NightBlogger

This is an odd report. FEMA, of course, are the people that brought toxic trailer homes to New Orleans and network of concentration camps across the US funded by Halliburton.

Yahoo News — People in a vast seismic zone in the southern and midwestern United States would face catastrophic damage if a major earthquake struck there and should ensure that builders keep that risk in mind, a government report said on Thursday. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said if earthquakes strike in what geologists define as the New Madrid Seismic Zone, they would cause “the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States.” FEMA predicted a large earthquake would cause “widespread and catastrophic physical damage” across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee — home to some 44 million people. More

What if the reality is that the US economy has been a lot worse than was thought for a long time, and now the chickens are finally coming home to roost? That’s the dark thinking beyond what is known as “Pollyanna creep,” a phrase coined by an economist named John Williams and supported by a cadre of other macroeconomic dissidents. Williams, who lives in California, runs a Web site called Shadowstats.com that trades in the idea that key government statistics have become so optimistically misleading as to become essentially useless. Yes, this sounds a bit like the thinking of the black helicopter crowd, or the plotline of a Matrix movie. But given what’s gone on in the financial sector of late, it doesn’t sound quite so fringe. More

naked capitalism
Reader eh pointed out in comments today that we could see “a monster snapback rally” should the tone of news improve, and one may be in progress. Bloomberg reports that Senator Charles Schumer proposed creating a new agency to provide equity to distressed financial firms. The stock market, and financials in particular, applauded. But in this skeletal form, this seems like a world class bad idea. The only successful example of dealing with a financial crisis is Sweden, which did not try to prop up troubled banks, but instead nationalized them, wiping out equity, brought in new top executives, and recapitalized them. The cost of failure was high to the incumbents and the solution was comprehensive, not piecemeal.

There seems to be a surprising willingness to accept its positioning as a “permanent solution” at face of the fact that this is a more like blood transfusion into a very sick patient: it will keep them alive without in many cases restoring them to health. Without other measures, such as the son of Resolution Trust Corporation proposed by Nicolas Brady, Paul Volcker and Eugene Ludwig in yesterdays Wall Street Journal, this runs the risk of being a page out of the failed Japanese playbook, where losses were not recognized and zombie banks were not permitted to fail. This US variant may keep them in a slightly more vital state, but that’s a long way away from a solution.

However, a potential shortcoming of the RTC version 2.0 idea is that we now live in a world of mark-to-market accounting. One imagines that sales out of this entity would be deemed to be fire sale prices (even though the Brady/Volcker/Ludwig piece used the formula “fair market prices”) and financial firms holding similar assets would not be required to mark them to those levels. But will anyone trust any non-market-price-based valuation approach? As much as the purge needs to (and inevitably will) happen, the RTC was not formed until a lot of thrifts had already fallen over. Implementing a similar vehicle at this juncture could have nasty unintended consequences.

Reader Dwight e-mailed us pointing that Pimco via CNBC said something we have mentioned in passing in earlier posts: with the RTC, the FDIC was disposing of assets that had already fallen in its lap via thrift failures. But this entity instead proposes to buy assets. How will the price be determined for assets where there is no market, or where transaction volumes are very small? Note that small sales do not represent where larger trades should be priced. A tremendous number of players have set up distressed asset funds, yet perilous few have done any buying. Will this son-of-RTC really set market-clearing prices? It could instead, via a combination of lack of savvy or having compromised, conflicting objectives, instead validate above-true-market prices, which is a bad outcome on many fronts (throwing scare fiscal firepower away on a failed mission, preventing rather than facilitating price discovery). More

Source: WorldNetDaily
A Wall Street Journal columnist has advised people to “start stockpiling food” and an ABC News Report says “there are worrying signs appearing in the United States where some … locals are beginning to hoard supplies.” Now there’s concern that the U.S. government may be competing with consumers for stocks of storable food. “We’re told that the feds bought the entire container of canned butter when it hit the California docks. (Something’s up!),” said officials at Best Prices Storable Foods in an advisory to customers. Spokesman Bruce Hopkins told WND he also has had trouble obtaining No. 10 cans of various products from one of the world’s larger suppliers of food stores, Oregon Freeze Dry.

He said a company official told him on the telephone when he discussed the status of his order that it was because the government had purchased massive quantities of products, leaving none for other customers. That, however, was denied by Oregon Freeze Dry. In a website statement, the company confirmed it cannot assure supplying some items to customers. “We regret to inform you Oregon Freeze Dry cannot satisfy all Mountain House #10 can orders and we have removed #10 cans from our website temporarily,” the company tells frustrated customers. “The reason for this is sales of #10 cans have continued to increase. OFD is allocating as much production capacity as possible to this market segment, but we must maintain capacity for our other market segments as well.”

The company statement continues, “We want to clarify inaccurate information we’ve seen on the Internet. This situation is not due to sales to the government domestically or in Iraq. We do sell products to this market, but we also sell other market segments … The reason for this decision is solely due to an unprecedented sales spike in #10 cans sales. “We expect this situation to be necessary for several months although this isn’t a guarantee. We will update this information as soon as we know more. We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your patience. We sincerely hope you will continue to be Mountain House customers in the future,” the company statement said. But Hopkins wasn’t backing away from his concerns. “The government just came in and said they’re buying it. They did pay for it,” he told WND about the summertime shipment of long-term storage butter. “They took it and no one else could have it.

“We don’t know why. The feds then went to freeze dried companies, and bought most of their canned stock,” he said. A spokeswoman for Oregon Freeze Dry, sales manager Melanie Cornutt, told WND that the increasing demand for food that can be stored has been on the rise since Hurricane Katrina devastated large sections of the Gulf Coast, cutting off ordinary supply routes. “We are currently out of stock on our cans. We are not selling any of our cans,” she confirmed. She then raised the issue of government purchases herself. “We do sell to the government [but] it is not the reason [for company sales limits],” she said. Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency told WND whatever government agency is buying in a surge it isn’t them. They reported a stockpile of about six million meals which has not changed significantly in an extended period. But Hopkins said it was his opinion the government is purchasing huge quantities of food for stockpiles, and Americans will have to surmise why.

“We don’t have shelters that [are being] stocked with food. We’re not doing this for the public. My only conclusion is that they’re stocking up for themselves,” he said of government officials. Blogger Holly Deyo issued an alert this week announcing, “Unprecedented demand cleans out major storable food supplier through 2009.” “It came to our attention today, that the world’s largest producer of storable foods, Mountain House, is currently out of stock of ALL #10 cans of freeze dried foods, not just the Turkey Tetrazzini. They will NOT have product now through 2009,” she said. “This information was learned by a Mountain House dealer who shared it with me this morning. In personally talking with the company immediately after, Mountain House verified the information is true. Customer service stated, ‘I’m surprised they don’t have this posted on the website yet.’ She said they have such a backlog of orders, Mountain House will not be taking any #10 can food requests through the remainder of this year and all of the next.

“Mountain House claims this situation is due to a backlog of orders, which may very well be true, but who is purchasing all of their food? This is a massive global corporation. “One idea: the military. Tensions are ramping up with Iran and news segments debate whether or not we will implement a preemptive strike in conjunction with Israel,” she wrote. Hopkins raised some of the same concerns, suggesting a military conflict could cause oil supplies to plummet, triggering a huge increase in the cost of food – when it would be available – because of the transportation issues. The ABC report from just a few weeks ago quoted Jim Rawles, a former U.S. intelligence officer who runs a survival blog, saying food shortages soon could become a matter of survival in the U.S. “I think that families should be prepared for times of crisis, whether it’s a man-made disaster or a natural disaster, and I think it’s wise and prudent to stock up on food,” he told ABC.

“If you get into a situation where fuel supplies are disrupted or even if the power grid were to go down for short periods of time, people can work around that,” he said. “But you can’t work around a lack of food – people starve, people panic and you end up with chaos in the streets.” At his California ranch, the location of which is kept secret, he said, “We have more than a three-year supply of food here.” In the Wall Street Journal, columnist Brett Arends warned, “Maybe it’s time for Americans to start stockpiling food. “No, this is not a drill,” he wrote. His concern was about various food shortages around the globe, and the fact that in a global market, prices in the U.S. reflect difficulties in other parts of the world quickly.

Professor Lawrence F. Roberge, a biologist who has worked with a number of universities and has taught online courses, told WND he’s been following the growing concern over food supplies. He also confirmed to WND reports of the government purchasing vast quantities of long-term storable foods. He said that naturally would be kept secret to avoid panicking the public, such as when word leaks out to customers that a bank may be insolvent, and depositors frantically try to retrieve their cash.
Also See: US, UK, France, prepare to attack Iran?

aljazeera.net
Thousands of Thais have continued to protest on the streets of Bangkok in defiance of government threats to use force to end a week of demonstrations. More than 1,000 riot police were involved in a tense standoff with about 6,500 anti-government protesters on Saturday as the government demanded the crowds disband.

In a nationwide address, Samak Sundaravej, the prime minister, had said that police and soldiers were prepared to end the protests. “You have broken the law. I have a duty to deal with you,” he said.
But the promised crackdown never came despite the passing of two deadlines for the protesters to disperse. “We will not be using force as long as the protesters remain peaceful and they conduct themselves within the law,” Chalerm Yoobamrung, the interior minister, said later in the day. More
See: Thai protesters angered by PM vows to shield former PM from corruption charges

Photo Karen Horton
The beginning of political wisdom is the realization that despite everything you’ve always been taught, the government is not really on your side; indeed, it is out to get you.

Robert Higgs
SOMETIMES government functionaries and their private-sector supporters want simply to bully you, to dictate what you must do and what you must not do, regardless of whether anybody benefits from your compliance with these senseless, malicious directives. The drug laws are the best current example, among many others, of the government as bully. Our rulers presently enforce a host of laws that combine the worst aspects of puritanical priggishness and the invasive, pseudo-scientific, therapeutic state. They tolerate our pursuit of happiness only so long as we pursue it exclusively in officially approved ways: gin, yes; weed, no.

Notwithstanding the great delight that our rulers take in tormenting us with their absurdly inconsistent nanny-state commands, they generally have bigger fish to fry. Above all, the government and its special-interest backers want to take our money. If these people ran a store, they might aptly call it Robberies R Us. Their credo is simple and brazen: “you have money, and we want it.” More

Susie Bright, writer, audio-show host, interviewed Deborah Palfrey for 10 Zen Monkeys in late August 2007. “…[Deborah Palfrey] complains that she’d run her service for 13 years without so much as a peep of trouble from the police until [October 2006]…. And then all hell broke loose — just four weeks before the crucial 2006 elections. Under pressure, and suspicious about the timing of her bust, Palfrey eventually decided to go nuclear. She published the phone list of everybody who’d used her services.”

Deborah Palfrey:

For 31 months I was being observed! Any good vice cop will tell you that a simple prostitution bust or investigation takes no more than a few days to a few weeks to a few months to put together — from start to finish. It doesn’t appear that I was being looked at for prostitution-related activities, as much as I was being watched for my own personal and professional actions. My banking, my business affairs, my personal acts. So as for the question: why me and me alone? I think it’s logical to conclude that there was something that I had, or knew, that they found to be very valuable.

Who are they? We don’t know. Is it the GOP? Is it this administration? Is it Homeland Security? Is it the CIA? Who is “they”? We don’t know who they are…

When we were quiet as church mice — from last October 4, when the search warrant was executed, until March 1, when I was criminally indicted — we went to them on three occasions. We went to them in late October/early November, again in mid-January after New Year’s, and then finally at the last pre-indictment conference in late February. And we did everything — beg, plead, threaten, and cajoled the Assistant US Attorneys in this case. We asked them, “What is it that you want? What is going on here?” But they would not talk to us! They stood us up for an appointment. They did the most rudimentary motions work that they had to do… They wouldn’t hand over discovery! They stonewalled, stonewalled, stonewalled. And they were able to do so procedurally in the civil phase of this. We got nowhere.

At the very end, at this last pre-indictment conference in late February, we took the now famous photocopy of one page of that August, 1996 phone bill. And we said, “Look. We’ve got 46 pounds of this.

…October was one month before the very crucial November election of last year, when both the Senate and House went Democratic, and the balance of power in this country shifted. And, here I was, after 13 years, this very routine life… They must’ve watched me and thought I was the most boring person in the world. And all of the sudden, I start making these rather unusual or aberrant moves. I put my house of 15 or so years on the market. I closed my business rather unexpectedly — it wasn’t really unexpected, but if you’re watching me from afar, it would be a flag. My 13-year-business was shut down. And then I wire money — $70,000 — over to Germany, and make a little trip to Germany.

Which by the way was picked up on one of those Homeland Security terrorist watch programs — the ones which are supposed to be watching the terrorists?

They were watching me. Read more on this story.
Click here for more on Deborah Palfrey.