Trust you had a great weekend!
One of my facebook contacts sent this through to
me and I thought it might be of some interest to you:

http://marshawright.co.uk/champagnereception.php

Enjoy if you can make it!

WASHINGTON — Suddenly the Federal Reserve is everybody’s punching bag.

Strip the Fed of its bank regulation powers, some in Congress are demanding. Get probing audits of its behind-the-scenes operations, others say.

The chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is always fair game for criticism and second-guessing, usually over interest rate actions. But this year the criticism is much broader as Congress responds to widespread public anger that the Fed bailed out Wall Street but not ordinary Americans, and with unemployment in double digits.

Former Fed chairman William McChesney Martin Jr. famously said that the central bank’s job was to yank away the punchbowl just when everybody is starting to party. And while Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has signalled the Fed will keep interest rates low for now, a round of higher rates inevitably will come.

The Fed finds itself both the punchbowl keeper and the punching bag. Imagine the outcry when it does begin to crank up rates â?? perhaps just ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Fireworks seem likely at Senate confirmation hearings early next month on President Barack Obama’s nomination of Bernanke to a second four-year term as chairman.

Many economists and Fed watchers say congressional efforts to rein in the Fed’s powers could interfere with the central bank’s ability to help guide the fragile economy to recovery.

The Fed’s very independence and its unique ability among U.S. institutions to create money out of thin air enabled it to act quickly to stabilize the nation’s financial system after it froze up last September after the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers investment house, Fed backers say.

“It might have been the Fed’s finest moment when it had to jump into the market,” said David M. Jones, a former Fed economist and president of DMJ Advisors, a Denver-based consulting firm. “We still have to wait to see how effective the Fed is in its exit strategy and whether it can keep inflation in check. But this badgering by Congress, even if there is populist sentiment, is inappropriate.”

The Fed’s aggressive intervention also set the stage for the current criticism. Many lawmakers question whether the Fed’s money machine has mainly benefited financial markets and not the broader economy. Lamakers are also peeved that the central bank acted without congressional involvement when it brokered the 2008 sale of failed investment bank Bear Stearns and engineered the rescue of insurer American International Group.

Bernanke, first appointed by President George W. Bush, has worked closely with both Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in confronting the worst financial crisis in decades. Geithner also has gotten his share of congressional wrath, mainly for his administering of the $700 billion bank bailout fund.

“In the past, the Federal Reserve was held in very high esteem,” said Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a libertarian who ran a quixotic third-party presidential campaign in 2008. Now, it’s “the source of our problem,” suggests Paul, author of the bestseller “End the Fed.”

Usually an outlier, Paul suddenly has found an army of at least 307 House colleagues and 30 senators marching behind his legislation to subject the Fed to intense scrutiny by Congress’ Government Accountability Office. The House Financial Services Committee endorsed Paul’s approach 43-26 last week over objections from its chairman, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

The bill would authorize Congress to audit not only the Fed’s lending programs but its basic decisions to set monetary policy by raising or lowering interest rates. Paul has been introducing a version every year since the early 1980s, but this is the first time it has garnered any serious attention.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who will preside over Bernanke’s confirmation hearings, has proposed legislation that would strip the Fed of its bank-regulation authority and give the Senate a role in selecting the 12 regional Federal Reserve bank presidents.

Dodd says his measure would return the Fed to its core mission of setting monetary policy, claiming it proved itself “an abysmal failure” by not cracking down on risky lending practices that led to the financial meltdown.

Dodd is in an extremely tight battle for re-election, even though he has served in Congress for 35 years.

“I don’t think it ever hurts to have a member of Congress stand up and denounce the Fed. There is a lot of anger out there, and this is basically a therapeutic gesture,” said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University.

Still, Baker said, it probably isn’t wise to tamper with the formula that makes the Fed “very much an anomaly in American government. It’s independent, it has to be. You don’t want the Fed to be under the control of the president. And it kind of sits out there — not in the executive branch, not in the legislative branch, not in the judicial branch. Sort of its own little element in the separation-of-powers constellation.”

While the Fed is subject to some congressional oversight, its decisions don’t have to be ratified by the president or Congress. Fed officials are not paid with money appropriated by Congress.

Should Bernanke be worried?

“Not only should he be worried, he’s clearly ratcheted up his game in terms of his communications with Congress,” said Norman Ornstein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Ornstein said the Fed bashing this time is different from before, with “a broader base of support. And it’s coming from people who in the past would not have hit the Fed. There’s a lot of populist anger out there — on the left, in the center, and on the right. And politicians are responsive to that.”

Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee

Monday, November 23, 2009 1:51 PM

A page one, top-of-the-fold New York Times report Monday warns that U.S. debt is rising so fast that the federal government is careening toward a “payment shock” in the not-too-distant future.

The Times lead headline read: “Federal Government Faces Balloon in Debt Payments: At $700 Billion a Year, Cost Will Top Budgets for 2 Wars, Education, Energy.”

The Times headline appears eerie just as the Senate moves to push forward on a radical healthcare reform — with CBO estimates for a final bill costing nearly $1 trillion dollars over the next year.

The national debt now stands at over $12 trillion and the White House estimates that the cost of servicing the debt will rise to more than $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year. The Times suggests that $700 billion annual payment cost may be conservative.

The additional $500 billion a year in interest payments would surpass the combined budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security, plus the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Times observes.

Treasury officials face not only huge new debts incurred in response to the economic meltdown but a balloon of short-term borrowings coming due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are certain to return to normal levels when the Federal Reserve concludes that the fiscal emergency has passed.

Link to Article

If you are a fiduciary for your employer’s retirement savings plan, you already know that life isn’t getting any simpler. Lawsuits against plan fiduciaries are on the upswing, and some fiduciaries have been found personally liable for plan losses under ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

What you may not know is that neither your company’s directors’ and officers’ (D&O) insurance nor the bond that all retirement plan sponsors are required by law to carry will indemnify you for claims involving benefit plans. The former excludes such claims; the latter covers only plans themselves. Instead, you need fiduciary-liability insurance, and if you don’t know whether you have it, you should find out.

This wasn’t such an urgent issue a decade ago. But the litigation landscape began to change in 2004 when 10 former outside directors of Enron Corp. were together forced to cough up $1.5 million of their own money, without recourse to insurance or indemnification, to settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Labor. The suit alleged mismanagement of employee retirement funds, which were heavily invested in Enron stock that became worthless after the company imploded in an accounting scandal. Prior to that time, the idea that corporate officers or directors might have to open their own wallets to settle such a case was virtually unthinkable.

Since then, the floodgates have opened, with plaintiffs’ lawyers filing dozens of lawsuits against retirement plan sponsors and their executives who, they claim, committed a variety of fiduciary mistakes, from countenancing exorbitant vendor fees to stocking their plans with inappropriate investment options. Some of the cases have been dismissed, but many continue to grind their way through the court system. All the while, defense costs are accruing.

Link to Article

By Jeff Clark
Stowe, Vermont

“There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll have a mania in gold. And because the gold and especially silver markets are so tiny, the rush into them will be like trying to push the contents of Hoover Dam through a garden hose. Our positions will go absolutely ballistic.” – Doug Casey, September 2009

There’s certain to be a rush into gold and silver, and buying before Main Street catches gold fever is the only way to play this trend. Because when Midas fever hits, prices will explode to the upside, for both the metals and the stocks. How do we know that?

First, let’s look at gold. If we added up all the gold ever mined on the planet, its total value would equal no more than $5 trillion at today’s prices. Yet, look at how this compares to the debt and bailouts and other monetary mischief of current governments…

Let’s make this chart very clear. Of the $5 trillion in gold ever mined…

• The US government has thrown over twice as much at the economy in the past 12 months.
• The US debt is more than double this amount so far this year.
• Total global government bailouts are almost four times larger (and this is a conservative figure; one estimate puts it at $24 trillion).

I intended to include annual gold production as one of the comparisons, but the chart isn’t big enough and neither is your monitor: 2008’s global gold production equaled about $73 billion, and to make that figure discernable on the chart would require the Global Bailouts bar to hit the ceiling above your head. That’s how small the gold market is.

The implications are undeniable: when the greater public rushes into gold – whether in response to inflation, dollar woes, war, whatever – the price will be forced up by an order of magnitude.

While physical gold will protect our wealth, it’s the gold stocks that can potentially make us wealthy.

Once again, to get a sense of the Lilliputian size of the gold industry, I compared it to several other leading industries and stocks.

The value, as measured by market capitalization, of all gold producers around the world is less than Wal-Mart’s. Every gold stock would need to nearly double just for the industry to match ExxonMobil. The oil and gas industry is about 12 times bigger.

When your neighbors and relatives and co-workers and friends all start clamoring to buy gold stocks, the pressure on prices will be enormous, rocketing our positions upwards.

Meanwhile – and admitting we’re first and foremost gold bugs – the picture for silver is even more dramatic. The potential for silver stocks is jaw dropping.

If the gold industry is tiny, then silver’s $9 billion market cap makes it a nano industry. The entire silver industry is over 21 times smaller than gold’s! If gold explodes, silver will go supernova.

Consider these macro-facts about a micro-market and what they reveal about silver’s enormous potential:

• There are over 200 companies in the S&P 500 with a market cap larger than the entire market of silver producers.
• There are five times more gold stocks than silver.
• Total silver production in 2008 was valued around $10.3 billion (at today’s prices). That represents just 1.5% of the $700 billion bailout last year, and 0.006% of the current US monetary base.
• Of the 20 largest silver producers, only five actually call themselves a “silver” company, due to the fact that about 73% of all silver mined is a byproduct of other metals mining.

Any flood into the silver market would overwhelm it. In other words, the rise will be stunning. While it’s not going to happen tomorrow, I strongly suggest you get on board before that rocket ship takes off.

Just putting these charts together stirred my feelings of restlessness, making me anxious for the mania in precious metals to arrive. But the timing is not up to us. Be patient, because if you’re invested in gold and silver and the respective, high-quality stocks, you’re on the right side of this trend.

Regards,

Jeff Clark
Senior Editor, Casey’s Gold & Resource Report
for The Daily Reckoning
By Jeff Clark
Stowe, Vermont

“There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll have a mania in gold. And because the gold and especially silver markets are so tiny, the rush into them will be like trying to push the contents of Hoover Dam through a garden hose. Our positions will go absolutely ballistic.” – Doug Casey, September 2009

There’s certain to be a rush into gold and silver, and buying before Main Street catches gold fever is the only way to play this trend. Because when Midas fever hits, prices will explode to the upside, for both the metals and the stocks. How do we know that?

First, let’s look at gold. If we added up all the gold ever mined on the planet, its total value would equal no more than $5 trillion at today’s prices. Yet, look at how this compares to the debt and bailouts and other monetary mischief of current governments…

Let’s make this chart very clear. Of the $5 trillion in gold ever mined…

• The US government has thrown over twice as much at the economy in the past 12 months.
• The US debt is more than double this amount so far this year.
• Total global government bailouts are almost four times larger (and this is a conservative figure; one estimate puts it at $24 trillion).

I intended to include annual gold production as one of the comparisons, but the chart isn’t big enough and neither is your monitor: 2008’s global gold production equaled about $73 billion, and to make that figure discernable on the chart would require the Global Bailouts bar to hit the ceiling above your head. That’s how small the gold market is.

The implications are undeniable: when the greater public rushes into gold – whether in response to inflation, dollar woes, war, whatever – the price will be forced up by an order of magnitude.

While physical gold will protect our wealth, it’s the gold stocks that can potentially make us wealthy.

Once again, to get a sense of the Lilliputian size of the gold industry, I compared it to several other leading industries and stocks.

The value, as measured by market capitalization, of all gold producers around the world is less than Wal-Mart’s. Every gold stock would need to nearly double just for the industry to match ExxonMobil. The oil and gas industry is about 12 times bigger.

When your neighbors and relatives and co-workers and friends all start clamoring to buy gold stocks, the pressure on prices will be enormous, rocketing our positions upwards.

Meanwhile – and admitting we’re first and foremost gold bugs – the picture for silver is even more dramatic. The potential for silver stocks is jaw dropping.

If the gold industry is tiny, then silver’s $9 billion market cap makes it a nano industry. The entire silver industry is over 21 times smaller than gold’s! If gold explodes, silver will go supernova.

Consider these macro-facts about a micro-market and what they reveal about silver’s enormous potential:

• There are over 200 companies in the S&P 500 with a market cap larger than the entire market of silver producers.
• There are five times more gold stocks than silver.
• Total silver production in 2008 was valued around $10.3 billion (at today’s prices). That represents just 1.5% of the $700 billion bailout last year, and 0.006% of the current US monetary base.
• Of the 20 largest silver producers, only five actually call themselves a “silver” company, due to the fact that about 73% of all silver mined is a byproduct of other metals mining.

Any flood into the silver market would overwhelm it. In other words, the rise will be stunning. While it’s not going to happen tomorrow, I strongly suggest you get on board before that rocket ship takes off.

Just putting these charts together stirred my feelings of restlessness, making me anxious for the mania in precious metals to arrive. But the timing is not up to us. Be patient, because if you’re invested in gold and silver and the respective, high-quality stocks, you’re on the right side of this trend.

Regards,

Jeff Clark
Senior Editor, Casey’s Gold & Resource Report
for The Daily Reckoning

By Stephen C. Webster
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 — 9:50 pm

As the number of problem U.S. banks swells to the hundreds, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is increasingly hard-pressed to fill in the gaps where institutions have put depositor’s funds at risk.

Unfortunately, a dire prediction made by government officials in early 2009 has come true: the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund is now broke, according to published reports.

“The deposit insurance fund dropped by $18.6 billion during the third quarter of 2009 to negative $8.2 billion, as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. set aside $21.7 billion in provisions for additional bank failures,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “This is the second time in the agency’s history that the balance has fallen into negative territory.”

In March the FDIC took steps to stave off the possibility that its insurance fund would run dry, instituting new fees on banks, forcing them to pay to protect consumers.

The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Sheila Bair, wrote to bank leaders declaring that “without these assessments, the deposit insurance fund could become insolvent this year.”

According to the FDIC’s most recent quarterly report, there were 552 “problem” banking institutions in the U.S., the most since the end of 1993.

“In its state of the industry report, the F.D.I.C. reported that banks posted a $2.8 billion gain in the third quarter, after a $4.3 billion loss in the previous period,” The New York Times reported. “The number of bad loans of nearly every stripe — credit cards, mortgages, small business and commercial real estate — continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace.”

BizJournals added: “Fifty institutions failed during the third quarter, bringing the total number of failures in the first nine months of 2009 to 95. As of Nov. 21, 124 banks have failed nationwide.”

“The FDIC has not yet accessed a temporary $500 billion fund of capital it has available to it from Treasury for the insurance fund,” Marketwatch notd. “The FDIC estimates that bank failures will cost the agency as much as $100 billion over the next five years, with the majority of the losses taking place in 2009 and 2010. The agency may require banks to pay additional assessments to cover losses to the fund if bank failures expand in greater numbers than anticipated by the agency.”

When banks insured by the FDIC are seized or declare bankruptcy, the agency returns depositors’ funds up to $250,000.

Read the FDIC’s full Q3 2009 report [PDF link].

With AFP.

An earlier version of this report said the FDIC insures depositors’ funds up to $100,000. The government-run agency expanded its coverage for consumers from $100,000 to $250,000 in 2008. President Obama further extended the additional cushion until the end of 2013.

Nov. 24, 2009 at 2:49pm

Commercial banks and savings institutions insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) reported aggregate net income of $2.8 billion in the third quarter of 2009. Earnings were more than three times what was reported a year earlier and an improvement over the industry’s $4.3 billion net loss in the second quarter 2009.

In contrast, outstanding loan balances declined by the largest percentage since quarterly reporting began in 1984.
“There is no question that credit availability is an important issue for the economic recovery. We need to see banks making more loans to their business customers,” said agency Chairman Sheila Bair. “This is especially true for small businesses that rely on FDIC-insured institutions to provide over 60 percent of the credit they use.”

Total loans and leases declined by $210.4 billion (2.8 percent) during the quarter. Loans to commercial and industrial borrowers declined 6.5 percent, and real estate construction and development loans declined by $43.6 billion (8.1 percent).

The number of institutions on the FDIC’s “Problem List” rose to its highest level in 16 years. At the end of September, there were 552 insured institutions listed, up from 416 on June 30th.

The complete Quarterly Banking Profile is available on the FDIC Web site.

18. Book early
Low-cost airlines have created a market in holidays for people prepared to fly to any destination provided it’s cheap. You can benefit from this too. Just remember, only a few seats on each flight are sold at bargain-basement prices and once they’re sold, the prices rise. So book early.
Saving: £100

17. Are you paying too much for your life insurance?
We’re living longer. As a result the cost of insuring the unthinkable is getting cheaper all the time. If you were sold a policy when you took out or mortgage you may have been under too much stress to shop around. You could be missing a trick.
Saving: £100

16. Choose cheaper breakdown insurance
The breakdown sector is dominated by big names such as the AA and RAC. But being towed home if your car breaks down is just another form of insurance like any other and there are scores of cheaper alternatives.
Saving: Up to £100 a year

A blog is short for weblog, which simply means a website that is updated frequently with new information and is organized by date and submission. Blogs are typically a way of journalizing information whether it be personal, business, or what have you. It’s like an editorial and a journal all mixed together and available online for constant updates and submissions.

As a beginner, you probably want to know more about blogs and why people are using them.

Blogging started out when the Internet was new and the individuals who were technology savvy found it fun and entertaining to post different things they found on the web for other people to visit and enjoy. It caught on quickly and a community of blogs developed, allowing people to read other peoples blogs. As time went on, new technology was developed that allowed even the non-techie to create their own blog and join the blog culture.

Blogs are popular because they relay experiences, interesting thoughts, comments, photos, web links, and plenty of other information that people find interesting. Today, blogging is really popular and many people will send you a link to their blog so you can keep up with their experiences such as vacations, studies, pregnancies, and any other thing you can possibly think of.

What started out as a way to navigate the web and figure out all of the newness that was the Internet of the early ’90s, turned into a way for people to journalize their experiences, share photos, and keep people up to date on their lives. In response to the popularity of blogs, many websites launched software and free sign-ups for blogs so anyone could have their own blog and share their experiences with the entire world.

And so, blogging has continued to grow and weblogs have multiplied into the millions. In fact, there are so many blogs on the web that you can practically become part of your own community with people worldwide, sharing your life, experiences, and thoughts with people you would never have met. Blogs truly are linking people together and they are an amazing phenomenon.

If you are interested in blogging, all you have to do is join one of the many blog websites that will allow you to set up your own account and have your own blog space on the web, giving you a personal space to share photos, experiences, stories, links, and basically anything else that you care to share. Many people even find that writing blogs are excellent stress relievers and quite cathartic, so you might receive some additional benefits from your blog than just the joy of sharing your personal information. Go online today and find a blog website where you can set up an account and get started!

About the author: Michael Turner shows you exactly how to increase web site traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it today at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

Hi everyone!

Thanks again for visiting this blog… great to have you! Well, I’m going on holiday tomorrow and wont be back til next week, so in the meantime, get your free tickets for the business start up show and start planning your trip there!!

More money saving tips when I get back next week…

http://www.bstartup.com/

Starting a business?

As an industry-leader, Business Startup is free for anyone thinking about starting a business or expanding a business. With seminars, exhibitors, advice, opportunities, and much more, can you afford to miss out?

Enjoy!

http://www.bstartup.com/

Growl, Climb, Bark, or Hop to greater retail sales with giant animal advertising inflatables.
Big impact from a big distance! Nothing grabs attention faster than a 3-story tall Gorilla promoting your Retail Sale, Corporate Brand, or Special Event.

By Julianne Pepitone, CNNMoney.com staff reporter
Last Updated: November 6, 2009: 10:43 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Five banks failed late Friday, bringing the 2009 tally to 120.

The biggest to fall was United Commercial Bank of San Francisco, which had 63 U.S. branches as well as operations in Hong Kong and Shanghai. The bank held deposits totaling $7.5 billion.

East West Bank of Pasadena, Calif., agreed to assume all of United Commercial’s domestic branches, as well as its international subsidiaries.

United Security Bank of Sparta, Ga., closed its doors for the last time on Friday. Moultrie, Ga.-based Ameris Bank will assume control of all United Security’s deposits.

Home Federal Savings Bank of Detroit also failed late friday. New Orleans-based Liberty Bank and Trust Co. will assume control of its deposits.

Prosperan Bank of Oakdale, Minn., failed and will be taken over by Grand Forks, N.D.-based Alerus Financial.

Gateway Bank of St. Louis, Mo., also failed. Central Bank of Kansas City will take over its deposits.

Customers of the failed banks are protected, however. The FDIC., which has insured bank deposits since the Great Depression, currently covers customer accounts up to $250,000.

Customers can access their money over the weekend by writing checks or using ATMs or debit cards. Checks will continue to be processed, and borrowers should make mortgage and loan payments as usual.

Link to Article

Congress Is Teeming With Millionaires

By David Knowles

November 08, 2009 “Sphere” — (Nov. 6) — Apparently, times aren’t so tough all over.

According to a new study compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, 237 members of the U.S. Congress, or 44 percent, are millionaires.

“What’s easy to see is that the economic reality of our elected officials is not reflective of the general population,” said Dave Levinthal, who helped compile the study’s findings.

Nationwide, only 1 percent of U.S. citizens qualify as millionaires.

Among the wealthiest members of Congress are Darrell Issa, R-Calif., whose net worth is estimated at $251 million, and Jane Harman, D-Calif., who boasts a net worth of around $244.7 million.

A slight majority of those elected to Congress are not millionaires. And some of the least well-off members include Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., and Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., both of whose net worth is less than zero, according to the RCP database.

By compiling financial disclosure statements and public tax records, the Center for Responsive Politics was also able to examine the investment holdings of elected officials.

In 2008, the same year that the federal government bailed out several U.S. banks, the second most commonly held stock among members of Congress was Bank of America, the data showed. Other popular bank stocks included Wells Fargo, Citi Group and Goldman Sachs, all of which received congressionally approved funds.

And as Congress continues to work on the issue of health care reform, Levinthal noted that industry-related stocks were also commonly held by many on Capitol Hill.

“Pfizer was the sixth most commonly held stock in 2008, for instance,” Levinthal said. “Oftentimes, members of Congress are heavily invested in companies who will be affected by decisions the federal government makes.”

Surprisingly, in a year in which the economy ravaged the retirement savings and overall net worth of so many Americans, some members of Congress experienced just the opposite. In the Senate, Richard Shelby, R-Ala., saw his net worth increase by $2.8 million. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, earned $2.6 million, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s earnings rose by $9.2 million.

By Shamus Cooke

November 08, 2009 “Information Clearing House” — The United States is moving backwards…fast. State budget cuts are decimating essential health and social services; public education is being destroyed; the social safety net is in tatters. To make matters worse, all of this is occurring when the loss of jobs stands at a twenty-six year high with no end in sight.

But this is only phase one. The federal government intends to balance its books too, at the expense of society’s neediest. Instead of governors presiding over painful cuts, the President will be doing the gutting. And although his proposed budget isn’t due until February, the President’s spokespeople are priming the media to play a major propaganda role in what will be a colossal blow against working and poor people.

Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, has been particularly busy promoting the future cutbacks, repeating that “the country must live within its mean;” “deficits must be brought down dramatically” — something that will “require very hard choices.”

What are these hard choices? One possible option is no longer available. The biggest annual deficit producer is the U.S. military, which Obama will not radically reduce. Instead, he will increase it; Taxpayers will pay $660 billion (!) in 2010 toward the military. And maybe more — military commanders see more fighting in the future, not less; consequently, they want more money. The New York Times reports:

“…Admiral. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not say how much additional money would be needed, but one figure in circulation within the Pentagon and among outside defense budget analysts is $50 billion.” (November 4, 2009).

Senate Democrat John Murtha thinks only $40 billion extra will do the trick, making the military budget an even $700 billion for 2010.

A different “hard choice” that could fix the deficit is to drastically raise taxes on the very wealthy. To this end, Obama has made the wholly-inadequate pledge to “roll back the Bush tax cuts.” Taxing the super-rich an extra 4 percent isn’t going to do the trick; not even close. At bare minimum, their taxes should be raised an additional 35 percent, to the pre-Regan level. But Obama would never propose such an idea.

The solutions Obama has proposed are the ones that Geithner is actually referring to when he says “very hard choices.” Last January, Obama told the conservative Washington Post that, to lower deficits, he would “reform entitlement programs” — social security, Medicare, etc. Reform in this case means to eliminate, or drastically reduce. The Washington Post reports:

“President-elect Barack Obama pledged yesterday to shape a new Social Security and Medicare “bargain” with the American people, saying that the nation’s long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement programs.”

When will this happen? The Post answers: “[the] administration will begin confronting the issues of entitlement reform and long-term budget deficits soon after it jump-starts job growth and the stock market.” (January 16, 2009). The upward swing in the stock market gave Geithner the green light to begin his anti-entitlement public relations campaign.

By choosing not to drastically reduce military spending and not to greatly increase taxes for the super rich and corporations, Obama will have few other options: the federal deficit is too high, especially after the Bush/Obama bank bailouts.

These bailouts, combined with decades of reduced taxes for the very wealthy, created the conditions that led to our “deficit crisis.” The solution that Obama is proposing will further devastate millions already suffering from unemployment, unlivable wages, and little hope for the future.

It can be further presumed that, while Obama is getting the U.S. “financial house in order,” the Federal Reserve will assist by increasing interest rates — something demanded by U.S. foreign creditors — thereby significantly risking cutting into Wall Street’s most recent profits and opening up the possibility of transforming our Great Recession into another full-blown depression.

This is not a matter of “if,” but “when.” The imbalances in the U.S. economy are too massive; a giant “restructuring” must take place. The bank bailouts merely intensified the already enormous economic contradictions. Who pays for this restructuring will shape the future for years to come. As Obama implements his anti-worker plan, he will encounter tremendous resistance. The once-loved President will leave office more hated than Bush.

Once the Obama illusion is completely shattered, workers can begin to act independently. We must demand that the corporate elite pay for the crisis they created. Their efforts to push this crisis onto us must be fought at every step. This can be done by clearly articulating our solutions to the crisis — taxing the super-rich and the corporations, a massive public works campaign, and ending foreign wars (for starters) — and promoting these ideas through local and national coalitions of labor unions, community groups, students, the unemployed, etc. If we are united and fighting for a clear vision of the future, we will win. If we rely on the Democrats to solve this problem our fate is sealed.

By DAVID LEONHARDT

November 08, 2009 ” New York Times” — For all the pain caused by the Great Recession, the job market still was not in as bad shape as it had been during the depths of the early 1980s recession — until now.

With the release of the jobs report on Friday, the broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment tracked by the Labor Department has reached its highest level in decades. If statistics went back so far, the measure would almost certainly be at its highest level since the Great Depression.

In all, more than one out of every six workers — 17.5 percent — were unemployed or underemployed in October. The previous recorded high was 17.1 percent, in December 1982.

This includes the officially unemployed, who have looked for work in the last four weeks. It also includes discouraged workers, who have looked in the past year, as well as millions of part-time workers who want to be working full time.

The official jobless rate — 10.2 percent in October, up from 9.8 percent in September — remains lower than the early 1980s peak of 10.8 percent.

The broader rate is highest today, sometimes 20 percent, in states that had big housing bubbles, like California and Arizona, or that have large manufacturing sectors, like Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island and South Carolina.

The new benchmark is a sign of just how much damage financial crises tend to inflict. A recent book by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, two economists, found that over the last century the typical crisis had caused the jobless rate in the country where it occurred to rise for almost five years. By that standard, the jobless rate here would continue rising for two more years, through the end of 2011.

Most economists predict that the rate will in fact begin to fall next year, largely because of the federal government’s aggressive response — fiscal stimulus, interest-rate cuts and a variety of creative steps by the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department. Friday’s report showed that monthly job losses continued to slow recently, though the improvement has been gradual.

At the White House Friday, President Obama signed a bill to extend unemployment benefits and a tax credit for home buyers, and said that he was looking at ways to enact more stimulus. On Wednesday, the Fed announced that it expected to leave its benchmark interest at zero for “an extended period.”

Nearly 16 million people are now unemployed and more than seven million jobs have been lost since late 2007.

Link to Article

Friday… We saw the Jobs Jamboree, really surprised on the “good side” of the job losses which according to the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) was “only” 190,000 for October… Now, that’s quite the fall from the +500K job loss months we saw 6 months ago… The Unemployment Rate, however, spiked to 10.2% in October… The first time the Unemployment Rate has been above 10% since the recession of the early 80’s…

And then there was this, regarding Job losses… Chris Manning of the BLS stated last month that payrolls were overestimated in the twelve months ending March by 824,000. The source of this error was the birth/death model. BLS used “plug” numbers for the number of births and deaths. These “plug” numbers were wrong. They led to estimated positive contributions to employment that were too high. Most of the error (675,000 out of a total 824,000 jobs) occurred in the first quarter of this year. The birth/death model was adding significantly to payrolls when all other payrolls were falling. In reality the contribution from net births and deaths was in fact negative.

How long… has this been going on? (A great old song!) But, haven’t I ripped this Birth/Death model for years now? And here you go! Even a BLS employee says they were wrong to add these jobs!

So… The question is when do this job losses get posted? Well… I don’t think you’ll see that folks… It’s just the way the Gov’t does things… Hides them, cheats you, and then says, “we made a mistake” and goes on about their business of hiding and cheating you!

Oh… And one more thing here regarding the Jobs Jamboree… According to BLS, payrolls fell at a 188,000 a month rate over the last three months. But their own household survey says employment fell at a 589,000 a month rate.

I shake my head in disgust… But, shoot Rudy, we all know how “the game is played” so, we just adjust our numbers and go on…

Bill Bonner / David Rosenberg:

The Dow moved up 17 points on Friday, leaving it above the 10,000 mark. Gold rose too – it is at a new record high, only $5 below $1,100.

According to the news reports, the US economy is ‘growing’ again. Yes, that’s the official storyline.

But wait, what kind of growth is this? David Rosenberg:

“All we can say is that if the overwhelming consensus is correct that the recession is behind us, then what we have on our hands is the mother of all jobless recoveries and whatever economic growth is being squeezed into the system comes courtesy of the most dramatic intervention by the government in recorded history, including the New Deal 1930s era. President Obama is now running fiscal deficits that would have made FDR blush.”

The quacks at the Fed and the Treasury department have delivered the biggest jolt of adrenaline in history. People in the private sector won’t spend? Heck, the feds will spend for them!

It took the Fed nearly one hundred years to grow its balance sheet – which is the foundation of the US money supply – to $800 billion. Then, after Lehman Bros. went broke, it doubled its balance sheet…to more than $1.8 trillion.

Early last week, the Fed announced that it would keep the firehose- sized IV in place. Then, by the end of the week, the G-20 meeting of finance ministers confirmed said they were all sticking with their stimulus programs.

You can’t put that much cash into a financial system without getting some kind of reaction. Goldman is making record profits, for example. How does Goldman make money? It is finance business. It profits by offering credit. When credit expands, the moneylenders and speculators at Goldman make money.

The private sector isn’t borrowing. Every day brings more proof.

Consumer credit contracted again in September – the 8th month this year.

Unemployment just passed the 10% mark, reports The New York Times.

“Small Businesses Hunker Down to Survive,” says another headline story.

Another big bank went bust in California.

But while the private sector de-leverages, the public sector expands. Now, it’s the feds who are doing the borrowing – about $1.7 trillion this year.

This is great for the people who help the feds finance their spending. But all it does is add more debt to the system. And debt is the real problem.

If former OMB director David Stockman is right, we’ll see deficits over $2 trillion for a decade.

What people once took for absurd they now take for granted. Such as trillion-dollar deficits. For even with a hole in public finances equal to 13% of GDP the US House of Representatives passed a law overhauling the health care system, at a cost of more than $1 trillion.

What were they thinking?

Well, they were probably thinking that ‘deficits don’t matter.’ And they were probably justifying the expense on the grounds that it was ‘countercyclical spending’ that would help pull the US out of its slump.

Whatever they were thinking, they weren’t remembering what happened 20 years ago. It was 20 years ago today that the Berlin Wall fell, bringing to an end a 40-year demonstration project. The East Germans/Soviets wanted to show the world how well economists working for the government could run an economy.

And we found out!

With all the hype about how much money you can make from your blog, newbie bloggers are in a rush to get on the blogging bandwagon by any means necessary. That usually means that they make the same mistakes everyone else is making, without even realizing it.

Still, mistakes will cost you in the long run.

Although these mistakes appear to be random at first glance, a deeper look reveals that there are not more than three really BIG mistakes that can be easily avoided.

1) Ignoring Search Engine Optimization

This happens for a simple reason; lack of planning. When someone starts a blog, all they can think about is how much money they can make by next Monday, when they have to drag their feet to office and join the other lifeless beings we call “co-workers”.

They try to build an online income and quit their jobs in 30 days – after all, isn’t that you’re promised when you bought that “How to Make Money Blogging” ebook?

Therefore they start putting out tons of articles and blog posts, hoping it will make them rich fast. Most people ignore SEO at the beginning – if they even think about it at all!

When reality sinks in however, they realize that blogging is a lot of work, and it will take a while before they can see any level of sustainable income at all.

They also realize that to get a sustainable amount of traffic in the long term, they need to depend on Google as much as they depend on their writing skills. But the existing content is not getting any good ranking in Google’s search results, because it wasn’t optimized in the first place.

To re-optimize existing pages is way too much work. If only it was done correctly from the start!

2) Focusing On The Technical Stuff

Between installing and modifying WordPress themes, to sorting through hundreds of free plugins to get something to work the way you want, you tend to forget what’s really important for your blog – Content!

The more content you add, and the more you engage with your readers, the more blog traffic you’ll get and the more money you make.

But it’s so easy to get trapped in the vicious cycle of switching themes and hacking plugins. Although it may seem like “real” work, it’s really nothing more than an excuse not to do real work.

It’s just not worth your time. Outsource the tech stuff to someone else, or just make do with the fact that you blog isn’t the best looker on the Internet.

3) Not Getting The Right Hosting

Most bloggers tend to try and cut corners by opting for a cheap web host. This may not seem like a real problem in the beginning, until you start to experience problems with your host.

90% of smaller web hosting companies just disappear after a while. Even if their service is still up and running, the captain has abandoned ship a long time ago, and the service itself is not heading anywhere.

Support is important, especially if you’re a one-person operation without a permanent webmaster of technical staff to assist you when things go wrong.

If you’re REALLY treating your blog as a business by itself, then won’t it make more sense for you to make sure you’re with the right hosting plan right from the start?

So that’s it – the three biggest mistakes most new bloggers make. Neither one of them is particularly dangerous by itself, but if you have a mix of all (like most people do), you’re sabotaging your success right from the start.

Medifast Discount Coupons

Robert Willens – CFO.com | US
November 2, 2009

In the realm of overseas investment earnings, the Internal Revenue Code — specifically Section 956(c) — defines “U.S. property” to include an obligation of a “related U.S. person” held by a controlled foreign corporation (CFC). In general, an investment in U.S. property by a CFC produces dividend income for the CFC’s U.S. shareholders in an amount equal to the amount of the investment.1

For this purpose, a related U.S. person includes a “U.S. shareholder” of the CFC, as well as any domestic corporation whose voting stock is at least 25% owned (directly, indirectly, and constructively) by the U.S. shareholder.2

Link to Article

Sarah Johnson – CFO.com | US
November 2, 2009

A revamped lease accounting standard in the works will likely put hundreds of billions of dollars in assets and obligations onto some companies’ balance sheets. That has had companies that will be most affected by the changes — such as airlines, retailers, and railroads — dreading any progress the rule-makers might make in creating a new standard. And executives of those companies have been pushing for the United States and international accounting boards not to apply the new rule to all leases.

Businesses may have gotten at least part of their wish, if the decisions made at a recent joint meeting of the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board are any indication. In one of the latest agreements made in the boards’ glacial move to overhaul the existing lease accounting rules, FAS 13 and IAS 17, they have chosen to exclude some leases from a final new standard.

Link to Article

Optimism among small business owners improved during October, driven by improved outlook for revenue, capital spending and hiring, according to the latest results of the quarterly Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index.

Concluded Oct. 9, the score came in at minus-15, a net six-point increase from the previous survey conducted in July 2009. However, it remains well below the Index high of 114 (in December 2006).

A score of zero indicates that small business owners, as a group, are neutral – neither optimistic nor pessimistic – about their companies’ situations.

Respondents are particularly bullish about employment prospects, as 18 percent expect the number of jobs or positions to “increase a little” or “increase a lot” during the next year.

One in five survey respondents expect revenues to “decrease a little” or “decrease a lot” during the next year. One-third expect capital spending to “decrease a little” or “decrease a lot” during the next year.

Sarah Johnson – CFO.com | US
November 3, 2009

It’s payback time. After months of stretching out their payables, companies are starting to catch up on their debt with their suppliers, according to the National Association of Credit Management.

In turn, trade creditors have begun to see improvements in their collections during the past two months. Chris Kuehl, the NACM’s economic analyst, says this change is likely coming from companies preparing to grow their business once again and knowing they will need more credit from their suppliers in the future. It’s a trend that has occurred during previous recessions, he tells CFO.com.

Link to Article

Eric Fry, reporting from Laguna Beach, California…

Contrary to popular mythology, we Californians do not live merely on love, sunshine and granola.

I mean, sure, we’ve all got our yoga mats, our quartz crystals and our “life coaches” (who doesn’t?), but life is just so much more than “namastes” and positive energy. Life is also about building enough windmills (somewhere else) and installing enough solar panels (somewhere else) to keep our yoga studios air-conditioned.

And, yeah, I guess we need SOME crude oil, cause our Priuses cannot ALWAYS run on electricity. So I guess its fine to use crude oil if we have to, as long as we can obtain the oil in an ecologically friendly way…like getting it from somewhere else. (OMG, remember the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969? That was a SERIOUS bummer!)

So, yes, we Californians certainly understand that we cannot break our dependence on crude oil overnight. At least not until some “next generation” process comes along that can convert text messages into jet fuel. And even if we Californians use less crude oil, someone else is bound to use more of it…like all those reckless industrialists in the Developing World. Don’t they know how bad crude oil is for the environment?

But I guess there’s just no reasoning with these people. So I guess we’ll just have to keep finding and pumping crude oil for a long time to come.

Hmmm… I’m not sure how easy that’s going to be. When I was out recycling newspapers the other day, I saw an old headline that said crude oil is becoming much harder to find…and that oil production is falling off rapidly at many of the world’s largest fields.

So I did a little research and – would you believe – it’s true. Crude oil is becoming much harder to find and much more expensive to produce.

In today’s edition of The Daily Reckoning, our friends over at the US Global Investors Global Resources Fund shed a bit more light on this frightening truth.

But first, let’s hear what Dan Denning, our correspondent in Melbourne, Australia, has to say about yesterday’s surprising disclosure that India snapped up $6 billion worth of gold from the International Monetary Fund:

Well how about that! India pipped China at the post to walk away with 200 tonnes of IMF gold. Granted, India had to pay US$6.8 billion for the yellow metal. But with China steadily accumulating gold as a reserve asset (at the household AND central bank level), everyone thought China has this one in the bag. Not so!

Something more than meets the eye is going on here. The IMF sale was part of a plan to unload 403.3 tonnes of gold. It’s halfway there, and will use the proceeds to fund itself and loans to the developing world (or perhaps Britain and America when they go broke). But what else is going on?

In the past, large sales of gold – mostly by European central banks – swamped the gold price and kept it in check. Why did they sell?

The central bankers believed they had too much gold on their balance sheets doing too little work. In other words, these thoroughly modern bankers would explain, “Gold pays no interest.” So they thought it “prudent” to exchange their gold reserves for interest-bearing assets like Treasury bonds. So far, that’s been a horrible trade…and it is becoming an even more horrible trade as gold advances from record high to record high.

Nevertheless, the central bankers of the West continue to unload their gold reserves to the central bankers of the East….

India’s central bank is now the proud owner of 557 tonnes of gold. That gives it the tenth largest gold holdings among central banks. But it probably isn’t finished. Gold makes up just six percent of India’s foreign exchange reserves. There’s plenty of room for that to grow.

But don’t forget China. China has $2.3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves. But 70% of those – or $1.6 trillion – are in US dollars. It owns over just 1,000 tonnes of gold. That makes up less than 2% of China’s reserves and makes China the seventh largest holder of above ground gold. In fact the gold exchange traded fund (NYSE:GLD) owns more gold than China. France, Italy, the IMF, Germany and the United States round out the top five (from fifth to first).

What this tells you is that China could double (and then double again) its gold reserves and gold would still make up less than 10% of its total forex reserves. Compare that to 66% in Italy, 69% in Germany, 70% in France, and 77% in the US, according to official numbers. So what’s the big deal?

There will always be a threat that European Central Banks release gold supply on to the market. In fact, European central banks just renewed a five-year agreement (including the IMF) to sell down a maximum of 400 tonnes of gold per year from their holdings. They’ve agreed to this to disgorge their gold in an orderly fashion.

But it would not surprise us to see the Europeans fail to sell the gold they’re allowed to sell under the agreement. Our old desk mate in London, Adrian Ash (now with Bullion Vault) is at the London Bullion Market Association’s annual meeting in Edinburgh. Word from UBS analyst John Reade, also at the meeting, is that European Central Bank official Paul Mercier reckons that official holders of gold will, “no longer be net sellers of gold.”

As we predicted earlier this year, the European central banks would rather hoard their gold than sell it in a rising market. There may be a price at which they do sell it, in order to pay down sovereign debts. But psychologically, the fact that central banks want to own gold and not sell it is pretty important.

Also, it shows you how the balance of economic power in the world has shifted East. True, the European banks can still dump gold on to the market to drown the price. But between the ETFs, central bank buyers in India and China, and the average man on the street in Beijing, Mumbai, and elsewhere, there are more buyers of gold now than sellers.

And if we were right yesterday that the GFC is slowly morphing into a sovereign debt crisis, then the case for gold is that much stronger. This explains why gold futures were up by nearly 3% overnight and Old Yeller hit a new high at US$1,084.90.

The only worry? So many hedge fund managers and pundits are singing the same tune: long gold and short US Treasuries. These feel like “crowded trades.” So as a contrarian, you’ve got good reason to be a little worried about becoming a victim right about now.

Nevertheless, in the long term, the end of the Super Cycle in fiat money results in the re-monetisation of gold. That is what you’re seeing now. And it’s probably what you’ll see for a few more years. It also ought to benefit other precious metals, and of course, precious metals shares.