Business / Economic / Financial

[ This link to a somewhat more cumulative blog posts page will precede current days news since most all topics remain current in terms of impact and longer-term effect and can be searched by topical index term more easily. The same is provided since the blog site http://alpeiablog.blogspot.com has just been censored as to size by google which is typical for google as nsa / cia / gov’t shill as more are becoming aware of. The same is true for microsoft, another co. that’s seen their best days and relies on the government to maintain their monopoly. Up to now the better page http://www.scribd.com/alpeia is provided for ease of formatting and clarity thereby while the Washington Post page is the real deal but without formatting http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/community/mypost/index.html?plckPersonaPage=PersonaComments&plckUserId=alpeia&newspaperUserId=alpeia (Only up to 3-11-11-you must be logged in - (Washington Post) [ Comments COMMENTS ARE CLOSED WHILE WE UPGRADE OUR SYSTEMS ] the comments are no longer archived on their site ) . The following is the cumulative archive of blog posts / topics for 2010 as the new year starts anew (and archived by quarter): http://albertpeia.com/December312010postsarchive.htm or PDF formatted version
http://albertpeia.com/December312010postsarchive.pdf ]

Evidence: Bin Laden worked like a crime boss (Washington Post) [ Come on! This is all such total bs at this point at least if not sooner. How totally preposterous! Now we can add that word picture … Vito Corleone of ‘Godfather’ fame’s opening words, ‘I love america’ … What in pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america isn’t operated as a crime syndicate led by a crime boss? Who shot bin Laden? Former SEALs fill in the blanks (WP) `[` Well, here I am on the same page as a former navy seal: Jesse Ventura Questions Obama’s Narrative Of Bin Laden Raid Former Navy SEAL and Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura has questioned Barack Obama’s official narrative regarding the raid on Osama Bin Laden, telling the Alex Jones Show of his suspicions that Osama died years ago, and expressing disbelief that the man seen flicking between TV channels in the video released by the White House Saturday was actually Bin Laden. [Who is foolish enough to believe anything they say; particularly their scripted, ever-changing, evolving, self-serving accounts belied only by truth / reality as told by those with true courage and integrity; as, for example Jessica Lynch, etc. White House Press Secretary “Floundering Under Pressure” Of Flip-Flopping Bin Laden Fable Staged: White House “Situation Room” Photos Part Of Bin Laden Fable .. No resistance in “cold-blooded” U.S. raid: Pakistan officials The Cost of Bin Laden: $3 Trillion Over 15 Years Bin Had The Growing Coverup: Osama and “The Big Lie” The Obama administration and the corporate media are concocting an ever-more elaborate and spectacular theater around the “heroic” murder of the CIA intelligence myth/CIA asset Osama bin Laden. Red Alert: Government Had Osama bin Laden Frozen for Years Nimmo / Jones | Videos [ I personally believe Osama’s been dead for quite some time. Indeed, for one on dialysis, he otherwise would have been nothing less than a modern day miracle in terms of longevity / mortality rates for those so afflicted, particularly under the ‘stressful’ circumstances involving evading capture, betrayal for money, etc.. His ‘surfacing’ for a ‘talk’ wouldn’t even pass muster in the most rudimentary requirements for ‘proof of life’. The release at this time of the ‘announcement’ is, rather than a victory lap so to speak, but rather a sign of weakness and desperation on the part of america whose global and domestic economic, financial, and geopolitical position is substantially diminished and declining rapidly and whose military industrial complex welfare plan along with the Orwellian diversion of the masses could at best yield but a pyrrhic victory. Moreover, the same comes at a time of systemic failure for pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america. While the ‘announcement’ plays well for the nonce, to the dumb, uninformed back home, the same will galvanize resistance in the name of their now martyr, Osama Bin Laden.]

Debt ceiling battles have negotiation experts shaking their heads Professional negotiators weigh in on lawmakers’ inept attempts to negotiate the national debt ceiling. (Washington Post) [ Boehner seeks more than $2 trillion in cuts (Washington Post) [ I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking ‘Riiiiight! … that’ll happen … and all without cuts to endless war spending … while the situation’s more than that dire, the advice is … don’t hold your breath! Milbank: The GOP’s juvenile debate (Washington Post) [ Mr. Milbank has lamentably become the rush limbaugh / sean hannity of the newspaper world, though he barks and apologizes for dems (and wobama the b for b*** s***) only (as they for the gop / bushies only). A political minefield in Treasury plan (Washington Post) [ What plan! . Let the budget battle begin Congress returns to fight over the nation’s solvency. (WP) [ Stated another way, the nation’s solvency is over. .. america’s defacto bankrupt with no end in sight.. interest alone is eating progressively into GDP beyond the subterfuge.. Gerson: How serious are we about the deficit? (WP) [ Not much! I mean come on! Davis ‘… This is how we pay off our current debts and I think bondholders are simply happy to get anything out of a country that admits it owes $15Tn (1/4 of global GDP) but probably owes closer to $60Tn (entire global GDP) in the form of unfunded liabilities. The funniest thing about this (and you have to laugh) is to see Conservative pundits get on TV and talk about how we need to cut $100Bn worth of discretionary spending to "fix" this (while continuing to spend $1Tn on the military and $1Tn on tax cuts for the top 1% each year). There is no fixing this and even a Republican said you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. THIS HOUSE OF CARDS IS TEETERING FOLKS – PLEASE BE CAREFUL OUT THERE! ‘ … Suckers’ rally to keep suckers suckered: Philadelphia Fed Depresses Economists Durden ‘..the Philadelphia Fed collapsed from a revised 43.4 (a 27 year high) to 18.5, the lowest since November 2010… This is an especially great opportunity to sell / take profits while you still can since there's much worse to come! U.S. Economy Remains on Life Support Hansen ‘

The Fed press conference contained almost no new economic insights;
An FOMC meeting with no policy changes or insights..

`CIVIL RIGHTS PANEL TO PURSUE FED PROBE IN BLACK PANTHER CASE... ‘`In emotional and personal testimony, an ex-Justice official who quit over the handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases that involve black defendants and white victims’ Cases against Wall Street lag despite Holder’s vows to target financial fraud Obama has promised to hold Wall Street accountable for the meltdown. ):

‘THE OBAMA DECEPTION’ http://albertpeia.com/obamadeceptionhighqualityversion.flv ]

Hedge fund billionaire convicted of fraud Raj Rajaratnam was convicted on all 14 counts of fraud and conspiracy in the biggest insider-trading case in a generation, handing the government a victory after it was pummeled for bringing so few high-profile prosecutions out of the financial crisis. (Washington Post) [

Raj Rajaratnam Found Guilty On All Counts [ I share the following sentiments from Wall St Cheat Sheet: ‘…2) Insiders are finally getting busted. Although the media loves the Raj Rajaratnam trial and his guilty on all 14 counts, who really gives a s*** compared with what large banks, investment banks, and mortgage companies did to the US economy. So long as the Dick Fulds of the world are sipping champagne in Capri, Italy, these insider trading cases are basically sideshows…’ ] SEC urged to ease fundraising rules (Washington Post) [ REDUNDANT! I mean come on! Any more ‘easing’ and we’d be in negative territory where they actually reward you for breaking the rules which is currently the reality in pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt, meaningfully lawless america. Roche 'The worst part of it ...Obama, who vowed change, has done almost nothing to fix any of it and in fact continues most of the policies that helped get us here in the first place’ ‘INSIDE JOB’ Ferguson wins Oscar for Documentary on the unprosecuted massive extant fraud in the (many) TRILLIONS by the frauds on wall street ( and declares with oscar in hand that not one high level wall street exec has been prosecuted … despite ‘earning’ billiions from the fraud ). UPDATE: MORE CLAIMS OF RACE BIAS AT JUSTICE... `‘`In emotional and personal testimony, an ex-Justice official who quit over the handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases that involve black defendants and white victims ' Cases against Wall Street lag despite Holder’s vows to target financial fraud WP | Obama has promised to hold Wall Street accountable for the meltdown.

‘THE OBAMA DECEPTION’ http://albertpeia.com/obamadeceptionhighqualityversion.flv

People must realize that though having but 5% of the world’s population, america can boast 76% of the world’s serial killers and the highest crime rates in the world by far. http://www.albertpeia.com/realifeamericaserialkillers.mpg . Defacto bankrupt, fraudulent america also spends more on military spending than all the nations of the world combined... federal employees / contractors, cia, all 3 branches of the u.s. government, etc., are included in this evolved american trait of inherent criminality ( http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/ricosummarytoFBIunderpenaltyofperjury.pdf http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/PeiavCoanetals.htm ). That perverse field of dreams I’ve previously alluded to, the american nightmare, if you build / contrive war, they will come. And, they do; seals of them (among others); and when their ‘tours’ are done, it’s murder inc./contract killing for hire that they’ve won (cia, mob, etc.). The 20th century, the ‘bloodiest century’, not coincidentally referred to as the american century, brings longings of nostalgia to american criminals who, like Pavlov’s dogs salivate at the prospect of killing, raping, pillaging, and plundering which primitive mindset they have mistakenly been conditioned to connect to their now irretrievably lost success as a nation state; and to the contrary, has become globally and domestically self-destructive / self-defeating. The entire 911 / Bin Laden scenario just doesn’t pass the smell test and reeks of political desperation and Orwellian opportunism.

AIG to sell Treasury shares The government soon will begin unloading its 92.1 percent ownership stake in the bailout company. (Washington Post) [ Who’s the unlucky sucker? Ultimately, a pension fund or two or three, etc., or maybe you or an equally unlucky member of your family. Stock market on a roll despite slowing economic growth, lingering unemployment[Also known as reality! Roll … yes, indeed … everyone’s to get rolled! ] (WP) Dow is up more than 10 percent for 2011, to its highest point in nearly three years. [ Same bubble scenario preceeding last crash (including currency manipulation); yet, far worse this time owing to insurmountable debt and defacto bankruptcy of the nation.

Fed Chairman Bernanke does reality TV (WP) [ Except the ‘NO-RECESSION HELICOPTER BEN B.S. BERNANKE’ show is scripted unreality … even with his reduction in estimate for ‘economic growth’, the frauds on wall street still rallied. Bernanke prepares to make history (WP) [ He already has! $6 gas acomin’, $1,508+ gold, $46+ silver, other commodities at record levels, hyperinflation as predicted well on the way from over-printing of fiat paper currency by fed as predicted, etc., Equity Valuations Are Forming the Second Biggest Bubble in U.S. History Kaspar 'Despite the terrible economic performance of the past ten years, equity valuations are the 2nd largest bubble in U.S. history... According to Yale University’s Dr. Robert Shiller, the market is now 41% overvalued according to this valuation metric. The only time the markets have been more overvalued was a few brief months in 1929 and the tech bubble

... growth in earnings have been artificially manufactured...

· The change in accounting rules for the financial sector by FASB has generated massive “false” account profits beginning in 2009.

· The extended (and then further extended) unemployment benefits have kept an artificially higher demand for consumer consumption. As a result, the US government has artificially subsidized corporate profits.

· The billions saved through “free loading” by homeowners who have defaulted on their mortgages yet maintained their residence, thus living without a mortgage payment.

· The artificially suppressed interest rates...

Dave's Daily 'If you can keep interest rates this low this long, its inevitable cheap financing can allow companies to start cobbling each other up. Further Ben's policies allow companies like IBM to sell bonds at 1% and buy back shares with the proceeds (total paper bubble-scam). POMO is occurring almost daily and Primary Dealers can buy back their shares and pay dividends with what essentially is taxpayer money-- … an especially great opportunity to sell / take profits while you still can since there's much worse to come!

24 Signs Of Economic Decline In America ‘The United States is in the middle of a devastating long-term economic decline’ ] States face shortfall for retirees]

Stocks slip after three-day rally (Washington Post) [ Top 3 Reasons Markets Tanked with Oil WSCS‘DJI -1.02% SP500 -1.11% Nasdaq -0.93% Gold -0.82% Oil -4.63% at $98.88. Gold sold off ..Silver lost over 8%.

1) Commodities and Oil got slaughtered. .. widening trade gap.

2) Insiders finally getting busted.. but what about what large banks, investment banks, and mortgage companies did to the US economy…these insider trading cases are basically sideshows…

Fed official calls for vigilance (WP) [ Who’s still buying their b***s***! Much higher prices / inflation’s already here. 24 Signs Of Economic Decline In America ‘The US is in the middle of a devastating long-term economic decline’ ] States face shortfall for retirees (WP) (The frauds on wall street et als should be criminally prosecuted, jailed, fined, and disgorgement imposed), and have used the mideast turmoil to obfuscate their failure. Dave's Daily 'If you can keep interest rates this low this long, its inevitable cheap financing can allow companies to start cobbling each other up. Further Ben's policies allow companies like IBM to sell bonds at 1% and buy back shares with the proceeds (total paper bubble-scam). POMO is occurring almost daily and Primary Dealers can buy back their shares and pay dividends with what essentially is taxpayer money-- … an especially great opportunity to sell / take profits while you still can since there's much worse to come! America Is a Failed State Because It Won’t Prosecute Financial Crime Washington’s Blog / the grim economic reality [ http://albertpeia.com/grimreality.htm ]. Selling In May Is Very Good Advice This Year Harding / April Is a Good Time to Sell Adler Equity Valuations Are Forming the Second Biggest Bubble in U.S. History Kaspar ... According to Yale University’s Dr. Robert Shiller, the market is now 41% overvalued …only time the markets have been more overvalued .. 1929 & tech bubble. http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/4/12/saupload_cape_thumb1.png PRECHTER: We're Still In A Massive Bear Market And Stocks Will Crash To New Lows Bernanke prepares to make history (WP) [ He already has! $6 gas acomin’.. hyperinflation as predicted well on the way from over-printing of fiat paper currency by fed as predicted, etc., Equity Valuations Are Forming the Second Biggest Bubble in U.S. History Kaspar 'Despite the terrible economic performance of the past ten years, equity valuations are the 2nd largest bubble in U.S. history... According to Yale University’s Dr. Robert Shiller, the market is now 41% overvalued according to this valuation metric. The only time the markets have been more overvalued was a few brief months in 1929 and the tech bubble

... growth in earnings have been artificially manufactured...

· The change in accounting rules for the financial sector by FASB has generated massive “false” account profits beginning in 2009.

lobbies and frauds while diverting attention from the more ’mundane’ tasks of governance. War on Terror is a Reichstag Fire False Flag Operation Sartre** | If you really want justice for the 911 murders, you must face reality and look within your own government for the true terrorists.

Why Does the Terrorist Kingpin Look Better Than He Did in 2001? Washington’s Blog

Bin Laden Hoax….The Rest Of The Story Cartalucci .. examination of mainstream media’s headlines and interviews with the CIA director himself calls into question the official narrative.

Hoax: White House Claims 4-Year-Old Bin Laden Video Is New Footage

Then, of course, there’s also: that ‘pearl harbor event’ so sought by the neo-cons / war mongers still defies explanation (ie., the ‘stand-down order’, symmetrical implosions, foreknowledge by some {who conveniently ‘missed the party’ that day}, etc.. Some links, echoing the unbelief akin to the ‘Jessica Lynch’, Tillman, etc., affairs follow. People must realize that though having but 5% of the world’s population, america can boast 76% of the world’s serial killers, and the highest crime rates in the world by far. ]

Raj Rajaratnam Found Guilty On All Counts [ I share the following sentiments from Wall St Cheat Sheet: ‘…2) Insiders are finally getting busted. Although the media loves the Raj Rajaratnam trial and his guilty on all 14 counts, who really gives a s*** compared with what large banks, investment banks, and mortgage companies did to the US economy. So long as the Dick Fulds of the world are sipping champagne in Capri, Italy, these insider trading cases are basically sideshows…’ ] SEC urged to ease fundraising rules (Washington Post) [ REDUNDANT! I mean come on! Any more ‘easing’ and we’d be in negative territory where they actually reward you for breaking the rules which is currently the reality in pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt, meaningfully lawless america. Roche 'The worst part of it ...Obama, who vowed change, has done almost nothing to fix any of it and in fact continues most of the policies that helped get us here in the first place’ ‘INSIDE JOB’ Ferguson wins Oscar for Documentary on the unprosecuted massive extant fraud in the (many) TRILLIONS by the frauds on wall street ( and declares with oscar in hand that not one high level wall street exec has been prosecuted … despite ‘earning’ billiions from the fraud ). UPDATE: MORE CLAIMS OF RACE BIAS AT JUSTICE... `‘`In emotional and personal testimony, an ex-Justice official who quit over the handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases that involve black defendants and white victims ' Cases against Wall Street lag despite Holder’s vows to target financial fraud WP | Obama has promised to hold Wall Street accountable for the meltdown.

‘THE OBAMA DECEPTION’ http://albertpeia.com/obamadeceptionhighqualityversion.flv

Minyanville's T3 Daily Recap: Market Drops, Commodities Plummet After Unconvincing Bounce ‘The market erased gains from the two-day bounce to start the week, before bouncing slightly into the close. Despite indices tracking higher Monday and Tuesday, there were signs that the market was still not healthy after extremely bearish action last week. Today's sell-off confirms those suspicions, and tomorrow's open will be very interesting. The next big levels to watch to the downside in the S&P are the 21-day moving average (which held today), last week's pivot low at 1329.17, and then the 50-day currently at 1322.26. Commodities got hit hard once again after a brief oversold bounce as the dollar regained strength and broke last week's pivot high. Silver dropped like a rock, finishing the day down 8.3%. Crude prices also fell precipitously, with the United States Oil Fund LP (USO) falling 4.2%. The dollar has been strong by default as the Euro has plummeted on downgrades of and fears about Greece, while surprisingly dovish comments from ECB Chairmain Jean-Claude Trichet also weighed.’

Stocks Fall, In Step With Commodities Midnight Trader ‘4:24 PM, May 11, 2011 --

NYSE down 122.40 (-1.4%) to 8,428.09
DJIA down 130.33 (-1%) to 12,630.03
S&P 500 down 15.08 (-1.1%) to 1,342.08
Nasdaq down 26.83 (-0.9%) to 2,845.06

GLOBAL SENTIMENT

Nikkei up 0.5%.
Hang Seng down 0.2%.
Shanghai Composite down 0.2%.
FTSE-100 up 0.1%.

UPSIDE MOVERS
(+) M beats with earnings, hikes dividend, raises guidance.
(+) TISA reports improved earnings.
(+) JNJ upgraded.
(+) LVS initiated with Buy rating.
(+) ALTI inks contract.
(+) TYPE added to S&P 600 SmallCap.
(+) ASTC inks contract.
(+) HALO inks licensing pact.
(+) CHOP guides for beat.
(+) AIG sets share offering through Treasury Dept.

DOWNSIDE MOVERS
(-) NTAP upgraded.
(-) CS upgraded.
(-) IRM initiated with Overweight rating.
(-) GIVN reports positive results from European study.
(-) NTAP upgraded.
(-) DIS misses with results.
(-) YGE cuts margin, shipment guidance.
(-) HBC details cost-cutting.
(-) STWD selling shares.
(-) MYRX reports narrower loss vs year earlier.

MARKET DIRECTION

Stock averages end sharply lower, in the bottom end of the session's range, and snapping a three-day rally. Weaker commodities sapped early strength in the stock market as did concerns for Chinese inflation and Greek debt. Blue chip Disney (DIS) fell after disappointing results.

Commodities ended trading lower as crude oil futures faltered on concerns over rising inventories and a Chinese interest rate hike, and gold slumped on a stronger greenback.

Light, sweet crude for June delivery finished down 5.5% to $98.21 a barrel. In other energy futures, heating oil was down 2.8% to $2.91 a gallon while natural gas was down 0.64% to at $4.21 per million British thermal units.

Meanwhile, gold futures ended lower as the dollar strengthened against foreign currencies.

Gold for June delivery finished down 1% to $1,501.40 an ounce. In other metal futures, silver settled down 7.7% to $35.52 a troy ounce while copper traded up 0.62% to $4.04.

The U.S. dollar index (DXY) is up 1.01% to $75.37.

Walt Disney Co. fell after reporting Q2 EPS of $0.49, up from $0.48 per share in the prior year quarter. Revenue was $9.07 billion, up from $8.58 billion. The Street view was $0.57 per share in earnings on revenue of $9.11 billion.

The U.S. trade deficit widened by 6% in March to $48.2 billion, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. The trade deficit was above the consensus forecast of Wall Street economists for $47.0 billion. Exports rose to the highest level on record while imports were the strongest since August 2008.

Also, crude oil futures moved lower following talk about interest rate hikes in China and a larger-than-expected rise in U.S. oil supplies last week. The Energy Information Administration said crude oil inventories for the week ended May 6 increased by 3.8 million barrels, above the 1.1 million barrels expected by analysts.

The major refiners - including Chevron (CVX), BP (BP), Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) and Exxon (XOM) - were all trending lower.

In company news:

Intel (INTC) is higher after it raises its quarterly cash dividend 16% to $0.21 per share, beginning with the dividend that will be declared in Q3. The move is the second time in six months the world's largest chipmaker has boosted its dividend as corporate technology spending increases.

Shares of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) are higher following an AP report that the drug and healthcare products company is recalling a prescription drug due to a musty odor - most likely from a chemical on shipping pallets. J&J said it is recalling five lots of HIV medicine Prezista. The recall comes at the wholesale and pharmacy level in five countries.

U.S.-traded shares of HSBC (HBC) are down after the bank released cost cutting measures as part of a strategy day. HSBC plans to slash as much as $3.5 billion from mounting costs and announced a review of its U.S. credit-card business and branch network, MarketWatch and other news outlets reported. The bank said it aims to achieve sustainable annual cost savings of between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion by 2013, bringing its cost efficiency ratio, the ratio of expenses to revenue, down to between 48% and 52%.

Level 3 (LVLT) firms after it says HBO selected the company to provide content delivery network (CDN) services supporting the new HBO GO mobile app delivery initiative.

American International Group (AIG) shares gained after the insurer said it and the U.S. Department of the Treasury, as the selling shareholder, have commenced a registered public offering of AIG common stock, par value $2.50 per share. One hundred million shares will be issued and sold by AIG and 200 million shares will be sold by the selling shareholder. The Wall Street Journal was out with a report earlier Wednesday saying the $9 billion offering was smaller than analysts expected.

In earnings news:

- Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (TEVA) reports Q1 non-GAAP EPS rose 11.8% to $1.04 a share, beating the Thomson Reuters mean analyst estimate for $1.03 by a penny. Net sales rose 11.7% to $4.08 billion.

- Arcelor Mittal (MT) says Q1 sales were $22.2 billion, up 7.2% from a year ago. Net income was $0.69 per share, up from $0.42 a year earlier.

- Macy's (M) says Q1 sales were $5.889 billion, more than the Thomson Reuters mean for $5.85849 billion. It earned $0.30 per share, better than forecasts for $0.18.

In energy ETFs, the United States Oil Fund (USO) is down 2.56% to $40.03 and the United States Natural Gas fund (UNG) is down 2.18%, to $10.77.

In precious metal ETFs, the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) is down 0.94% at $146.51. Market Vectors Gold Miners (GDX) is down 1.9% to $55.68. iShares Silver Trust (SLV) is down 6.18% to $35.18.’

India, Indonesia, China and Wider Asia Buy Physical Gold and Silver on Dip as Stagflation Threatens Gold and silver have extended their recovery and may be headed for the fourth day of gains due to the continuing European sovereign debt crisis, Chinese inflation (+5.3%) and the real risk that rising oil and commodity prices are leading to an international inflation spiral and stagflation.

But… But… It Was Supposed To Go To Zero What kind of goddamned bubble pops and then goes right back up?

Peter Schiff: “Refuse to allow the debt ceiling to be raised” According to Euro Pacific Capital President Peter Schiff, it’s going to take a crisis for US lawmakers to get the economy back on track.

Irish Bombshell: Government Raids PRIVATE Pensions To Pay For Spending The Irish government plans to institute a tax on private pensions to drive jobs growth, according to its jobs program strategy, delivered today.

Dollar mixed on deeper trade deficit, Greece woes Associated Press | Dollar mixed against major currencies Wednesday after a report showed a growing U.S. trade deficit.

US Trade Gap Widens More Than Expected in March CNBC | The U.S. trade deficit widened more than expected in March.

U.S. ‘Underwater’ Homeowners Increase to 28 Percent Bloomberg | Homeowners with negative equity increased from 22 percent a year earlier.

Fed official calls for vigilance Action may be taken against even the possibility of a surge of higher prices, Jeffrey M. Lacker says. (Washington Post) [ Who’s still buying their b***s***! Much higher prices / inflation’s already here. They conveniently have said they’re using an ‘inflating strategy’ for asset prices, also known as inflation. Why? Because high inflation is here! 24 Signs Of Economic Decline In America ‘The US is in the middle of a devastating long-term economic decline’ ] States face shortfall for retirees Study: Affordable rentals scarce (WP) Poll: For Obama, low marks on Afghan war Fuel prices cut into Obama popularity (WP) (The frauds on wall street et als should be criminally prosecuted, jailed, fined, and disgorgement imposed), and have used the mideast turmoil to obfuscate their failure. Dave's Daily 'If you can keep interest rates this low this long, its inevitable cheap financing can allow companies to start cobbling each other up. Further Ben's policies allow companies like IBM to sell bonds at 1% and buy back shares with the proceeds (total paper bubble-scam). POMO is occurring almost daily and Primary Dealers can buy back their shares and pay dividends with what essentially is taxpayer money-- … an especially great opportunity to sell / take profits while you still can since there's much worse to come! America Is a Failed State Because It Won’t Prosecute Financial Crime Washington’s Blog / the grim economic reality [ http://albertpeia.com/grimreality.htm ]. Selling In May Is Very Good Advice This Year Harding / April Is a Good Time to Sell Adler Equity Valuations Are Forming the Second Biggest Bubble in U.S. History Kaspar ... According to Yale University’s Dr. Robert Shiller, the market is now 41% overvalued …only time the markets have been more overvalued .. 1929 & tech bubble. http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/4/12/saupload_cape_thumb1.png PRECHTER: We're Still In A Massive Bear Market And Stocks Will Crash To New Lows Bernanke prepares to make history (WP) [ He already has! $6 gas acomin’, $1,508+ gold, $46+ silver, other commodities at record levels, hyperinflation as predicted well on the way from over-printing of fiat paper currency by fed as predicted, etc., Equity Valuations Are Forming the Second Biggest Bubble in U.S. History Kaspar 'Despite the terrible economic performance of the past ten years, equity valuations are the 2nd largest bubble in U.S. history... According to Yale University’s Dr. Robert Shiller, the market is now 41% overvalued according to this valuation metric. The only time the markets have been more overvalued was a few brief months in 1929 and the tech bubble

... growth in earnings have been artificially manufactured...

· The change in accounting rules for the financial sector by FASB has generated massive “false” account profits beginning in 2009, corporate subsidies, etc.

ECONOMIC CRISIS ARCHIVE

(5-11-11) Dow 12,630 -130 Nasdaq 2,845 -26 S&P 500 1,342 -15 [CLOSE- OIL $99.58 (-54% for year 2008) (RECORD TRADING HIGH $147.27) GAS $3.95 (reg. gas in LAND OF FRUITS AND NUTS $4.26 REG./ $4.36 MID-GRADE/$4.46 PREM./ $4.55 DIESELL) / GOLD $1,505 (+24% for year 2009) / SILVER $35.45 (+47% for year 2009) PLATINUM $1,774 (+56% for year 2009) Metal News for the Day / DOLLAR= .69 EURO, 80 YEN, .61 POUND STERLING, ETC. (How low can you go - LOWER)/ Interest Rates: http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/Pages/TextView.aspx?data=yield 10 YR NOTE YIELD 3.15% …..… AP Business Highlights ...Yahoo Market Update... T. Rowe Price Weekly Recap – Stocks / Bonds / Currencies - Domestic / International This Is a Secular Bear Market and The End of Buy and Hold … and Hope The bull market that never was/were beyond wall street b.s. when measured in gold ‘WORST ECONOMIC COLLAPSE EVER’ Must Read Economic / Financial Data This Depression is just beginning The coming depression… thecomingdepression.net The Next Wave of Collapse is Coming Sooner than you think Sliding Back Into the Great Depression ABSOLUTELY, ABSURDLY, RIDICULOUS! SELL / TAKE PROFITS WHILE YOU CAN SINCE MUCH, MUCH WORSE TO COME!

National / World

Obama Gets Massive 13 Point Bounce From Contrived Bin Laden Raid Paul Joseph Watson | Americans are the most gullible people on the planet. [ Oh come on! Gullible? Is that all? How ‘bout dumb, gullible, inherently criminal, among many other negative traits. But, I don’t even believe the poll which conflicts with another which shows only a 3 point spike which is bad enough and quite pathetic. But such craved, depraved gladiatorial blood-letting is quite common during decline and fall of nation-states as america. ]

‘US killed bin Laden for a second time’ Press TV interviewed Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, to discuss the issue furthermore.

Who shot bin Laden? Former SEALs fill in the blanks (Washington Post) `[` Well, here I am on the same page as a former navy seal: Jesse Ventura Questions Obama’s Narrative Of Bin Laden Raid Former Navy SEAL and Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura has questioned Barack Obama’s official narrative regarding the raid on Osama Bin Laden, telling the Alex Jones Show of his suspicions that Osama died years ago, and expressing disbelief that the man seen flicking between TV channels in the video released by the White House Saturday was actually Bin Laden. [Who is foolish enough to believe anything they say; particularly their scripted, ever-changing, evolving, self-serving accounts belied only by truth / reality as told by those with true courage and integrity; as, for example Jessica Lynch, etc. White House Press Secretary “Floundering Under Pressure” Of Flip-Flopping Bin Laden Fable Staged: White House “Situation Room” Photos Part Of Bin Laden Fable .. No resistance in “cold-blooded” U.S. raid: Pakistan officials US Government Contractor Claims “Al-Qaeda” Has Confirmed Bin Laden Fairytale Watson The Cost of Bin Laden: $3 Trillion Over 15 Years What do we have to show for that tab? Two wars that continue to occupy 150,000 troops and tie up a quarter of our defense budget; a bloated homeland-security apparatus that has at times pushed the bounds of civil liberty. Bin Had The Growing Coverup: Osama and “The Big Lie” The Obama administration and the corporate media are concocting an ever-more elaborate and spectacular theater around the “heroic” murder of the CIA intelligence myth/CIA asset Osama bin Laden. Red Alert: Government Had Osama bin Laden Frozen for Years Nimmo / Jones | Videos [ I personally believe Osama’s been dead for quite some time. Indeed, for one on dialysis, he otherwise would have been nothing less than a modern day miracle in terms of longevity / mortality rates for those so afflicted, particularly under the ‘stressful’ circumstances involving evading capture, betrayal for money, etc.. His ‘surfacing’ for a ‘talk’ wouldn’t even pass muster in the most rudimentary requirements for ‘proof of life’. The release at this time of the ‘announcement’ is, rather than a victory lap so to speak, but rather a sign of weakness and desperation on the part of america whose global and domestic economic, financial, and geopolitical position is substantially diminished and declining rapidly and whose military industrial complex welfare plan along with the Orwellian diversion of the masses could at best yield but a pyrrhic victory. Moreover, the same comes at a time of systemic failure for pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america While the ‘announcement’ plays well for the nonce, to the dumb, uninformed back home, the same will galvanize resistance in the name of their now martyr, Osama Bin Laden.]

A push for new Afghan strategy The administration needs to clarify its Afghan mission and exit plan, some leading lawmakers say. (Washington Post) `[ Riiiiight! That umpteenth new strategy / progress thing … pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america can really afford it …` Clinton predicts violent spring in Afghanistan (Washington Post) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday warned NATO allies not to abandon Afghanistan and predicted a violent spring in the war there. [ Well, there you go … something to look forward to … sounds like a plan … you know, that progress thing so touted by gates / petraeus … remind us that these people, particularly innocent civilians, died for no good reason at all. .. america's defacto bankruptcy. 'Alas, poor america … a nation of infinite jest, and unexcellent fancy … and pervasive criminality' …IED casualties in Afghanistan spike (Washington Post) [ Yeah! That progress thing’s a bch! What do you expect them ( Petraeus optimistic on war ) to say? That the money spent / diverted to these lucrative for the few war profiteers (360 tons of $100 bills flown into Iraq disappear, etc.) has been worth the defacto bankruptcy of the nation. Drudgereport: `Congresswoman calls Afghanistan 'national embarrassment'... 'Epic failure'...` Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) talks about the "disastrous" war that is Afghanistan. "This war represents an epic failure, a national embarrassment and a moral blight," Rep. Woolsey said. [Though broke, they’re still voting for more war across the board.. this war is a blowback-creating, self-perpetuating, self-destructive, self-defeating, colossally expensive debacle benefiting war profiteers / lobbies and frauds while diverting attention from the more ’mundane’ tasks of governance. War on Terror is a Reichstag Fire False Flag Operation Sartre** | If you really want justice for the 911 murders, you must face reality and look within your own government for the true terrorists.

Why Does the Terrorist Kingpin Look Better Than He Did in 2001? Washington’s Blog

Bin Laden Hoax….The Rest Of The Story Cartalucci .. examination of mainstream media’s headlines and interviews with the CIA director himself calls into question the official narrative.

Hoax: White House Claims 4-Year-Old Bin Laden Video Is New Footage

The States Strike Back Paul Joseph Watson | Rise of the Republic: Rhodes, Boldin and Smith.

Special Operations Elite and the Osama Death Op Kurt Nimmo | New Pentagon fusion center runs Delta hunter-killer teams.

Federal Spychips To Hijack Your Phone Paul Joseph Watson | The Obama administration is engaged in a totalitarian takeover of all communications.

18 Facts Prove Illegal Immigration Is Absolute Nightmare For U.S. Economy The Economic Collapse | The government has absolutely refused to secure the U.S. border with Mexico for decades.

China: The New Bin Laden Hillary Clinton, the low-grade moron who is US Secretary of State, is busy at work making China the new enemy of Oceania.

An Empire of Evil Fantasies: The Hollywoodification of Washington The American people are prisoners of state terror and victims of totalitarian propaganda. The American mind has been under a government and media siege ever since September 11, 2001 when the Bush administration committed the deadliest terrorist attack against America in U.S. history.

The Assasination of Osama bin Laden: Glaring Anomalies in the Official Narrative For those who believe in omens, the triumphal announcement of the murder of Osama bin Laden, his son and various of his household (if it were he) by US., special forces, did not bode well.

Americans Are The Most Gullible People On The Planet Here’s a reminder that the vast majority of Americans are amongst the most gullible people on the planet. President Obama’s ability to pose as a “tough guy” over the contrived fable of the Bin Laden raid, allied with a return to simple-minded Bush-style terror fearmongering and helpful media spin on the economy, has enabled him to secure a massive 13 point bounce in approval ratings.

Ron Paul To Decide On 2012 Run “Within The Week” Texas Congressman Ron Paul says he will make a decision on whether to launch a 2012 presidential bid within the next seven days.

Special Operations Elite and the Osama Death Op Obama’s raid inside Pakistan that reportedly killed Osama bin Laden and members of his family was conducted by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who dispatched special operations elite hunter-killer commandos. It was likely run out of a new JSOC fusion center staffed by elite military and selected members of the government.

Barack Obama Is Wrong: 18 Facts Which Prove That Illegal Immigration Is An Absolute Nightmare For The U.S. Economy Barack Obama has declared that “immigration reform is an economic imperative”, and is promising to do his best to get an immigration bill pushed through Congress this year. But will “legalizing” all of the illegal immigration that has taken place over the last several decades improve the struggling U.S. economy or will it actually make our economic problems worse?

New Defense Bill Authorizes US Government To Launch “Defensive” Cyber Attacks Within the chairman’s mark of the 2012 Defense Authorization bill is language that would allow DoD to carry out clandestine operations in cyberspace against targets located outside the United States and to defend against all attacks on DoD assets.

March Trade Deficit Jumps To $48.2 Billion As Imports Surge And just as Citigroup predicted, US imports surge even as US exports jump to a record $172.7 billion. But the story is once again in the GDP reducing imports which jump by a whopping $220.8 billion, a $10.4 billion jump M/M.

The States Strike Back In this special video presentation for Prison Planet.tv members filmed from the new Infowars television studio, Alex Jones hosts a round table discussion featuring Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, founder and executive director of the Tenth Amendment Center Michael Boldin, as well as activist and economic writer Brandon Smith of Alt-Market, to discuss the states’ rights movement and how Americans need to organize now to take back power usurped in a myriad of different ways by the federal government.

What Else Will The Government’s “Special Chip” In Your Cellphone Do? The announcement that Americans are set to be bombarded with mandatory government propaganda via their cellphones represents a shocking lurch forward in the Obama administration’s bid to launch a total takeover of all communications as part of a wider move towards controlling the Internet, developing an omnipresent wiretap system, and creating a constant environment of suspicion and distrust by enlisting citizens to spy on each other.

Forbes Predicts U.S. Gold Standard Within 5 Years A return to the gold standard by the United States within the next five years now seems likely, because that move would help the nation solve a variety of economic, fiscal, and monetary ills, Steve Forbes predicted during an exclusive interview this week with HUMAN EVENTS.

Bin Laden death now part of Obama’s re-elect message Osama bin Laden, mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, is now an applause line in a presidential campaign speech.

Greece launches massive fire sale to service growing debt as riot police clash with violent protesters A general strike held today has seen most public services grind to a halt across the country, while thousands marched through Athens to protest against harsh austerity measures.

Interrogation Experts From Every Branch of the Military and Intelligence Agree: Torture DOESN’T Produce Useful Information Virtually all of the top interrogation experts – both conservatives and liberals (except for those trying to escape war crimes prosecution) – say that torture doesn’t work.

Libya: Nato doesn’t know if Col Gaddafi is dead or alive Nato has admitted that it doesn’t know if Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is dead or alive.

Drudgereport: Treasury Auctions to Push US Over Debt Ceiling...
McCARTHY: 'Not one Republican vote' to borrow more without cuts... REPORT: 48 Women Raped Every Hour in Congo... 'DOLLAR IN GRAVER DANGER THAN EURO'...
FORBES: RETURN TO GOLD STANDARD WITHIN 5 YEARS...
In S.C., legislature takes first step... POLL: 1 in 5 say bin Laden alive...
MICHELLE: KEEPS ON DANCING!
First Lady to host rapper who talks of killing cops...

USA FREAK OUT: TERROR FEARS; FALSE ALARMS...

Sen. Schumer Calls For Amtrak 'Do Not Ride' List...
Two tunnel 'breaches' cause scare in NYC...
Threats Divert Planes in Three Separate Incidents...
Passengers, flight crew subdue man banging on cockpit door...
Dallas Train Station Evacuated: Man Asked For Help Carrying Packages...
4 Arrested For Videotaping TSA Line At Denver...
SHOCK PHOTO: TSA LOOKING FOR 'POOP BOMBS?' U.S.-Pak. Rift Widens...
Pak. warns of 'full force' response to future US raids... S&P cuts Greece's rating... BOEHNER TO DEMAND NOT BILLIONS, BUT TRILLIONS IN CUTS...

OIL REBOUNDS; 2ND LARGEST GAIN ON RECORD...

REPORT: Housing crash getting worse...
...values fall fastest rate since '08

Michelle Obama to host rapper at WH who talks of killing cops...

'COMMAND CENTER'...
Pakistan skeptical of U.S. claim bin Laden directed network...
Two loud explosions heard in town where bin Laden killed...
Videos show 9-11 mastermind watching himself on TV...
U.S. government censors tapes, cuts audio...
Inside bin Laden's squalid home...
NYT: Final days of domesticity...

Drone Strike Kills 15 in Pakistan...
First since bin Laden raid...

BIN LADEN SUPPORTERS RAGE ON THE STREETS OF LONDON, VOW REVENGE...
Stage mock funeral in front of US embassy...

Gas nat'l average: $3.99...
Eats 9% of household budgets...
Average price sets record in Indiana -- $4.25 a gallon...
$6.03 in Hawaii... JAPAN URGES HALT AT THREE REACTORS...

UNEMPLOYMENT BACK UP TO 9.0%...

Fannie Mae Reports $8.7B Loss for First Quarter...
Seeks $8.5B more from taxpayers...

APRIL JOBS: +244,000...
FUZZY MATH: How can US add jobs but the unemployment rate go up?

Gas nat'l average: $3.99...
Eats 9% of household budgets...
Average price sets record in Indiana -- $4.25 a gallon...
$6.03 in Hawaii...

PAPER: GREECE EU EXIT?

Silver Plunge Spreads...
OIL GUTTED...
Price Slide Temporary, New Highs Likely: Goldman...
Fears linger of a new 'flash crash'...
Euro Tumbles...

CNN SHOCK POLL: RON PAUL HAS BEST CHANCE VS OBAMANational Home Prices Double Dip...
JOBLESS CLAIMS RISE TO 8 MONTH HIGH...
Fears linger of a new 'flash crash'...

9-11 FAMILY: 'SHOW US PROOF BIN LADEN KILLED'...
Victim's father: Obama 'putting too much spotlight on himself'...
Channels Bush at Ground Zero: 'We will never forget'...
Tells teen survivor he knows Justin Bieber...
Turns Back on 9/11 Family Member...
AUDIO... Muslim Brotherhood urges review of Israel ties...

Pakistanis burn U.S. flags; backlash over death grows...

Pakistan officials: No resistance in 'cold-blooded' U.S. raid...
Warns America not to stage any more...
Threatens 'disastrous consequences'...
Muslims already name dump location 'Martyr's Sea'...
OBAMA, NO PHOTOS OF OSAMA: 'We don't need to spike the football'... 'Conspiracy theorists will just claim doctored'...
Sen. Scott Brown: 'I've seen picture, he's definitely dead'... UPDATE: Photo proving bin Laden's death to Sen. Brown was faked...
three senators fell for fakes...
UPDATE: 'The photo I saw and that a lot of other people saw is not authentic'...
Top Dem: No photo needed, 'there's absolute proof'...

REUTERS RELEASES 'DEATH SCENE' PHOTOS
**WARNING GRAPHIC**

UPDATE: Photo proving bin Laden's death to Sen. Brown was faked...
Possibly three senators fell for fakes...

Pakistan: 'Not a single bullet fired from compound'...
WIRE: Photos from 1 hour after raid show 3 dead, no weapons...
The Slippery Story of the bin Laden Kill... Official says 'killed apparently by the U.S. raid team'...

DOLLAR HITS 3 YEAR LOW...
1 IN 7 ON FOOD STAMPS!
Job numbers disappoint...
Treasury suggests $2 trillion debt cap raise...

REUTERS, AP journalists describe staging of Obama photo taken after TV announcement of bin Laden's death...

Postal Service loses $2.2B in second quarter (Washington Post)[ And, let me add that they deserved that loss. The USPS is totally unreliable and basically a jobs program for the otherwise unemployable; and, they are also corrupt. I’ve previously set forth the scenario where the postal service waylaid dvd disks sent priority/confirmation and a second time, certified mail, to the FBI (violations of federal law, tampering, obstruction, etc.), and ultimately additional copies of said disks were delivered by the reliable, efficient, competitive, performance-driven UPS (their parcel rates are roughly the same and yet half the delivery time – Fedex is as unreliable as the USPS-and for some time had a deal with the USPS). Amazon, Ebay, though a boon to the USPS, have consistently failed to deliver in the realm of computers. http://www.procomputercenter.com . Pro Computer Center is among the few remaining stores of their kind. They are performance / service / customer oriented like no other surviving computer retailer / repairer / service providers I’ve experienced. They’ve also moved into the realm of computer forensics / data recovery in the context of court proceedings where they’ve successfully performed where others failed and at substantially more reasonable rates than ‘the competition’. My most recent computer problems accounting for some website / posting delays has been once again been resolved by them and another Dell computer (the circumstances of the most recent debacle was a barrage of Trojans caught by my antivirus, one after another, then shutting down my antivirus, ultimately freezing (no boot) my computer (I previously alluded to my reasonable suspicions as to who perpetrated same). My experiences with such as Amazon, Ebay have been atrocious and borderline if not outright fraudulent (the shoddy sellers), time consuming, and aggravating in the ‘claims process’. Moreover, other retailers lay most of the warrantee on the manufacturer. (Prior:

I just wanted to extend to you and your company my sincere thanks for a job well done.. I bought my first computer from you (Ben) in or around 1999. It was a Sony Vaio laptop which owing to Windows Millenium and a very proprietary approach to computing on the part of Sony, truth be told, was not the greatest system in terms of stability, but no fault of yours. Ultimately, though functional, I traded the Vaio for a Mac. You’ve always stood by your products / service, are available / accessible to field / handle all questions / problems which is rare indeed. In Armand you have a top-notch A+ Certified Tech who is patient, knowledgeable, and talented. Ruben, in truth has been particularly instrumental in seeing to a smooth transition in my recent dealings with your company as a knowledgeable IT Specialist and especially as a savvy, capable manager. Since 1999 I’ve purchased five computers from you and based upon performance, the sixth is assured.

Sell in May? The Signals to De-Risk Cam Hui ‘In the wake of the commodity rout last week, the Inflation-Deflation Timer Model has moved into "neutral" from an "inflation" reading*. This told my inner trader that he should take some risk off the table. Given the high level of macro risk, I would be inclined to take more more defensive position than usual.

This signal to de-risk isn't a surprise. In early April, I wrote about negative divergences (see Getting ready to sell in May). How the market reacts to news is also a good short-term indicator of direction. The fizzled Osama bin Laden rally should have been as clear as ringing the bell in the town square to traders that this market was looking tired.

What happens now?
Now that the Timer Model has gone neutral, what happens now? Mr. Market could take one of two paths.

First, this could be the start of a run-of-the-mill 5-10% correction in the equity market, with an extreme downside limit of about 15%. VIX and More has tabulated the market pullbacks in the 2009-11 period and the average depth of these correction was 6.5%.

Macro risks everywhere
I am concerned that the market is acting vulnerably during a period of heightened macro risk. There are three major sources of macro risk:

Europe: As I write this, Greek 2-year debt is sporting an eye-popping yield north of 25%. These stratospheric levels reflect market fears that bond holders will have to take a significant haircut on Greek debt, which would be a devastating blow to the already fragile European banking system. If Greece re-structures, then it could very well take down Spain - which may be too large for the EU to rescue.
China: The PBoC has signaled that it will take further steps to cool its superheated economy and there are "no limit to how far it can raise the reserve requirement". Already, there are signs that its property bubble is being deflated. Recent reports indicate that Chinese property developer profits are falling and their debt is approaching $1T in a climate of rising inventory.
US default: The political horse-trading over the debt ceiling continues to be worrisome. A default by the US Treasury would send shock waves all around the globe and it would be the financial equivalent of the comet that hit the Earth and created the Gulf of Mexico in prehistoric times.

The current market environment is likely to resolve itself with a plain vanilla 5-10% correction. However, if any of these macro risks were to manifest themselves during that pullback, the downside has the potential to extend itself to 40-50%.

My inner investor has already heeded these warnings and de-risked his portfolio. My inner trader is inclined to be more defensive than normally called for.’

Should Long-Term Investors Buy or Sell This Market? Jones ‘…Stocks: Overbought & Overvalued The data show that stocks right now are overbought and overvalued. That's not dogma or my opinion or the narrative I'm trying to promulgate; it's just what the data show.With the exception of the bubble 90’s, the stock market has never had a positive 10-year return that began from valuation levels like the present …’ ‘ It's a good question. The kind of question than long-term investors like you and I really want to know the answer to. Is the market a long term buy? To help us answer it we're going to look at some charts, including one that might be the most important chart of all. The King of the Charts! It's the one that every long-term investor should be interested in.

Overbought & Overvalued? Underowned & Fundamentally Cheap?

We're already on record as believing that stocks are a tricky value proposition over the short run. The market has gone up for eight straight months since the QE2 program was announced and anything that moves that far in a straight line faces an increasingly large risk of reverting back to mean. Moving to a slightly longer time horizon -- the medium term -- one of our Predictions for 2011 was that the market would end basically flat for the year. So far, I've been dead wrong on that one though the rest have panned out nicely, nailing it on gold, oil, Paul Ryan, and real estate. I expect to finish the year about 50/50 on my predictions. That's the best that any of us who lack crystal balls can really hope for.But what about over the long-term? Is it OK to ignore the short and medium term risks and buy?Long-term investors nowadays sort themselves into two basic camps. I'll bet dollars or donuts that you already have a view on the matter and what we discuss today won't change your mind one way or the other. But that's how it goes with investment research -- we look for stuff that confirms our preconceived notions and discard information that refutes it. Trying to change minds in this business is just asking for trouble.Most likely you're already either in the camp that thinks that stocks are cheap and a fantastic buy or you think that they're expensive and you're waiting for them to fall back to lower valuations. But maybe you're in the middle. Who knows. Maybe you just own gold or GLD and are hiding out in your bunker cranking out angry manifestos about how stocks are a fraud and Treasuries are a fraud and so, incidentally, is the Dollar and it's nebbish champion, Timothy Franz Geithner.That's cool too. Hopefully you like charts:

click to enlarge [ chart http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/5/6/524360-130470267773646-Jeffrey-Dow-Jones_origin.png ]

I love this chart. It's my time machine chart.What this chart does is start at the very beginning of the year 1900. It takes a look at the Price/Earnings ratio for the market at that exact moment. Then it fast forwards through time to exactly ten years later and it measures how much the market went up in down over that ten year span. The chart plots those two bits of information against each other as one data point. Then it goes back to February of 1900 and repeats the process for every single month and every single 10-year window in the 20th century.The chart measures present valuation against future return. Pretty snazzy, huh?For this kind of study, it's important to use some kind of normalized earnings to smooth out the volatility of corporate earnings. Personally, I like Bob Shiller's simple "average 10 year earnings". But there are bunch of different ways you can normalize earnings. It all tells basically the same story.If you look back at that chart again, you'll probably say, "whoah, that's cool." You can see that there is a definite relationship between present valuation and future return. High valuations correlate with low future returns and low valuations correlate with higher future returns. Always be skeptical if you hear people denying this relationship or that you should always buy (or sell) the market regardless of its valuation. The data doesn't lie. As a long-term investor, it really pays to get a sense of whether the market is cheap or expensive before investing because it can make a HUGE different over the long run.In other words: if you buy when stocks are fundamentally cheap and hold them for a while, there is a very good chance you'll make decent money. If you buy stocks when they are expensive and hold them for a while, there is a very good chance you'll get a whole lot of heartburn and your wife will wonder why you're always using so much profanity.Looking back at that chart, you'll also notice that there are two different curves. That probably makes you say, "whoah, that's weird." What's going on here?The entire upper curve is pretty much the 1990's through now. Valuations were really high in the early 90's and the market did great for the next decade. In the late 90's valuations were really, REALLY high and the market pretty much broke even for the next decade. That brings us to right around today.What was the reason for that? How was it that the stock market did so well, doubling or better from a 20+ P/E ratio when every other instance like that in history stocks had gone down?Some of it had to do with the tech bubble. Investors bought the market at a time when it was kind of pricy but the 10-year window happened to close during the peak of the bubble days. Then there is also the collection of points that started in the mid-90's when the market was starting to get really expensive and ran through the peak of the credit bubble in 2007.Do you want to blame Alan Greenspan for those points, distorted by the bubble windows? You can if you want. I won't get in your way.We all kind of freaked out when we had 9/11 and the little 2001 recession and when the stock market went down for a few years in a row we got desperate and cut interest rates to basically zero percent. When you do that, real interest rates usually go negative and that gives people a serious incentive to invest in anything that's not cash, regardless of the price. I wrote a much more in-depth piece about the effect of negative real interest rates right here. It boils down to "Risk or Die."Because interest rates have been so low for so long, and real interest rates have been negative or close enough to it, the market is behaving in a manner totally discordant with the bulk of recorded history.

It's a policy-driven world

You can make a pretty good case that a lot of those points have been driven entirely by modern policy -- both Fed policy and political policy. We can argue about whether or not this goal to inflate asset prices is the prudent or appropriate policy. But it's kind of silly to debate whether or not it actually works. It does.Will this super-aggressive, asset-stimulative policy continue? That's the big discussion right now and it's why so many people pay so much attention to those two little words -- "extended period" -- in the Fed minutes. If the policy doesn't continue then the market might start behaving like it did for the century prior to the credit bubble.

UH OH.

What might that look like? Let's revise our chart. Let's take out all of these modern data points, the ones from this era of unprecedented and aggressive monetary & fiscal policy. It'll be what an investor should expect if they think they next few decades will resemble the first 90% of the 20th century and not this recent era since Greenspan and Bernanke took over.

[chart http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/5/6/524360-130470615079765-Jeffrey-Dow-Jones_origin.png ]

In this chart, our time machine basically stops before we get too far into the buy-at-any-price psychology of tech boom and subsequent credit bubble.I also marked the today's Price/Earnings ratio. As of last week, the Shiller PE stands at around 24. Again, you can use other flavors of normalized earnings, but they all tell pretty much the same story. The numbers are different but the relationship is the same.

Stocks: Overbought & Overvalued

The data show that stocks right now are overbought and overvalued. That's not dogma or my opinion or the narrative I'm trying to promulgate; it's just what the data show.With the exception of the bubble 90’s, the stock market has never had a positive 10-year return that began from valuation levels like the present. Now, I want to emphasize that that’s not to say that stocks will go down over the next decade. They could go up. These are crazy times!There are plenty of convincing arguments to buy stocks for the long run, but relative to historical valuation data, stocks are expensive. In a sense, buying them is a bet that policy will continue to be asset-stimulative and that we won't have any technical or economic hiccups along the way.This condition won’t last forever. I'm one of those guys that doesn't like to buy things that are expensive and if they are things that fluctuate in value (like stocks) I am happy just being patient until they get cheap again. Don’t worry, they will get cheap again. The history of the stock market is one where it moves in big cycles from “expensive” to “cheap” and back again. When stocks do get cheap I’ll go shopping. Until then, I’m avoiding the risk and saving myself the heartburn.

How to play it

If you think that the arguments against using historical valuation as a compass are outweighed by other arguments then go ahead and load up on something like the SPDRs (SPY) or Diamonds (DIA) and just hold them for as long as you'd like. Or buy an actively managed growth fund. Over the long-run, most of them are pretty much the same and they'll all do well if the market does well.Go on ahead and bet on systemtically-important U.S. stocks like Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Exxon (XOM), Wal-Mart (WMT), or Johnson & Johnson (JNJ). Odds are, over the long run those stocks will grow by at least GDP. I probably wouldn't use a bank stock like Citgroup (C) or Bank of America (BAC) to make a bet like this on the broader market. There are a lot of factors idiosyncratic to that industry that may produce extra volatility and more-difficult-to-predict returns.If you don't like to buy the market when it's expensive... then don't buy it! I probably wouldn't recommend shorting it just because that's a tough thing to successfully manage over the long run. Try and be patient and hold your cash as you wait for that opportunity. Hang out in bonds or something. Heck, go play golf and check back in a year or so.You can also narrow your focus. Just because the market is expensive doesn't mean that every stock is expensive. There are plenty of cheap stocks out there and this is the kind of stuff that people talk about on Seeking Alpha every day.In fact, if you're going to draw one conclusion from this article, I hope it's not that you should buy the market or sell the market. It's that this is an environment where you'll probably be better off with active strategies and picking specific stocks than with passive strategies and positioning yourself like an index.

When to go all in

If that red line ever gets below 10, I am going to load the freakin’ boat with domestic equities. It will be a long-term trade, and the bad news is that it’s the kind trade that most investors get only one shot to make in their entire careers. It’s like buying stocks in 1908 or 1933 or 1947 or 1982. I wasn’t in the business in 1982, so I’m still waiting for my chance. It will come. But I can tell you right now that it won’t be an easy trade to make. The world will feel like it’s ending and people will hate stocks with a violent passion. (Sort of like real estate today.) Stocks will sell for 8 or 9 times the previous decade’s earnings and everybody in the world will think they should be selling at 4 or 5x. That sounds like it will be an easy thing to do. But trust me, it will take some serious cojones. Everyone in the world will have a reason for why investors shouldn't buy the market despite the historically cheap valuation.Psychology is a funny thing.’

After an Oversold Bounce, Will Commodity Blues Spread to Stocks?

New Poll Has Bad News For Obama And The Economy On the more important issue of the economy, things aren’t looking good.

So About That Speculative, And Undisputed, Silver Bubble… Lately, everyone and their grandmother speaks with 100% conviction that over the past week what happened in the silver market was nothing but a speculative bubble popping.

Head Of Eurogroup Admits To Lying About “Secret Greek Meeting” Out Of Fears For Market Collapse – “When It Becomes Serious, You Have To Lie” On Friday the misinformation floated about the Greek expulsion event hit a fever pitch: while we correctly speculated that nobody would be expelled from the Eurozone, the amount of conflicting info was at an all time record, with glaring inconsistencies between various quoted authoritarians.

Dollar to Yo-Yo Back Up on Faux Euro Troubles Here we go again. With the debt ceiling approaching, the dollar hitting a record lowagainst the Swiss Franc, dollar-based commodities soaring to new highs; everyone has been predicting the death of the dollar, again. Yet, as if by miracle, Euro-zone troubles emerge just in time to save the dollar from complete collapse.

Boehner seeks more than $2 trillion in cuts (Washington Post) [ I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking ‘Riiiiight! … that’ll happen … and all without cuts to endless war spending … while the situation’s more than that dire, the advice is … don’t hold your breath! Milbank: The GOP’s juvenile debate (Washington Post) [ Mr. Milbank has lamentably become the rush limbaugh / sean hannity of the newspaper world, though he barks and apologizes for dems (and wobama the b for b*** s***) only (as they for the gop / bushies only). A political minefield in Treasury plan (Washington Post) [ What plan! . Let the budget battle begin Congress returns to a lengthy fight over the nation’s solvency. (WP) [ Stated another way, the nation’s solvency is over. .. america’s defacto bankrupt with no end in sight.. interest alone is eating progressively into GDP beyond the subterfuge.. Gerson: How serious are we about the deficit? (WP) [ Not much! I mean come on! Davis ‘… This is how we pay off our current debts and I think bondholders are simply happy to get anything out of a country that admits it owes $15Tn (1/4 of global GDP) but probably owes closer to $60Tn (entire global GDP) in the form of unfunded liabilities. The funniest thing about this (and you have to laugh) is to see Conservative pundits get on TV and talk about how we need to cut $100Bn worth of discretionary spending to "fix" this (while continuing to spend $1Tn on the military and $1Tn on tax cuts for the top 1% each year). There is no fixing this and even a Republican said you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. THIS HOUSE OF CARDS IS TEETERING FOLKS – PLEASE BE CAREFUL OUT THERE! ‘ … Suckers’ rally to keep suckers suckered: Philadelphia Fed Depresses Economists Durden ‘..And here comes the first indicator that Q2 GDP is about to be mass revised by everyone, courtesy of Japan, and ongoing inflation pressures: the Philadelphia Fed collapsed from a revised 43.4 (a 27 year high) to 18.5, the lowest since November 2010… This is an especially great opportunity to sell / take profits while you still can since there's much worse to come! U.S. Economy Remains on Life Support Hansen ‘

The Federal Reserve press conference contained almost no new economic insights; and,
An FOMC meeting with no policy changes or insights..

`CIVIL RIGHTS PANEL TO PURSUE FED PROBE IN BLACK PANTHER CASE... ‘`In emotional and personal testimony, an ex-Justice official who quit over the handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases that involve black defendants and white victims’ Cases against Wall Street lag despite Holder’s vows to target financial fraud Obama has promised to hold Wall Street accountable for the meltdown. ):

‘THE OBAMA DECEPTION’ http://albertpeia.com/obamadeceptionhighqualityversion.flv ]

Editorial: Bin Laden raid no vindication of torture (Washington Post) [ While I don’t disagree with this Editorial, I do disagree with the premise; viz., that they truly sought to prevent that ultimate ‘pearl harbor event’, to ratchet up the war spending / military industrial complex welfare plan with broad based enthusiasm / support. Even war-monger mccain supports this which also finds support in international law, treaties, conventions.I can only wonder what the presence of substantially underrated President General Eisenhower would have meant, and truly believe this entire debacle and the nation’s decline would have been avoided. “All In All It Appears That Eisenhower’s Worst Fears Have Been Realized And His Remarkable And Unique Warnings Given For Naught” [ I personally believe, and the factual, historical realities support that President General Eisenhower is without question the most under-rated president in america’s short-lived history. Is there anyone who foolishly would believe this man (Ike) of honor, the quintessential General / Commander in Chief would be sacrificing lives (american among many others) and treasury for the sake of war profiteers, greed, fraud, etc., as now? ] President Eisenhower’s warned us about the growing threat from the military-industrial complex – and it’s threat to our prosperity – 50 years ago. Eisenhower’s Worst Fears Have Been Realized Washington’s Blog | All in all it appears that Eisenhower’s worst fears have been realized and his remarkable and unique warnings given for naught. ….. Indeed, 911 itself; that ‘pearl harbor event’ so sought by the neo-cons / war mongers still defies explanation (ie., the ‘stand-down order’, symmetrical implosions, foreknowledge by some {who conveniently ‘missed the party’ that day}, etc.. Some links, echoing the disbelief akin to the ‘Jessica Lynch’, Tillman, etc., affairs follow. People must realize that though having but 5% of the world’s population, america can boast 76% of the world’s serial killers and the highest crime rates in the world by far. That perverse field of dreams I’ve previously alluded to, the american nightmare, if you build / contrive war, they will come. And, they do; seals of them (among others); and when their ‘tours’ are done, it’s murder inc./contract killing for hire that they’ve won (cia, mob, etc.). The 20th century, the ‘bloodiest century’, not coincidentally referred to as the american century, brings longings of nostalgia to american criminals who, like Pavlov’s dogs salivate at the prospect of killing, raping, pillaging, and plundering which primitive mindset they have mistakenly been conditioned to connect to their now irretrievably lost success as a nation state; and, to the contrary, has become globally and domestically self-destructive / self-defeating. The entire 911 / Bin Laden scenario just doesn’t pass the smell test and reeks of political desperation and Orwellian opportunism.

More talk on troubled borrowers fund State attorneys general descend on Washington to negotiate aid for troubled homeowners … More bad economic news for Greece A year into its rescue program, the country is behind schedule and may require more help to stay solvent.

(Washington Post) [ And don’t forget the troubled states. Ask Meredith Whitney! She was right last time, and this time, like last last time, she’s takin’ it on the chin from the permabull wall street frauds: Meredith Whitney Sticks to Her Guns Today Roche ‘Talk about holding onto a losing trade. At the Milken Conference yesterday, Meredith Whitney said there was nothing controversial about her muni call, maintaining that she has more conviction about the muni crisis call than anything in her entire career. Via Bloomberg:

Whitney said on the panel, “It’s not that big of a call..There’s nothing controversial about that call, if you look at the numbers.”

“You can criticize me for everything you want, I’m just numb to it because I have more conviction on this than I’d had on any single thing in my career.”

On the same panel, David Solomon, Goldman Sachs’ co-head of investment banking said, “I don’t think we’re doomed. I think the resources available to us, and the changes that will evolve as we come out of a very, very difficult economic period that we’ve been stuck in over the past couple of years, will provide more flexibility than I think Meredith believes.”

Whitney is certainly right that the states are suffering fiscal woes; however, as we’ve seen in Europe, there are mechanisms that can be utilized to combat these issues. While I still maintain that there is a chance of local defaults, I think the United States will be proactive in fending off a euro-style crisis.

And that means the US federal government will do what it has always done. It will credit the bank accounts of the states in order to ensure that any single municipality cannot cause widespread economic hardship throughout the United States. This would be nothing new. The US has always credited the bank accounts of the states that are part of this union.

If Europe was truly united, we would see the same thing occurring in Europe; however, because it's not united, it instead chooses austerity due to fears of inflation. The reality is that the ECB is not creating inflation; it's merely stopping the potentially deflationary debacle that would ensue with sovereign defaults.

I would hope that a truly United States of America would be a bit more caring of its own member states.’

Strange Week: Wall Street Takes a Dive Hansen ‘Strange week on Wall Street.

Weekly unadjusted initial unemployment claims popped above the 2010 year-ago number.

http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/5/8/saupload_z_unemployment2.png

China chided over fiscal policies China has bigger-than-forecast surplus (Washington Post) [ Arguing with success … that new axiom for pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america, supplanting that old cliché that ‘you can’t argue with success’. Chided over fiscal policies as China has bigger-than-forecast surplus … Is this some parallel universe that pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america operates in? If only China had the benefit of my own experience in meaningfully lawless america, I’d say they’d easily defend the onslaught of disingenuous rhetoric (and a bit late) from pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america. Indeed, 911 itself; that ‘pearl harbor event’ so sought by the neo-cons / war mongers still defies explanation (ie., the ‘stand-down order’, symmetrical implosions, foreknowledge by some {who conveniently ‘missed the party’ that day}, etc.. Some links, echoing the unbelief akin to the ‘Jessica Lynch’, Tillman, etc., affairs follow. People must realize that though having but 5% of the world’s population, america can boast 76% of the world’s serial killers and the highest crime rates in the world by far. http://www.albertpeia.com/realifeamericaserialkillers.mpg . Defacto bankrupt, fraudulent america also spends more on military spending than all the nations of the world combined... federal employees / contractors, cia, all 3 branches of the u.s. government, etc., are included in this evolved american trait of inherent criminality ( http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/ricosummarytoFBIunderpenaltyofperjury.pdf http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/PeiavCoanetals.htm ). That perverse field of dreams I’ve previously alluded to, the american nightmare, if you build / contrive war, they will come. And, they do; seals of them (among others); and when their ‘tours’ are done, it’s murder inc./contract killing for hire that they’ve won (cia, mob, etc.). The 20th century, the ‘bloodiest century’, not coincidentally referred to as the american century, brings longings of nostalgia to american criminals who, like Pavlov’s dogs salivate at the prospect of killing, raping, pillaging, and plundering which primitive mindset they have mistakenly been conditioned to connect to their now irretrievably lost success as a nation state; and to the contrary, has become globally and domestically self-destructive / self-defeating. The entire 911 / Bin Laden scenario just doesn’t pass the smell test and reeks of political desperation and Orwellian opportunism. ]

US Postal Service reports $2.2B loss for quarter... [ And, let me add that they deserved that loss. The USPS is totally unreliable and basically a jobs program for the otherwise unemployable; and, they are also corrupt. I’ve previously set forth the scenario where the postal service waylaid dvd disks sent priority/confirmation and a second time, certified mail, to the FBI (violations of federal law, tampering, obstruction, etc.), and ultimately additional copies of said disks were delivered by the reliable, efficient, competitive, performance-driven UPS (their parcel rates are roughly the same and yet half the delivery time – Fedex is as unreliable as the USPS-and for some time had a deal with the USPS). Amazon, Ebay, though a boon to the USPS, have consistently failed to deliver in the realm of computers / peripherals. The following includes a prior testimonial to the service, reliability of PRO Computer Center ( http://www.procomputercenter.com Pro Computer Center, 10837 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025) . Pro Computer Center is among the few remaining stores of their kind. They are performance / service / customer oriented like no other surviving computer retailer / repairer / service providers I’ve experienced. They’ve also moved into the realm of computer forensics / data recovery in the context of court proceedings where they’ve successfully performed where others failed and at substantially more reasonable rates than ‘the competition’. My most recent computer problems accounting for some website / posting delays has been once again been resolved by them and another Dell computer (the circumstances of the most recent debacle was a barrage of Trojans caught by my antivirus, one after another, then shutting down my antivirus, ultimately freezing (no boot) my computer (I previously alluded to my reasonable suspicions as to who perpetrated same). My experiences with such as Amazon, Ebay have been atrocious and borderline if not outright fraudulent (the shoddy sellers), time consuming, and aggravating in the ‘claims process’. Moreover, the other brick and mortar stores, even if reputable, have a fine print which lays most of the warrantee/ guarantee on the manufacturer. In sum, Pro Computer Center does not have any ‘real’ competition. They are currently building me a backup computer that comports with my budget and their survival as a company, though somewhat rare among computer retailers of their type, is totally understandable and a testament to high quality performance and service. (Prior testimonial:Pro Computer Center

10837 Santa Monica Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA 90025

Gentlemen:

I just wanted to extend to you and your company my sincere thanks for a job well done. The Dell computer I recently purchased from you has lived up to all your representations and as well, my own expectations. I bought my first computer from you (Ben) in or around 1999. It was a Sony Vaio laptop which owing to Windows Millenium and a very proprietary approach to computing on the part of Sony, truth be told, was not the greatest system in terms of stability (typical Millenium problems), but no fault of yours. Ultimately, though functional, I traded the Vaio for a Mac, an accommodation by your company seldom seen with other companies if at all (3+ years later). You’ve always stood by your products / service, are available / accessible to field / handle all questions / problems which is rare indeed. In Armand you have a top-notch A+ Certified Tech who is patient, knowledgeable, and talented. Ruben, in truth has been particularly instrumental in seeing to a smooth transition in my recent dealings with your company as a knowledgeable IT Specialist and especially as a savvy, capable manager. Since 1999 I’ve purchased five computers from you and based upon performance, the sixth is assured.

Sincerely,

Albert L. Peia ) ]

National / World

Jesse Ventura Questions Obama’s Narrative Of Bin Laden Raid Former Navy SEAL and Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura has questioned Barack Obama’s official narrative regarding the raid on Osama Bin Laden, telling the Alex Jones Show of his suspicions that Osama died years ago, and expressing disbelief that the man seen flicking between TV channels in the video released by the White House Saturday was actually Bin Laden.

TSA Defends Pat Down Of Baby: Stroller Set Off Explosives Alarm The TSA has defended the actions of two of it’s agents who were photographed conducting a full body pat down on an eight-month old baby at Kansas City International Airport yesterday, saying they were adhering to procedure.

Fear-based Terror Alerts to Become Mandatory On Cell Phones It’s not enough the government and its corporate media propaganda tool commandeer the television and radio with phony terror alerts and incessant nonsense about Muslim miscreants who are inspired by FBI agents provocateurs to talk about terrorism.

FLASHBACK: Are You Scared Yet? Big Sis To Beam Terror Warnings To Your Iphone The Department of Homeland Security is beefing up it’s terror alert warning system in a move that will see terror alerts, whether real or phony, issued via the mainstream media and directly to your phone or computer over social networking sites, and even via Emergency Alert broadcasts.

Obama Ready to Roll Out New Amnesty Carpet for Illegals Amnesty or bust. Though not using those words, that’s expected to be the message President Barack Obama will deliver in the border town of El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday.

Nuclear collapse looms? Fukushima No. 4 reactor ‘leaning’ A small group of evacuees have briefly been allowed inside the exclusion zone around Japan’s damaged Fukushima nuclear plant.

New US strike kills 4 in Pakistan A non-UN sanctioned US drone attack has killed at least four people and wounded several others in Pakistan’s troubled northwest tribal belt belt.

AP Files FOIA Request For Bin Laden Evidence President Obama’s decision to withhold the visual evidence of Osama bin Laden’s death has created a fundamental disagreement between the White House and one of the largest journalism organizations in the world.

Amtrak Backs Schumer Proposal For “No Ride List” Following New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s call for a “no ride list” that would mimic the notoriously sweeping, oppressive and ineffective “no fly list,” Amtrak has publicly backed the idea, which would officially create a Soviet-style internal passport for American citizens and make the presence of TSA workers conducting grope downs at train stations ubiquitous.

Ron Paul: Why Didn’t We Kill Osama Rather Than Invading Afghanistan and Iraq? It is tragic that it took ten years, trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of American casualties and many thousands of innocent lives to achieve our mission of killing one evil person.

Tea party vs. the RINOs Activists and lawmakers are split on what’s next. (Washington Post) [ Ah, yes! Those activists … those musket-bearing tea partyers … riiiiight, gotcha. What Mr. Milbank conveniently omits (too obvious, maybe?) is that the Tea Party is particularly adversarial to the DINs (democrat in name). Truth be told, I really don’t follow the Tea Party; but, it’s also true I don’t follow the democrats or republicans either. After all, I don’t consider myself a lemming, propelled to the precipice so to speak; and, moreover, posit an inevitable futility in light of past (and future) events. If only they had listened … made love, not war! Well, like the scorpion, it’s in their nature (I’m sure you remember that fable). Speaking of fables, they’re getting downright primetime:

The Osama Deception Corbett Report | James Corbett breaks down the Osama raid hoax and the “home video” footage.

Poll Reveals Most Mistrust Bin Laden Assassination Story Kurt Nimmo | Only 10 percent believe the official fairy tale.

Internal Passport: Terror Alert Overload Leads To Call For “No Ride List” Watson | Resurrection of Osama sees Israeli-style security coming to the streets of America.

10 Facts That Prove The Bin Laden Fable Is a Contrived Hoax Paul Watson | Every indication clearly points to last Sunday’s raid being a manufactured ploy to return Americans to a state of post-9/11 intellectual castration.

War on Terror is a Reichstag Fire False Flag Operation Sartre | If you really want justice for the 911 murders, you must face reality and look within your own government for the true terrorists.

Why Does the Terrorist Kingpin Look Better Than He Did in 2001? Washington’s Blog | In the newly-release videos, Bin Laden looks better than he did years ago.

Bin Laden Hoax….The Rest Of The Story Tony Cartalucci | Even a superficial examination of mainstream media’s headlines and interviews with the CIA director himself calls into question the official narrative.

Hoax: White House Claims 4-Year-Old Bin Laden Video Is New Footage Paul Joseph Watson | Dubious Bin Laden “Home Movies” Identical To Tapes Released 4 Years Ago By Pentagon Front Group

Then, of course, there’s also: that ‘pearl harbor event’ so sought by the neo-cons / war mongers still defies explanation (ie., the ‘stand-down order’, symmetrical implosions, foreknowledge by some {who conveniently ‘missed the party’ that day}, etc.. Some links, echoing the unbelief akin to the ‘Jessica Lynch’, Tillman, etc., affairs follow. People must realize that though having but 5% of the world’s population, america can boast 76% of the world’s serial killers, and the highest crime rates in the world by far. ]

Trump’s 2012 polling plummets (The Ticket)

Trump University's Unhappy Students [ trump university … don’t make me laugh! ] Among the many things that Donald Trump has stamped with his brand is a little-known endeavor called Trump University. In Trump’s true exaggerational style, the university isn’t what it appears to be. It isn’t an accredited university at all, but a for-profit entity that sells classes on how to invest in and make money from real estate. Some of its students claim in a class-action lawsuit in federal court that the thing Trump University does best is sell its own classes.

Marcus Baram over at Huffington Post has a thoroughly reported piece on Trump University on Friday. I have spent part of the past week digging into some of the same issues that Baram did.

The case against Trump University alleges that “The primary lesson Trump University teaches its students is how to spend more money by buying more Trump Seminars.” Students say they were encouraged to raise the credit limit on their credit cards so they could spend up to $35,000 to take a Trump University multi-day seminar.

The case is not new –it was filed last year in U.S. District Court in San Diego –but the judge may rule on it as soon as this month. The complaint in the suit says attorneys general in six states have received “numerous complaints against Trump University” and the Texas Attorney General began investigating in January 2010.

George Sorial, assistant general counsel at the Trump Organization, denies the suit’s claims. Sorial told me that 11,000 students have taken Trump University courses and most have been happy. He sent me copies of customer satisfaction surveys that rank the courses highly. He also sent a video interview with Tarla Makaeff, one of the plaintiffs in the class action suit, taken in August 2008 in Los Angeles after a Trump U seminar, in which she praises the program.

Makaeff, a former fashion and handbag designer in San Diego, says via email that the video interview of her was manipulative, and that before it was taken she had already complained toTrump University about not making any money off her $35,000 investment in a seminar. “They … knew I had to give a positive response [in the video] and cooperate with them and a camera being shoved in my face in order to get further support and services from them for my $35,000 investment which I had yet to make any money off in 1 year despite verbal promises otherwise since day one,” Makaeff continues in an email.

The Trump Organization has also countersued Makaeff for $1 million, alleging defamation. A judge has denied Makaeff’s motion to dismiss the counterclaim. Call it the case of the billionaire vs. the handbag designer.

The question is what affect, if any, the lawsuits might have on billionaire Donald Trump, should he decide to run for president. Oh, and there’s a lesson, too. Before you decide to spend $35,000 on a Trump University seminar, remember what its lawyers say: “Trump University cannot guarantee riches any more than Harvard University can guarantee a Rhodes Scholarship or MIT can guarantee a Nobel Prize.”

Dionne: Who is Obama? Now we know. (Washington Post) [ Oh really? Now you tell us what you really know about this fraud and failed president. Barack Obama: The Naked Emperor Shocking but true revelations from David Icke (a must read) | ‘…He has been covertly funded and supported ever since by the Trilateral Commission and its network of foundations connecting into the Ford Foundation, for whom Obama's mother worked... Does anyone really believe that someone, a 'man of the people', would simply appear from apparently nowhere to run the slickest and best-funded presidential campaign in American history? He was chosen long ago by those who wish to enslave the very people that Obama says he wants to 'set free'. The sources of Obama funding .. - Goldman, UBS, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, etc. No wonder he went back on his pledge to accept the limitations of public funding … Obama is just more of the same, a big smile with strings attached, and controlled completely by those that chose him, trained him, sold him and provided his record funding, kept his many skeletons under wraps, like the gay sex and crack cocaine .. Larry Sinclair (from affidavit: 1. Who is Ron Allen that claims to be with your Presidential camp, who is alleged to claim that someone claiming to represent me called asking for $100,000, to keep me from coming forward about our (Obama and I) November 1999 encounter of sex and cocaine use?), ... Obama is just another Banksters' moll prostituting himself .., and that's why he supported the grotesque bail-out of the banking system and why he will always put their interests before the people. His financial advisors are straight from the Wall Street 'A' list, … Zionist Tim Geithner (Bilderberg Group, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations), was appointed Treasury Secretary, a former employee of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the appalling Kissinger Associates. Obama's Treasury team locks into the inner circle around the Zionist Robert Rubin, Citi, Council on Foreign Relations, and economic advisor to Obama. Rubin, ..Illuminati Bilderberg Group, the man behind Citi's debacle.. rescued by taxpayers' money. The very people who caused the financial crisis .. appointed by Obama .. `CIVIL RIGHTS PANEL TO PURSUE FED PROBE IN BLACK PANTHER CASE... ‘`In emotional and personal testimony, an ex-Justice official who quit over the handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases that involve black defendants and white victims ...’ Cases against Wall Street lag despite Holder’s vows to target financial fraud Obama has promised to hold Wall Street accountable for the meltdown. ):

‘THE OBAMA DECEPTION’ http://albertpeia.com/obamadeceptionhighqualityversion.flv ]

TRUMP TO GIBBS: YOU'RE 'A LOSER' [‘Another trumped-up case of the pot calling the kettle black’]... TRUMP: Obama Not Worthy of Ivy Leagues... [ Talk about the pot calling the kettle black … trump’s b.s., low grade (penn) ivy league (courtesy of papa mobster trump who ‘twisted his arm to go’ so people would take him ‘seriously’ – papa mobster trump would pound the undistinguished academically / athletically, Donald with the mantra, ‘you’re a killer, you’re a king’ in film noir melodramatic fashion which proved too much for the more balanced and ‘chosen / favored’ elder brother trump who committed suicide. The old man also required trump to go to prep / military / boarding school where according to a classmate, Ted Levine, trump used to wet / pee in his bed. ) vegetable garden in the same manner as dumbya bush … mobster trump and people like trump are part of the problem (total b*** s***, fraud, etc., as in his home turf, mob-infested sinkholes, jersey / new york), not the solution. Indeed, trump is an interesting mental case in that he evolved from narcissist (those inflated grandiose moods coupled with feelings of inferiority – he loved to obsessively read those hitler speeches for inspiration and to pump himself up according to Ivana Trump) to severe case of antisocial personality disorder [ predatory disregard for and violation of the rights of others – hence, those sophomoric soundbite solutions to complex problems as, ie., taking oil fields(Libya), 25% tariff on Chinese (actually including american goods made in China), drug money laundering in his casinos, bribery, etc.http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/ricosummarytoFBIunderpenaltyofperjury.pdf http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/PeiavCoanetals.htm ]

In a rational nation that wasn’t in decline as pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america, trump and sister Maryanne would both be in prison.

'Terrible student,' not good enough for Harvard... Biden daughter trashes Trump...
Bill Cosby slams: 'He's full of it!'...
Trump Takes On NYT, Gail Collins...
Admires her for surviving 'so long with so little talent'...
NBCWSJ POLL SHOCK: TRUMP #2 GOP [ NBC where t_rump has his Jerry Springer derivative shock-jock show and sinkhole new york's fraud street journal … poll? … Don't make me laugh … Lawrence O'Donnell insists parent company NBC consider firing Donald Trump Daily Caller ... Milbank: Donald trumps CPAC | Gibbs gone (Washington Post) [ Trump’s a loser, dressed up and propped up by and to shill for a declining, fallen nation in the most corrupt regions (ie., new york, jersey, etc.) of the country (every fallen nation has such); of that there is no question …"Over the years I've participated in many battles and have really almost come out very, very victorious every single time," the Donald said. (Except for the bankruptc[ies], that is. [ trump’s never won a battle that wasn’t fixed in advance (including the ‘pre-packaged bankrupcies’ crammed down the throats of objecting creditors – jersey general ] He also with his corrupt mob ilk 'chased' Steve Wynn out of jersey – Steve Wynn's doing extremely well in Macau and Vegas.) "I've beaten many people and companies, and I've won many wars," he added. (Though he didn't serve in the military.) "I have fairly [according to mobster rules; ie., bribery, money laundering, etc.] but intelligently [ as any other mob boss … trump is total b*** s***, a fraud, and lightweight … and, despite the façade, quite insecure … trump’s a total mental case … He truly is the ‘poster-boy’ of american decline and part of the problem, not the solution! …trump also said america’s become the laughingstock of the world … true enough … and trump the biggest joke … NEWS FLASH: Direct from Lost Angeles Learning Annex – Presenting mobster t_rump of new yoke, new joyzey, and now caleefornia mob fame with his continuing message for the past several years: buy real estate (and watch the values go down…..riiiiight!).
Bank sues Trump over Chicago tower loan...
Trump casino to miss interest payment...
trump’s fired (from ‘his own company’)

Gunfire Erupts Inside trump Taj Mahal Casino, 1 Dead - Second Such Incident In A Year At N.J. Mainstay Ends With Employee Killed – What else would you you expect from a mobster’s casino in mob-infested jersey!

Trump luxury resort folds, leaving buyers defrauded…litigation has commenced…send for sister maryanne, the corrupt federal judge to preside, coverup, etc., she’s in n.y./n.j./pa 3rd circuit ct appeals, understands drug money laundering/fraud and handles her own motions to recuse her and like mobster trump should be in jail ... (see RICO Case)] earned many billions of dollars [ at whose expense ], which in a sense was both a scorecard and acknowledgment of my abilities [ to fool most of the people, all of the time. ] ." TRUMP DRAWS CHEERS, BOOS AT CONSERVATIVE CONFERENCE... PONDERING PRESIDENTIAL RUN... [Don’t make me laugh! … Donald T_rump Would Impose 25% Tax on China Imports if President [ trump also said america’s become the laughingstock of the world … true enough … and trump the biggest joke … Indeed, that trump even posits the possibility of a run when he should be in jail is a testament to just how big a laughingstock pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america’s become! [ If he was mobster in chief, mobster and scoundrel trump wraps himself in populist american flag and offers up an (too little too late – typical lightweight) implausible solution to keep ‘the juice’ flowing though he’d already be in jail in a rational, non-declining nation with meaningful laws. All China has to do is dump (and not prospectively buy) their ever more and declining in value day-by-day (from dollar debasement policies) u.s. paper / bonds and overnight and the u.s. economy consequently thereby collapse. [ When you come right down to it, this has been america’s most significant export. Indeed, this irrevocable structural shift, hailed by cia men hw bush and clinton (clinton couldn’t have survived with them) by way of NAFTA as the greatest thing since sliced bread was indeed in no uncertain terms condemned and warned against by Perot, a man of honor who, unlike his opponents, could not be bought, which is the reason, in pervasively corrupt america, he could never have been elected. Interestingly, you may have noticed the good (but not great, other than the spotlight on pervasive bribery including judges, police, politicians, etc., being far too light) the film ‘The Untouchables’ getting a wide re-airing of late, purporting to be a significant part of american folklore / history / culture. However, the reality is that in america, and certainly today, the real story with impact is that of ‘The Touchables’. The reality is that Elliot Ness died a broken man; bankrupt, unable to even win election to the mayoralty of his then current hometown. He was incorruptible; and hence, in the real america, unelectable at the least if not also all but unemployable (he and his are among those few genetic anomalies in america as I’ve previously alluded to. How far america has fallen from even false perception! Pervasively corrupt, meaningfully lawless america can’t even fake it anymore. See, for example, http://albertpeia.com/CIAAgentAffidavit1.jpg http://albertpeia.com/FBIAgentAffidavit11.jpg , and of course, corrupt legal / judicial processes, etc., Defacto bankrupt, fraudulent america also spends more on offensive (defensive a misnomer / propaganda) military spending than all the nations of the world combined, and by a large margin at that. Do you see a pattern emerging here [ I unfortunately only belatedly did, and the feds, fed employees, cia, all 3 branches of the u.s. government, etc., are included in this evolved american trait of inherent criminality in the most nefarious sense … The pervasively corrupt american illegal system … corrupt u.s. courts / (lawyers) / judges: Their lifetime plush appointments should be abolished, which corrupt entities are unheard of in productive societies as China, Japan, etc.. Time to abolish these drags on society and eliminate their lifetime stipends and costly bureaucracies. Rules of law mean nothing to these typically corrupt americans. Most, including sam alito of the u.s. supreme court, concerning drug money laundering and obstruction of justice in the 3^rd circuit ( also maryanne trump barry who covered-up drug money laundering through her brother’s casinos in a civil RICO case) should have gone to or belong in jail. Contrary to popular belief, they do it for the money, personal money, big, cash, untraceable money. The fog of war is great for such things (360 tons $100 bills flown into Iraq and missing, etc.). [ http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/ricosummarytoFBIunderpenaltyofperjury.pdf http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/PeiavCoanetals.htm ]. america’s just a fraudulent and failed defacto bankrupt nation. ] “I would announce, without equivocation, a 25% tax increase on anything purchased from China.” ]

Drudgereport: US Postal Service reports $2.2B loss for quarter...
MICHELLE: KEEPS ON DANCING!
First Lady to host rapper who talks of killing cops...

USA FREAK OUT: TERROR FEARS; FALSE ALARMS...

OIL REBOUNDS; 2ND LARGEST GAIN ON RECORD...

REPORT: Housing crash getting worse...
...values fall fastest rate since '08

Michelle Obama to host rapper at WH who talks of killing cops...

Drone Strike Kills 15 in Pakistan...
First since bin Laden raid...

BIN LADEN SUPPORTERS RAGE ON THE STREETS OF LONDON, VOW REVENGE...
Stage mock funeral in front of US embassy...

Gas nat'l average: $3.99...
Eats 9% of household budgets...
Average price sets record in Indiana -- $4.25 a gallon...
$6.03 in Hawaii... JAPAN URGES HALT AT THREE REACTORS...

UNEMPLOYMENT BACK UP TO 9.0%...

Fannie Mae Reports $8.7B Loss for First Quarter...
Seeks $8.5B more from taxpayers...

APRIL JOBS: +244,000...
FUZZY MATH: How can US add jobs but the unemployment rate go up?

Gas nat'l average: $3.99...
Eats 9% of household budgets...
Average price sets record in Indiana -- $4.25 a gallon...
$6.03 in Hawaii...

PAPER: GREECE EU EXIT?

Silver Plunge Spreads...
OIL GUTTED...
Price Slide Temporary, New Highs Likely: Goldman...
Fears linger of a new 'flash crash'...
Euro Tumbles...

CNN SHOCK POLL: RON PAUL HAS BEST CHANCE VS OBAMANational Home Prices Double Dip...
JOBLESS CLAIMS RISE TO 8 MONTH HIGH...
Fears linger of a new 'flash crash'...

Pakistanis burn U.S. flags; backlash over death grows...

REUTERS RELEASES 'DEATH SCENE' PHOTOS
**WARNING GRAPHIC**

UPDATE: Photo proving bin Laden's death to Sen. Brown was faked...
Possibly three senators fell for fakes...

DOLLAR HITS 3 YEAR LOW...
1 IN 7 ON FOOD STAMPS!
Job numbers disappoint...
Treasury suggests $2 trillion debt cap raise...

REUTERS, AP journalists describe staging of Obama photo taken after TV announcement of bin Laden's death...

The Federal Reserve press conference contained almost no new economic insights; and,
An FOMC meeting with no policy changes or insights..

`CIVIL RIGHTS PANEL TO PURSUE FED PROBE IN BLACK PANTHER CASE... ‘`In emotional and personal testimony, an ex-Justice official who quit over the handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases that involve black defendants and white victims’ Cases against Wall Street lag despite Holder’s vows to target financial fraud Obama has promised to hold Wall Street accountable for the meltdown. ):

‘THE OBAMA DECEPTION’ http://albertpeia.com/obamadeceptionhighqualityversion.flv ]

Editorial: Bin Laden raid no vindication of torture (Washington Post) [ While I don’t disagree with this Editorial, I do disagree with the premise; viz., that they truly sought to prevent that ultimate ‘pearl harbor event’, to ratchet up the war spending / military industrial complex welfare plan with broad based enthusiasm / support. Even war-monger mccain supports this which also finds support in international law, treaties, conventions.I can only wonder what the presence of substantially underrated President General Eisenhower would have meant, and truly believe this entire debacle and the nation’s decline would have been avoided. “All In All It Appears That Eisenhower’s Worst Fears Have Been Realized And His Remarkable And Unique Warnings Given For Naught” [ I personally believe, and the factual, historical realities support that President General Eisenhower is without question the most under-rated president in america’s short-lived history. Is there anyone who foolishly would believe this man (Ike) of honor, the quintessential General / Commander in Chief would be sacrificing lives (american among many others) and treasury for the sake of war profiteers, greed, fraud, etc., as now? ] President Eisenhower’s warned us about the growing threat from the military-industrial complex – and it’s threat to our prosperity – 50 years ago. Eisenhower’s Worst Fears Have Been Realized Washington’s Blog | All in all it appears that Eisenhower’s worst fears have been realized and his remarkable and unique warnings given for naught. . Indeed, 911 itself; that ‘pearl harbor event’ so sought by the neo-cons / war mongerers still defies explanation (ie., the ‘stand-down order’, symmetrical implosions, foreknowledge by some {who conveniently ‘missed the party’ that day}, etc.. Some links, echoing the unbelief akin to the ‘Jessica Lynch’, Tillman, etc., affairs follow. People must realize that though having but 5% of the world’s population, america can boast 76% of the world’s serial killers and the highest crime rates in the world by far. That perverse field of dreams I’ve previously alluded to, the american nightmare, if you build / contrive war, they will come. And, they do; seals of them (among others); and when their ‘tours’ are done, it’s murder inc./contract killing for hire that they’ve won (cia, mob, etc.). The 20th century, the ‘bloodiest century’, not coincidentally referred to as the american century, brings longings of nostalgia to american criminals who, like Pavlov’s dogs salivate at the prospect of killing, raping, pillaging, and plundering which primitive mindset they have mistakenly been conditioned to connect to their now irretrievably lost success as a nation state; and to the contrary, has become globally and domestically self-destructive / self-defeating. The entire 911 / Bin Laden scenario just doesn’t pass the smell test and reeks of political desperation and Orwellian opportunism.

The Osama Deception Corbett Report | James Corbett breaks down the Osama raid hoax and the “home video” footage.

Poll Reveals Most Mistrust Bin Laden Assassination Story Kurt Nimmo | Only 10 percent believe the official fairy tale.

Internal Passport: Terror Alert Overload Leads To Call For “No Ride List” Watson | Resurrection of Osama sees Israeli-style security coming to the streets of America.

10 Facts That Prove The Bin Laden Fable Is a Contrived Hoax Paul Watson | Every indication clearly points to last Sunday’s raid being a manufactured ploy to return Americans to a state of post-9/11 intellectual castration.

War on Terror is a Reichstag Fire False Flag Operation Sartre | If you really want justice for the 911 murders, you must face reality and look within your own government for the true terrorists.

Why Does the Terrorist Kingpin Look Better Than He Did in 2001? Washington’s Blog | In the newly-release videos, Bin Laden looks better than he did years ago.

Bin Laden Hoax….The Rest Of The Story Tony Cartalucci | Even a superficial examination of mainstream media’s headlines and interviews with the CIA director himself calls into question the official narrative.

Hoax: White House Claims 4-Year-Old Bin Laden Video Is New Footage Paul Joseph Watson | Dubious Bin Laden “Home Movies” Identical To Tapes Released 4 Years Ago By Pentagon Front Group

More talk on troubled borrowers fund State attorneys general descend on Washington to negotiate aid for troubled homeowners … More bad economic news for Greece A year into its rescue program, the country is behind schedule and may require more help to stay solvent.

Whitney said on the panel, “It’s not that big of a call..There’s nothing controversial about that call, if you look at the numbers.”

“You can criticize me for everything you want, I’m just numb to it because I have more conviction on this than I’d had on any single thing in my career.”

I would hope that a truly United States of America would be a bit more caring of its own member states.’

Strange Week: Wall Street Takes a Dive Hansen ‘Strange week on Wall Street.

Weekly unadjusted initial unemployment claims popped above the 2010 year-ago number.

http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/5/8/saupload_z_unemployment2.png

China chided over fiscal policies China has bigger-than-forecast surplus (Washington Post) [ Arguing with success … that new axiom for pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america, supplanting that old cliché that ‘you can’t argue with success’. Chided over fiscal policies as China has bigger-than-forecast surplus … Is this some parallel universe that pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america operates in? If only China had the benefit of my own experience in meaningfully lawless america, I’d say they’d easily defend the onslaught of disingenuous rhetoric (and a bit late) from pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america. Indeed, 911 itself; that ‘pearl harbor event’ so sought by the neo-cons / war mongerers still defies explanation (ie., the ‘stand-down order’, symmetrical implosions, foreknowledge by some {who conveniently ‘missed the party’ that day}, etc.. Some links, echoing the unbelief akin to the ‘Jessica Lynch’, Tillman, etc., affairs follow. People must realize that though having but 5% of the world’s population, america can boast 76% of the world’s serial killers and the highest crime rates in the world by far. http://www.albertpeia.com/realifeamericaserialkillers.mpg . Defacto bankrupt, fraudulent america also spends more on military spending than all the nations of the world combined... federal employees / contractors, cia, all 3 branches of the u.s. government, etc., are included in this evolved american trait of inherent criminality ( http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/ricosummarytoFBIunderpenaltyofperjury.pdf http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/PeiavCoanetals.htm ), That perverse field of dreams I’ve previously alluded to, the american nightmare, if you build / contrive war, they will come. And, they do; seals of them (among others); and when their ‘tours’ are done, it’s murder inc./contract killing for hire that they’ve won (cia, mob, etc.). The 20th century, the ‘bloodiest century’, not coincidentally referred to as the american century, brings longings of nostalgia to american criminals who, like Pavlov’s dogs salivate at the prospect of killing, raping, pillaging, and plundering which primitive mindset they have mistakenly been conditioned to connect to their now irretrievably lost success as a nation state; and to the contrary, has become globally and domestically self-destructive / self-defeating. The entire 911 / Bin Laden scenario just doesn’t pass the smell test and reeks of political desperation and Orwellian opportunism. ]

Strange Week: Wall Street Takes a Dive Hansen ‘Strange week on Wall Street.

Weekly unadjusted initial unemployment claims popped above the 2010 year-ago number.

http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/5/8/saupload_z_unemployment2.png

Yet the BLS jobs report this week (analysis here) was outstanding.

Was it caused by an unusual event in unemployment? Maybe, but the same uptick happened in 2008 – and the convergence began in the prior week. But hey – this is an economic recovery expansion right? As the BLS jobs data for April actually uses a mid month cutoff – whatever caused the spike in initial unemployment claims will not be in the current jobs data release. And the great BLS numbers released this week are subject to revision for several months.

But these were not the only bizarre data points this week.

April ISM non-manufacturing was positive but far less good than a month ago.
Productivity growth in 1Q2011 came in at a paltry 1.9% annual growth rate.
The global investing world was a sea of red this week lead by the collapse of commodities.

This week Econintersect released its economic forecast for May 2011 anticipating a continuing flat growth rate. The question - Is the economy on the doorstep of another dip?

The fundamental economic real time building blocks are positive, and in some ways are gaining strength. The economy is not correcting when the transport of goods and materials to your local shopping center remains up YoY. Some transport data points are only a week old. Yes, some data points are not showing the same growth rate as they were earlier this year, but others are stronger. Overall a push.

The unsettling aspect of this week is the investing markets. There is a correlation between wealth and spending, and many are poorer as this week draws to a close. The economy has been “moderately” growing (Fed Chairman Bernanke’s words) – nothing has changed. It is the markets themselves which were growing at rates above the economic dynamics.

Sooner or later, the markets (stocks and commodities) correct to reflect a more considered forward view. The high end consumer is caught in this game of investing musical chairs, and as they are a major element in consumer “growth” – there might be another headwind to growth in the months to come.

But with any luck, the energy headwind might be abating. Econintersect remains positive for near term economic growth.

Economic News This Week:

Econintersect issued this week its economic forecast for May 2011 indicating a peaking of this current economic sub-cycle. In simple words, the same moderate recovery seen in March and April will continue in May.

This week the Weekly Leading Index (WLI) from ECRI declined from 7.5% to 6.7%. This level implies the business conditions six months from now will be approximately the same or slightly improved compared to today.

http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/5/8/saupload_z_weekly_indexes.png

As discussed above, initial unemployment claims rose rather strongly in this week’s release. I suspect there might be an issue with the seasonal adjustment factors but only time will tell.

http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/5/8/saupload_z_unemployment3.png

Most of the data this week had elements of uncertainty – but overall did not rise to a level which signaled a correction to moderate economic growth forecast.

Weekly Economic Release Scorecard:

Item	Headline	Analysis
April Jobs Report	Up	Jobs up a solid 244,000. Economic markers in the data are not excellent.
March Consumer Credit	Up	With smoke and mirrors consumer credit is up 0.06% YoY
Market Valuations		Doug Short and John Lounsbury review three market valuation indicators
Commodity Prices		Dirk Ehnts suggests Goldman Sachs may have been involved in the commodity price bubbles
Initial Unemployment Claims	Up	The seasonally and non-seasonally adjusted data tell the same bad story
1Q2011 Productivity	Up	Unusually small productivity growth
April ISM Non-Manufacturing	Less Good	This survey is not as bad as the pundits are making out
April ADP Employment	Up	Lower growth, and barely above labor force growth rates
Bush Tax Cuts		Elliott Morss overviews effects of eliminating some of the Bush Tax Cuts on deficit reduction
March Manufacturing	Up	Manufacturing new orders are in record territory
Student Loans		Malcolm Harris overviews the growing debt problem against the benefits of college education
April ISM Manufacturing	Less Good	The underlying survey results show manufacturing is growing
March Construction Spending	Up	Not Up – still falling YoY but at a slower rate
Global Empires		Elliott Morss looks at the role of education in maintaining empires
May 2011 Economic Forecast		Same economy as April
India		Sunil Chandra argues that the Reserve Bank should not be raising the prime rate
Real Estate Short Sales		Frank McKenna discusses short sale flipping fraud
Dollar as Reserve Currency		Michael Pettis looks at how the reserve currency has created global imbalances
BRICS and the dollar		Sanjeev Kulkarni opines on the BRIC conference outcome
MERS and Foreclosuregate		Michael Collins lists essential elements in the government settlements with the banking industry
Global Stock Markets		Erik McCurdy graphs the warning signals

Bankruptcy This Week: Raser Technologies, Majestic Capital (fdba CRM Holdings) and Majestic USA Capital, Caribe Media and CII Acquisition Holdings

Failed Banks This Week:

http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/5/8/saupload_z_failed_banks.png ‘

Key Market Movers This Week: Buying Opportunity or Epic Turning Point? Wachtel ‘…Fundamentals

Data from the US, UK and EU outside of the core funding nations has been steadily downbeat. In addition, US earnings season failed to provide the lift it has typically delivered in the past years. As earnings season wraps up, just 60% of companies have “beat” expectations so far – the lowest rate of any quarter in the current bull market. Finally, QE 2 is set to end, even though income from current holdings will be reinvested in US bonds to keep the Fed’s balance sheet from actually shrinking. Although the great liquidity contraction has yet to begin, the expansion is ending.

Technical Evidence: S&P 500, EURUSD Approach Multi-Year Highs, QE 2 End In Sight, Begs Profit Taking

The bellwether S&P 500 Index began the week at 1380, under 200 points from its pre Great Financial Crisis highs of 2007, though the global and US economy is in much worse condition. The EURUSD was challenging pre-Greek-Crisis highs of a year ago of 1.5000 though the EU debt crisis too has only gotten worse, with Greece at the brink of default and 2 other nations on bailout life support, and too-big-to-bailout Spain’s situation has also deteriorated.

Admittedly, these assets have been challenging and breaking though significant resistance for some time now, though the above catalysts, combined with the above technical and fundamental conditions, may have been enough.

Certainly they had help from bearish fundamentals this past week.

EUR Bearish News

Euro zone events allowed for additional follow through to the extent that they changed current market perceptions not only for this week but for at least a part of the coming week as well.

These included:

Thursday’s dovish ECB remarks. Concerning inflation, Trichet omitted the key “strongly vigilant” language used to telegraph imminent rate hikes. He also reiterated support for a strong USD, and by implication, acceptance of a weaker EUR. This set back the timing and pace of EUR rate increase hopes on which the entire EUR rally of the past months as been based, setting the stage for a EUR pullback, and thus a USD increase, which, by the way, further undermined commodities.
With rate hike hopes dampened, that allowed markets to refocus on the EUR’s deteriorating underlying fundamentals, which have been deteriorating over the prior months, and took a turn for the worse this week. Specifically:
A poor Portuguese bond auction
Rumors of Greek threats to leave the EU/ impending debt restructure: A roughly 50% default on Greek bonds has already been priced in, Germany has publicly admitted a Greek restructure is coming, and EU officials have been reportedly working on a plan to smooth this process. Then came Friday’s bombshell report from Der Speigel that Greece was threatening to leave the EU and that officials were holding emergency meetings on the subject, which further rocked the already reeling EUR. The report was denied by both Greece and the EU, though these were discounted because there were indeed emergency meetings on both Greece and Portugal.
As we’ve noted for weeks, a restructure (or exit) by any of the PIIGS would have ramifications far beyond the size of the specific debtor nation. Either event would undermine the reliability of the 11 year old currency, and would also risk raising credit costs for the remaining PIIGS block and pushing them closer to a similar fate. Fears of contagion risk alone could be enough to send the EUR spiraling lower, along with all risk assets, as it did just about a year ago.
As always, a weakening EUR means a strengthening USD, which in turn puts more pressure on commodities and commodity currencies…’

Earnings Not Quite Living Up to Expectations

“CEOs at the Nation’s Largest Companies Were Paid Better Last Year Than They Were In 2007, When … Unemployment Was Roughly Half What It Is Today” Indeed, the government’s policies have been geared towards redistributing wealth upwards.

Senator Paul discusses debt ceiling In his latest update, Senator Paul reaffirms his opposition to increasing the debt ceiling and makes the case for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. This amendment would force Congress to balance their budget just as many states are required to do and families across America have to.

The Greek Debt Crisis Escalates: Is Greece Threatening To Leave The Euro? Is the Greek debt crisis about to explode out of control? According to Der Spiegel, the government of Greece is considering leaving the Euro and reestablishing its own currency.

US Unemployment Rises To 9 Per Cent The nation’s unemployment rate – the result of a separate but simultaneously released survey of households instead of businesses – showed an uptick to 9.0 percent.

Oil Prices Will Top Highs After Correction: Goldman CNBC | Oil to surpass recent highs by 2012 due to supply tightness.

U.S. Adds 244,000 Jobs in April, but Unemployment Rises National Journal | Pace of employment growth accelerates; unemployment up to 9 percent.

Jobs Report Has More Bad News Than Good News CNBC | There was more bad news than met the eye to Friday’s jobs report.

More Money Created as Prices Rise As the economy stumbles the American standard of living recedes. 44 million people are using food stamps and in one year that figure will be 60 million.

JIM ROGERS ON COMMODITIES: The Bull Market Will Go Up, Consolidate, Go Up, Consolidate, Go Up And Consolidate For Years Jim Rogers didn’t buy or sell anything during last week’s commodity sell-off.

U.S. economy adds 244,000 jobs But the unemployment rate edged up last month, showing that the outlook for workers remains grim (Washington Post) [244,000 jobs added in April Associated Press In biggest hiring spree in five years, employers posted a third straight month of hiring; unemployment rose to 9 percent as people resumed looking for work. Interactive: Why it doesn’t feel like a recovery (Washington Post) [ Short answer: Because it’s really not a recovery! What jobs? $1 dollar a day, 3 days a year … and on government pork projects for the porkers’ reelection campaigns? I don’t think so! Obama’s victory lap (Washington Post) The killing of bin Laden offered hope of instant renewal. [ Only wobama aficionado Mr. Milbank could latch onto this propagandist Orwellian dream and call it victory. Sounds like he’s shootin’ for a job in this failed presidency/administration as others, including from the Post.. 10 Reasons 2011 Is Feeling More and More Like 2008 Jensen ‘..it eerily feels like the months before the financial crisis and meltdown of 2008. .. impending and significant pullback over the summer.

10 reasons 2011 ..like 2008.

Gas prices rising rapidly, starting to impact consumer spending and sentiment. On Thursday, gas prices hit this highest level since July 31^st, 2008 and have risen every month since last August, up over 30% ..
Despite numerous federal programs (mostly failed), the housing market remains moribund. ..
The Federal Reserve continues to be behind the curve. In 2008, the subprime loan problem was “contained”. In 2011, Bernanke can’t seem to see any signs of inflation despite rapidly rising energy and food prices (they are not “core” components of the Index Blind Ben
In 2008, we were fighting military actions in two Middle Eastern countries; Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2011, we are still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and have added ½ a war in Libya, .. a higher floor for oil prices ..
World food prices increased dramatically in the 1st and 2nd quarter of 2008 creating a global crisis and causing political and economical instability and social unrest ..In 2008, this produced food riots in many developing countries. In 2011, we have uprisings throughout the Middle East ..
In May 2008, the market was worried about which was the next financial institution ..what European sovereign state will be the next to need a bailout after Greece, Ireland and Portugal and what the ramifications will be for the credit markets.
In 2008, gold hit $900 an ounce in January of that year and $1000 an ounce for the first time in March 2008. In 2011, gold and silver just hit all time highs last week
As in 2008, U.S. GDP growth was anemic in the first quarter.. In 2011, GDP growth ..shows a significant slowdown from previous qtr.
As in 2008, the fiscal and monetary policies of the United States have led to a decline in the value of its currency
In 2008, China, the world’s third largest economy, instituted a series of measures to curb growth in order to address increasing inflation and the beginnings of a property bubble.. ]

Milbank: The GOP’s juvenile debate (Washington Post) [ Mr. Milbank has lamentably become the rush limbaugh / sean hannity of the newspaper world, though he barks and apologizes for dems (and wobama the b for b*** s***) only (as limbaugh / hannity for the gop / bushies only). A political minefield in Treasury plan (Washington Post) Questions about deficit and growth complicate Treasury’s plan to overhaul corporate taxes. [ What plan! . Let the budget battle begin After two weeks of tumultuous meetings with constituents, Congress returns to a lengthy fight over the nation’s solvency. (WP) [ Or more aptly put, stated another way, the nation’s solvency is over. .. america’s defacto bankrupt with no end in sight.. interest alone is eating progressively into GDP beyond the subterfuge.. Gerson: How serious are we about the deficit? (WP) [ Not much! I mean come on! Davis ‘… This is how we pay off our current debts and I think bondholders are simply happy to get anything out of a country that admits it owes $15Tn (1/4 of global GDP) but probably owes closer to $60Tn (entire global GDP) in the form of unfunded liabilities. The funniest thing about this (and you have to laugh) is to see Conservative pundits get on TV and talk about how we need to cut $100Bn worth of discretionary spending to "fix" this (while continuing to spend $1Tn on the military and $1Tn on tax cuts for the top 1% each year). There is no fixing this and even a Republican said you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. THIS HOUSE OF CARDS IS TEETERING FOLKS – PLEASE BE CAREFUL OUT THERE! ‘ … Suckers’ rally to keep suckers suckered: Philadelphia Fed Depresses Economists Durden ‘..And here comes the first indicator that Q2 GDP is about to be mass revised by everyone, courtesy of Japan, and ongoing inflation pressures: the Philadelphia Fed collapsed from a revised 43.4 (a 27 year high) to 18.5, the lowest since November 2010… This is an especially great opportunity to sell / take profits while you still can since there's much worse to come! U.S. Economy Remains on Life Support Hansen ‘

The Federal Reserve press conference by Chairman Bernanke which contained almost no new economic insights; and,
An FOMC meeting with no policy changes or insights..

`CIVIL RIGHTS PANEL TO PURSUE FED PROBE IN BLACK PANTHER CASE... ‘`In emotional and personal testimony, an ex-Justice official who quit over the handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases that involve black defendants and white victims’ Cases against Wall Street lag despite Holder’s vows to target financial fraud Obama has promised to hold Wall Street accountable for the meltdown. ):

‘THE OBAMA DECEPTION’ http://albertpeia.com/obamadeceptionhighqualityversion.flv ]

Pledge not squaring with reality Obama’s vow to boost middle-class economic security at odds with corporate profits, unemployment. (Washington Post) [CEOs’ pay: It’s as if the Great Recession never happened (Washington Post) The typical big-business CEO made $9 million last year, exceeding pre-recession level. [ And ‘worth every penny’? Not likely in pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america, leaders no more except in fraud, crime, manipulation, subterfuge. Imagine the comparisons to their foreign counterparts where value still has meaning. As if ‘never happened? How ‘bout not over, and worse to come! UBS bank admits rigging bids (WP) Swiss bank reaped millions of dollars of illegal profits by rigging municipal bond transactions in 36 states, government said. [ The key here is ‘Swiss’ and ‘millions of dollars of illegal profits’ when the american banks / wall street frauds’ generated hundreds of billions in illegal profits, which frauds continue to this day by way of slightly subdued high-frequency trading / commission-generated scams along with cover-up and cash-out from the last, still unprosecuted fraud in the trillions for which disgorgement, fines is long overdue. 24 Signs Of Economic Decline In America ‘The US is in the middle of a devastating long-term economic decline..’ ] States face shortfall for retirees (WP) Public workers’ retirement funds had a gap of $1.26 trillion at the end of fiscal 2009 Study: Affordable rentals scarce (WP) Poll: For Obama, low marks on Afghan war (WP) More Americans disapprove of President Obama’s management of the war in Afghanistan than support it Fuel prices cut into Obama popularity (WP) (The frauds on wall street et als should be criminally prosecuted, jailed, fined, and disgorgement imposed), and have used the mideast turmoil to obfuscate their failure. Dave's Daily 'If you can keep interest rates this low this long, its inevitable cheap financing can allow companies to start cobbling each other up. Further Ben's policies allow companies like IBM to sell bonds at 1% and buy back shares with the proceeds (total paper bubble-scam). POMO is occurring almost daily and Primary Dealers can buy back their shares and pay dividends with what essentially is taxpayer money-- … an especially great opportunity to sell / take profits while you still can since there's much worse to come! America Is a Failed State Because It Won’t Prosecute Financial Crime Washington’s Blog / the grim economic reality [ http://albertpeia.com/grimreality.htm ]. Selling In May Is Very Good Advice This Year Harding / April Is a Good Time to Sell Adler Equity Valuations Are Forming the Second Biggest Bubble in U.S. History Kaspar ... According to Yale University’s Dr. Robert Shiller, the market is now 41% overvalued …only time the markets have been more overvalued .. 1929 & tech bubble. http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/4/12/saupload_cape_thumb1.png PRECHTER: We're Still In A Massive Bear Market And Stocks Will Crash To New Lows ]

Meredith Whitney Sticks to Her Guns Today Roche ‘Talk about holding onto a losing trade. At the Milken Conference yesterday, Meredith Whitney said there was nothing controversial about her muni call, maintaining that she has more conviction about the muni crisis call than anything in her entire career. Via Bloomberg:

Whitney said on the panel, “It’s not that big of a call..There’s nothing controversial about that call, if you look at the numbers.”

“You can criticize me for everything you want, I’m just numb to it because I have more conviction on this than I’d had on any single thing in my career.”

I would hope that a truly United States of America would be a bit more caring of its own member states.’

Don't Be Fooled By The Jobs Report Harding ‘This was a week that confirmed that the economic recovery has stalled.

We knew from the previous week that economic growth (GDP) slowed to just 1.8% in the March quarter from 3.1% in the December quarter. This week it was reported that the ISM Non-Mfg Index, which tracks the service sector of the economy, plunged to 52.8 in April from 57.3 in March (versus the consensus estimate of economists that it would improve to 57.8).

It was a shocking report since the ISM Non-Manufacturing Index covers just about every business sector– everything from education, healthcare, finance, insurance and retail, to technology services, transportation, and mining, accounting for more than 80% of U.S. employment. At the same time it was reported that the ISM New Orders Index also plunged substantially, from 64.1 in March to 52.7 in April, not encouraging for service sector business activity for the next few months.

Commodity markets, already worried about what slowing global economies would do to demand for materials and supplies, reacted with further substantial declines. By the close on Thursday, the price of crude oil had collapsed from its high of $114.80 a barrel a week ago, to $99.75. The S&P GSCI Index of 24 raw materials fell 11.5% in just five days.

Fortunately, the stock market’s reaction to the further evidence that the economic recovery is in trouble was more muted. By the close on Thursday, the S&P 500 was down only 1.8% for the week.

And thankfully, on Friday morning the Labor Department released its monthly jobs report, which showed that 244,000 new jobs were created in April, 60,000 more than had been forecast, and the stock market surged up in reaction, with the Dow up 150 points within minutes of the market’s open.

Indeed the jobs report was good news, even though it was also reported that the unemployment rate rose to 9.0% from its previous level of 8.8%. But did the better than expected jobs report cancel out the even more surprising plunge in the ISM service sector index in April, reported the previous day?

I don’t think so. Even within the employment report the numbers show that 13.7 million people remained unemployed in April, still almost double the number just before the last recession began in December, 2007. Including part-time workers who have not been able to find full-time jobs, and those who have given up looking for a job, the “underemployed” rate rose to 15.9% in April. That seems to more closely resemble what the ISM Index said about the economy slowing further in April.

And here’s the thing about the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report. As my subscribers know, I have always called it ‘The Big One’ as far as economic reports go. That’s because it’s so difficult for economists to forecast that it comes in with a big surprise in one direction or the other more often than any other series of reports. And that surprise results in a one or two day triple-digit move by the Dow in one direction or the other more often than any other report.

But the rest of that pattern is that the move is then most often reversed over the following two or three days, and the market returns to whatever its focus was before the report.

In this instance, with the 1^st quarter earnings reporting season pretty much over, that is liable to be a refocus on the slowing economic recovery that had it troubled prior to the jobs report.

Meanwhile, the collapse in commodity prices was another example of what happens when markets become overbought, and investor sentiment reaches extremes of bullishness, as was the case with commodities. The consensus opinion a week ago was that they could only move higher. $2,000 gold, $75 silver, $150 a barrel oil seemed assured. But when a surprise hits and investors head in a rush for the exit they discover they can’t all get through the door at once. Since most everyone interested in commodities was already invested there was no one willing to buy what they wanted to sell except at much lower prices.

Perhaps a cautionary tale for the stock market as it enters its unfavorable season with investors so bullish and anxious to jump in on any dip?’

Three-Theme Monty: Economic Conditions, Commodity Rally / Rout, Euro Crisis

A Rough Week for World Markets Short ‘This past week was a downer across major world markets. The Nikkei 225 is the one index showing a fractional gain, but it was closed three of the last six market days. The DAX was down fractionally, but the other markets finished deeper in the red. The table below shows the three-week trend of the seven markets I've been tracking in this series.

[ chart http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/5/9/saupload_world_indexes_weekly_comp_110506_table.png ]

The chart below illustrates the comparative performance of World Markets since March 9, 2009. The start date is arbitrary: The S&P 500 and BSE SENSEX hit their lows on March 9th, the Nikkei 225 on March 10th, the DAX on March 6th, the FTSE on March 3rd, the Shanghai Composite on November 4, 2008, and the Hang Seng even earlier on October 27, 2008. However, by aligning on the same day and measuring the percent change, we get a better sense of the relative performance than if we align the lows.

[ chart Click for a larger image ]

A Longer Look Back

Here is the same chart starting from the turn of 21st century. The relative over-performance of the emerging markets (Shanghai, Mumbai, Hang Seng) is readily apparent.

[ chart Click for a larger image ]‘

Alan Greenspan “Betrayed” Ayn Rand [ Ayn Rand … Is that all? … If it was only Ayn Rand ] and Ruined the Economy [ With ‘no-recession-helicopter-ben’s coup de grace’, so to speak, in finishing ‘the job’. ] - Aaron Task "Ayn Rand would have never advocated for the kind of policies Alan Greenspan instituted," says Yaron Brook, President of the Ayn Rand Institute.

Yaron Brook: GOP Should Repeal Dodd-Frank, Abolish the Fed- Peter Gorenstein

America’s Middle Class Crisis: The Sobering Facts- Peter Gorenstein

Housing Crash Is Getting Worse- MarketWatch

Greece hit by new downgrade, EU ponders more help

Greeks ring alarm bells just a year after bailout

SMH | Greece will not be able to meet the terms of last year’s rescue.

U.S. ‘Underwater’ Homeowners Increase to 28 Percent, Zillow Says

Bloomberg | More than 28 percent of U.S. homeowners owed more than their properties were worth.

Gold, Silver Prices Recover After Carnage The Street | Gold and silver prices were recovering Monday.

National / World

The Osama Deception Corbett Report | James Corbett breaks down the Osama raid hoax and the “home video” footage.

Poll Reveals Most Mistrust Bin Laden Assassination Story Kurt Nimmo | Only 10 percent believe the official fairy tale.

Internal Passport: Terror Alert Overload Leads To Call For “No Ride List” Steve Watson & Paul Joseph Watson | Resurrection of Osama sees Israeli-style security coming to the streets of America.

10 Facts That Prove The Bin Laden Fable Is a Contrived Hoax Paul Watson | Every indication clearly points to last Sunday’s raid being a manufactured ploy to return Americans to a state of post-9/11 intellectual castration.

War on Terror is a Reichstag Fire False Flag Operation Sartre | If you really want justice for the 911 murders, you must face reality and look within your own government for the true terrorists.

Schumer Calls for Train Station Gestapo Zones Kurt Nimmo | Government has used no-fly list to harass political activists.

Media Ignores Fukushima Fire Kurt Nimmo | The situation at Fukushima is not newsworthy for the corporate media.

Why Does the Terrorist Kingpin Look Better Than He Did in 2001? Washington’s Blog | In the newly-release videos, Bin Laden looks better than he did years ago.

Bin Laden Hoax….The Rest Of The Story Tony Cartalucci | Even a superficial examination of mainstream media’s headlines and interviews with the CIA director himself calls into question the official narrative.

Hoax: White House Claims 4-Year-Old Bin Laden Video Is New Footage Paul Joseph Watson | Dubious Bin Laden “Home Movies” Identical To Tapes Released 4 Years Ago By Pentagon Front Group

Red Alert: Help Stop False Flag Terror Infowars.com | Alex warns about the potential for another false flag attack, urging listeners to call the White House.

Alternative Media Rankings Surge After bin Laden Assassination Spectacle Activist Post | As a result, traffic to alternative news sites has surged dramatically.

More Fake Photos Emerge In Bin Laden Farce Infowars | Check out the bad photoshopping on this supposed image of Bin Laden’s wife’s passport.

Cindy Sheehan: If You Believe The Newest Death Of Osama Bin Laden YOU’RE STUPID! YouTube | Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan weighs in on the Bin Laden facade.

Ron Paul – It’s Time to End the Wars and Bring the Troops Home Ron Paul is the ONLY 2012 Candidate on EITHER side ready to end the pointless wars in the Middle East, as well as, put an end to the constant Empire Building by the Military Industrial Complex.

Hoax: White House Claims 4-Year-Old Bin Laden Video Is New Footage In a desperate effort to bolster its crumbling official narrative, the White House today released a set of dubious Bin Laden “home movies” purportedly seized from his compound during the raid on Sunday night that it claims show Bin Laden on camera in 2010, but the tapes are almost identical to footage released almost four years ago by a notorious Pentagon front group that acts as a conduit for US intelligence by regularly releasing fake Al-Qaeda videos.

Obama Administration Official Took Photographs Of Press During Bin Laden Briefing The audio from the videos were not played, Ms. Starr reports, and reporters were not allowed to record the briefing. They were permitted to take notes, she said, while an Obama administration official took photographs of the reporters.

More Fake Photos Emerge In Bin Laden Farce Check out the bad photoshopping on this supposed image of Bin Laden’s wife’s passport.

CIA agents lived next door to Osama bin Laden, Pakistani Neighbours Don’t Believe A Word Of It The latest piece of news at the end of a week in which it had been revealed Osama Bin Laden had practically been their neighbour, was that a covert CIA surveillance team had also lived among them, unnoticed and unknown. Nobody was inclined to believe either proposition could be true.

Corporate Media Again Takes Claim Of “Islamist Website” As Gospel On Bin Laden Threat to Attack US While the mainstream media ceaselessly attacks anyone who doesn’t instantly believe every word that comes out of Obama’s mouth as a “conspiracy theorist,” they are perfectly willing to instantly swallow anything posted on a random “Islamist website” as the absolute gospel truth, particularly if it validates the narrative of using the supposed words of whatever bogeyman is currently in vogue to terrify the American people into submitting to being groped, surveilled and harassed in the name of the fraudulent war on terror.

Media Ignores Fukushima Fire Image captures of video footage from the Fukushima nuclear plant appear to show a fire. According to Alexander Higgins and other bloggers, the Japanese shut down the webcam after the images below appeared on the internet. Lucas White Field Hixson posted the images last night, according to Higgins. There is also an animation of the images posted on YouTube.

Bin Laden had Pakistan ‘support network’: Obama Osama bin Laden had a “support network” in Pakistan but it is not clear if the Pakistani government was involved, US President Barack Obama said in his first public comments on the issue.

Scepticism in Pakistan over bin Laden’s alleged role Pakistani security officials reacted with scepticism on Sunday to a U.S. assertion that Osama bin Laden was actively engaged in directing his far-flung network from his compound in Abbottabad where he was killed on May 2.

A Final Word on the Bin Laden Hoax The “Bin Laden” hoax is consuming our time and energy even as the global corporate-financier oligarchs flee forward cashing in on the political capital they presume they have gained by making this announcement.

Bin Laden Home Videos Released … Why Does the Terrorist Kingpin Look Better Than He Did in 2001? In the newly-release videos, Bin Laden looks better than he did years ago.

Bin Laden: The Ears Have It Ears are as unique as fingerprints, and they do not change with time. The ears do not match (and the noses are also different). The man in the video watching TV is most definitely not Osama Bin Laden.

Syria Standing in Defiance: US-funded sedition and the responsibility to restore order The global corporate-financier funded think-tanks rolled out their slick acronym, “R2P,” or the “responsibility to protect,” as a means to encapsulate the latest excuse in a long history of untenable excuses for wars of imperial expansion, in recent regards to Libya.

Bin Laden kill conveniently paves way for security checkpoints everywhere — shopping malls, sports stadiums, grocery stores, churches Now that Osama Bin Laden is allegedly dead (for something like the ninth time), prepare to eventually be groped, molested, and herded through naked body scanners and other X-ray scanning machines everywhere you go.

Alternative Media Rankings Surge After bin Laden Assassination Spectacle A story like the assassination of “public enemy #1″ is naturally going to drive people toward all news sources. However, we in the alternative news media have been particularly busy since the announcement late Sunday night, as indicated by Alexa website rankings.

“If You Believe The Newest Death Of Osama Bin Laden YOU’RE STUPID!” Cindy Sheehan Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan weighs in on the Bin Laden facade.

Al Jazeera Releases New Footage From Inside Bin Laden’s Compound Al Jazeera has obtained new footage of Bin Laden’s compound from shortly after the raid.

More Propaganda: Was Bin Laden betrayed by his right-hand man? Osama Bin Laden’s deputy led U.S. troops to the Al Qaeda leader’s hideout so he could take over the terrorist group, it was claimed today.

The Cost of Bin Laden: $3 Trillion Over 15 Years What do we have to show for that tab? Two wars that continue to occupy 150,000 troops and tie up a quarter of our defense budget; a bloated homeland-security apparatus that has at times pushed the bounds of civil liberty.

Trail to bin Laden began with phone call (Washington Post) [ It’s truly difficult not to like Mr. Woodward or not to receive well anything he reports on. After all, having been played on the big screen by extremely likeable Robert Redford, I’m constrained to say I myself am predisposed to liking Mr. Woodward (Hoffman/Bernstein – not so much) and being thusly more receptive to what he has to say (that ‘transfer aspect’ of ‘propaganda’ which I was fortunate to have studied in sixth grade, the advanced reading group, courtesy of James Bresnahan, undoubtedly the best teacher I’ve ever had, grade for grade – he treated young people as more than just kids, with exposure to the great classics, classical music, slides and insights from his wide-ranging world travels, etc.). This is not to say Mr. Woodward should in any way be diminished inasmuch as his substantial journalistic credentials and contributions speak for themselves (particularly his recent piece, at great peril I believe, on the ubiquity of high level security clearances in the Washington metro area). Moreover, his contributions are invariably a welcomed positive for the great paper, The Washington Post. Yet, Mr. Woodward was a ‘navy man’, after all; and, I can’t help but think, with all the scripted, staged hoopla surrounding the Bin Laden affair, his ‘gorge rises at it’. Indeed, 911 itself; that ‘pearl harbor event’ so sought by the neo-cons / war mongerers still defies explanation (ie., the ‘stand-down order’, symmetrical implosions, foreknowledge by some {who conveniently ‘missed the party’ that day}, etc.. Some links, echoing the unbelief akin to the ‘Jessica Lynch’, Tillman, etc., affairs follow. Additionally, people must remain attuned to the reality that though having but 5% of the world’s population, america can boast 76% of the world’s serial killers, http://www.albertpeia.com/realifeamericaserialkillers.mpg . Defacto bankrupt, fraudulent america also spends more on military spending than all the nations of the world combined... federal employees / contractors, cia, all 3 branches of the u.s. government, etc., are included in this evolved american trait of inherent criminality ( http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/ricosummarytoFBIunderpenaltyofperjury.pdf http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/PeiavCoanetals.htm ], and the highest crime rates in the world by far. That perverse field of dreams I’ve previously alluded to, the american nightmare, if you build / contrive war, they will come. And, they do; seals of them (among others); and when their ‘tours’ are done, it’s murder inc./contract killing for hire that they’ve won (cia, mob, etc.). The 20th century, the ‘bloodiest century’, not coincidentally referred to as the american century, brings longings of nostalgia to american criminals who, like Pavlov’s dogs salivate at the prospect of killing, raping, pillaging, and plundering which primitive mindset they have mistakenly been conditioned to connect to their now irretrievably lost success as a nation state, and to the contrary, has become globally and domestically self-destructive / self-defeating. In so short a period of time, it is unlikely that Mr. Woodward could do an incisive investigative piece as he’s become famed for; nor could he reasonably be expected to have done so given the ‘breaking nature’ of the story. The entire 911 / Bin Laden scenario just doesn’t pass the smell test and reeks of political desperation and Orwellian opportunism. Uncharacteristically, and somewhat disingenuously, I’m not going to read Mr. Woodward’s article so that I can continue to like Bob Woodward Redford.]

Paul Craig Roberts: What Is The Agenda Behind The Bin Laden Fable?

My mother is still gone The daughter of a 9/11 victim reflects on bin Laden’s death. (Washington Post) Parker: Bin Laden death was anti-climactic [ Paul Craig Roberts: What Is The Agenda Behind The Bin Laden Fable? The US government’s bin Laden story was so poorly crafted that it did not last 48 hours before being fundamentally altered. What agenda or agendas is the “death of bin Laden” designed to further? US Government Contractor Claims “Al-Qaeda” Has Confirmed Bin Laden Fairytale Paul Joseph Watson | SITE organization was behind release of fake “Al-Qaeda” tapes released at politically opportune times stretching back years Red Alert: Help Stop False Flag Terror Infowars.com | Alex warns about the potential for another false flag attack, urging listeners to call the White House. Terrorist Hunter: General Under Wolfowitz Told Me 9/11 Was False Flag Infowars.com | Government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik cannot be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist.” Pieczenik: The Psychological Resurrection of Osama Bin Laden Infowars.com | Critically acclaimed author of psycho-political thrillers, Steve Pieczenik continues his analysis of the so-called death of Osama bin Laden. The Cost of Bin Laden: $3 Trillion Over 15 Years What do we have to show for that tab? Two wars that continue to occupy 150,000 troops and tie up a quarter of our defense budget; a bloated homeland-security apparatus that has at times pushed the bounds of civil liberty.

Red Alert: Help Stop False Flag Terror Alex Jones calls in to warn about the potential for another false flag attack, urging listeners to activate, call the White House and try to stop the attack. Counter-terrorism expert Dr. Steve Pieczenik concurs with Alex’s outlook and urges the good men and women inside the system to say no to this shameful and dangerous tactic.

The Week Ahead: Is the Worst Over? [ Over? Much worse is yet to come! This is an especially great opportunity to sell / take profits while you still can since there's much, much worse to come! ]

Trump University's Unhappy Students [ trump university … don’t make me laugh! ] Among the many things that Donald Trump has stamped with his brand is a little-known endeavor called Trump University. In Trump’s true exaggerational style, the university isn’t what it appears to be. It isn’t an accredited university at all, but a for-profit entity that sells classes on how to invest in and make money from real estate. Some of its students claim in a class-action lawsuit in federal court that the thing Trump University does best is sell its own classes.

Marcus Baram over at Huffington Post has a thoroughly reported piece on Trump University on Friday. I have spent part of the past week digging into some of the same issues that Baram did.

Dionne: Who is Obama? Now we know. (Washington Post) [ Oh really? Now you tell us what you really know about this fraud and failed president. Barack Obama: The Naked Emperor Shocking but true revelations from David Icke (a must read) | ‘…He has been covertly funded and supported ever since by the Trilateral Commission and its network of foundations connecting into the Ford Foundation, for whom Obama's mother worked... Does anyone really believe that someone, a 'man of the people', would simply appear from apparently nowhere to run the slickest and best-funded presidential campaign in American history? He was chosen long ago by those who wish to enslave the very people that Obama says he wants to 'set free'. The sources of Obama funding .. - Goldman, UBS, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, etc. No wonder he went back on his pledge to accept the limitations of public funding … Obama is just more of the same, a big smile with strings attached, and controlled completely by those that chose him, trained him, sold him and provided his record funding, kept his many skeletons under wraps, like the gay sex and crack cocaine .. Larry Sinclair (from affidavit: 1. Who is Ron Allen that claims to be with your Presidential camp, who is alleged to claim that someone claiming to represent me called asking for $100,000, to keep me from coming forward about our (Obama and I) November 1999 encounter of sex and cocaine use?), ... Obama is just another Banksters' moll prostituting himself .., and that's why he supported the grotesque bail-out of the banking system and why he will always put their interests before the people. His financial advisors are straight from the Wall Street 'A' list, … Zionist Tim Geithner (Bilderberg Group, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations), was appointed Treasury Secretary, a former employee of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the appalling Kissinger Associates. Obama's Treasury team locks into the inner circle around the Zionist Robert Rubin, Citi, Council on Foreign Relations, and economic advisor to Obama. Rubin, ..Illuminati Bilderberg Group, the man behind Citi's debacle.. rescued by taxpayers' money. The very people who caused the financial crisis .. appointed by Obama .. `CIVIL RIGHTS PANEL TO PURSUE FED PROBE IN BLACK PANTHER CASE... ‘`In emotional and personal testimony, an ex-Justice official who quit over the handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases that involve black defendants and white victims ...’ Cases against Wall Street lag despite Holder’s vows to target financial fraud Obama has promised to hold Wall Street accountable for the meltdown. ):

‘THE OBAMA DECEPTION’ http://albertpeia.com/obamadeceptionhighqualityversion.flv ]

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http://www.albertpeia.com/wallstreetlunacy2ndqtr10108.htm

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Thursday, May 12, 2011

May 11, 2011

Business / Economic / Financial

‘THE OBAMA DECEPTION’ http://albertpeia.com/obamadeceptionhighqualityversion.flv ]

24 Signs Of Economic Decline In America ‘The United States is in the middle of a devastating long-term economic decline’ ] States face shortfall for retirees]

Bin Laden Hoax….The Rest Of The Story Cartalucci .. examination of mainstream media’s headlines and interviews with the CIA director himself calls into question the official narrative.

But… But… It Was Supposed To Go To Zero What kind of goddamned bubble pops and then goes right back up?

Peter Schiff: “Refuse to allow the debt ceiling to be raised” According to Euro Pacific Capital President Peter Schiff, it’s going to take a crisis for US lawmakers to get the economy back on track.

Irish Bombshell: Government Raids PRIVATE Pensions To Pay For Spending The Irish government plans to institute a tax on private pensions to drive jobs growth, according to its jobs program strategy, delivered today.

National / World

‘US killed bin Laden for a second time’ Press TV interviewed Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, to discuss the issue furthermore.

Bin Laden Hoax….The Rest Of The Story Cartalucci .. examination of mainstream media’s headlines and interviews with the CIA director himself calls into question the official narrative.

The States Strike Back Paul Joseph Watson | Rise of the Republic: Rhodes, Boldin and Smith.

Special Operations Elite and the Osama Death Op Kurt Nimmo | New Pentagon fusion center runs Delta hunter-killer teams.

Federal Spychips To Hijack Your Phone Paul Joseph Watson | The Obama administration is engaged in a totalitarian takeover of all communications.

18 Facts Prove Illegal Immigration Is Absolute Nightmare For U.S. Economy The Economic Collapse | The government has absolutely refused to secure the U.S. border with Mexico for decades.

China: The New Bin Laden Hillary Clinton, the low-grade moron who is US Secretary of State, is busy at work making China the new enemy of Oceania.

The Assasination of Osama bin Laden: Glaring Anomalies in the Official Narrative For those who believe in omens, the triumphal announcement of the murder of Osama bin Laden, his son and various of his household (if it were he) by US., special forces, did not bode well.

Ron Paul To Decide On 2012 Run “Within The Week” Texas Congressman Ron Paul says he will make a decision on whether to launch a 2012 presidential bid within the next seven days.

March Trade Deficit Jumps To $48.2 Billion As Imports Surge And just as Citigroup predicted, US imports surge even as US exports jump to a record $172.7 billion. But the story is once again in the GDP reducing imports which jump by a whopping $220.8 billion, a $10.4 billion jump M/M.

Bin Laden death now part of Obama’s re-elect message Osama bin Laden, mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, is now an applause line in a presidential campaign speech.

Greece launches massive fire sale to service growing debt as riot police clash with violent protesters A general strike held today has seen most public services grind to a halt across the country, while thousands marched through Athens to protest against harsh austerity measures.

Libya: Nato doesn’t know if Col Gaddafi is dead or alive Nato has admitted that it doesn’t know if Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is dead or alive.

After an Oversold Bounce, Will Commodity Blues Spread to Stocks?

New Poll Has Bad News For Obama And The Economy On the more important issue of the economy, things aren’t looking good.

So About That Speculative, And Undisputed, Silver Bubble… Lately, everyone and their grandmother speaks with 100% conviction that over the past week what happened in the silver market was nothing but a speculative bubble popping.

‘THE OBAMA DECEPTION’ http://albertpeia.com/obamadeceptionhighqualityversion.flv ]

More talk on troubled borrowers fund State attorneys general descend on Washington to negotiate aid for troubled homeowners … More bad economic news for Greece A year into its rescue program, the country is behind schedule and may require more help to stay solvent.

National / World

TSA Defends Pat Down Of Baby: Stroller Set Off Explosives Alarm The TSA has defended the actions of two of it’s agents who were photographed conducting a full body pat down on an eight-month old baby at Kansas City International Airport yesterday, saying they were adhering to procedure.

Obama Ready to Roll Out New Amnesty Carpet for Illegals Amnesty or bust. Though not using those words, that’s expected to be the message President Barack Obama will deliver in the border town of El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday.

Nuclear collapse looms? Fukushima No. 4 reactor ‘leaning’ A small group of evacuees have briefly been allowed inside the exclusion zone around Japan’s damaged Fukushima nuclear plant.

New US strike kills 4 in Pakistan A non-UN sanctioned US drone attack has killed at least four people and wounded several others in Pakistan’s troubled northwest tribal belt belt.

AP Files FOIA Request For Bin Laden Evidence President Obama’s decision to withhold the visual evidence of Osama bin Laden’s death has created a fundamental disagreement between the White House and one of the largest journalism organizations in the world.

Ron Paul: Why Didn’t We Kill Osama Rather Than Invading Afghanistan and Iraq? It is tragic that it took ten years, trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of American casualties and many thousands of innocent lives to achieve our mission of killing one evil person.

Poll Reveals Most Mistrust Bin Laden Assassination Story Kurt Nimmo | Only 10 percent believe the official fairy tale.

Internal Passport: Terror Alert Overload Leads To Call For “No Ride List” Watson | Resurrection of Osama sees Israeli-style security coming to the streets of America.

10 Facts That Prove The Bin Laden Fable Is a Contrived Hoax Paul Watson | Every indication clearly points to last Sunday’s raid being a manufactured ploy to return Americans to a state of post-9/11 intellectual castration.

War on Terror is a Reichstag Fire False Flag Operation Sartre | If you really want justice for the 911 murders, you must face reality and look within your own government for the true terrorists.

Bin Laden Hoax….The Rest Of The Story Tony Cartalucci | Even a superficial examination of mainstream media’s headlines and interviews with the CIA director himself calls into question the official narrative.

‘THE OBAMA DECEPTION’ http://albertpeia.com/obamadeceptionhighqualityversion.flv ]

Poll Reveals Most Mistrust Bin Laden Assassination Story Kurt Nimmo | Only 10 percent believe the official fairy tale.

Internal Passport: Terror Alert Overload Leads To Call For “No Ride List” Watson | Resurrection of Osama sees Israeli-style security coming to the streets of America.

10 Facts That Prove The Bin Laden Fable Is a Contrived Hoax Paul Watson | Every indication clearly points to last Sunday’s raid being a manufactured ploy to return Americans to a state of post-9/11 intellectual castration.

War on Terror is a Reichstag Fire False Flag Operation Sartre | If you really want justice for the 911 murders, you must face reality and look within your own government for the true terrorists.

Bin Laden Hoax….The Rest Of The Story Tony Cartalucci | Even a superficial examination of mainstream media’s headlines and interviews with the CIA director himself calls into question the official narrative.

More talk on troubled borrowers fund State attorneys general descend on Washington to negotiate aid for troubled homeowners … More bad economic news for Greece A year into its rescue program, the country is behind schedule and may require more help to stay solvent.

Earnings Not Quite Living Up to Expectations

“CEOs at the Nation’s Largest Companies Were Paid Better Last Year Than They Were In 2007, When … Unemployment Was Roughly Half What It Is Today” Indeed, the government’s policies have been geared towards redistributing wealth upwards.

The Greek Debt Crisis Escalates: Is Greece Threatening To Leave The Euro? Is the Greek debt crisis about to explode out of control? According to Der Spiegel, the government of Greece is considering leaving the Euro and reestablishing its own currency.

US Unemployment Rises To 9 Per Cent The nation’s unemployment rate – the result of a separate but simultaneously released survey of households instead of businesses – showed an uptick to 9.0 percent.

More Money Created as Prices Rise As the economy stumbles the American standard of living recedes. 44 million people are using food stamps and in one year that figure will be 60 million.