‘Tis the season to spend, spend, spend and it looks like consumers are doing just that. But, can this momentum spur a sustainable recovery and how long before people in this country are put back to work? Charles Nenner of the Charles Nenner Research Center has a positive outlook on our situation over the next few months. But beyond that his prediction is grim: he thinks we are bound to be the next Japan.
Standard & Poor’s said it may cut Portugal’s credit ratings on concern that the government has made little progress on boosting economic growth to offset the fiscal drag from scheduled 2011 budget cuts.
"U.S. officials have for 50 years trotted out this line when they are afraid the public is going to see how they really behave," Assange said in his email. "The facts are that we wrote to the State Department asking for a list of any specific concerns that might have. They refused to assist, and said they demanded everything, including those documents that revealed abuses, be destroyed."
Wikileaks head Julian Assange told Forbes that the next leak will be regarding a major American bank. He said that Wikileaks plans to release the documents early next year.
According to an ominous Tweet, Wikileaks' next information leak will be seven times the size of the last one. After already posting more than 500, 000 pages on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars alone NewsFeed is wondering, how much more can their be?
It looks like Assange has some proof on the banks. We shall see. By the way, is it just me or did the CNBC crowd seem a little annoyed. :)
By Chuck DiFalco
A red button has shown up where I work. Big and free standing, the button displays one word: “easy”. When it is pressed, a confident voice declares, “That was easy.” The toy reminds us that the only easy task in our information technology workshop is hitting the button. Bernanke has finally pressed the red button at the Federal Reserve that monetizes United States government debt. My fear is that he liked the praise from Capitol Hill, and then he put his fingers in his ears when criticism of buying treasury securities increased. My fear is that there are more attacks on financial sanity to come.
By James West
I’ve always occupied the emotional frequencies ranging between disgusted and outraged when it comes to WikiLeaks. Regardless of your stance on governments and sovereign interference, putting the lives of human beings at risk by exposing their participation in intelligence programs is aiding and abetting in murder. The psychotic fundamentalists that perpetuate the bulk of the violent crimes on its own and foreign citizens need not be encouraged by the provision of a list of fresh targets by idealistic or simply amoral grandstanders desperate for attention.
By Michael Ashton
Back in July, when the EU bank stress test results were announced, I noted (in the commentary linked here) that the €3.5bln in capital the EU said was required of the banks which failed the test was "a fraction of the lowest arm's-length estimates." Moreover, it bears noting that of the seven banks that failed the test, none was in Ireland (only one was in Greece; one in Germany; five in Spain). In the bailout announced yesterday for Ireland, €35bln is earmarked for the Irish banks (€10bln immediately, and €25bln later) which had previously passed the test.