The number ONE reason the pesents will revolt

This is what will lead to the next revolution because i am affraid we will not wake up tell it is to late here is more scary prof of how asleep we are.

Madoff and the Failure of the SEC

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Daily Article: Thursday, December 18, 2008 by Briggs Armstrong

Madoff is a perfect case study showing that the SEC is incapable of protecting investors as well as free-market institutions can. The SEC is becoming increasingly irrelevant and people are beginning to take notice. It failed to save investors from the house of cards made up of mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps, and collateralized debt obligations that resulted from the housing bubble. Now it has failed to protect thousands more individuals and charities from something as simple and old as a Ponzi scheme!

Madoff and the Failure of the SEC

Daily Article by Briggs Armstrong | Posted on 12/18/2008 12:00:00 AM

Ex-Nasdaq Chairman Bernard Madoff

Few Wall Street gurus or members of the financial press, if asked on December 11, would have said that the news of Senate Republicans spurning Bush and killing the automotive bailout would not be the next day's top headline. They would have been sadly mistaken.

News broke on December 12 that Bernard Madoff, former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, was arrested for committing fraud. This was not in the form of some minor chicanery, but a fifty-billion-dollar scam. Lest the reader think that the word scam is too harsh, I will put it in Madoff's own words; he referred to his operation as "all just one big lie" and "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme."

For those unfamiliar with the nature of a Ponzi scheme, it relies on funds from new investors to pay falsified, and abnormally high, returns to existing investors. As Madoff demonstrated, as long as there is sufficient money coming in, it can reach massive proportions and continue for years.

Madoff managed to lure billions of dollars away from huge charities, as well as wealthy individuals in both the United States and Europe by getting them to invest in his hedge fund. He did so by claiming extraordinary returns (generally in the low double digits). His scheme eventually reached a staggering $50 billion under "management." This all came crashing down around him after market conditions led to a considerable amount of redemptions (investors asked for their money back).

Hedge funds are different from mutual funds in many respects. Most notably, hedge funds are not burdened by the same government regulatory requirements that mutual funds are. They also generally have much different compensation structures and considerably higher barriers to entry for potential investors. Due to hedge funds' relative freedom from excessive government intervention and regulatory burden, they are often able to generate higher returns than the average mutual fund; indeed, most mutual funds underperform compared to the S&P 500 benchmark.

As shocking and unprecedented as this scandal is, many in the financial press are beginning to ask "Where was the SEC?" This is perhaps the most important lesson to be gleaned from this tragedy, which has left countless bankrupt. It seems that everyone wants to know how anyone could be so clever as to run a fifty-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme without the SEC — which has seemingly limitless power and resources at its disposal — ever noticing. After all, if the government couldn't protect people who could? The answer is simple: the free market.

This is not a case in which free-market proponents are forced to theorize countless what-if scenarios regarding a solution that would not involve the government. The free market did spot the problem; it even reported it to the SEC. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all of the warnings were ignored by the SEC, which failed its fiduciary obligation to investors.

Due to the lack of government intervention and regulation with respect to hedge funds, consumers demanded some sort of policing of hedge funds in order to protect investors who lack the knowledge or resources to properly investigate the funds in which they plan to entrust their money. The free market responded to the consumer demand and so-called "due-diligence firms" emerged. Individuals seeking to invest in a hedge fund frequently pay one of these due-diligence firms for their opinion about specific hedge funds.

Due-diligence firms use the fees collected from their clients to hire professionals to meticulously review hedge firms for signs of deceit. One such firm is Aksia LLC. After painstakingly investigating the operations of Madoff's operation, they found several red flags. A brief summary of some of the red flags uncovered by Aksia can be found here. Shockingly, Aksia even uncovered a letter to the SEC dating from 2005 which claimed that Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme. As a result of its investigation, Aksia advised all of its clients not to invest their money in Madoff's hedge fund.

This is a perfect case study showing that the SEC is incapable of protecting investors as well as free-market institutions can. The SEC is becoming increasingly irrelevant and people are beginning to take notice. It failed to save investors from the house of cards made up of mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps, and collateralized debt obligations that resulted from the housing bubble. Now it has failed to protect thousands more individuals and charities from something as simple and old as a Ponzi scheme!

$22 $18

It seems that this event will place people into one of two camps. Either people will be disillusioned with the SEC and realize that the only function that it seems to be able to do well is to stand in the way of the free market's self-policing mechanism, or they will come to the erroneous conclusion that there is too little regulation and that the SEC needs more power to protect investors.

I fear that the latter will be the majority, but even so, many will come to see that less government is the real way to protect people. Tragically, it is in the nature of government, when its failures are exposed, to claim that if only it had more power it could have performed its duties in the manner it had promised.

PREPARE FOR AFRICA BOYS!!!

The Somali Pirates are becoming more and more agressive, and nations are saying enough is enough. A Hollywood President. Were going to Africa Boys begin prepareing now.
Things to look at "Ukrainian ship, the Faina, with 32 battle tanks aboard." What the F*&% was a Ukrainian ship doing with 32 battle tanks on board? Where the hell was it going origanly? With the resent bed buddys of Russia we can only gess? What else did that ship have aboard that they are not talking about and that is now arming the Pirates? And if you got 32 tanks on deck how the hell do a couple of skinny africans in a dingy take you over?
We will be fighting an Africa very diffrent from the one we left. More hostile better armed and extreamly battle ready and exsperianced.

Hijacked by Somali pirates, Centauri, a Greek cargo ship, was released last month. (The Associated Press)

NEWS ANALYSIS

Shipowners losing this battle of wits

By Mark McDonald

Published: December 8, 2008

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HONG KONG: A nightmare scenario has shipowners, insurers, seafarers and naval officers in something of a panic, given a sharp increase in brazen pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden.

The scenario unfolds with the Somali pirates in control of the Saudi supertanker Sirius Star becoming frustrated in negotiations over their ransom demands. They pump 50,000 gallons of crude oil into the water - a fraction of the tanker's load - and they threaten to leave the pumps running until their demands for $15 million are met. To reinforce their message, they toss a crew member over the side, and he drowns in the oily muck.

The scenario is horrifying but plausible. In the Gulf of Aden alone, the huge expanse of water between Yemen and Somalia, 14 ships are being held for ransom, including the Sirius Star and a Ukrainian ship, the Faina, with 32 battle tanks aboard. Rumors are swirling in the region that both ships could soon be released.

Shipowners and governments are desperately seeking successful countermeasures to address what has clearly become a crisis situation. On Monday, the European Union began a yearlong naval operation in the pirate-infested gulf, the EU's first maritime mission ever.

Eight countries are participating in the flotilla, which will be backed up with three airplanes. Ground-based personnel are at Northwood Headquarters in Britain.

Today in Africa & Middle East

Bomb kills at least 18 as Brown visits Baghdad

UN Security Council backs U.S. plan to combat piracy

China preparing to send navy ships to Gulf of Aden

Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, said the mission would have "robust rules of engagement" while coordinating with other navies operating in the region, including those of the United States, India and Russia.

This week the UN Security Council passed a resolution allowing navies to breach the 20-kilometer, or 12-mile, territorial limit and enter Somali waters in pursuit of pirates.

In the gulf this year 102 ships have been attacked and 40 have been hijacked. With 21,000 ships passing through the region each year and only a handful of international navies to run interference, the risk-to-reward ratio for impoverished Somalis has been unbeatable.

"Somali fishermen simply changed their business model, and they've got military hardware in the meantime," said Dieter Berg, head of marine underwriting for the huge reinsurance company Munich Re. "Piracy is now a real industry in Somalia. Whole clans are living off it."

Berg said some pirate outfits were now getting inside information in Europe about upcoming shipments of dangerous cargo and shipping routes, the better to plot and pick their attacks.

Interviews with owners, insurers, security companies and anti-piracy experts suggest that many technical innovations are being tried now, everything from high-tech sonic cannons to jury-rigged electrified wires strung around the hulls of their boats.

Some ships have put on extra crew to stand 24-hour watches. Sonic guns and night-vision goggles are now in such demand in the region that they have doubled in price. Nonlethal weapons like low-impact claymore mines and laser-light rifles known as "dazzle guns" are being considered.

Foam sprayers and high-pressure fire hoses have been used to drench the speedboats of approaching hijackers. Huge floodlights have been installed on ships and gasoline bombs prepared. Some ships are stocking special sprays developed by the U.S. military to make decks so slippery that the pirates, if they do come aboard, will not be able to stand up. Some ships have built - and actually used - panic rooms for crews to hide in.

Private enterprise also is getting involved. A number of the world's best-known security companies, including Blackwater and Aegis, are trying to expand into the maritime-security business. They are offering teams of onboard guards - most of them former military combat veterans - to repel the pirates.

"Blackwater offered to put a couple ships in the water, but they don't have the UN mandate," said Arthur Bowring, managing director of the Hong Kong Shipowners Association, referring to the legal protections afforded national navies. "I've had lots of e-mails from these security companies offering us their services - at vast expense."

The effectiveness of security guards remains to be seen, and most anti-piracy experts and insurers do not endorse the use of armed guards. But without armed guards, some analysts say, there is no real deterrent for the pirates.

"How do pirates in a small boat stop a 30,000-ton ship? It's firearms, that's all it is," Andy MacDonagh, a director of the private military contractor Raven Special Projects, said in an interview with Lloyd's List. "But as soon as you fire back, they are going to turn round and go the other way because they're so vulnerable."

An unarmed three-man team was overwhelmed by pirates who captured the chemical tanker Biscaglia in the gulf last week. The guards, two Britons and an Irishman, jumped overboard as the pirates clambered onto the ship. They were pulled from the water by a helicopter deployed from a nearby French frigate.

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Dont forget to lay your pimp hand down Today

I saw this and just had to laugh it comes from a blogg i found by just clicking next, somthing i highly recommend doing i always click threw a couple times before closing down and have found more good info that way then any other

Monday, December 08, 2008

Remember this day

International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers - Home

December 17th is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. This event was created to call attention to hate crimes committed against sex workers all over the globe. Originally thought of by Dr. Annie Sprinkle and started by the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA as a memorial and vigil for the victims of the Green River Killer in Seattle Washington. International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers has empowered workers from over cities around the world to come together and organize against discrimination and remember victims of violence. During the week of December 17th, sex worker rights organizations will be staging actions and vigils to raise awareness about violence that is commonly committed against sex workers. The assault, battery, rape and murder of sex workers must end. Existing laws prevent sex workers from reporting violence. The stigma and discrimination that is perpetuated by the prohibitionist laws has made violence against us acceptable. Please join with sex workers around the world and stand against criminalization and violence committed against prostitutes.

Technorati Tags: sex workers, violence, women, human rights

Posted by Post-Modern Sex Geek at 4:14 PM 0 comments Links to

Interesting look at it

Don't Cave

Daily Article by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. | Posted on 12/15/2008 12:00:00 AM

"If a dystopian nightmare of the totalitarian state finally arrives in the United States, it will be the result of a compromise…"

If you write about and follow politics enough, you eventually realized that most evil in this world is brought about by those seeking a lesser of two evils. And those who assist in this very much resent it when you point out that they are promoting evil.

My inbox has been inundated in recent days with people who think along these lines. Consider the Detroit bailout for example. Now, this idea is preposterous on the face of it. One of the glorious aspects of this recession is that it will finally deal the crippling blow to this industry, which has been a decades-long drag on American productivity.

Wicked unions have thoroughly looted the capital stock of these companies, and the workers themselves are wholly focused on their own well-being rather than that of the company and the consumer. The management is deeply embedded in the regulatory structure of the state, working to effectively turn the American car industry into a public-private partnership of the sort Mussolini would have applauded.

You don't have to be a technician to know that foreign makers — whether building abroad or residing in the United States — make a superior car at a better price, no matter how much the "Big 3" waste on hopped-up advertising campaigns. In fact, we should welcome their complete bankruptcy. Maybe they can regroup or maybe they can't. That's for the market to decide.

In the meantime, not cranking out these endless cars would be a welcome relief, freeing up labor and capital for more-economically-useful purposes.

To bail them out with tax dollars is an amazing insult to American consumers. What Americans have chosen not to buy, the government is now effectively forcing them to buy. You want a Toyota and paid for it with your money but your government is now saying that you should have bought a Pontiac, so it is tapping into your bank account to make it happen — and then not even giving you a car for your money!

But let's return to the problem of those who have caved in. I'm getting messages from people who believe in free markets saying that we have to do this bailout anyway, otherwise we will face worse consequences. The unions will strike back. There will be massive protectionism to prop up the industry. Free-market people will get a bad name for not supporting the little guy. Our industrial base will further erode. Unemployment will soar and then the masses will riot and we'll get Bolshevism. And so on.

Dick Cheney himself is reported to have gone around to Republican senators to tell them to pass the bailout, even if they disagree. Otherwise, they will be like Hoover, not having done anything about the Depression. Leaving aside his stupid historical point (Hoover did plenty, all of it wrong), it is never right to do evil that good may come of it.

I grant that all the predicted results of failing to pass it would be bad. They might even be worse than a bailout — who is to say? But these are speculations about the future. What we face right now is the terrible evil of a bailout, and great good comes from its failure to pass. What's more, if free-market people can't bring themselves to oppose that, what good are they anyway?

People who think along these lines imagine that they personally can control the political process in clever ways, giving a bit here to get more later on. I actually heard these same arguments about the first round of bailouts back in September: we'd better support this now else it will be worse later.

What is striking about these arguments is how tyrants always use them. Hilary Clinton used to claim that we either pay for her healthcare program now or pay more later. FDR said we needed to support the New Deal now, else face full-scale socialism later. Actually Hitler was the same way: his entire program was justified on the idea that only National Socialism could stop Bolshevism.

$19 $15

"The management is deeply embedded in the regulatory structure of the state, working to effectively turn the American car industry into a public-private partnership of the sort Mussolini would have applauded."

If a dystopian nightmare of the totalitarian state finally arrives in the United States, it will be the result of a compromise, and there will be people around until the very end who will insist that we should be grateful because it could be much worse.

This kind of strategizing also works as a cover for selling your soul. The temptation to do this is very great indeed. The state loves nothing more than a seeming libertarian who weighs in from time to time with a pro-state position. This allows the state and its minions to justify their oppression even from the standpoint of libertarian intellectuals. When you sell out, this is the role you are playing (and this is the role that some DC organizations have been appointed to play).

There is only one sure way that you can know you are on the right side of history, and that is by saying what is true and defending what is right, without exception. It is not left to intellectuals to play political games. Intellectuals are supposed to tell the truth, regardless of the moment. That means, in these days, completely opposing all increases in state power under the cover of "countercyclical policy."

Let evil people take responsibility for their evil policies. Those who know better should stick to the right and true.

Do we need any more reasons to get rid of Orin Hatch

I dont think i needed any more reasons to get rid of Orin Hatch and maybe get someone from Utah in the Senate for Utah but here is another

Bob Lonsberry on Orrin Hatch pardoning a druggie

From Bob Lonsberry’s blog at KNRS in SLC:

A little harsh?

How to get a presidential pardon.

Orrin Hatch is a United States senator.

No one knows why.
The people who first sent him to Washington are all dead now. They went extinct before the last ice age.

But still he lingers, one of the longest-mooching Republicans in the Senate, waiting hopefully each week for a call to appear on “This Week” or “Face The Nation” or one of those other shows normal people don’t watch.

To be honest, I like him. He has integrity.

Unfortunately, he’s also clueless, and he does dopey things

Like John Forte.

John Forte is a drug dealer, and soon he will be an out-of-jail-free drug dealer.

Thanks to Orrin Hatch.

Seven years ago, John Forte was caught at an airport back east in possession of 31 pounds of cocaine. The retail value was something in the neighborhood of $1.5 million.

Which is against the law. They’re very specific about that. If you go traipsing around with what is scientifically known as a whole crapload of cocaine, the cops are going to take poorly to it.

They’re going to think you’re a drug dealer.

They’re going to think that you’re the WalMart of drug dealers.

And, doggone it, they’re going to lock your skanky backside up. They’re going to lock you up and throw away the key. You will go to prison and you will stay there.

Unless Crazy Uncle Orrin thinks you can help his songwriting career.

Which, honest to goodness, strikes me as a potential warning sign of Alzheimer’s. If you’re 105 years old and you think you’re a songwriter, you need a brain scan, stat. Especially when your chicken scratching is as pathetic as this guy’s.

He scrawls out the most vapid stuff imaginable, but because he’s a big senator who’s not afraid to reward his friends, the occasional used-to-be celebrity will record one of his tunes. When you’re cut 14 on Tony Orlando’s latest release, you don’t really need to rent a tux for the Grammys.

But back to John Forte, Bishop Hatch’s drug-dealing friend.

It turns out that there is a connection between the two. And that connection got John Forte sprung from the big house. A 14-year mandatory sentence is about to vaporize into thin air.

Pay attention, this might be hard to follow.

John Forte went to a swanky school named Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He went there to study violin.

Which, naturally, prepared him for a career in rap.

A very short career.

In 1996 he produced two “songs” for The Fugees. That went so well that they broke up the next year. Which led to John Forte, the year after that, releasing an album of his own.

Which fell flat on its face.

Which is what happens when you suck.

But back to the connection between drug dealer Forte and clueless centenarian Hatch.

It turns out that while at Phillips Exeter, John Forte became friends with Ben Taylor.

Who is the son of Carly Simon.

Who was the wife of James Taylor, who I love but who last had a hit song when my middle-aged carcass was still in high school.

Tangent: You’d think with all that money he makes singing “You’ve Got A Friend” on PBS fundraisers that James Taylor might have been able to afford braces for young Ben.

But I digress.

Forte knew Ben who is the son of Carly who recorded a song for Orrin who knows W who pardoned Forte.

See how that works?

It’s like the passing of a social disease, and we know that’s nothing to clap about.

John Forte isn’t from Utah – which Crazy Uncle Orrin theoretically represents in the Senate – and he has no contact with or relevance to Senator Hatch. There is nothing whatsoever about Brooklyn-native John Forte that would draw the get-out-of-jail-free attention of a Utah senator.

Except Orrin Hatch’s vain and self-absorbed view that he is a song writer.

Carly Simon – whose last song of any note came out just in time for Richard Nixon’s second inaugural – is proof positive that even older women can look good with enough air brushing. But I digress.
She is not a constituent of Crazy Uncle Orrin. But she did record one of his songs.

Dozens of people heard it.

All of them are surnamed Hatch or are relatives of his congressional staffers.

But Carly Simon records one of his songs – which makes him money, right? – and she had an entre. And so former Mormon bishop Hatch takes up for a gigantic drug dealer.

Which is pretty much all that’s left for you when your rap album tanks.

Orrin Hatch went so far as to describe this guy as a “genius” whose musical talents need to be returned to society.

In case you forgot: He produced two songs and had an album that was stillborn.

Yeah, that’s what society needs.

So Crazy Uncle Orrin, prompted by his “friend” from the “music community,” overlooked any number of his constituents who might actually deserve a presidential pardon – as well as two Border Patrol agents unjustly sitting in federal prison – and pulled the strings on George W. Bush to get him to pardon a New York City drug dealer.

In case you forgot: It was 31 pounds of cocaine.

And it wasn’t actually a pardon, it was a commutation – which is a French word meaning, “Homey be home for Christmas.”

Now, some might find it odd that of all the drug dealers in all the prisons, Senator Senile chooses to help the one who is recommended to him by the former singer who – if she is so inclined – can make him money by recording his songs.

They might also find it odd that a guy from the most morally conservative state in the Union – where drug use is not only against the law it’s against God – is standing up for someone who distributed drugs.

Which brings up another point. In defending his action to a reporter, and praising his new-found delinquent friend, Crazy Uncle Orrin said that John Forte wasn’t such a bad criminal because he didn’t actually USE drugs, he only SOLD them.

That’s right, the people who transport and sell the drugs that kill untold Americans every year, they’re not so bad. Using is worse than selling.

But only in Orrin Hatch’s world.

The only thing more disappointing than this Orrin Hatch break with lucidity is the fact that George W. Bush has allowed his presidential power to be co-opted by a piece-of-trash drug dealer, a long-forgotten singer and a deluded old man who has confused the recording industry’s fawning before his senatorial power as some sort of admiration for his tuneless drivel.

Sorry to be harsh, just trying to be honest.

John Forte doesn’t deserve to be free, and if Orrin Hatch believes he does, then Orrin Hatch doesn’t deserve to be a senator.

John Forte got sprung after just seven years . The people of Utah have been doing hard time under Orrin Hatch for 32 years, and there’s no parole date in sight.