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December 5, 2011, 9:58 PM HKT Ominous Ordos: Dispatch from a Chinese Ghost Town Ordos – a town in the desert of Inner Mongolia – has become a symbol of the excesses of China’s real estate boom. Reports in the local press that property prices in the eeriest of China’s ghost towns had fallen 70% had China Real Time Report on the next plane out there. We found little evidence of a collapse in prices yet. But with sales volume sharply down that could be just around the corner. “You want to know why they were building all those houses...

By Andy Xie 10.14.2011 14:52 Underground Rumblings, then a Financial Quake Private, real economic activities are on shaky ground as high-rate loans, speculation and the state sector surge A real business does not go bankrupt simply because it can't borrow money. But a money-burning speculator does. This fact explains why it's wrong to blame the recent wave of private company bankruptcies in Wenzhou on China's monetary tightening and credit squeeze. The real story is that the companies speculated with borrowed money, and lost. Excessive monetary expansion from 2008-'10 rewarded speculation through asset inflation. The Chinese government's economic stimulus, launched in...

HAVANA (AP) — It's been more than a year since Fidel Castro burst back on the scene with a spate of public appearances and dire warnings of nuclear Armageddon. But after a flurry of activity that quieted speculation about his exit from the world stage, the Cuban revolutionary's revival tour seems to be over. Castro has not appeared in public since a key Communist Party meeting in April when he seemed unsteady and unusually frail. He has also virtually stopped writing his trademark opinion pieces and didn't make a statement or release a photograph on his 85th birthday in August....

An interview with Ann Coulter on Follow the Money.

Rick Perry and Sarah Palin aren't stupid, no matter what you might think of them. They are riding a comet, and they are in no hurry to get off. I'm talking about the possibility of running for president. Neither one will probably take the plunge. Given the realities of modern campaigning and fund-raising, they'd already be in this thing if they were serious about it. Both are content in their real jobs - Perry as governor of a huge state, Palin as a money-making-machine and voice of the hard Right. But why stop the fun? As long as they are...

We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by LOVE, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thes 1:3 Once again the free market makes fools of the Harvard grads, which is like saying water is wet; after President Obozo announces tapping into the strategic oil reserves the pump price drops dramatically. How can this be after we have been lectured endlessly by the Dems how increasing our supply would have no effect on the prices for years? All the simpletons who don’t have Ivy League degrees...

More shoes may be dropping at the California Public Employees' Retirement System. Forty-nine staff members, including the president and chief investment officer, have been notified they are being investigated by the Fair Political Practices Commission for possible violations of gift reporting requirements. ... some of the potential violations went back five years. The investigation grew, indirectly, out of the scandal involving outside placement agents and their allegedly corrupt links to senior CalPERS executives

A desert site in Arizona sold for $32.5 million this week, five years after the California Public Employees’ Retirement System paid $400 million for the land. “Of all the speculative deals I’ve seen here, this was right at the top,” McDonnell said. Calpers had investments valued at $209.7 million in MW Housing Partners III June 30, 2007. The next year, the investment had a negative market value of $102.9 million.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R), who has been largely out of the public eye through much of the spring, will reemerge Sunday as she begins a national bus tour that will put her back in the spotlight and no doubt renew speculation about a possible presidential bid. The tour, the first of what will be a series of such journeys over a period of weeks, will start on Sunday in Washington at the annual Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally and work its way north along the East Coast. She will visit other parts of the country later, stopping at symbolically...

Amid questions about the authenticity of Obama's posted birth records raised by the registration number, a researcher has discovered a possible explanation. The Post and Email blog, which has focused on the Obama eligibility controversy, features a report by an unnamed researcher who discovered the record of a girl born the same day as the president who died a day later that could have been the source of Obama's birth certificate. The find is significant because of questions about the plausibility of the registration number indicated on the images of short-form and long-form birth certificates for the president posted on...

Why would President Obama want high gas prices? It's a matter of ideology for him. He thinks it's good for the environment for gas prices to be high. The higher gas prices are, the less you will drive. Also, higher gas prices make his beloved "alternative fuels" more competitive. That is because these alternative fuels are inherently more expensive, and so can't compete with cheaper gas. Note this is not a prescription for easing the financial burden on working people. High gas prices make it more likely you will buy expensive "alternative fuels." But either way, your wallet will still...

As the “Arab Spring” spooks the market, and Obama’s economic, monetary and energy policies increase inflationary pressure, gas prices keep pushing upward, now well over $4/gallon in many places. So, rather than look in the mirror, President Obama has reached again for his dog-eared copy of Rules for Radicals and searched out a culprit to demonize. And the winner is … those bad “traders and speculators,” who, he suggested yesterday, could be “taking advantage of American consumers for their own short-term gains.”

Joel Richardson believes the Bible teaches “that the biblical Antichrist is one and the same as the Quran’s Muslim Mahdi.”[1] As I mentioned in a previous article, there’s nothing new about making Islam the end-time bad guy when it comes to prophetic speculation. It has a long history, something Mr. Richardson seems not to be aware of or, if he does know about it, he’s not telling his readers. Francis X. Gumerlock makes this historical observation about Islam and end-time conjecture: In A.D. 637, the Moslems captured Jerusalem, and soon afterward built a mosque on the Temple Mount. One chronicler...

http://publicsearch.ndcourts.gov/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=203281 MAUREEN K ZIMMERMAN VS. EDWARD A SCHULTZ Case Type: Divorce Date Filed: 01/26/1999 Location: — Cass County Judicial Officer: Marquart, Steven L (Snip) 11/02/1995 Converted Event Codes Doc ID# 72 (EXP01 ) EX PARTE TEMPORARY PROTECTION ORDER (CC TO CC SHER. & FGO. PD) 11/02/1995 Application Doc ID# 71 APPLICATION FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PROTECTION ORDER (Snip) 11/16/1995 Hearing (9:00 AM) (Judicial Officer Backes, Norman J) UCIS Hrg Desc: PROTECTION ORDER Result: Hearing Ended (Snip) 11/30/1995 Motion/Hearing (9:00 AM) (Judicial Officer Backes, Norman J) UCIS Hrg Desc: CONTINUED CONTEMPT HEARING 09/11/1995 Continued to 11/30/1995 - Continuance - Schultz, Edward A...

The run-up in global commodity prices is stirring debate in a number of countries over the role of financial speculators, a prospect that could fuel a regulatory backlash by governments keen to control food prices.

May I go where others have not gone: the obvious..... It is crystal clear that even this clown in Arizona was far more impacted by Hollywood, TV and video games than anything else.... Tell me he hasn't killed plenty on the video games, where killing on many games is the way to WIN... Tell me he hasn't seen "Matrix" or any of the other 20 dozen films of violence.... Tell me he hasn't listened to the crap they call music these days that all the kids listen to, many with words that defame women and life itself.... And I will...

Reagan Son Claims Dad Had Alzheimer's as President 2011 is a big year for Ronald Reagan fans, being the centennial of his February 6 birth in Tampico, Ill. But youngest son Ron Reagan is spoiling the good cheer with a new book that suggests the Gipper suffered from Alzheimer's disease while in the White House, a claim dismissed by Reagan's doctors and outside experts. "Had the diagnosis been made in, say, 1987, would he have stepped down?" Ron asks, regarding the disease confirmed in 1994. "I believe he would have," he writes in My Father At 100: A Memoir, due...

Speculation could push oil prices to rise to $110 per barrel within a few weeks, which may prompt OPEC to raise production, a member of Kuwait's Supreme Petroleum Council said on Sunday. "Demand will increase slightly, but this increase in price is usually technical, due to analysts' forecasts and speculations," Imad al-Atiqi, a member of the country's highest oil policy body, told Reuters in a telephone interview. "This (increase) could be a reason to increase production so the oil market does not get worried ... especially if the rise was quick and crossed the $110," he said. However, OPEC members...

The sudden crash in oil prices might be the smoking gun that shows speculation, rather than supply and demand, drove the huge run-up in oil futures last year.

Awhile ago, Goldman Sachs wanted my personal account. I was flattered. I gave them half. Next Goldman Sachs offered me "friends and family" shares in their initial public offering. Now I felt special. They purchased some different stocks for my account. These were shares their analysts pronounced as undervalued--stocks that should outperform the market. Wow. I felt really special. I had finally slipped into the inner circle of Wall Street. Oops. Things didn't work out that way. I lost money. Goldman called to inform me that my balance had fallen below their minimum. I needed to wire in more cash...

ll 'Obamacare' health care reform become law in the United States? 'Obamacare' health care reform (see contract rules) to become law before midnight ET 30 Jun 2010

Disasters - earthquake, Tsunami, others - happening rapidly now. Read Matthew 24. There will be earthquakes.....etc. When we see these events occurring in increasing frequency it is because these are the "birth pangs" that we have been told by Jesus Christ Himself - would happen closer together in time as do the birth pangs of a woman in labor. The closer she gets to giving birth, the worse the birth pangs become and the closer together they come.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But he only comes for kids -- not for governments that have bragged, borrowed and spent their way into bankruptcy. Two Thousand Ten is going to belong to the Grinch. For spendthrift governments around the world, the new year's going to bring massive defaults. The new globalization may be the globalization of a second wave of financial crises. The world economy is not convalescing. It's just been pumped full of unaffordable medicines. Borrowing madly, countries as diverse as Greece and Dubai have been buying time, not fiscal health.

Tiger Woods did not suffer facial lacerations from a car accident. They were inflicted by his wife, Elin Nordegren -- according to a conversation Woods had Friday after the accident. Tiger has yet to be formally interviewed by the Florida Highway Patrol -- that should happen this afternoon. But we're told Tiger had a conversation Friday -- with a non-law enforcement type -- detailing what went down before his Escalade hit a fire hydrant. We're told he said his wife had confronted him about reports that he was seeing another woman. The argument got heated and, according to our source,...

Tiger Woods was injured early Friday morning outside his Florida home when his car struck a fire hydrant, then crashed into a tree. Tiger Woods, bolting his Florida mansion after a reported late-night fight with his wife, was found dazed and bleeding Friday after plowing his SUV into a fire hydrant and a tree. The world's No. 1 golfer was pulling out of his driveway at 2:25 a.m. when he double-bogeyed the getaway in his 2009 Cadillac Escalade, the Florida Highway Patrol said. Wife Elin Nordegren heard the crash from inside the couple's $2.4 million home and went to her...

Tiger Woods’ wife rescued him from the wreckage of a late night car crash by smashing a golf club through the window, police said. Mrs Nordegren told police she was inside the couple’s house in a gated community in Orlando, Florida when she heard the accident and ran outside. She grabbed a golf club and smashed the rear window of the black Cadillac Escalade to get to her husband. Woods was on his own in the car and no other vehicles were involved. It was unclear where he had been intending to go at that early hour. The accident happened...

Should we use taxes to deter financial speculation? Yes, say top British officials, who oversee the City of London, one of the world’s two great banking centers. Other European governments agree — and they’re right. Unfortunately, United States officials — especially Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary — are dead set against the proposal. Let’s hope they reconsider: financial transactions tax is an idea whose time has come. The dispute began back in August, when Adair Turner, Britain’s top financial regulator, called for a tax on financial transactions as a way to discourage “socially useless” activities. Gordon Brown, the British prime...

November 27, 2009 Dubai in Deep Water As Ripples From Debt Crisis Spread Patrick Hosking and David Robertson Work has been halted on the artificial islands Fears of a dangerous new phase in the economic crisis swept around the globe yesterday as traders responded to the shock announcement that a debt-laden Dubai state corporation was unable to meet its interest bill. Shares plunged, weak currencies were battered and more than £14 billion was wiped from the value of British banks on fears that they would be left nursing new losses. Nervous traders transferred the focus of their anxieties from the...

Brazil sparks wider currency control fears By Peter Garnham Published: November 19 2009 11:37 | Last updated: November 19 2009 11:37 Asian currencies came under pressure on Thursday as a move from Brazil to further curb foreign inflows sparked fears that other countries would follow suit. Brazil moved overnight to close a loophole that had allowed investors to avoid a 2 per cent tax on foreign investment in equities and bonds announced last month. The government announced a 1.5 per cent tax on American Depositary Receipts. Guido Mantega, Brazil’s finance minister, said some foreign investors had been buying ADRs to...

FORT HOOD — One of the most sensational allegations stemming from last week's shooting spree at Fort Hood was a claim that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shouted “Allahu akbar!” before firing into scores of soldiers at a large post processing center. A day after Army chief of staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. expressed concern over potential anti-Muslim reaction in the wake of the mass shooting, Fort Hood appeared to distance itself from the controversy. A spokesman for the post, asked to clarify comments made last week by Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the Fort Hood commander, who suggested that Hasan...

[UPDATE: Lambeth Palace has denied reports that there is to be an emergency meeting of Church of England bishops to discuss the Pope's offer tomorrow.] Here’s what I think Dr Rowan Williams is most worried about as the reality of the Pope’s offer sinks in: the prospect of the Bishop of Chichester and many of his clergy signing up to the new Ordinariate. Bishop John Hind put out a statement today which denies that he is about to become a Roman Catholic. Read between the lines, though. It doesn’t mean that he won’t join the new Papal structure in the...

Wall Street is up to its old tricks again. One year later, one of the key excesses that led our consumer-based economy into an historic downturn is being abused in the exact same way that got us $147-a-barrel oil last summer. Worse, many in the media are again getting the facts wrong on oil prices and demand— Forget what Cambridge Energy Research Associates reported on Oct. 13. By its calculations oil demand actually peaked in 2005 among the industrialized members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation, while in the U.S. alone oil usage has dropped by 2 million barrels a...

<p>ANNANDALE, Va. (MarketWatch) -- It's hardly earth-shattering news that the last six months have been a speculative period for the stock market.</p> <p>Nor is that a big surprise: The initial thrusts upward of a brand new bull market are always speculative.</p>

Back in 2002 and in the aftermath of the Enron and Worldcom implosions, former Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., and former Rep. Mike Oxley, R-Ohio, created the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, meant to curb allegedly funny accounting and business practices. As President George W. Bush asserted in signing the bill, "There will not be a different ethical standard for corporate America than the standard that applies to everyone else." Nice political theater for sure, but then reality set in. Fast-forward four years, and the joke was on politicians naïve enough to believe that corporations with aspirations of going public would lie prostrate before...

Do you have to be a power-plant owner to really understand the natural gas market? Should makers of aluminum siding being the only ones allowed to buy aluminum? These are the kinds of questions being raised in many commodities markets today. The issue is speculators versus users of fuels, metals and agricultural products. Both of these groups are big investors in commodities. Users buy these goods to consume them. Speculators buy without any intention of ever using them. A speculator looks purely to make a profit by buying and selling the rights to a pound of copper or a barrel...

The staggered phase out of energy-wasting light bulbs begins on Sept. 1 in Germany. The unpopularity of the energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs that will replace them is leading consumers and retailers to start hoarding the traditional bulbs. As the Sept. 1 deadline for the implementation of the first phase of the EU's ban on incandescent light bulbs approaches, shoppers, retailers and even museums are hoarding the precious wares -- and helping the manufacturers make a bundle. The EU ban, adopted in March, calls for the gradual replacement of traditional light bulbs with supposedly more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL). The...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ahZl9asR.GX8

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is planning to issue a report next month that suggests that wild swings in oil prices were significantly driven by speculators, the Wall Street Journal reported on its website on Tuesday. A 2008 report by the main U.S. futures-market regulator that attributed oil-price swings primarily on supply and demand was based on "deeply flawed data," Bart Chilton, one of four CFTC commissioners, told the paper in an interview on Monday. The CFTC did not reveal preliminary figures from the report to the paper and declined to discuss the previous data. Reuters attempts to...

Big speculators such as hedge funds and investment banks have sharply reduced their buying positions in oil futures in recent weeks, just as regulators are considering setting limits in energy speculation. The drop in speculative positions likely contributed to last week's 10% slump in oil prices -- the biggest weekly loss in six months, analysts said. Long, or buying, positions held by non-commercial traders, a category the regulator uses to classify big speculators, dropped by 16,382 contracts in the week ended July 7, according to the weekly Commitments of Traders report released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission late Friday....

‘Rogue broker’ blamed for oil spike By Javier Blas and Izabella Kaminska in London Published: July 2 2009 12:07 | Last updated: July 2 2009 20:26 The startling spike in oil prices to their highest level this year on Tuesday was caused by a rogue broker who placed a massive bet in the Brent oil market, triggering almost $10m (€7m) of losses for his company. PVM Oil Associates, the world’s largest over-the-counter oil brokerage, said on Thursday it had been the “victim of unauthorised trading”. The privately owned company said that as a result of the unauthorised trades it had...

Air France pilots battled for up to 15 minutes to save the doomed flight that went missing over the Atlantic this week, electronic messages emitted by the aircraft have revealed. Details have emerged of the moments leading up to the disappearance of flight AF 447 with 228 people on-board, with error messages reportedly suggesting the plane was flying too slowly and that two key computers malfunctioned. Flight data messages provided by an Air France source show the precise chronology of events of flight AF 447 before it plummeted into the sea 400 miles off Brazil on Monday. These indicate that...

Florida-based radio station KissFM reports that Patrick Swayze has died. So sad if its true

Although the CDC has not explained whether the current swine flu outbreak in Mexico and the United States is bioterrorism, influenza can be very readily manipulated and may be one of the best candidates for weaponization for several reasons: 1) Terrorists can prepare a vaccine to protect themselves and their host populations in advance of its release. 2) Influenza is airborne, it is transmitted through either solid or lipid aerosol, therefore it’s easy to spread. 3) There is a normal period of incubation during which time the carrier displays no symptoms, but can infect others. Therefore, dispersion is very efficient....

In a discussion this morning with a cell biologist and medical doctor working at Johns Hopkins, my friend thought this 4-part flu combination is highly unusual and looks like it could be man-made. Especially because it has an avian strain. My doctor friend (he's Taiwanese) explained that in Asia, it's common for a avian-swine-human flu to happen naturally, but this virus first showed up in Mexico, where pigs and ducks are not usually raised together. Also, recombination of more than 2-different flu viruses is extremely rare. I'm just repeating what he said as an expert in the field. He says...

The recently released Department of Homeland Security assessment of rightwing extremism represents an alarming politicization of that huge federal agency. The 10-pages document is entitled: "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." Its source is the Extremism and Radicalization Branch of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis Assessment, of the Department of Homeland Security. (Imagine the size of their security badges.) Read it here. American Thinker Jim Byrd's article entitled "Is Texas A Terror State?" provides a catalogue of transgressions that cumulatively define rightwing extremism. Byrd concludes that, when measured against Governor Rick Perry...

As state budgeters look toward another multi-billion dollar budget deficit this summer, attorneys for the Legislature and Gov. Schwarzenegger have issued a new opinion reaffirming the legality of a plan passed by Democrats last December that raised revenues without requiring a two-thirds vote. The March 9 opinion from Legislative Counsel Diane Boyer-Vine, addressed to Gov. Schwarzenegger, reaffirms a 2003 opinion by her office that finds a bill that raises one tax and lowers another by an equal or greater amount only needs simple majority votes in each legislative house. “We think that a tax bill is not subject to the...

How Goldman Sachs was at the center of the oil trading fiasco that bankrupted pipeline giant Semgroup. When oil prices spiked last summer to $147 a barrel, the biggest corporate casualty was oil pipeline giant Semgroup Holdings, a $14 billion (sales) private firm in Tulsa, Okla. It had racked up $2.4 billion in trading losses betting that oil prices would go down, including $290 million in accounts personally managed by then chief executive Thomas Kivisto. Its short positions amounted to the equivalent of 20% of the nation's crude oil inventories. With the credit crunch eliminating any hope of meeting a...

Details remain vague, but The Juice has just learned that authorities believe they have found the body of Natalee Holloway, the 18-year-old from Clinton, Miss., who vanished in the Caribbean island in May 2005. A Miami-based flight attendant for American Airlines tells The Juice that a cadaver dog was aboard a Miami-to-Aruba flight. The officer with the dog was going to search for the remains of Holloway. "They think they've found where Natalee Holloway's remains are, and they're taking the dog down to confirm that," said the flight attendant, who lives in Fort Lauderdale. "They're not telling anybody because Aruba...

About the only economic break most Americans have gotten in the last six months has been the drastic drop in the price of oil, which has fallen even more precipitously than it rose. In a year's time, a commodity that was theoretically priced according to supply and demand doubled from $69 a barrel to nearly $150, and then, in a period of just three months, crashed along with the stock market. So what happened? It's a complicated question, and there are lots of theories. But as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, many people believe it was a speculative bubble, not unlike...

Last night Ed Hale presented the (heretofore, unseen) divorce decree on Plains Radio between Obama's mother and Obama Sr ( her FIRST marriage). The key bonus in this was the revelation of the specific version of her name in the decree, Stanley Ann D. Obama. Using this precise name variation ( the abbreviated, initial "D" --instead of 'Dunham', was the cipher that broke open the search), they are claiming to have now located a POE (Port of Entry ) document that Obama's mother provided when she returned to the US with her son--soon after Obama's birth, (allegedly in Kenya). The...