport due to engine problems around noon on Thanksgiving. Garcia said...

King Dollar Forced To Abdicate Currencies / US Dollar Oct 23, 2009 - 04:12 PM By: Peter_Schiff For the most part, the value of the dollar is given cursory attention by the financial media. Typically, its movements are assigned an importance on par with much less determinative metrics such as natural gas futures and construction permits. It's only when major milestones are reached that anyone really takes notice of the dollar. We are living through one of those times. The great dollar rally of 2008-2009 has come full circle. When the financial crisis exploded in its full ugliness in mid-2008,...

Possible Credit Dislocation: Be WarnedFriday, October 23. 2009 Posted by Karl Denninger in Musings I have reason to suspect that the "monetary transmission mechanism" is full of rocks (again), and we are about to have another instance of what could colloquially be called "fun." (Yes, that's sarcasm.) Here's what we know and what I can deduce from it: * JP Morgan's "cash position" was analyzed by a writer who published on SCRIBD, which showed that actual cash held has deteriorated radically. By more than half in the last year. The deterioration is continuing, not slowing. * I am hearing repeated...

And So It Begins (Dollar Warnings)Friday, October 23. 2009 Posted by Karl Denninger in Monetary at 08:47 I have been on a potential dollar dislocation - or collapse - for more than two years. Indeed, back in the fall of 2007, it was one of the themes of petitions to Congress and letters I sent under personal cover to all 535 members. The debt liquidation cycle of 2008/early-09 appeared to stop the deterioration. Unfortunately that cycle was interrupted - intentionally - by enabling a continuing pattern of lies and fraud within our government. This has reversed all of the gains...

Dollar Hegemony For Another Century By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard October 21st, 2009 Let me stick my neck out. The dollar will still be the world’s dominant reserve currency in 2030, sharing a degree of leadership in uneasy condominium with the Chinese yuan. It will then regain much of its hegemonic status as the 21st century unfolds. It may indeed end the century even stronger than it was at the start. The aging crisis in Asia — and indeed the outright demographic implosion in Japan and China, not to mention China’s water crisis — will soon be obvious to everybody. Talk of...

Niall Ferguson: The Dollar Is Finished And The Chinese Are Dumping It Joe WeisenthalOct. 20, 2009, 2:50 PM Economic historian Niall Ferguson warns that China's love affair with the dollar is fading faster than anyone realizes. TechTicker: "The idea they don't have anywhere else to go or would shoot themselves in the foot if there were a steep decline in the dollar or appreciation of their currency reassures many people in Washington ‘we can relax'," he says. "An appreciation of the renminbi may reduce value of their international reserves but increases the value of every other asset the Chinese own,"...

Why the Dollar Will Likely Rally in the Next Crash by: Washington October 20, 2009 As I have previously noted, HSBC currency chief David Bloom doesn't think that the dollar will rally when the stock market next tanks: The dollar rallied last year because we had a global liquidity crisis, but we think the rules have changed and that it will be very different this time [if there is another market sell-off]. Is he right? I have argued that the new dollar carry trade could very well unwind during the next crash, which could create an enormous need for dollars....

The Giant Pool of Money What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money I have wanted to hear this or read the transcript every since I first heard portions of it on my car radio. I was driving to Pennsylvania on Interstate 81 with a destination of McConnellsburg to join some friends for a week-end of camping and shooting skeet. I...

This is the latest Hal Lindsey Report. Lindsey talks about what's happening to the American dollar by way of the Federal Reserve and the Obama Administration.

President Obama is going coast to coast to help raise money for fellow Democrats.

Market Street Saloon scammed out of $510 in latest, boldest counterfeit case It was dark, the alcohol was flowing and dozens of Alexander Hamiltons and Andrew Jacksons were making their way into a downtown bar's cash register Friday night. It wasn't until the next day that a manager at the Market Street Saloon realized that someone scammed the business out of $510 by passing bogus $10 and $20 bills. Charleston police said the incident is the most brazen of several counterfeit cases to hit the city recently. In the last two weeks, eight businesses from West Ashley, James Island and...

Understanding A Systemic Banking Crisis Harald Uhlig 15 October 2009 The recent crisis was like a bank run, but it didn’t quite fit. This column describes six features that a model of the recent crisis ought to capture and describes a new theory with which we might analyse the crisis and policy responses. Bryant (1980) and Diamond and Dybvig (1983) have provided us with the classic benchmark model for a bank run. The financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 is reminiscent of a bank run, but not quite (Brunnermeier 2008; Gorton 2009). The following six features summarise the prevalent view...

San Franciscans love us some President Barack Obama. But the question is, does he love us back? "After eight long years of being ignored like a problem only-child in a first marriage gone afoul, it feels almost unnatural for the President of the United States to pay San Francisco a visit," SFist laments. When he was in town campaigning for Senator back in 2004, he even refused to appear in public with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, worried conservative Illinois voters would take that as tacit support for marriage equality. He'll only be appearing at a Democratic Party fundraiser at...

The Most Hated Stock Market Rally In Wall Street History Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2009 Oct 10, 2009 - 05:06 AM By: Anthony_Cherniawski The rebound in U.S. consumer spending, driven by government stimulus, will wane as the unemployment rate surpasses 10 percent, a survey of economists showed. “You just can’t see a lot of strength on the consumer side given how battered income is from job losses and weak hourly wage growth,” said David Greenlaw, chief fixed-income economist at Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York. “We’ve got a gradual recovery in the overall economy, but it’s not vigorous enough...

Bank Earnings: Reality Check Ahead Michael Panzner October 11, 2009 Whether you call it a reality check... ...a wake-up call... ...or a splash of cold water reality,... ...based on the following MarketWatch report, "October Surprise from Bank Earnings?" it appears that lots of people are going to be caught out when banks announce their earnings in the weeks and months ahead (I guess they've been listening to the gang that couldn't rate straight): Some experts worry results may be much more negative than investors expect.[snip]

'Benign Currency Neglect' Could Spell Real Danger For US EconomyWhat's happening to the dollar? That's the question dominating the world's financial markets. Last week the US currency fell, on a trade-weighted basis, to a fresh 14-month low. The dollar's decline is now gaining momentum. By Liam Halligan Published: 7:22PM BST 10 Oct 2009 Many American economists say the greenback is falling because the global economy is recovering – so investors no longer need the dollar as a "safe haven". That's nonsense. The reality is that "safe haven" status has shifted away from the dollar and towards tangible assets that the...

Since Nixon severed gold from the greenback in 1971, the dollar's comparative value has fallen 97%. Money printing today will only hasten the currency's destruction. I was recently thinking about what has transpired in this country in the past decade: first the equity bubble, then the real estate/credit bubble and the steady debasement of the dollar (where a trickle of trouble threatens to turn into a flood). I have been struck by how few people seem to understand how all these events are related -- in that, at the root, they each have the irresponsible printing of money as the...

Did Gold Traders Stage A Bear Raid On The US Dollar? Joe WeisenthalOct. 9, 2009, 1:24 PM This week's report in The Independent that the various oil-producing states were planning on dumping the US Dollar set the tone for a horrible rout of the greenback that only moderately with the help of some Asian intervention. There weren't many folks who took the details of the report too seriously -- it was very cloak & daggery, and the author Robert Fisk has a definite agenda -- but there was probablly something to the idea that countries like Saudi Arabia and China...

As we, in my opinion, march towards financial meltdown I have a few thoughts to throw out: We have been living in an economy where everyone wants their things NOW! The idea is to enjoy the “fruits of one’s labor” prior to performing the “fruits of one’s labor”. This, of course, is known as debt – and people are willing to pay usury (interest) in order to get that which they desire. Everyone in debt is a debt servant, but those that live the lifestyle of wanting things now and working for them later are what I refer to as...

The city of Detroit has turned away thousands of people who lined up Wednesday for a chance to receive stimulus money set aside for homeless and low-income residents. Wednesday at the Cobo Hall was the last day for Detroit residents to get an application for Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program stimulus money. The city said an overwhelming 50,000 people came to the center seeking money that was promised to keep low-income residents from losing their homes and finding temporary housing for the homeless. The massive crowds created a fire and safety hazard and forced the Detroit Police Department to...

Having risen approximately 300% since the start of its bull run in 2001, Gold has far outpaced the investment gains in virtually every other investment class, including stocks, bonds, real estate and cash. Gold bugs feel certain that this time will be the ‘big one,' and that the precious metal will likely hit $2,000 - $3,000 an ounce, if not higher. Commodity experts like Jim Rogers also believe that Gold will continue to surge higher, right along with most energy, food and base metal commodities; in fact, some believe that the bull run in commodities still has another 5 -10...

China Defaults, Currency Basket Threatens Dollar TSF – October 6, 2009 By Janet Tavakoli Robert Fisk exposed revived discussions by the Gulf States, China, France, Japan, Brazil, and Russia to replace the dollar as the benchmark oil trading currency with a basket of currencies including gold within 10 years. This proposal is not new and discussions have been ongoing for decades. But other extraordinary moves in the capital markets suggest we should take this threat to the dollar’s position very seriously. For example, China has $2.3 trillion in currency reserves (about 70% in dollars), and China knows how to get...

DETROIT -- Detroit's homeless and low-income residents have another opportunity for a chance at millions of stimulus dollars. The money is available to help low-income residents from becoming homeless and homeless residents to find housing. Thousands of people lined up Tuesday. Some people in line falsely believed they were registering for $3,000 stimulus checks from the Obama Administration. City officials told Local 4 that Detroit was granted $15 million to help residents pay bills and their rent or find temporary housing for the homeless. Watch: Thousands Line Up For Stimulus Check Applications

Financial Armageddon In Sweden? By Rocky VegaTuesday, 6 October, 2009 10/06/09 Stockholm, Sweden – Personally having a Swedish bank account with SEB, and having recently visited the Latvian capital of Riga, this piece from Naked Capitalism hits home…literally. According to the article, worsening financial conditions in Latvia could lead to an economic crisis and collapse similar to Iceland’s recent devaluation and potentially a major default. The blowback would hit Sweden especially hard because its major banks have lent substantial funds to the Baltic nation. Latvian loans from Swedbank have totaled roughly 61 billion kroner, 40 billion kroner from SEB, and...

According to The Capital Times, the Madison Police Department has been trying to get assault rifles for its officers for years. The City Council has not granted funding for the rifles due to budgetary constraints. In a disputed effort to better equip the officers, the department has proposed that each officer buy his or her own assault rifle.

The fast-talking and well-dressed Texas customs broker has arrived at the Treasury Department twice in recent years with luggage stuffed with crusty, grimy greenbacks. The money was ruined, he said, and worth about $6.4 million. The broker wanted to exchange the soiled bills, unearthed in Mexico, for a U.S. government check. But the transactions raised alarms for authorities... Felhaber first came onto authorities' radar in August 2005, when he, his uncle and a female relative appeared at the Federal Reserve Bank in El Paso. They had $120,000 in water-damaged and ruined cash, just a small portion of millions of dollars...

<p>Children in a school in Germany had a day to remember this week when four pupils found around 15,000 euros (22,000 dollars) and then handed it out to their friends in the playground, police said Friday.</p> <p>The four, two boys and two girls aged between 10 and 13, found the bundle of cash stuffed in a dirty brown envelope on the way into their school in Frankfurt on Tuesday morning.</p>

merica's richest people are getting poorer, according to this year's Forbes 400 list. The annual ranking of the 400 wealthiest US citizens shows their net worth has dropped by $300bn, from $1.57 trillion to a paltry $1.27 trillion. That includes a loss of nearly $40bn for the top ten alone. The decline can be attributed to the global economic crisis, which has affected the capital and housing markets, as well as fraud and divorce, causing 314 returning members to record a loss. Warren Buffett, who remains at number two, was the worst affected by the world recession, losing $10bn over...

Warning - Funny but VERY, VERY gratuitous use of the "F" word. Some vulgar body movements as well. (R-rated!) Please do not view this video if crude or vulgar language or images offend you.

Rampant Debt Monetization Means U.S. Financial System Is Doomed Sep 27, 2009 - 05:25 AM By: Bob_Chapman Nearly half the nation's 25 biggest retail chains expect to hire fewer holiday workers this season than they did last year, another sign that retailers aren't counting on recession-strained shoppers to relax the tight grip on their pocketbooks this year. About 40% of stores surveyed across a broad swath of retailing, including consumer-electronic chain Best Buy Inc., teen-retailer American Eagle Outfitters Inc., and luxury-goods seller Saks Inc., told the Hay Group, a human resources consulting firm, that they expect to hire between 5%...

Amid the crushed soda cans, plastic bags and soiled cardboard, a shower of $100 bills started raining from the ceiling. Workers at the Sunnyvale recycling station ran giddily about early Tuesday morning, catching the cash and stuffing the money inside a plastic bucket. They had even found a body among the hundreds of thousands of tons of recyclables sorted at the SMaRT plant over the years. But a shower of cash? Never. "It just kept coming," Geronimo Martinez, 57, a supervisor at the station, said Wednesday, "more and more. It was crazy. I thought at first it was a joke."...

If you ask Americans about campaign finance reform, most likely they’ll answer something about the need for it because “there’s too much money in politics,” not realizing that to many the freedom to donate to the political candidate of their choice is a right equated with everything else granted by the First Amendment. It’s quite possible those free speech advocates will soon be pleased as a key part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform package may be overturned by the Supreme Court. In what began as a quite innocent case brought out as a clarification request by the producers of...

....Becoming debt-free should be paramount for the individual liberty lover who wishes to make a difference, because even if he is dependent on someone else for his income he still maintains a sense of freedom. He is free to allocate any extra resources he may have as he pleases and to direct his thoughts and time toward worthy causes of his choice. The debt-ridden individual, on the other hand, is in bondage. He is limited in how he can spend his money. He is unable to donate as much as he would like to liberty promoting organizations or political campaigns....

Obama pledges to work with G-20 to regulate markets Press Trust Of India / Washington September 20, 2009, 0:59 IST US President Barack Obama today pledged to work with leaders of the G-20 countries to strengthen the rules governing financial markets and ensure that the global economic crisis that engulfed the world just a year ago does not happen again. . . “At next week’s G-20 summit, we’ll discuss some of the steps that are required to safeguard our global financial system and close gaps in regulation around the world — gaps that permitted the kinds of reckless risk-taking and...

Tim Geithner, the Goldman Sachs Secretary of the Treasury, has gone on record as saying that the government will withdraw its $3 trillion backstop guarantee from the money market fund industry, on schedule, today, September 18th. While I am for any reduction in the government's role in the economy, this decision is pretty interesting. Why would they do it now, when even a cursory examination of the real economy shows that things are shaky and rocking the boat on investor confidence seems a bit of a gamble? I will try to answer that question, but only after stepping back to...

Okay, you’re probably thinking that when politicians and edbiz theorists talk about spending more money on education, they don’t have leafy suburbs and ivy-clad universities in mind. It’s those inner-city schools that are “failing our children.” That’s where we should be spending more money, right? The optimists’ faith that spending oodles of money will solve any problem is quite touching. In the case of education, though, the spend-more-money theory has actually been tested to destruction in several places. The Thernstroms cover two of these tests in detail in No Excuses: Kansas City, Mo., and Cambridge, Mass. Kansas City is the...

China, Russia, et al. are talking about shifting their monetary reserves out of U.S. dollars. Gold has hit $1000 per ounce, even though wholesale and retail prices exhibit a deflationary bias. The United Nations has called for a new world currency to replace the dollar. What’s going on? All of these phenomena are early death throes of Federal Reserve notes. I balk at saying “the U.S. dollar,” because a “dollar” is still defined in law as a certain quantity of silver or gold, whereas the U.S. currency that now circulates here and around the globe consists of nothing more than...

Multiply this stack by 7 and that is what NObama is thowing away! http://www.ptm.org/uni/resources/ptmupdate/032309/conclusion.html

A great explosion of purity is about to come , But "not" as before(as Katrina) ,something straight from my kingdom , The heavenlies are about to applaud , I AM The Lord behold I alone am God ! Yet for my children of my rod and staff , They shall rest in my bossom of Zion and laugh , For the Joy of The Lord is their strength , And these are my children of victiory that have gone the full length , Obedience to me has become their rod , My staff is their com(fort) for I AM their...

Chicago is known as “The Windy City” not because it is windy (although anyone who tries to use an umbrella during a heavy rain in the Loop knows how difficult that can prove) but because of the blowhard politicians it has produced throughout the centuries. Chicago’s scandalous history of political corruption began in the l9th century around the time of the Chicago Fire continuing through today, most notably, Governor Blagojevich’s attempt to “sell” President Obama’s Senate seat. Political malfeasance doesn’t begin and end in Illinois, though. Other states have equal or worse reputations. The Wall Street Journal, in an article...

y Bruce Karlson No one can reasonably take exception to the idea that, at some point, the dollar will be worth nothing. Its sole value, since we abandoned gold, is the backing of the US government, which will not last forever. An argument can and should be made that ALL paper money is illegal and illegitimate. To wit: The Constitution, in Article I, Section 8 authorizes the Congress “To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures; to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities (bonds) and current coin...

We’re not Dorothy walking down the yellow brick road and, Toto, we’re definitely not in Kansas any more! When I was growing up, I was taught that these are three topics that you simply don’t discuss. You don’t tell people how much money you make, you don’t tell people who you voted for, and religion, well, that’s just too personal. One little problem about keeping our mouths shut: a specific instruction from Jesus called The Great Commission. “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy...