Archive for March 28th, 2012

by Tyler Durden ZeroHedge.com 03/28/2012 Germany’s recent ‘agreement’ to expand Europe’s fire department (as Goldman euphemestically describes the EFSF/ESM firewall) seems to confirm the prevailing policy view that bigger ‘firewalls’ would encourage investors to buy European sovereign debt – since the funding backstop will prevent credit shocks spreading contagiously. However, as Francesco Garzarelli notes... »

Spain’s fragile economy has fallen back into recession and the country faces a year of grinding economic decline as premier Mariano Rajoy slashes spending yet further to meet EU demands. By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard TelegraphUK 27 Mar 2012 The Bank of Spain said the “contractionary dynamic” in the economy continued into early 2012 for the... »

Michael Brendan Dougherty BusinessInsider.com 3-28-2012 Jeffrey Toobin tweeting from today’s Supreme Court hearing on Obama’s health care reform: We’re getting the quick reports now. There is just a 20 minute window for reporters at the court to file their dispatches from this morning’s arguments over whether the individual mandate to buy health insurance could... »

By: Jim Willie CB GoldSeek.com Wednesday, 28 March 2012 The Gold Groundhog Grind By: Jim Willie CB, GoldenJackass.com — Posted Wednesday, 28 March 2012 | Share this article| Source: GoldSeek.com A very important objective change has taken place in the gold market. Its price is not moving above the resistance established in the 1600... »

By: Bob Chapman GoldSeek.com Wednesday, 28 March 2012 Seven months after the official announcement on 9/21/11 of “Operation Twist” not much progress has been made at the long end of the market to reduce yields. The yield on the 10-year T-note has gone from 1.88% to 2.3% and the 30-year bond went from 3.03%... »

By Graham Summers GoldSeek.com Wednesday, 28 March 2012 Europe continues to take a page out of Hank Paulson’s “Crisis Combat” booklet, by unveiling one monetary “bazooka” after another. Obviously, EU leaders didn’t notice that Paulson’s “bazooka” completely failed to stop the 2008 Crash. Even more strangely, they keep pulling out bazooka after bazooka, first... »

Mandi Woodruff BusinessInsider.com 3-28-2012 When students default on their federal loans, debt collectors are hired out just like any other to track them down and wrangle some kind of payment. Problem is they may be asking borrowers for more than they should have to pay under federal law, Bloomberg’s John Hechinger reports: “With $67... »

by Charles Hugh Smith ZeroHedge.com 3/28/2012 The National Security State has an Orwellian imperative: destroy democracy in order to “save” it. Here is what I consider to be the dominant narrative of what I call the National Security State. The National Security State is comprised of the Pentagon, the Armed Forces, the CIA, NSA,... »

(To get to the full article, you’ll need to drop the title in Google) By TYLER COWEN NYTimes.com I RECENTLY asked a group of colleagues — and myself — to identify the single most important development to emerge from America’s financial crisis. Most of us had a common answer: The age of the bank... »

The Receding Tide by Fred Reed LewRockwell.com Several things characterize countries of the Third Word, whatever precisely “Third World” means. The first is corruption. America is rotten with it, but American corruption is distinct from corruption in, say, Guatemala or Thailand, being less visible and better organized. Several major differences exist between the usual... »