Month: February 2014

The report that the FBI had a human resource in direct contact with Bin Laden in 1993 – and covered it up and hid it from the 9/11 Commission and Congress – is newsworthy.  See Washington Times' report and NBC News coverage.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg:

• Top American officials admit that the U.S. armed and supported Bin Laden and the other Mujahadin – which later morphed into Al Qaeda – in the 1970s, in order to fight the Soviets

• The mainstream French paper Le Figaro alleged that the CIA met with Bin Laden himself 2 months before 9/11

• An FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. And see this Newsweek article and this New York Times report

• According to the large French newspaper Le Monde, the intelligence services of America’s close ally France and of other governments had infiltrated the highest levels of Al-Qaeda’s camps, and actually listened to the hijackers’ debates about which airlines’ planes should be hijacked, and allied intelligence services also intercepted phone conversations between Al-Qaeda members regarding the attacks

• According to reports from Bloomberg, an ABC News investigative reporter and others, one of the main trainers of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda worked at various times for the  CIA, FBI and Green Berets

• A high-level military intelligence officer says that his unit – tasked with tracking Bin Laden prior to 9/11 – was pulled off the task, and their warnings that the World Trade Center and Pentagon were being targeted were ignored

• Several key employees for the defense department say that the government covered up their testimony about tracking Mohammed Atta before 9/11

• The National Security Agency and the FBI were each independently listening in on the phone calls between the supposed mastermind of the attacks and the lead hijacker. Indeed, the FBI built its own antenna in Madagascar specifically to listen in on the mastermind’s phone calls

• According to various sources, on the day before 9/11, the mastermind told the lead hijacker “tomorrow is zero hour” and gave final approval for the attacks. The NSA intercepted the message that day and the FBI was likely also monitoring the mastermind’s phone calls

• Shortly before 9/11, the NSA also intercepted multiple phone calls to the United States from Bin Laden’s chief of operations

• The CIA and the NSA had been intercepting phone calls by the hijackers for years (see also this)

• According to the Sunday Herald, two days before 9/11, Bin Laden called his stepmother and told her “In two days, you’re going to hear big news and you’re not going to hear from me for a while.” U.S. officials later told CNN that “in recent years they’ve been able to monitor some of bin Laden’s telephone communications with his [step]mother. Bin Laden at the time was using a satellite telephone, and the signals were intercepted and sometimes recorded.” Indeed, before 9/11, to impress important visitors, NSA analysts would occasionally play audio tapes of bin Laden talking to his stepmother.

• And according to CBS News, at 9:53 a.m on 9/11, just 15 minutes after the hijacked plane had hit the Pentagon, “the National Security Agency, which monitors communications worldwide, intercepted a phone call from one of Osama bin Laden’s operatives in Afghanistan to a phone number in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia”, and secretary of Defense Rumsfeld learned about the intercepted phone call in real-time (if the NSA monitored and transcribed phone calls in real-time on 9/11, that implies that it did so in the months leading up to 9/11 as well)

Indeed, former counter-terrorism boss Richard Clarke theorizes that top CIA brass tried to recruit the hijackers and turn them to our side, but were unsuccessful. And – when they realized had failed – they covered up their tracks so that the FBI would not investigate their illegal CIA activities , “malfeasance and misfeasance”, on U.S. soil.

And former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds – deemed credible by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, several senators (free subscription required), and a coalition of prominent conservative and liberal groups –  alleges that the U.S. worked with Bin Laden right up to 9/11 … and for months afterwards.

Whether or not she's right, it's indisputable that 9/11 was entirely foreseeable … as was Al Qaeda flying airplanes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

As is the fact that the U.S. has backed the world's most dangerous and radical Muslim terrorists for decades.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1hhxTFA George Washington

Having threatened Russia that “any military move would be a grave mistake” and sounding awefully like a “line” to be crossed, US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters that the US is ready to bail out Ukraine…

• *KERRY: RUSSIA MILITARY MOVE ON UKRAINE WOULD BE GRAVE MISTAKE
• *KERRY SAYS U.S. PLANNING $1 BLN LOAN GUARANTEE FOR UKRAINE
• *KERRY SAYS U.S. WORKING WITH IMF, OTHERS ON AID TO UKRAINE

One has to wonder how many US jobs this will create (or save)? Or will Ukraine offer unlimited vodka to citizens of Detroit (or Puerto Rico for that matter)?

 

As Reuters headlines show:

• U.S. CONSIDERING UNSPECIFIED BUDGET SUPPORT FOR UKRAINE ON TOP OF POSSIBLE $1 BILLION LOAN GUARANTEE – KERRY
• KERRY SAYS POSSIBLE MILITARY INTERVENTION BY RUSSIA IN UKRAINE WOULD BE A COSTLY DECISION, GIVES NO DETAILS

Via AP,

Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States is planning to provide Ukraine with $1 billion in loan guarantees and will consider additional direct assistance to the former Soviet republic.

 

Speaking to reporters at the State Department on Wednesday, Kerry said it was “urgent to move forward” in assisting Ukraine following the ouster of its Russian-backed president. But he said it was also urgent for Ukraine’s interim authorities to enact reforms, curb corruption, and prepare free and fair elections.

 

The U.S. aid would be part of a planned massive international assistance package that was expected to include European contributions as well as loans from global financial institutions.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1hhxTFi Tyler Durden

The TOTUS is at it again, creating more jobs and repaving old freeways on paper, as transcribed by the president… but why bother? The US is so fixed, America is now issuing bailout loans to the Ukraine.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1jB0N3q Tyler Durden

Study: Online Content Creators Outnumber Consumers 2,000 To 1

WASHINGTON — According to a study published Monday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, for every person who reads, listens to, or watches some form of media on the internet, there are approximately 2,000 individuals engaged in creating new online content.

“In terms of web-based entertainment, journalism, and personal opinion pieces, creators now outnumber consumers by a factor of several hundred thousand percent—meaning that for every one viewer, there are dozens of fully staffed companies churning out articles, videos, blogs, vlogs, and countless social media posts hoping to lure that person to click,” said bureau commissioner Erica Groshen, adding that during each minute of online video streamed by a consumer, another whole lifetime’s worth of video content is uploaded.

“Furthermore, our analysis found that the massive increase in internet usage over the past two decades was due almost entirely to people going online to publish text or images they themselves had produced and then repeatedly hitting the refresh button to see if anyone else has looked at their work.”

Reports later confirmed that the six people who worked on this article are the only ones currently reading it.

Source: The Onion

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1kiCo2y Tyler Durden

When a hypertotalitarian banana republic takes another turn for the gigasurreal, even Elon Musk is speechless.

In the most glaring example of how farcical idiocy has become the new normal, we will remind readers (especially those who do not follow us on twitter), of the following blurb from last night:

Obama Weighs Four Options for Revamping NSA Surveillance – WSJ. Will pick the fifth one that makes it even bigger

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 26, 2014

Sure enough, this attempt at comedy has just failed once more, as less than 24 hours later, it describes an increasingly surreal reality. Just out from the WSJ:

The Obama administration has asked a special court for approval to hold onto National Security Agency phone records for a longer period–an unintended consequence of lawsuits seeking to stop the phone-surveillance program.

 

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the Justice Department was considering such a move, which would end up expanding the controversial phone records database by not deleting older call records.

 

Under the current system, the database is purged of phone records more than five years old. The Justice Department, in a filing made public Wednesday, said it needs to hold onto the older records as evidence in lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and others.

 

Under the proposal made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the older data would continue to be held, but NSA analysts would not be allowed to search it.

The gruesome irony of course is that after his so heartfelt, if completely scripted and rehearsed, appearance before the US public one month ago, when Obama promised he would do everything in his power to reform the NSA, including the ending of the Section 215 metadata collection, and the retenion of bulk phone records, the president certainly kept his promise. Just not quite in the way that everyone had assumed.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1kiy3fA Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Just in case you thought for a second that the sorry discipline we call economics couldn’t stoop any further into the gutter of academic idiocy and irrelevance, think again. It’s now being reported that ex-Goldman Sachs trader Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre (recently convicted on six counts of securities fraud) will be teaching an honors economics class at the “prestigious” University of Chicago.

There’s nothing like an esteemed University setting the already culturally accepted example that ethics are for suckers. Stealing, cheating and corruption are the values most exalted in today’s world. It doesn’t matter how you achieve your wealth, as long as you attain it. After all, it’s not as if you’ll ever get in trouble for it as long as you work for a “Too Big to Jail” bank.

From the UK’s Independent:

Fabrice Tourre, the former Goldman Sachs trader convicted on six counts of securities fraud six months ago, will teach an honours class in economics at the University of Chicago this spring.

 

Mr Tourre’s weekly Thursday afternoon seminar, called “Elements of Economic Analysis”, is part of his studies for a PhD in economics, after he completed a masters in operations research at Stanford University.

 

Last August, a federal court found “Fabulous Fab”, as he famously styled himself in emails to his girlfriend, liable for six of seven counts of securities fraud relating to the Abacus 2007-AC1 mortgage-linked collateralised debt obligation.

 

At the time, The New Yorker magazine wrote that Mr Tourre was the “only Wall Street banker to be found guilty of any charges having to do with the financial crisis” of 2008.

Don’t worry Fab, modern economics essentially bases its principles on your behavior. A match made in crony heaven.

Full article here.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/N4iMEi Tyler Durden

For the 3rd day in a row, the opening of the US day-session sparked some inexorable desire to buy stocks up to record highs – ignoring the realities of other assets like bonds (lower and lower yields), USD (soaring), VIX (rising), credit spreads (flat) and even JPY carry traders. And for the 3rd day in a row, the initial “pump” has failed and “dumped” back to AUDJPY reality. It seems the all-important green close for 2014 just won’t hold (for now).

 

 

It seems – all of a sudden that “social”, “media”, and “you just don’t get it” stocks are not wanted anymore as TSLA, NFLX, FB, AMZN, and TWR all tumble

 

Charts: Bloomberg

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1hpvQPc Tyler Durden

It was about a year ago when we noted a core component of the US housing non-recovery: the time to sell foreclosed homes had just hit a record of 400 days across the nation. We showed the following chart from RealtyTrac confirming just this:

 

We also proceeded to highlight some thoughts from a real housing expert, not a made for financial comedy TV “housing guru”, in this case Marc Hanson, who pointed out the Bottom line on the Zombie housing market:

Of the 54 million homeowners with mortgages — the primary repeat buyer cohort and a primary builder demand cohort — over 22 million are dead to the housing market. Of the 70 million homeowners — mortgage’d and free and clear — 33 million are Zombies. Thus, we can’t expect housing to act like it has in the past. With so many Zombies it will be impossible for repeat and new home sales to perform as expected. The past 18 month bounce — especially on prices — has been on cheap and easy money from investors looking for a dividend stock and/or Treasury replacement trade. some foreigners following their lead, and finally the ‘dumb money’ (retail) chasing into this summer.

 

But we are running out of greater fools very quickly, especially with first-timers sidelined and new-era “investors” who are quickly pricing themselves out of markets nationwide.

(More can be read in the original article).

Fast forward to today when even the last traces of the lie that sustained the housing recovery myth are being swept away, and we get the following article from Bloomberg titled “Foreclosures Surging in New York-New Jersey Market.” The punchline is quite clear but below, for those who are new to this story, are the key supporting points:

The epicenter of the U.S. foreclosure crisis is shifting to New Jersey and New York, threatening a housing rebound in one of the country’s most densely populated areas.

 

New Jersey has surpassed Florida in having the highest share of residential mortgages that are seriously delinquent or in foreclosure, with New York third, a Mortgage Bankers Association report showed last week. By contrast, hard-hit areas such as Arizona and California have some of the lowest levels of soured loans after allowing banks to quickly foreclose after the 2007 property crash.

 

The number of New York and New Jersey homeowners losing their houses reached a three-year high in 2013. Banks in these states have been slowly working through a backlog of delinquent loans that enabled borrowers to skip mortgage payments for years. Now these properties are poised to empty onto a market where affluent Manhattan suburbs neighbor blighted towns that are struggling most with surging defaults.

The good news (according to some): thousands of people could live mortgage free for years until the bank delays obtaining the keys to the foreclosed property. This was money which instead of going to the mortgage owner, would instead go to buy Made in China trinkets and gizmos and otherwise keep the US retail party humming. Specifically, as we observed long ago in March of 2011, the benefit to the US economy from “deadbeat squatters” was about $50 billion per year. Which brings us to the bad news: the party – retail and otherwise – is ending, as courts and banks finally catch up with inventory levels on both sides of the foreclosure pipeline, and those who lived for years without spending a dollar for the roof above their head are suddenly forced to move out and allocated the major portion of their disposable income toward rent.

Lenders in New Jersey are pushing cases through more quickly and it now takes about two months to process final judgments against delinquent homeowners, compared with a backup of nine months a few years ago, said Kevin Wolfe, assistant director of the Civil Practice Division in the Administrative Office of the Courts.

 

The Office of Foreclosure, which reviews case files before they can move to the final step of sheriff sale, has added four permanent staff members, six law clerks and 10 case analysts since 2012. It previously had seven employees.

 

“We are staffed up to move these cases faster,” Wolfe said. “But the other reason cases are moving more quickly is that lenders have improved their foreclosure practices and worked out logistics with their law firms and, as a result, they’re geared up to handle foreclosures more efficiently.”

Which means that as the inventory bottleneck suddenly unclogs and thousands of new properties hit the market with an urgency to sell before anyone else does, things in New York and especially New Jersey are about to go from bad to worse.

“It is really a delayed reaction in New Jersey and New York,” said Michael Fratantoni, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington. “Loans that were made pre-crisis have been in this state of suspended animation for a number of years. And now, we are beginning to see the pace of resolution pick up.”

 

In January, the number of New York foreclosure auctions reached 527, the highest monthly level since October 2010, according to data firm RealtyTrac. Foreclosure filings in New York City increased 30 percent to 15,993 in 2013, a three-year high, according to RealtyTrac.

 

Almost 10,000 cases in New Jersey headed to a sheriff sale in 2013, 47 percent more than the year before and the highest level since 2009, according to the New Jersey Administrative Office of the courts. Across the country, repossessions fell 31 percent in 2013 to the lowest since 2007, according to RealtyTrac.

The implication is that prices – already suffering in these two core states – are about to go far, far lower:

The real estate markets in New York and New Jersey are trailing the rest of the country as a result. Prices in New Jersey, the most densely populated state, climbed 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, compared with a 7.7 percent jump for the U.S, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said yesterday. New York values rose 3.7 percent.

 

“Price increases that are occurring in the rest of the country are not likely to happen in the New York-New Jersey area, with the potential inventory that can come at any time,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors.

 

“When one sees a price increase in Phoenix or many other parts of the country, one can assume it’s a genuine increase from falling inventory,” he said. “If it happens in Edison, New Jersey, or Long Island, New York, one has to ask, ’Is this for real or just temporary?”

Actually, Larry, when one sees price increase in Phoenix i) one will be wrong as prices in Phoenix just posted their first monthly decline since 2011, and ii) nobody can assume anything is genuine in a housing market in which mortgage origination just dropped to a 19 year low, meaning only those with abundant cash and no regard for cost can continue buying.

Everyone else is about to get a very harsh lesson in what it means to have been lied to by the propaganda machine for years, and suddenly have nothing to show for it but some vastly overpriced real estate.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/MuCc4i Tyler Durden