Smile, Super Bowl
fans! The New York City Police Department has you under even closer
and creepier surveillance than usual. The New York Civil Liberties
Union reported finding over 2,000 surveillance cameras on
the streets of Manhattan alone, before the stepped up
security for the big football game. Now the NYPD is deploying an
additional 200 or so “temporary” surveillance cameras in midtown in
anticipation of the festivities.
The New York Police Department has quietly installed about 200
temporary surveillance cameras in midtown Manhattan to help spot
trouble along “Super Bowl Boulevard,” a 13-block street fair on
Broadway that’s expected to draw large crowds during the windup to
the game. Banners promoting the fair compete on the same lampposts
with decidedly less festive signs reading, “NYPD Security Camera in
Area.”
Counting and mapping the cameras that were already in place is a project of the
NYCLU. The organization’s activists tallied 2,397 cameras
watching public places, just in Manhattan. Outer-borough counts are
yet to come. But the vast majority of those 2,000+ cameras are
privately owned. Only an estimated 300
were installed and maintained by government agencies. So the 200
new additions represent a major upping of the ante, even if they
remain temporary.
Private cameras are usually used to protect property and deter
or record crime against specific people and businesses. But public
cameras can be networked together and monitored by people who have
the coercive power of the state at their command.
“Government has the power to investigate, prosecute, and
potentially jail people and that’s a very different thing from
doing what officers did in Boston which is responding to a known
crime by reviewing existing footage,” Peter Bibring of the American
Civil Liberties Union of Southern California
told Reason TV last May.
So, the installation of 200 new police-controlled cameras may
not be such a positive thing.
See Reason TV’s post-Boston bombing take on the new enthusiasm
for surveillance cameras.
Smile, Super Bowl
fans! The New York City Police Department has you under even closer
and creepier surveillance than usual. The New York Civil Liberties
Union reported finding over 2,000 surveillance cameras on
the streets of Manhattan alone, before the stepped up
security for the big football game. Now the NYPD is deploying an
additional 200 or so “temporary” surveillance cameras in midtown in
anticipation of the festivities.
The New York Police Department has quietly installed about 200
temporary surveillance cameras in midtown Manhattan to help spot
trouble along “Super Bowl Boulevard,” a 13-block street fair on
Broadway that’s expected to draw large crowds during the windup to
the game. Banners promoting the fair compete on the same lampposts
with decidedly less festive signs reading, “NYPD Security Camera in
Area.”
Counting and mapping the cameras that were already in place is a project of the
NYCLU. The organization’s activists tallied 2,397 cameras
watching public places, just in Manhattan. Outer-borough counts are
yet to come. But the vast majority of those 2,000+ cameras are
privately owned. Only an estimated 300
were installed and maintained by government agencies. So the 200
new additions represent a major upping of the ante, even if they
remain temporary.
Private cameras are usually used to protect property and deter
or record crime against specific people and businesses. But public
cameras can be networked together and monitored by people who have
the coercive power of the state at their command.
“Government has the power to investigate, prosecute, and
potentially jail people and that’s a very different thing from
doing what officers did in Boston which is responding to a known
crime by reviewing existing footage,” Peter Bibring of the American
Civil Liberties Union of Southern California
told Reason TV last May.
So, the installation of 200 new police-controlled cameras may
not be such a positive thing.
See Reason TV’s post-Boston bombing take on the new enthusiasm
for surveillance cameras.
Organizing for Action, formerly known as Obama
for America and still located online at BarackObama.com, is a
501(c)4, which is allowed to do political advocacy but prohibited
from supporting a specific candidate, has joined in the pre-State
of the Union propaganda push. They want to know what you’re most
interested in hearing the president talk about. The OFA e-mail:
Edward —
In a few short days, President Obama will lay out his plans for
2014, but before that, we want to know what you’re most interested
in hearing from him on Tuesday.
Take this quick, one-question survey and let OFA
know:
The e-mail follows an official White House e-mail from Valerie
Jarrett where she talked about how much work she’s putting into an
address that for nearly two hundred years was merely sent as a
letter to the Congress. It’s a “hectic week,” she wrote, with busy
policy advisors and speech writers.
Joe Biden sent a White House e-mail, calling the
Constitutionally-mandated update the President has to give Congress
a “plan for the upcoming year of action,” calling the State of the
Union “part of a tradition that dates back to our founding
fathers,” without mentioning, naturally, that from the presidency
of Thomas Jefferson all the way through Woodrow Wilson, presidents
were able to meet their constitutional obligation without the pomp
and circumstance introduced to it since Wilson brought back the
live reading.
The State of the Union will be next Tuesday. You’ll be able to
watch it on any of the networks and most of the cable news
channels, or follow along as we livetweet here at Hit &
Run.
The RNC has passed a
resolution relating to NSA surveillance which outlines the
following encouragements:
RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee encourages
Republican lawmakers to enact legislation to amend Section 215 of
the USA Patriot Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA
Amendments Act to make it clear that blanket surveillance of the
Internet activity, phone records and correspondence — electronic,
physical, and otherwise — of any person residing in the U.S. is
prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in
adversarial proceedings before a public court;
RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee encourages
Republican lawmakers to call for a special committee to
investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this
domestic spying and the committee should create specific
recommendations for legal and regulatory reform ot end
unconstitutional surveillance as well as hold accountable those
public officials who are found to be responsible for this
unconstitutional surveillance; and
RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee encourages
Republican lawmakers to immediately take action to halt current
unconstitutional surveillance programs and provide a full public
accounting of the NSA’s data collection programs.
According to
MSNBC, “Not a single member rose to object or call for further
debate, as occurred for other resolutions.”
The news comes a day after the Privacy and Civil Liberties
Oversight Board released its
report on the NSA’s collection of telephone data. Three of the
five members of the board said that the NSA’s telephone data
collection program is
illegal. The report’s executive summary states that the program
has also not helped prevent any terrorist attacks:
Based on the information provided to the Board, including
classified briefings and documentation, we have not identified a
single instance involving a threat to the United States in which
the program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a
counterterrorism investigation. Moreover, we are aware of no
instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery
of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a
terrorist attack.
Earlier this week,
I wrote about a recent Pew/USA Today poll that
highlighted, among other things, that the GOP is divided when it
comes to the NSA. Among those who consider themselves Republican or
Republican-leaning and associate with the Tea Party 68 percent
disapprove of the NSA’s collection of phone and Internet data.
Among those who consider themselves Republic or Republican-leaning
but not party of the Tea Party the collection has 52 percent
disapproval.
While it is good to see the RNC passing a
resolution condemning the NSA’s outrageous behavior, some
Republican legislators in Washington, D.C. are strong defenders of
the NSA’s data collection. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Rep. Mike
Rogers (R-Mich.) are among the most prominent Republican supporters
of the NSA’s activities. King has gone so far as to say that the
NSA
should spy on members of Congress, and has said that Sen.
Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of the Republican lawmakers who has been
critical of the NSA, is either “totally uninformed” or part of the
so-called “hate America crowd.”
Rep. Rogers has said that NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden,
who he calls a
traitor, may have had help from the Russians in leaking
confidential information.
MSNBC notes that the passing of the RNC’s resolution “is a sign
of the increasing influence of the libertarian wing of the party,
especially supporters of Ron Paul and his son, Rand Paul, who have
made government overreach in pursuit of terrorists a top
issue.”
Former Reason man Radley Balko from his new perch at
the Washington Post points out the
dangers of prescription drug user databases, especially when
government agencies get access to them without court order.
After discussing a recent legal challenge to the practice in
Oregon, and how Pennsylvania is trying to create more
records of its citizens prescription drug use for government snoops
to enjoy:
Imagine a law enforcement officer looking for ammunition in a
divorce or custody dispute. Or perhaps a politician who takes the
wrong position on police pensions or police accountability might
see his painkiller scripts leaked to the press. (That sort of
retaliation wouldn’t
be unheard of.) Moraff points out that Virginia’s prescription
database has already been accessed by hackers, who then threatened
to release the records of 8 million people.
But [there’s a] less obvious problem—the chilling effect this
will have on doctors. For example, one of the red flags federal
investigators look for when looking for doctors to accuse of “drug
dealing” is the overall number of prescriptions a given doctor
writes for various controlled drugs. That means that as he’s
deciding your course of treatment, or whether to prescribe opioids
to improve your mother’s quality of life as she’s dying from
terminal cancer, he’ll be thinking about how many scripts for those
drugs he may have already written for other patients. It’s an
intrusion on the doctor-patient relationship, and could influence a
doctor’s decisions about a patient’s treatment with factors that
have nothing to do what’s best for that particular patient.
VIX’s 25% spike from yesterday’s lows to over 17% is the largest jump in 7 months. Stocks are continuing to collapse broadly (even as Bonds are stable) with the Dow almost unchanged from Taper now. Trannies are back to their 50DMA for the first time in over 3 months and the Dow and S&P are well through the 50DMA. The USD is stable but JPY is leading the charge lower in stocks. Credit markets are at 7 week wides. Not “off the lows”
Back in the years just before the previous housing bubble burst (not to be confused with the current, even more acute one), one person did the math on subprime, realized that the housing – and credit bubble – collapse was imminent, and warned anyone who cared to listen – almost nobody did. That man was Kyle Bass, and because he had the guts to put the money where his mouth was, he made a lot of money. Fast forward to 2014 when subprime is all the rage again and the subprime bubble is bigger than ever: it may comes as a surprise to some that in 2013, subprime debt was one of the best performing fixed income instruments, returning a whopping 17% in a year when most other debt instruments generated negative returns. And this time, while Kyle Bass is busy – collecting nickels (each costing a dime) perhaps – it is someone else who has stepped into Bass’ Cassandra shoes: that someone is Jeff Gundlach.
“These properties are rotting away,” Gundlach, 54, said last week on a conference call with investors, about homes stuck in foreclosure pipelines, adding that it could take six years to resolve defaulted loans made to the least creditworthy borrowers before the real-estate crash. Those residences are a sign of an uneven U.S. recovery, which has left blighted neighborhoods in cities from Los Angeles to Detroit and about 8 million borrowers still owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.
But while warning on yet another subprime implosion is nothing new, and many have done it in the past, why this time may be different and far more timely, is because seriously delinquent borrowers are literally soaring, up from 7% in 2012 to 32% currently!
A measure of losses on mortgage debt rose last quarter for the first time since 2011, Fitch Ratings said in a report yesterday. The reversal was driven by an aging pool of loans in the foreclosure process, particularly in states such as Florida and New Jersey which give added legal protections to homeowners against repossessions.
About 32 percent of seriously delinquent borrowers, those at least 90 days late, haven’t made a payment in more than four years, up 7 percent from the beginning of 2012, according to Fitch analyst Sean Nelson.
“These timelines could still increase for another year or so,” Nelson said, leading to even higher losses because of added legal and tax costs, and a greater potential for properties to deteriorate.
This means that the capacity of lenders to absorb losses is rapidly declining as inbound cashflows slow to a trickle. And not only that, but loss severities, or how much a lender will lose in case of default are also grinding higher:
Loss severities on subprime debt, tied to risky mortgages that inflated the housing bubble, increased to 75.9 percent from 74.1 in the last three months of the year. The severities — a measure of losses suffered on a liquidated loan — peaked at 77.1 percent in early 2012 from 12.8 percent at the end of 2006, during the property boom.
Gundlach isn’t the only one:
“In 2013, we were very bullish on subprime,” said Anup Agarwal, head of mortgage-backed and structured products at Pasadena, California-based Western Asset Management. “It was overall a big winner and you saw that reflected in prices.” Agarwal, whose firm managed $443 billion in fixed-income assets as of Sept. 30, has in the past six months turned more negative on subprime and started shifting money into Alt-A securities.
One William Street Capital Management LP, a hedge fund firm with $2.7 billion in assets, is expecting reduced losses as home prices continue to rise, according to a letter sent to investors this month. The investment firm said increased regulations have added to costs for firms that deal with troubled mortgages.
For subprime prices to make sense, recoveries must improve but won’t because of the backlog of loans, Gundlach said.
Gundlach’s take home message is simple:
“The housing market is softer than people think,” Gundlach said, pointing to a slowdown in mortgage refinancing, the time it’s taking to liquidate defaulted loans and shares of homebuilders that have dropped 14 percent since reaching a high in May. D.R. Horton Inc., the largest builder by revenue, fell 1.9 percent to $21.54 at 9:43 a.m. in New York trading, extending its drop since May to 22 percent.
The money manager has cautioned investors before about avoiding subprime. In 2012, he said investors can’t assume the “lines will head south” speaking about loss severities for loans and then last year, referred to the debt as being stubborn.
Alas, warnings in a centrally-planned system in which only what the head of the Fed does matters, are lost on everyone: such was the case with Bass, such will be the case with Gundlach for the simple reason that the ever fainter music is still playing, and those whose money comes from furiously shuffling worthless assets back and forth, must dance. Plus by now everyone knows that by the time people actually do listen, it is always too late.
Ukrainian protesters erected more street barricades and occupied another government ministry building on Friday after the failure of crisis talks with President Yanukovich, as opposition leader Klitschko feared "more deaths" pointing to a weekend of increasingly violent protests. Reuters reports that Yanukovich's party stated "the situation has grown sharper throughout the country," and called on people to disregard the calls of "radical troublemakers" to turn out for protest rallies. Klitschko punched back, "Yanukovich has declared war on his own people. He is trying to hold on to power at the price of blood and de-stabilization of the situation in the country. He has to be stopped." The international community is getting involved with Hollande calling for "dialogue" but it is Biden's threat of "consequences" that spurred a different protest at the US embassy – "The US is behind everything that is happening in Kiev’s downtown right now."
Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in the capital after Yanukovich backed away from signing a free trade deal with the European Union, which many people saw as the key to a European future, in favor of financial aid from Ukraine's old Soviet master Russia.
But the movement has since widened into broader protests against perceived misrule and corruption in the Yanukovich leadership.
Protesters have been enraged too by sweeping anti-protest legislation that was rammed through parliament last week by Yanukovich loyalists in the assembly.
and is spreading…
Yanukovich's Party of the Regions confirmed reports that two months of anti-government protests were spreading to other parts of the country, particularly the west, where "extremists" had seized regional administration buildings.
And will get worse…
Opposition leader Vitaly Klitschko, who with two other opposition leaders failed to wring any concessions from Yanukovich late last night, said the only way out of the impasse lay with international mediation.
"Any discussion of how to settle the crisis in Ukraine must take place with the involvement of the international mediators of the highest level," a statement from his Udar party quoted him as saying.
"Instead of shifting to solving the situation by common sense, Yanukovich has declared war on his own people. He is trying to hold on to power at the price of blood and de-stabilization of the situation in the country. He has to be stopped," the boxer-turned-politician said.
…
Masked protesters, some carrying riot police shields seized as trophies, stood guard as others piled up sandbags packed with frozen snow to form new ramparts across the road leading down into the square.
…
Opposition leader Vitaly Klitschko, after leaving a second round of talks with Yanukovich empty handed, late on Thursday voiced fears the impasse could now lead to further bloodshed.
But at the US embassy, a different crowd is revolting…
…a new faction of intelligent Ukrainian protesters has sprung up this week.
They see right through the covert western operation:
“The US is behind everything that is happening in Kiev’s downtown right now.”
From yesterday afternoon, this new group have begun to encircle the US Embassy in Kiev. Their demand to the US:
‘Stop meddling in our affairs, and stop sponsoring unrest mobs in our country’.
Following John McCain’srecent trip to Kiev practicing his new brand of international racketeering by threatening the Ukraine if they did not join the EU, it seems that the real Ukrainians have finally figured out that the pro-EU mobs have been staged by a conclave of western NGO’s and ‘democracy foundations’ – the very same nest of hornets who brought on the fabled ‘Arab Spring’ to the Middle East three years ago.
The main goal for Washington and the City of London is to separate Kiev from Moscow, and thus weaken Russia’s hand in Eurasia.
For EU central bankers, the prospect of raping and privatising the Urkraine economy- is also a big incentive.
It looks like the old tricks are no longer working. At last, the ‘colour revolution’ jig may finally be up…
A huge crowd of demonstrators has surrounded the US embassy in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, protesting against Washington’s meddling in the country’s internal affairs.
The event was organized by Kievans for Clean City, a new pro-government activist group which has spoken out against the rioters and violence in downtown Kiev.
Several thousand demonstrators are taking part, urging the US to “stop sponsoring” mass unrests, local media reported.
“The US is behind everything that is happening in Kiev’s downtown right now. The financing is coming from over there. This has to be stopped. That is what we came out here to say to the whole world: ‘US – stop! US – there needs to be peace in Ukraine,’” said Ivan Protsenko, one of the movement’s leaders.
Ukrainian protesters erected more street barricades and occupied another government ministry building on Friday after the failure of crisis talks with President Yanukovich, as opposition leader Klitschko feared "more deaths" pointing to a weekend of increasingly violent protests. Reuters reports that Yanukovich's party stated "the situation has grown sharper throughout the country," and called on people to disregard the calls of "radical troublemakers" to turn out for protest rallies. Klitschko punched back, "Yanukovich has declared war on his own people. He is trying to hold on to power at the price of blood and de-stabilization of the situation in the country. He has to be stopped." The international community is getting involved with Hollande calling for "dialogue" but it is Biden's threat of "consequences" that spurred a different protest at the US embassy – "The US is behind everything that is happening in Kiev’s downtown right now."
Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in the capital after Yanukovich backed away from signing a free trade deal with the European Union, which many people saw as the key to a European future, in favor of financial aid from Ukraine's old Soviet master Russia.
But the movement has since widened into broader protests against perceived misrule and corruption in the Yanukovich leadership.
Protesters have been enraged too by sweeping anti-protest legislation that was rammed through parliament last week by Yanukovich loyalists in the assembly.
and is spreading…
Yanukovich's Party of the Regions confirmed reports that two months of anti-government protests were spreading to other parts of the country, particularly the west, where "extremists" had seized regional administration buildings.
And will get worse…
Opposition leader Vitaly Klitschko, who with two other opposition leaders failed to wring any concessions from Yanukovich late last night, said the only way out of the impasse lay with international mediation.
"Any discussion of how to settle the crisis in Ukraine must take place with the involvement of the international mediators of the highest level," a statement from his Udar party quoted him as saying.
"Instead of shifting to solving the situation by common sense, Yanukovich has declared war on his own people. He is trying to hold on to power at the price of blood and de-stabilization of the situation in the country. He has to be stopped," the boxer-turned-politician said.
…
Masked protesters, some carrying riot police shields seized as trophies, stood guard as others piled up sandbags packed with frozen snow to form new ramparts across the road leading down into the square.
…
Opposition leader Vitaly Klitschko, after leaving a second round of talks with Yanukovich empty handed, late on Thursday voiced fears the impasse could now lead to further bloodshed.
But at the US embassy, a different crowd is revolting…
…a new faction of intelligent Ukrainian protesters has sprung up this week.
They see right through the covert western operation:
“The US is behind everything that is happening in Kiev’s downtown right now.”
From yesterday afternoon, this new group have begun to encircle the US Embassy in Kiev. Their demand to the US:
‘Stop meddling in our affairs, and stop sponsoring unrest mobs in our country’.
Following John McCain’srecent trip to Kiev practicing his new brand of international racketeering by threatening the Ukraine if they did not join the EU, it seems that the real Ukrainians have finally figured out that the pro-EU mobs have been staged by a conclave of western NGO’s and ‘democracy foundations’ – the very same nest of hornets who brought on the fabled ‘Arab Spring’ to the Middle East three years ago.
The main goal for Washington and the City of London is to separate Kiev from Moscow, and thus weaken Russia’s hand in Eurasia.
For EU central bankers, the prospect of raping and privatising the Urkraine economy- is also a big incentive.
It looks like the old tricks are no longer working. At last, the ‘colour revolution’ jig may finally be up…
A huge crowd of demonstrators has surrounded the US embassy in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, protesting against Washington’s meddling in the country’s internal affairs.
The event was organized by Kievans for Clean City, a new pro-government activist group which has spoken out against the rioters and violence in downtown Kiev.
Several thousand demonstrators are taking part, urging the US to “stop sponsoring” mass unrests, local media reported.
“The US is behind everything that is happening in Kiev’s downtown right now. The financing is coming from over there. This has to be stopped. That is what we came out here to say to the whole world: ‘US – stop! US – there needs to be peace in Ukraine,’” said Ivan Protsenko, one of the movement’s leaders.
My sense these days is that nobody except me and maybe a few others work on fridays in America, especially on a cold and icy day like today. It is a slow day. So…let’s talk disintermediation.
dis·in·ter·me·di·a·tion
noun. reduction in the use of intermediaries between producers and consumers, for example by investing directly in the securities market rather than through a bank.
Here are four areas that I find particularly interesting when it comes to thinking about disintermediation:
Wealth/Capital (gold, bitchezzz!!!)
Relationship with a higher power (God, bitchezzz!!!)
Food (garden, bitchezzz!!!)
Security (guns, bitchezzz!!!)
Over the years, I have found many ways to practice disintermediation in each of these areas. I have written articles and comments and posted photos on Zerohedge about some of these efforts. Today, I invite you to discuss with me our successes, failures, and hopes in the comments section below. I am thinking this will be similar to an open thread, except I would like us to keep to the topic of practicing disintermediation as much as possible.
Here are a few examples to get us started:
A great way to safely store a little gold is by placing 1/10th ounce krugerrands in an L.L. Bean money belt, and hanging it in the closet with a bunch of other belts. Hiding in plain sight, and readily portable.
I found it helpful to write a Gratitude List of the things I am most thankful for, and placing it in a place where I see it every day, not just in the church on Sundays. In my experience, Veggie Tales is right…a thankful heart is a happy heart.
Most places in America still have a county agriculture extension office where one can get a list of the plants that grow well locally, when to plant them, when to harvest them, how to protect them from pests, and how to fertilize them, etc.