J.P. Morgan To Buy Bear Stearns For $2 A Share
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is buying battered broker Bear Stearns Cos. for $236 million in a Federal Reserve-backed bailout unprecedented in scope and execution. The Federal Reserve, which cut the discount rate in a coordinated move with its announced backing of the deal Sunday evening, is taking the extraordinary step of providing special financing in connection with this transaction.

The Implosion is Accelerating, Prepare While You Can
National Guard units are training and preparing for urban combat. The United States has just reached an agreement with Canada’s armed forces to come in to this country and assume combat roles should they be needed in American cities and towns. The Federal Reserve’s last ditch effort to stem the “blood loss” in the sub-prime and other currency markets has failed. The dollar has been abandoned for Euros. The stock market can’t find its ass with both hands and a Chinese made, Wal-Mart sold ass finder. Israel has demanded that all of the financial aid it receives from Washington (that’s us) be paid for in Euros. The ultimate irony and slap in the face. Oil, dairy, wheat, wheat products, gold, silver, copper prices, the list goes on and on, are racing for the stratosphere with no end in sight. An implosion has begun and it has no known method of stopping or reversing until critical mass is reached. It will be followed by an explosion in the economy and the political realm unseen since the founding of this nation.

Welcome To The Second Great Depression
Last Friday we got a taste of what the future is likely to be like as we make our way further into the belly of the second great depression. The Fed rushed to bail out a venerable Wall Street institution, which was rumored to be insolvent. Sunday evening, that rumor was confirmed to be true, as Bear Stearns agreed to sell itself to JP Morgan for a paltry $2 per share. Two dollars! This for a firm that was trading at $170 just over a year ago, and was as high as $54 just Friday! If Bear Stearns is only worth $2 per share, how can we possibly say with any confidence what other "investment banks" are worth?

Gold futures push past $1,000
Gold prices are skyrocketing to record highs above $1,000 (U.S.) an ounce. The sharp rise is being driven by a faltering U.S. economy and struggling greenback, leading wary investors to pile into gold in search of a hedge against inflation. Strategists are divided on whether the precious metal’s bull run has gotten ahead of itself, with some predicting a correction and others calling for gold to hit $2,000 an ounce, or more, in the next year.

Carlyle Hedge fund on verge of collapse
Carlyle Capital Corporation (CCC), a unit of the private equity firm Carlyle Group, has said it will not be able to meet lenders' demands for money.

Corporate Media Snowjobs Dollar Crisis
CNN has echoed the Bush administration's snowjob policy on the dollar crisis by ludicrously citing "experts" who claim that the unprecedented plunge of the greenback is "not necessarily a bad thing for the U.S. economy."

Wheat Fungus Could Cause Mass Starvation
Epidemic of world hunger looming, new research shows. That's because Cyclone Gonu blew a wheat fungus out of Africa and toward the Asian breadbasket, speeding by an estimated two years the spread of the devastating crop disease, called Ug99.

Expert Fears Dollar Crash As Greenback Hits New Lows
Underscoring how the administration has lost all traces of credibility, President Bush's bumbling attempt to lend the ailing greenback some strong rhetorical support only backfired, preceding a new all time low against the Euro, while one expert expressed fears of a complete dollar crash.

Meltdown Looms Larger as Credit Markets Freeze
"It's another round of the credit crisis. Some markets are getting worse than January this time. There is fear that something dramatic will happen and that fear is feeding itself," Jesper Fischer-Nielsen, interest rate strategist at Danske Bank, Copenhagen; Reuters

Expert Fears Dollar Crash As Greenback Hits New Lows
Underscoring how the administration has lost all traces of credibility, President Bush's bumbling attempt to lend the ailing greenback some strong rhetorical support only backfired, preceding a new all time low against the Euro, while one expert expressed fears of a complete dollar crash.

Campaign Warns Of "Economic Disaster" If Climate Policies Are Followed
A national media campaign launched this week warns that following global warming policies would "spell economic disaster" in the United States and "would mean misery, starvation and death on a massive scale" for people in less developed countries.

Dollar Declines on Speculation Fed Rescue Package Won't Succeed
The dollar fell against the euro and the yen on speculation the Federal Reserve's plan to provide funds to banks won't be enough to break the gridlock in money- market lending and stem credit losses.

September 2008 Collapse Of US Real Economy
The end of the third quarter of 2008 will be marked by a new tipping point in the unfolding of the global systemic crisis. At that time indeed, the cumulated impact of the various sequences of the crisis will reach its maximum strength and affect decisively the very heart of the systems concerned, on the frontline of which the United States, epicentre of the current crisis. In the United States, this new tipping point will translate into a collapse of the real economy, final socio-economic stage of the serial bursting of the housing and financial bubbles and of the pursuance of the US dollar fall. The collapse of US real economy means the virtual freeze of the American economic machinery: private and public bankruptcies in large numbers, companies and public services closing down massively.

The Long Slide Ahead
That “Almighty Dollar” you used to hear about is heading straight towards the scrap heap of junk currencies (think Ruble, Rupee, Lira, Escudo). Several decades of foolishly voting for charlatan politicians, who assured us we could rule the world as we saw fit with a military whose costs were greater than the rest of the world’s armies combined, and who assured us we didn’t need to pay for our wars and our military might because we could just borrow money to keep the government running, have finally run us up against a wall.

Dollar dives as Fed rate cut eyed
The dollar slipped against the euro Monday, but traded above the all-time lows from last week when investors recoiled from dire U.S. jobs figures.

Oil roars to record over $108 on weak dollar
Oil shot to a record over $108 a barrel on Monday, extending a rally led by investors seeking a hedge against the tumbling dollar and inflation.

More Leading Economists Say US Is Now In Recession
More leading economists have conceded that the US economy is now in recession after figures, released on Friday, revealed a second successive monthly fall in employment.

Rush for biofuels threatens starvation on a global scale
We can end “climate change” with biofuels but this will lead to starvation and population reduction, sort of the way our rulers planned it all along

Gulf investors may not save Citigroup, Dubai executive says
Sameer Al Ansari, Chief Executive of Dubai International Capital told delegates at a private equity conference that it will take more than the combined efforts of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the Kuwait Investment Authority and Saudi investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to save the bank.

The U.S. Dollar Is Being Destroyed
The U.S. Dollar is being destroyed through inflation and those who own precious metals will be rewarded as precious metals serve as a fantastic defense against the criminal central bankers that set these criminal policies

Gold powers to record on oil, eyes $1,000
Gold powered to a new high near $980 an ounce on Friday after crude oil set an all-time high of above $103 a barrel, igniting inflation worries and another round of buying from investors and speculators.

The Anti-Gold Standard Gospel According to Barron Smith
Barron Young Smith is a financial journalist whose piece What Would Happen If We Adopted the Gold Standard? is appended below. He describes Ron Paul's campaign to restore Constitutional money in the U.S. as being "populist". He adds insult to injury in saying that "Ron Paul... is on a crusade to resurrect a great symbol of Wall Street-Washington dominance over the individual".

Bernanke: “You are all Dead Ducks”
Banks are battered by subprime liabilities, housing is in the tank, manufacturing is down, food and energy are up, unemployment rising… All that’s missing is a trumpet blast and the arrival of the Four Horseman.

Gold hits record high on tumbling dollar, firm oil
Gold surged to a record high above $960 on Wednesday as investors poured money, spurred by a plummeting dollar and oil rising above $102 a barrel.

Traitor Greenspan Urges Gulf States To Abandon Dollar
Alan Greenspan has again exposed himself as a traitor working against the interests of the American people by urging Gulf states to abandon the dollar peg, a move that could result in financial chaos and an economic depression in America.

Bank Losses "Grossly Underestimated", "Fundamentals Rapidly Deteriorating"
The rate of loan losses is ``grossly underestimated by consensus estimates'' at Citigroup and other U.S. banks, Whitney wrote. ``Core fundamentals are rapidly deteriorating.'' She cut her per-share prediction for 2008 earnings by more than 70 percent to 75 cents. The New York-based company's shares could fall more than 36 percent to less than $16, she wrote.

Middle Class May Be Subject To Food Rations, Warns UN
The UN is warning of a food shortage crisis and drawing up plans for food rations which will hit even middle-class suburban populations as inflation and economic uncertainty causes the prices of staple food commodities to skyrocket.

Gold nears $1,000 as stagflation fears grow
Gold hit a record $953.60 a troy ounce on Thursday as oil’s move above $100 and inflation fears provided fresh upward momentum. Fuelling the rally were fears the US economy could be heading for stag­flation after the Federal Reserve published forecasts for lower growth and higher inflation.

US Self-Employment Plummeting - Massive Downturn
All forms of self-employment in the U.S. are in virtual free fall now. Small businesses are failing in vast numbers creating even more jobless Americans thrust into the quest for the security of wage- based employment with benefits for themselves and their families.

The fall of the Dollar Empire
The US economy has grown largely on the back of speculative credit derivatives that have risen exponentially to $ 35 trillion, which is more than double the size of the entire US economy! This is an approaching iceberg, and all you've seen (in the sub-prime scandal) is the tip.

The Great Depreciation - The Selling Of America
The equation is simple, the formula is proven and the outcome is predictable: The deeper the Fed cuts rates, the cheaper it is to borrow money. The cheaper it is to borrow money, the less the dollar is worth against stronger foreign currencies. The less the dollar is worth, the less it costs holders of stronger currencies to buy up America. And that's just what they're doing. Strong currency nations are buying up America like a third world country.

The Great Depression 2008 - It can't happen to us....can it?”
“ In the 1920s, Americans consumers and businesses relied on cheap credit, the former to purchase consumer goods such as automobiles and furniture and the later for capital investment to increase production. This fueled strong short-term growth but created consumer and commercial debt. People and businesses who were deeply in debt when price deflation occurred or demand for their product decreased often risked default. Many drastically cut current spending to keep up time payments, thus lowering demand for new products. Businesses began to fail as construction work and factory orders plunged.” We are seeing almost to the final utterance the same play we saw unfold in 1929. Were those folks any more prepared for the Great Depression than we are today? I'd argue that while they were perhaps a bit better equipped to provide for their own sustenance that American society in the 1920's was as complacent as we are today.

Dozens of U.S. banks will fail by 2010
Dozens of U.S. banks will fail in the next two years as losses from soured loans mount and regulators crack down on lenders that take too much risk, especially in real estate and construction, an analyst said. "The initial round of failures will come from smaller banks with limited access to capital and overexposure to commercial real estate," Cassidy said.

Gulf States To Drop Dollar On Fed Action
Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will be forced to revalue their currency pegs this year following the dollar's declines and the Federal Reserve's interest-rate cuts, Bear Stearns has said. Five Gulf nations lowered interest rates last week in step with the US to keep their links to the dollar even as inflation accelerates. When Saudi Arabia left rates unchanged after the Fed's Sept. 18 reduction, the riyal rose to a 20-year high.

Iran's Oil Bourse Could Topple The Dollar
Bush went to the trouble of traveling half-way around the world to tell the Saudis and their friends in the Gulf States that they were going to continue linking their oil to the dollar or they were going to "sleep with the fishes".

Economist: Expect Fed to lower Dow to 8,000
Consumers should expect a deep recession, triggered by the "stealth methodology" of the Federal Reserve to "depress" the market even while lowering interest rates in an ostensible effort to stimulate economic growth, an economic analyst charges.

US Slides Into 1930s 'Liquidity Trap'
The United States is sliding towards a dangerous 1930s-style "liquidity trap" that cannot easily be stopped by drastic cuts in interest rates, Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz has warned.

Fear Stalks The Markets
It did not even take a fall on Wall Street to spook the Federal Reserve into slashing interest rates by three-quarters of a point on January 22nd; the American markets were closed for a public holiday the day before. The Fed reacted instead to a slump in global markets and the prospect, indicated by the futures market, that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would drop by more than 500 points at the opening.

Half of gold in central banks gone?
The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, or GATA, claims the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury are surreptitiously manipulating the country's gold reserves by participating in undisclosed leases. "Most observers calculate central bank reserves are supposed to have about 30,000 tons of gold worldwide in their vaults, but we believe the amount of gold actually there may be more like 15,000 tons," Murphy said. "The rest of the gold is gone."

Super Tuesday: 'It's the economy, stupid'
The 24 states holding primaries in next week's Super Tuesday have lost 1,568,600 manufacturing jobs in the seven years since President Bush took office, according to statistics provided WND by the Alliance for American Manufacturing, or AAM.

U.S. slump spreading around the globe, IMF warns
This is why globalism is a BAD THING. National borders form a natural barrier to contain political and economic crisis so that the entire world is not destroyed. National borders serve the same function as fire-proof doors in a building or watertight bulkheads in a ship. They contain an incident so that the entire structure is not threatened.

Economic stimulus package: macabre waltz into the abyss
With two or three exceptions (Dr. Ron Paul being the stand out), the U.S. House of Representatives, comprised of useful fools, the functionally illiterate and stinking buzzards, has just passed another monumental piece of lunacy called an "economic stimulus package." This $1.5 BILLION dollar shell game will stimulate nothing and let me tell you why.

Helicopter Ben About to Shift the Confetti Shredder Into Afterburner
Gold nearly hit $900 today. Thanks, Ben. No, really. Thank you, sir. I keep thinking, I need to diversify and hold a little USD. Somehow, I don’t seem to be getting around to it… And that has been a good thing, so far. Remember, the number to watch on the U.S. Dollar Index is 74.50. That is THE support. If that gets taken out, we’ll likely be taking about gold in four digits, to the left of the decimal place, instead of three. If consumer stocks bounce on the latest Fed confetti shredder action, let’s all work together to draw up a target list of the most succulent pigs to short/buy puts on to profit from a whipsaw back down. My logic is that the rate cuts will cause more inflation, making things more difficult for consumers.

The Bush Dollar Trap
The first government response to America's sinking economy was denial. We were told as recently as a month ago by administration officials and Wall Street charlatans that the economy was robust and that there would not be a recession. Now we are told that the economy is in trouble, but that the government is taking decisive action to shore it up.

Let Market Crash Now Or Face Financial Train Wreck
The Fed's continued obsession with slashing interest rates and printing money in order to maintain the facade of the grossly overvalued stock market while the dollar collapses is precipitating a financial holocaust. Yuppies need to cut their losses and accept a soft crash now or place the very pillars of the American economy in danger.

Citigroup & Merrill Lynch At Risk Of Bankruptcy?
Citigroup posted the biggest loss in the bank's 196-year history as rising defaults on home loans forced it to write down the value of subprime-mortgage investments by $18 billion. It also received a $12.5 billion investment from outside investors, in a bid to bolster its finances in the face of deepening losses.

Stocks Plummet in Germany, Hong Kong, India, Brazil in Rout
Today's declines follow the worst week for U.S. stocks in five years after President George W. Bush's $150 billion plan to revive the economy and expectations of interest-rate cuts failed to allay recession concerns.

Russia Was Better Prepared for Collapse than the U.S.
An economic collapse will produce massive chaos, homelessness, hunger and violence in the United States.

Recession or Depression?
Many people are finally saying the R word: Recession. The fundamentals don't look good. The externals are even scarier: dollar and stocks skidding, gold and other prices (particularly producer prices) rising.

The Coming Collapse Of The Modern Banking System
Most people have no idea how grave the present situation is or the disaster the country will face if trillions of dollars of over-leveraged bonds and equities begin to unwind. There's a widespread belief that the stewards of the system - Bernanke and Paulson - can somehow steer the economy through this "rough patch" into calm waters. But they cannot, and the presumption shows a basic misunderstanding of how markets work. The Fed has no magical powers and will not allow itself to be crushed by standing in the path of a market-avalanche. As foreclosures and bankruptcies increase; stocks will crash and the fed will step aside to safety.

Breaking phase ahead for the global financial system in 2008
The rapid aggravation of the global systemic crisis as its phase of impact unfolds has brought our researchers to estimate that the contemporary global financial system will reach a breaking phase in the course of 2008. Crisis follow-up indicators now show that we should no longer only fear the failure of some large financial institution and of many small ones in the US first and the in the rest of the world, but that the global financial system itself is structurally hit.

Meet Bush's World Bank Nominee
PNAC Member, Bilderberg Attendee, CFR Member, Trilateral Commission Member, NAFTA Architect and Enron Advisor

Irish Stock Market Crash and Global Depression
Did you know the Irish stock market (ISEQ) has crashed and lost over 40 billion Euro in one year? If your not one of the few stock investors in Ireland then your answer will probably be no. There’s only one group of people that this financial disaster won’t disturb and they are the extremely rich, the 1%, the ones who already control the large banks, organizations, companies and institutions around the world, they will still have their comforts but now they will be able to ‘buy low’. Everything thing will be on sale at a minimum of 90% discount. It’s going to be a wonderful time for the elite, like it was 200 years or so ago when the same families bought up/stole Africa - which they still control today.

Citibank Refusing to Process Firearms Related Credit Card Transactions
Citi Merchant Services and First Data Corp. are refusing to process any credit card transactions between federally licensed firearms retailers, distributors and manufacturers -- a move which will severely limit available inventory of firearms and ammunition to military, law enforcement and law-abiding Americans.

Dollar Could Drop Further 50 Percent in Value
The Dollar could fall to half or one-third of its existing value -- British Newspaper and Media Group announces 100 percent support for Ron Paul on Republic Radio. Ron Paul's Ideas are heralded on air as the catalyst for the end of communism in China. International support for Ron Paul's message exceeds all expectation.

Morgan Stanley issues full US recession alert
Morgan Stanley has issued a full recession alert for the US economy, warning of a sharp slowdown in business investment and a "perfect storm" for consumers as the housing slump spreads.

The Mirage of the Mortgage Fix
Picture the Joker from the movie Batman throwing money from his float on the parade and you can see where this is going. Or imagine the alchemist of medieval lore, attempting to conjure up wealth from chemical mixtures.

The Last Days of the United States Dollar
The great debate among those of us on the Economy Deathwatch seems to be whether the debacle we observe around us will resolve as a crash or a slow-motion financial train wreck. It seems to me that at every layer of the system, we're susceptible to both -- in tradable paper, institutional legitimacy, individual solvency, productive activity, real employment, "consumer" behavior, and energy resources. Some things are crashing as I write.

America’s Trade Debts Lead to a Likely Gold Confiscation
Recently posted in the Federal Register on the internet were regulations listed under the caption of The Patriot Act . . . . At the end of 17 pages you will find legal definitions for “bullion coins” and “rare numismatic coins.” Strange how the definition of these forms of gold would show up under 17 pages of regulations pursuant to the Patriot Act having to do with identification of persons boarding and de-boarding aircraft and a multitude of other topics. Once you analyze the situation, it becomes obvious that these regulations were published in this manner, so as to keep the information from the general public and avoid suspicions of confiscation and the resulting objections.

The American empire is falling with the dollar
The US dollar is still officially the world's reserve currency, but it cannot purchase the services of Brazilian super model Gisele Bundchen. Gisele required the $30 million she earned during the first half of this year to be paid in euros.

Fed pumps $8bn into market to head off new crunch
Central bankers are becoming nervous that a renewed credit crunch could destabilise financial markets around the end of next month, and the US Federal Reserve has pumped an initial $8bn (£3.9bn) into the market to help ease the mounting pressure.

US Dollar Could Plunge 90 Percent
A financial crisis will likely send the U.S. dollar into a free fall of as much as 90 percent and gold soaring to $2,000 an ounce, a trends researcher said. "We are going to see economic times the likes of which no living person has seen," Trends Research Institute Director Gerald Celente said, forecasting a "Panic of 2008."

IMF warns of 'perfect storm' that could drag Britain into recession
The Washington-based International Monetary Fund has warned of a "perfect storm" caused by surging oil prices and the turbulence on the world's financial markets. Its chief economist, Simon Johnson, said: "The combination of the global credit crunch and high oil prices could bring a big reduction in international trade from which no one would be immune."

A Financial System under Siege
The global dollar-based financial system is in crisis and is threatening the prosperity and stability of many economies. Financial excesses of all kinds have undermined its legitimacy and its efficiency. The U.S. dollar is losing its preeminence as the main international reserve currency while many banks are caught in the turmoil of the subprime credit crisis.

Dollar Crisis: None dare call it ‘conspiracy'
Yesterday, WorldNetDaily reported that the Chinese are considering abandoning the U.S. dollar as their national reserve currency. WND quoted Craig Smith's assessment of the consequences of such a move by Beijing on our economy: “If that were to happen, all bets are off, and we will be in a depression that makes 1929 look like child's play, or we will experience Weimar Republic inflation as the dollar makes extreme moves toward devaluations.”

Dollar Collapse to Trigger Global Financial Meltdown
The father of Reagonomics and former Wall Street Journal editor Paul Craig Roberts has warned that the collapsing dollar will eventually cripple the European economy and may even return the world economy to a barter system as financial chaos ensues.

Hundreds of banks threatened by new subprime crisis
The reserves of hundreds of banks are at risk, including some major banks, after a little-noticed federal court decision signaled the crisis in securitized home mortgages could spell much more trouble for financial institutions than previously realized, even on Wall Street.

Experts Fear Repeat Of 1929 Economic Crash
Two prominent economic experts have warned that "insiders with conflicts of interest" allied to the Fed's policy of tanking the dollar to bail out Wall Street could lead to a repeat of the economic crash of 1929, during a segment on Bill Moyers' PBS show.

Prepare for prolonged turmoil, says US Treasury Secretary
Investors should brace themselves for a prolonged period of market turmoil, Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, said yesterday as he held emergency meetings with the Chancellor and the French Finance Minister.

Crash is coming, warns top investor
THE man responsible for investing $41 billion of the State's money has warned mum-and-dad investors to prepare for a massive sharemarket crash. He says a dramatic downturn is inevitable as the rapid rate of investment is unsustainable, and the repercussions of the $300 billion subprime lending crisis in the US are yet to be felt fully.

Gold Eyes Record $850 As Oil Nears $100
Oil barreled past a record-high $98 on Wednesday as an ever-weaker dollar nudged gold toward a historic $850 an ounce, with investors concerned over inflation and the health of the U.S. economy.

Expert says feds stealing half of seniors' paychecks
The Social Security payments Americans receive in the mail are roughly half of what they would be if the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the Consumer Price Index honestly, a veteran econometrician told WND. John Williams contends the U.S. government statistics intentionally understate inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index, or CPI. By understating CPI data, Williams argued, government officials are able to avoid increases in Social Security payments that are mandated by law as "cost of living adjustments." Williams maintains a website called Shadow Government Statistics that is dedicated to examine "analysis behind and beyond government economic reporting." In an analysis of the CPI, Williams contends the index is understated by roughly 7 percent per year by government intentionally manipulating the data.