Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Questions about Birth Certificate image release (Illustrator inspection)


Market-ticker blog:(Birth Certificate)


Genesis [This is Karl's handle in the comment forum of his blog market-ticker]
Posts:99417
Incept: 2007-06-26

Chief Bottle Washer

Jeffrey: Adobe saves changes in the file. It's a forensics thing. A lot of people don't know that it does this, but it in fact does.

A PDF file is just a list of elements. Their mistake was not "flattening" the image in whatever they edited it with before they created the PDF. As such the layers and elements were left in the file when it was run through Distiller.

Oops.

Like I said.... clumsy.

Las Vegas real estate tumble

Leaving Las Vegas Update

Wealthy Leaving Las Vegas Mansions as Foreclosures Spreading

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Montebello, Calif., in Dire Straits


$126 million of outstanding bond debt

“If the city cannot get a loan by September, we will be technically and practically bankrupt,” Cosentini said in a memo to the City Council last week reported by the Whittier Daily News.

Swiss Franc update:

1 CHF = 1.1393 USD

Monday, April 25, 2011

Swiss Franc building an Alp in US dollars

1 CHF = 1.1308 USD

Libya stalemate


Commentary from Ghana (Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor/mjbokor@yahoo):
Feature: Libya: The stalemate that the West fears - Part I

Happenings in Libya (and elsewhere) confirm how these Western powers have been deaf to all entreaties to use options other than the military one to resolve crises in other people’s countries. In the end, they realize the futility of their stubbornness only after the fact. Sadly, though, they don’t even learn any lesson from such experiences and easily repeat such follies in later events.

From the resilience of the Libyan government forces—even in the face of the thousands of destructive daily sorties made by NATO that has destroyed between 30% and 40% of the Libyan government’s ground forces and military/civilian infrastructure—we can tell that the stalemate that the West fears is at hand. It will take more than the military option to break the back of such forces. The truth is that the flexing of military muscle won’t intimidate or cow such a determined people into submission. They have a lot more to concretize their resistance than the West knows. Let me refer to only one major source of inspiration for these pro-Gaddafi forces to substantiate my claim.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

China Planning Cutting Two Thirds Of Its $3 Trillion In USD Holdings

@ Zerohedge

All those who were hoping global stock markets would surge tomorrow based on a ridiculous rumor that China would revalue the CNY by 10% will have to wait. Instead, China has decided to serve the world another surprise.


I'm sure they want to get rid of the GSE crap first.

Swiss Franc keeps gaining in US Dollars

Swiss Franc (CHF) in US Dollar (USD)1 CHF = 1.1294 USD -0.00013 (-0.011%)
Apr 22, 8:00PM GMT+00:00

Saturday, April 23, 2011

China's Sinopec cuts off oil exports: state media

Chinese oil giant Sinopec has stopped exporting oil products to maintain domestic supplies amid disruption concerns caused by Middle East unrest and Japan's earthquake, a report said Wednesday.
The state-run Xinhua news agency did not say how long the suspension would last but it reported that the firm had said it also would take steps to step up output "to maintain domestic market supplies of refined oil products".
Sinopec would ensure supplies met the "basic needs" of the southern Chinese special regions of Hong Kong and Macao, but they also should expect an unspecified drop in supply, Xinhua quoted an unnamed company official as saying

Vietnam places further restrictions on gold lending


The new rule is an attempt to eliminate the role of gold as a means of payment in Vietnam, the central bank said.

Bolivia might not nationalise mines

Bolivia backpedals on Glencore, Pan Am mines

Bolivia's plans to nationalize mines owned by Pan American Silver Corp PAAS -0.56% and Swiss commodities trader Glencore International AG appear to have hit a snag, with workers' unions at the two companies rejecting the move.

The government has said it would not move forward with taking over the mines if the unions opposed it.

The idea has been discarded because the unions don't want any change, vice minister of mining development Hector Cordova told Radio Fides late Tuesday.

However, an official decision has not been made yet and mining minister Jose Pimentel was meeting with president Evo Morales Wednesday, mining ministry spokesman Alfredo Zaconeta said in a telephone interview. An official announcement is expected later in the day, he said.


We'll see what happens in May. With these kind of shananigans, whoever has the news early, eh inside, will make a ton of money.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

China truckers strike


Clashes erupt in Shanghai as truck drivers strike near port

Truck drivers go on strike at Shanghai ports
(AFP)


SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A two-day strike over rising fuel prices turned violent in Shanghai on Thursday as thousands of truck drivers clashed with police, drivers said, in the latest example of simmering discontent over inflation.

About 2,000 truck drivers battled baton-wielding police at an intersection near Waigaoqiao port, Shanghai's biggest, two drivers who were at the protest told Reuters.

The drivers, who blocked roads with their trucks, had stopped work on Wednesday demanding the government do something about rising fuel costs, workers said.

Petrol shortage in Dubai causes chaos


Like Newcastle running out of coal
The National newspaper quotes an Emarat spokesman as saying that60 out of 170 Emarat petrol stations have run out of fuel due to “logistical problems” , whatever that means. The paper also claims that the petrol company is currently suffering from heavy debts since they buy petrol at international rates in a country that produces it.

Motorists turned away as fuel stations run dry

The New Ordeal

While reading Karl Denningers commentary on the federal budget:
This is the same mistake - identical in point of fact - that was made in the 1930s. By attempting to prevent people from being "hurt" by unemployment and economic contraction the government stretched what should have been a nasty 18 month depression into a decade-long economic disaster!
,
I came up with a new name for the government program that was in response to the Depression, and which made it last for a whole decade: The New Ordeal.
Today we have the Stimulus/QE Newer Ordeal.

An economy can't be based on building overwrought post offices.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Greece sees anarchy erupt as austerity bites


As unemployment rises and austerity bites ever harder, tempers seem to fray faster inGreece , with citizens of all stripes thumbing their noses at authority. Some refuse to pay increased highway tolls and public transport tickets. There has been a rise in politicians being heckled and even assaulted. Yesterday, in Thessalonika, scores of activists were arrested after violent clashes with police.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

You're a lying sack of crap Barry.

From Karl Denninger at Market Ticker:

International JOKE: President Obama

You borrowed it. That "credit card"? It never got cut up. Not from the 1980s onward. You're lying Barry.

Obama: "To give you an idea of how much damage this caused to our national checkbook, consider this: in the last decade, if we had simply found a way to pay for the tax cuts and the prescription drug benefit, our deficit would currently be at low historical levels in the coming years...."

Another lie.

Students: You Are Exploited Debt-Serfs

Of Two Minds, blog of Charles Hugh Smith (found from Zerohedge)story on education scam, sort of like American-dream-of-homeownership scam:

College rip-off


Zerohedge comment:
by anony
on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 12:04
#1161825

College/University for the most students is the new Senior High School.

A playground for professors who abhor students and teaching, students who find learning tedious, and since curiosity about important matters has been substituted for b.s. that passes for curricula these days, it's more of a pleasant purgatory for most so-called students and scholars.

The ones serious about their education are a fraction of the entire nationwide student body.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Way to be Iceland



Iceland rejects saddling its citizens with banker debts.

Readers agree with Icelanders: Say 'no' to debt payoff

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: 60 percent opposed the refund to the British and the DutchMost of the reader mail received by Deutsche Welle fully supports the Icelanders' referendum vote to refuse to pay off debts owed to the UK and the Netherlands.

Swiss Franc : Safe Harbour


Swiss Franc (CHF) in US Dollar (USD) View USD in CHF NewsBlogsFeeds






Currency converter1 CHF = 1.1033 USD +0.00437 (0.397%)

Australia economy trouble hidden by mining, resource trade

THE mining boom is masking the state of the real economy, with weakness becoming entrenched in key sectors such as retail, housing and construction.
Mining hides flatlining Australian economy

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Chad President says Al Qaeda stole missiles from Libya

PARIS: Al Qaeda’s offshoot in North Africa has snatched surface-to-air missiles from an arsenal in Libya during the civil strife there, Chad’s president said in an interview to be published Monday.


Le Tchadien Deby affirme qu'Aqmi s'est emparé de missiles en Libye

[From the French] PARIS - Chadian President Idriss Deby said in an interview with the weekly Jeune Afrique, to be published Monday, that Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) took advantage of the uprising in Libya to take ground-air missiles (MANPADS).

"What is my worry? Concerned, is it? Is what is happening TODAY? Now in Libya and the risk? Implosion of that country," said Deby. "The Islamists? Al-Qaeda took advantage of looting arsenals in the rebel zone for its own purposes? Supplies of arms seized, including surface to air missiles, which are subsequently leaking into their sanctuaries in the Ténéré (central Sahara, etc.), "he added.

"What? It is very serious. AQIM is becoming a real army, the best equipped in the region," he said, asserting that he was sure "of 100%" of his claims.

The Chadian President believes that there is "some truth" in the statements of what Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has said repeatedly. [that the uprising is] manipulated [by the?] qu'Aqmi insurgents.

Libya con game

Webster Tarpley

After two weeks of imperialist attack, Libya is being mangled by al Qaeda terrorists, civil war, NATO air raids, cruise missiles, Predator drones, and C-130 gunships – all made possible by the CIA-backed al Qaeda rebels of Cyrenaica. US, British, French, and Dutch commandos have taken leadership of the rebel forces, and are arming them with modern weapons in flagrant violation of the arms embargo specified in UN Security Council resolution 1973. Al Qaeda is also stealing heavy weapons on its own, as the president of Chad has reported. The singing tomorrows of the fatuous US-UK color revolution rhetoric have dissolved, exposing the hideous reality of a brutal, cynical, imperialist drive to destroy the modern nation-state itself.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Let us now shed a tear for those clueless Knights of Knowledge who rail on at the University of California

If these guys want to rebuild the UC of the past, they need to start by axing the wonderful faculty hired at top dollar. They need to go back to a day when the tenured faculty worked like adjuncts and got paid only a bit more. Yet, this is what they fear the most. They call this dismantling what their grandparents built but it’s really returning the place to what it was when it began.

What is frightening is just how clueless these guys can be. Their message is that students won’t be able to afford $40k for a UC education and that’s certainly true. But their solution is to push the costs onto the state and in this wonderful logical leap they seem to forget something: the students and the taxpayers are one in the same. If the students can’t afford $40k what makes them think that the same people will be able afford it when the bill comes labeled as “tax”?

Paper reserves in central banks


Reserves have exploded because there was no need to “settle” trade imbalances. Since the world accepted Nixon’s decision not to settle with gold, but to accept dollars in supposed “payment” of Trade Deficits, a complete disorder set in. So-called “Reserves” are huge - $7.2 Trillion – and yet nothing goes right. All these “Reserves” are debts owed, principally by the US.

Up to 2007, this was a wonderful period for the US: it was able to behave like an adolescent come into a vast fortune: dollars in huge quantities, manufactured at will by the US Fed and Treasury, were spent buying up everything under the Sun for the enjoyment of the US consumer. Unlimited credit expansion!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

In Marin in February the median price was off sharply

Year-to-year in Marin in February the
median price dropped 18.9%, to $607,500

The county recorded 112 single-family home sales in February, up slightly from 107 in February 2010. But the median price dropped 18.9 percent over the same period, from $749,000 to $607,500. The pattern was similar month to month, with sales bumping up 12 percent in February from 100 in January and the median price dropping slightly, from $630,000 in January.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Libya lesson for info-babes

Former CIA Analyst Tells Truth About Libya Intervention On CNN, Hilarity Ensues

Oil normalcy bias

Good article at James Howard Kunstler's blog this week.
Almost everyone of these ideas is inconsistent with reality, based on faulty premises, or represents some kind of magical thinking. What they have in common is that they're ideas the public wants to hear, whether they are truthful or not, because we don't want to change the way we live.


A special shout-out here to The New York Times, whose abysmal reporting on these issues, once again, is due to their reliance on a single source: the IHS-CERA group, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, the paid public relations auxiliary of the oil industry, led by that mendacious sack of shit Daniel Yergin, whore-in-chief.

Element 47: New 31-year high (nominal)

Monday, April 4, 2011

Prosper Australia calls for Buyers Strike


>“When the Great Australian Land Bubble bursts – just as land bubbles all around the world have – the freshest buyers are totally exposed. They face financial ruin as house prices fall below their debt. The crippling mortgage repayments become pointless,” Prosper campaigner David Collyer said today.

Silver at new post-Hunt high

Silver for immediate delivery has gained another 1.7% to $38.50 an ounce, the highest level since February 1980, the year silver reached a record of $50.35/oz. An ounce of gold bought as little as 37.32 ounces of silver in London today, the lowest level since September 1983.

Fed backstop to profligacy

Weekend reading:

Doug Noland'sCredit Bubble Bulletin on the market perception of backstopping speculation:

It’s been my view that the power of QE2 was not so much with the $600bn. It was, instead, that the Fed was right there guaranteeing more than ample marketplace liquidity .... And why not speculate on risk assets, assured that central bankers would be quick to bolster the markets at the first sign of trouble? ...bolstering a powerful Monetary Process now deeply entrenched in traders’ psyche. Why not just ignore risk and speculate, emboldened by the reality that systemic fragilities ensure a potent punchbowl filled to the brim. QE2 was one more in an ongoing series of mistakes by our central bank.

But there may be an end to this crap as pointed out in Zerohedge
The Dirty Secret of the Debt Ceiling Debate: Nobody Wants Treasuries

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Dutch Bros. raising prices on coffee

I was told that my coffee would be 25c more. My on-the-ground report. On my particular usual drink (quad shot breve with vanilla) it is an 8.33% increase.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Hershey to raise candy prices nearly 10 percent.

The Hershey Co. is raising wholesale prices by 9.7 percent
 , because its own costs have risen. The candy maker says the price increase takes effect immediately.

The U.S.-Saudi Libya Deal

Article by Pepe Escobar ( pepeusa@mac.com )
Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement of their neighbor in exchange for a 'yes' vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya -- the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973. ...



"A full Arab League endorsement of a no-fly zone is a myth. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] members, the U.S.-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. Syria and Algeria were against it. Saudi Arabia only had to 'seduce' three other members to get the vote.

"Translation: only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone. The vote was essentially a House of Saud-led operation, with Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa keen to polish his CV with Washington with an eye to becoming the next Egyptian President.

"Thus, in the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the U.S.-Saudi counter-revolution."

Harry & David's Bankruptcy Rocks Medford, Oregon

Tower of debts


Harry & David, Northwest Overpriced-Fruit-Basket Delivery Company, Declares Bankruptcy

Friday, April 1, 2011

Alameda, California, is nearing bankruptcy

Another CA city in trouble

Bankruptcy looms in Alameda's future
Drastic steps needed to counter rising retirement, other costs, City Council told

8% of all housing units in California vacant

California is now listed as having 8 percent of all housing units vacant. Keep in mind this figure doesn’t include the occupied shadow inventory. >occupied vs unoccupied Edit from George4title's latest vid:

In Turkey Gold Beats Banks as Erdogan Fights Inflation Worries

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is struggling to persuade fellow Turks that their banks are as good as gold.

For every Turk who saved in a deposit account last year, three opted for gold or cash, a December MasterIndex survey showed. Those who deposit their lira at banks refuse to do so for more than a few months, according to the survey commissioned by MasterCard Worldwide.

Fed bailed out Libya-owned bank

Arab Banking Corp., a lender part- owned by the Central Bank of Libya,a bank majority owned by the Libya Central Bank, was the direct recipient of US taxpayer largesse in the form of discount window borrowing.

Arab Banking Corp., the lender part- owned by the Central Bank of Libya, used a New York branch to get 73 loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve in the 18 months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed.

The bank, then 29 percent-owned by the Libyan state, had aggregate borrowings in that period of $35 billion -- while the largest single loan amount outstanding was $1.2 billion in July 2009, according to Fed data released yesterday. In October 2008, when lending to financial institutions by the central bank’s so- called discount window peaked at $111 billion, Arab Banking took repeated loans totaling more than $2 billion.