US Said to Ready Special Armed Forces Unit For Domestic Deployment in Case of Disaster or Civil Unrest

Although the National Guard has been used in the past to deal with protests, they were called by the state governors and were not acting at the direction of the Federal government.

"The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of Reconstruction, with the intention (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) of substantially limiting the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The Act prohibits most members of the federal uniformed services (today the Army, Navy, Air Force, and State National Guard forces when such are called into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order" on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) within the United States.

The statute generally prohibits federal military personnel and units of the National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Coast Guard is exempt from the Act during peacetime."

I wonder if this is true, and if the Obama Administration intends to deploy Federal troops, or declare martial law, this summer prior to the elections. I am not familiar with the Newark Examiner.

It does not seem consistent with the law, because this is a regular army regiment. The provisions for their deployment passed during the Bush Administration had been repealed, setting the use of troops back to the conditions of Insurrection as I recall.

I believe that is the premise by which the government directed MacArthur to lead regular army troops to dispel the WWI veterans from the Capitol in the last Great Depression.

Even in the race riots of the 1960's which were in many cases armed and dangerous, the National Guard was deployed at the direction of the state's governor. I am not aware of any other legal precedents or rules on this. Perhaps someone else can oblige.

P.S. A reader informs me that this news report is from a 'conservative' news source that has a variety of virtual locations in different states. The size of this military unit is also said to be greatly overestimated at 80,000. I suspect that this might be the case, and that the purpose of this news piece may be to incite misplaced concerns. But it does serve to bring up the issue, and to make people aware that posse commitatus has been considered a 'liberty' of the land for over a hundred years. If it is ignored, and the law is broken, then the American people will speak out against it again, as is their duty and their obligation.

Newark Examiner
Special army unit ready to be deployed on American soil just before Nov. elections
April 21, 2010

In October of this year, one month prior to the November midterm elections, a special army unit known as 'Consequence Management Response Force' will be ready for deployment on American soil if so ordered by the President.

The special force, which is the new name being given to the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry, has been training at Fort Stewart, Georgia and is composed of 80,000 troops.

According to the Army Times,

"They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal
with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in
response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield
explosive, or CBRNE, attack."

The key phrase is 'may be called upon to help with civil unrest.'

This afternoon a local radio talk show host reported that he had been in contact with a member of the military. This military source stated that the armed forces have been alerted to the strong possibility that civil unrest may occur in the United States this summer, prior to the midterm elections of 2010.

The source described this as 'our long, hot summer of discontent' that could be eerily reminiscent of the summer of 1968 when riots broke out in many of our largest cities.

However, the summer of 2010 could well be much worse due to the players involved. In 1968 the major players were war protesters. This time, the outrage simmering beneath the surface of American society involves a broad cross-section of the heartland, and most of them are heavily armed...

Read the rest here.

93% Of Commodity Specs Believe that Gold Price Will Decline; US Financial Model Is a Threatened Specie

Of course that pun in the title is intended. How could you even ask?

Mom and Pop America, unlike their Asian counterparts, and most speculators apparently, do not favor the precious metals like gold.

They might be right. But sometimes it is safest to be positioned comfortably far from the maddening (pun intended as in 'frenzied' and 'annoying') crowd.

For me that entails being on a short term hedged trade, long stuff and short fluff.

The US financial sector, as represented by the bloated banks, are overvalued based on a business model that relies on gaming the system, routinely defrauding their customers, adding little value to the global economy except for themselves, and feeding off the wealth creation and the labor of the many. That seems to be coming to an end, perhaps not tomorrow, but as time goes by.

If stocks take a serious tumble in the US we'll know which way the wind is blowing. If gold holds its ground, we will have an indication that it is ready for the next leg up, because the drop in stocks is based on a disgorgement of assets which have lost their appeal and confidence because of the repeated, increasingly reckless, and virulent frauds of the American oligarchs.

Commodity Online
Poll: 93% of Investors Believe That Gold will Fall
By Rutam Vora
21 April 2010, 10:49 a.m. EST

(Commodity Online) -- At a time when gold prices reeled under pressure, for a sustained period after hitting their all-time high in December 2009, the perception towards the yellow metal seems to have reversed with investors hinting at weakening of gold prices in the near future and strengthening of other investment avenues...

In an online opinion poll conducted by Commodity Online, a majority of the respondents have hinted at a possible fall in gold prices in the near future, and better earning opportunities will come knocking on the door.

In an online poll of a sample size of 21,600 respondents selected from across the globe, 93% or 20,100 of the total sample size had opined that there would be a fall in gold prices due to a recent upbeat mood in the global equity markets, while only 1,400 respondents contradicted the stand, 0.46% did not comment on either side. This showed that most of the respondents believed that there would be a fall in gold prices in the near future due to a recovery in global equity markets.

However, with regard to the other metals being an investment destination, most of the respondents maintained a view that they (base metals) can potentially become alternative investment instruments. As many as 64.35% of respondents considered base metals as a potential investment instrument but of them, 53% still chose gold as a preferred investment instrument compared to base metals, while 46.76% preferred base metals to gold....

Similarly, of the total respondents as many as 53.1% believed that the US dollar would replace gold from its status of 'safe haven.' Looking at the recovery of the US economy from the nightmarish recession which had started from the US and hit the world economy in 2008, the dollar was found gathering steam once again. However, 46.8% of the respondents contradicted the view and maintained their skepticism towards the dollar and put gold to their preferred investment mode...

US Unveils an Even Newer New $100 Bill

The new $100 US bill will go into circulation on February 10, 2011.

It is being put forward as a new form of currency with stronger anti-counterfeiting measures to help stem the tide of non-official monetary expansion.

I suspect at some point it will facilitate a 'recall' of the old notes, as a means of combating cash and carry businesses and money laundering. It will also seek to unhinge cash hoarding overseas tied to the drug trade.

It has not been announced if these bills will be carrying an expiration date to insure freshness.

Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner will be auctioning the crayons he used to sign his name to the bill on eBay to help defray the national debt. His handle is 2RB-O-TimEE.

New Money Homepage

Wall Street Journal
U.S. Unveils New $100 Bill
By
DARRELL A. HUGHES
April 21, 2010

WASHINGTON—Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke unveiled a new $100 bill equipped with two new security features.

The bill will go into circulation Feb. 10, 2011.

The Fed, along with the Treasury Department, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the U.S. Secret Service, "continuously monitor the counterfeiting threats" for each denomination and redesign decisions are made based on those threats, Mr. Bernanke said.

"This job has become more complex in recent years as technology advances and U.S. dollar flows expand and increase," he added.

The bill—the highest denomination of all U.S. notes—circulates widely around the world, with circulation in the past 25 years growing to $890 billion from $180 billion.

About two-thirds of all $100 notes circulate outside the U.S.; Mr. Bernanke said the agencies must ensure people around the world are aware of the design change. Over the next several months, officials at the agencies will work to educate cash handlers,
consumers and others about the design and explain how to use its security features.

The 6.5 billion or so $100 notes in circulation now will remain legal tender, Mr. Bernanke said.

The new bill's security features include a blue 3-D Security Ribbon on the front of the note that contains images of bells and 100s, which move and change from one to the other as you tilt the note, according to joint release from the agencies.

Another security feature is the "Bell in the Inkwell" image that changes color from copper to green when the note is tilted, an effect that makes it appear and disappear within the inkwell. (For more on the redesigned note and its features, visit www.newmoney.gov.)

"As with previous U.S. currency redesigns, this note incorporates the best technology available to ensure we're staying ahead of counterfeiters," Mr. Geithner said.

The new design for the $100 note retains three effective security features from the previous design: the portrait watermark of Benjamin Franklin, the security thread, and the color-shifting numeral 100.

The Financial Oligarchy in the US

If you do nothing else this week, read the transcript or watch this video.

I have a serious difference of opinion with the speakers with regard to Robert Rubin and his role, but they make up for it with their description of Jamie Dimon as close to the White House and one of the most dangerous men in America today.

And I thought it was interesting that Simon Johnson would say openly that the ONLY Senator who is speaking the truth plainly is Ted Kaufman from Delaware.

Other than that they are substantially putting out a very sound and realistic view of the root of the problems that created the financial crisis, and what requires to be done to rebalance the system and create a sustainable recovery.

BILL MOYERS: And you say that these this oligarchy consists of six megabanks. What are the six banks?

JAMES KWAK: They are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.

BILL MOYERS: And you write that they control 60 percent of our gross national product?

JAMES KWAK: They have assets equivalent to 60 percent of our gross national product. And to put this in perspective, in the mid-1990s, these six banks or their predecessors, since there have been a lot of mergers, had less than 20 percent. Their assets were less than 20 percent of the gross national product.

BILL MOYERS: And what's the threat from an oligarchy of this size and scale?

SIMON JOHNSON: They can distort the system, Bill. They can change the rules of the game to favor themselves. And unfortunately, the way it works in modern finance is when the rules favor you, you go out and you take a lot of risk. And you blow up from time to time, because it's not your problem. When it blows up, it's the taxpayer and it's the government that has to sort it out.

BILL MOYERS: So, you're not kidding when you say it's an oligarchy?

JAMES KWAK: Exactly. I think that in particular, we can see how the oligarchy has actually become more powerful in the last since the financial crisis. If we look at the way they've behaved in Washington. For example, they've been spending more than $1 million per day lobbying Congress and fighting financial reform. I think that's for some time, the financial sector got its way in Washington through the power of ideology, through the power of persuasion. And in the last year and a half, we've seen the gloves come off. They are fighting as hard as they can to stop reform.

The Financial Oligarcy in the US - Bill Moyer's Journal

US Dollar Very Long Term Chart

"A sentiment of trust in the legal money of the State is so deeply implanted in the citizens of all countries that they cannot but believe that some day this money must recover a part at least of its former value. To their minds it appears that value is inherent in money as such, and they do not apprehend that the real wealth, which this money might have stood for, has been dissipated once and for all.

This sentiment is supported by the various legal regulations with which the Governments endeavor to control internal prices, and so to preserve some purchasing power for their legal tender. Thus the force of law preserves a measure of immediate purchasing power over some commodities and the force of sentiment and custom maintains, especially amongst peasants, a willingness to hoard paper which is really worthless...

If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer."

John Maynard Keynes, Economic Consequences of the Peace, NY, 1920, p. 239-40

SP Futures, NDX Futures, US Dollar, No Sell Signals Yet

The big drop in the SP 500 last Friday triggered by the Goldman fraud charges was not confirmed at all by the NDX.

The SP 500, rightly or wrongly, is where much of the market manipulation of stocks is said to occur. It is a lead index for us, but we watch the NDX along side it, and vice versa. A genuine change in trend must be confirmed before we would take positions in size against the prior trend.



Bullish sentiment is starting to roll over. It has not yet challenged a level that would signal a bearish reversal. It is enetered a period of consolidation and sideways chop. If it penetrates the second moving average band it would be a strong trend change signal.



The US Dollar as measured by the DX Index is in a consoldiation within its uptrend. It has not yet broken serious support to signal a change in trend.

Net Asset Values and Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

The US Financial Media Does Not Disappoint, But Will Obama?

"And this is good old Gotham,
The home of the rich and the odd.
Where Morgan talks only to Goldman,
And Goldman talks only to God."

Andrew Stanton, with compliments to
"Boston Toast" by John Collins Bossidy

The spin was running hot and heavy this morning.

The scandal was a one off, a rogue trader. The charges against Goldman are weak, nothing illegal, perhaps just immoral. But morality is not an issue with qualified investors, who should have known better. This has never happened before and is unlikely to happen again. No one forces anyone to be victimized by a fraud. They did it to themselves.

The outstanding talking head on Bloomberg TV was guest salesman Tom Brown of Second Curve Capital, who never met a Wall Street pustule he didn't wish to feed upon. He was supported eagerly by the bobbing heads of Adam Johnson and some less memorable sycophant. And of course the ineffably endearing news anchor, Betty Liu, who is an understudy for Alicia Silverstone in the Wall Street version of Clueless.

But CNBC's Steve Liesman put out a description of the scandal that was so outrageous that it made Mark Haines cough up a donut. Mark still has a conscience apparently but Steve left his at a pawn shop in Moscow. His economic arguments, along with Cramer and Kudlow, drove me away from CNBC long ago. But there is little refuge at Bloomberg anymore except in the off continent off hours, and Fox, well, it is Fox.

I expected a slime trail to appear early on, and I was not disappointed. And its a shame.

Charley Rose has a special on Goldman tonight and it should be worth watching. Charley is a journalist, and tends to show some integrity, which is an increasingly rare commodity in the American mainstream media.

Most Likely Outcome

Goldman will settle out of court, while admitting no fault, after making a great deal of noise to salvage their reputation and lay out a defense for the civil suits that will follow IF Obama does not call in the FBI and Justice to do a more thorough job of investigating the firm and their variety of dodgy deals.

The penalty will be a disgorgement of 15 million, plus a penalty of maybe 45 million. This is just the cost of doing business compared to the billions they took down in side bets like the Credit Default Swaps when the subprime card table tipped over.

The Dems will get Chris Dodd's toothless financial reform passed, and within five years at least one Wall Street firm will roll over and be 'virtually bailed out' at great cost to the taxpayers under its provisions. After he leaves office citizen Obama will say he should not have listened to Larry Summers' advice and ought to have done more to reform Wall Street, despite determined Republican opposition. hi ho

That is the usual outcome. It *could* change, Obama can change it and he doesn't need the Republicans to ask the FBI and Justice to assist the SEC in their civil case investigation to look for evidence of criminal wrongdoing including Paulson and other hedge funds under the RICO statutes. That would show us something about him, at least differently from what I think of his character now. I don't hold much hope for it given the enormous sums that Wall Street is contributing to the Democrats. But I'm prepared to be surprised.

Or it could change if the people shake off their cynicism and lethargy, and a "million person march" goes to Washington this summer, and peacefully demonstrates that business as usual is no longer acceptable. And then they put some bite into it and vote out the incumbents in the fall elections, voting heavily for third parties dedicated to real change.

That is also unlikely but I am prepared to be surprised.

But in the meantime, Europe and Asia should start counting the silverware, and hide the women and children, because the dogs of Wall Street are still on the loose, with little effective restraint.

Goldman Sachs: A Pattern of Organized Criminal Behaviour?

Chris Whalen provides some excellent commentary on the Goldman Sachs fraud inquiry by the SEC at the beginning of his weekly newsletter, The Institutional Risk Analyst.

In addition to the information he provides about other deals, including those that specifically targeted AIG, he puts an interesting twist on this. He intimates that at times the Hedge Funds were acting in concert with the Big Banks as off-balance-sheet accomplices in crafting these complex frauds. And the Paulson - Goldman scandal may only be one of a type, and not perhaps the best or most flagrant example.

A reaction from many is that this is just the tip of the iceberg, a single point in a much larger picture of calculated fraud involving many more deals and significantly more money up to and including the bailout of AIG.

It is not enough to throw a few token fines on some selective deals, and then dismiss them as outliers, and then suggest we 'move on' to reform the market. The spin will be that what Goldman did was 'legal' but immoral. And for many today, morality is simply a matter of taste. And Paulson will be served up as the fall guy. It will take a serious investigation to uncover all the facts, and make the case stick. And the SEC is not competent to do this, for a variety of reasons.

And the reforms that the Congress will create as a result of this, at the least the ones permitted by Jamie and Lloyd, will quickly be circumvented with new fraudulent devices and it will quickly be business as usual. Its hard to say that the business has never stopped, even now. The Big Banks continue to manipulate markets and abuse derivatives as instruments of financial fraud.

The absolute worst place to conduct a serious investigation will be in front of the Congress is a show trial, designed to give some of the Senators and Representatives an opportunity to create sound bytes of anger, to be played in commercials for their re-election, and then at then end of the day, continue to collect fat campaign contributions, and then do nothing.

It does not require Republican permission for President Obama to direct the FBI and the Justice Department to begin a serious inquiry with an eye to RICO violations in what may be one of the largest financial frauds in history, dwarfing the Madoff Ponzi scheme in terms of value and number of victims.

Oh, and by the way, we hate to say we told you so, but please fire Larry Summers now that Bill Clinton has thrown him under the bus, and have him take Rubin's other protégé, Turbo Timmy, along with him.

My concern is that the American people even now do not understand how serious this crisis is. They are quickly distracted into ridiculous partisan spirit and frivolous diversions. This is the freedom and the welfare of their country that is at risk, and it is time to put aside childish things, and begin the serious work of reforming their financial system, the ownership of their media, and the political campaign process.

Institutional Risk Analyst
Goldman SEC Litigation: The End of OTC?
By Chris Whalen
April 19, 12010

Last Friday's announcement by the SEC of a civil lawsuit against Goldman Sachs (GS) for securities fraud did not surprise us. Nor were we surprised to see the markets
trade off large on the news, evidence to us that there is a certain lack of conviction in the financials.

Q: How can you have "normalized earnings" in an abnormal industry?

No, what surprised us about the SEC action is that it took as long as it did. Maybe surprised isn't precisely the right word, but you know what we mean. The inertia in the system seems to dampen reactions to extreme outlier behavior to a far too great a degree. This week in The IRA Advisory Service we discuss the implications of the SEC action and the likely impact on the OTC dealer community in the months and years ahead.

Readers of The IRA will recall back in 2004 when were started to talk about the regulatory focus on complex structured financial products and the perceived reputational risk to the big firms arising from these unregulated, OTC instruments. Big thank you to Chuck Muckenfuss at Gibson Dunn for the heads up. The "advice" issued by all of the regulators ("Interagency Statement on Sound Practices Concerning Complex Structured Finance Activities") was focused almost entirely on protecting the dealers from reputational risk and not on protecting investors.

The fact of the 2004 notice by the SEC and other regulators illustrates the problem. Regulators clearly knew that a problem existed back then, yet the SEC waited until April of 2010 to actually do something constructive to rebalance the equation, to lean just a bit more in the direction of investors and abit less in favor of the dealers. Keep in mind that it's not like the games played by GS and the Paulson organization were remotely unique. Just about every OTC dealer worthy of the description has at least one deal comp to this thing of beauty.

On March 31, 2010, Bob Ivry and Jody Shenn at Bloomberg published a very important article on American International Group and its losses from insuring collateralized debt obligations structured by, you guessed it, GS. Entitled "How Lou Lucido Let AIG Lose $35 Billion With Goldman Sachs CDOs," the article outlines the process whereby AIG was left on the hook for billions in losses on CDOs sold to TCW Group in Los Angeles.

Whereas in the trades with Paulson GS was helping a client create and then sell short a CDO that was being sold to another client, in the case of TCW the GS firm was helping a client buy toxic loans to be contributed to a CDO in the knowledge that doing so would cause losses to a regulated insurer, AIG. The activities of GS to harm AIG make the subsequent payments by AIG to GS, using money from the US Treasury, seem all the more outrageous.

But the other thing that really bothers us about both the TCW transactions and the more recent revelations about GS and the Paulson firm is the fact that the SEC apparently still does not fully understand the symbiotic relationship between the dealer and the hedge fund. In our view, the funds that were involved with these
transactions and many, many more examples in the OTC marketplace, did not have an arm's length relationship with the dealer. Hedge funds exist at the sufferance of the dealers, who finance and execute and act as custodian for their various strategies and use the funds as short-term storage for inventory.

In the case of Paulson, the information provided by the SEC makes it seem as though Paulson was the party which initiated these transactions and, according to the SEC, paid GS $15 million to arrange and market these CDOs to investors. Paulson was also apparently working as an advisor to GS and collaborating with GS regarding investment strategy. A spokesman for Paulson told The New York Times that all of their dealings with GS and other parties were on "an arm's length basis." We believe that reasonable people can differ on this issue. We also suspect that the nature and the extent of the relationship between GS and Paulson will be the subject of extensive legal and political inquiry in the weeks and months ahead.

But for us, the bottom line is that hedge funds often times are merely extensions of the dealers with which they interact. It is often difficult if not impossible to tell where the dealer's interests end and those of the hedge fund begin, especially when the dealer and the fund seem to be working in concert to create securities that are being sold to third parties. This episode is a terrible mess and, to us at least, illustrates why the OTC markets for securities and derivatives need to be regulated out of existence -- or at least into compliance with norms of disclosure and fair dealing that would render such strategies impossible. If the global financial markets have been reduced to nothing more than beggar thy neighbor, then we all have a big problem.

JP Morgan Responds to Calls for Goldman Investigation By Warning Germany on Banking Regulation, Asks for More Influence On European Politicians

'"When profits fall too sharply then capital will move somewhere else, where there is more money to be earned, for example non-regulated markets," Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said in the German mass circulation Sunday paper Welt am Sonntag. "The question is, is that what regulators want?"... he also said the banking industry could do with more influence on politicians." Reuters

In response to calls for an investigation of Goldman Sachs and tighter regulations on the Wall Street Banks, the CEO of JP Morgan has delivered fresh promises of financial damage if the Banks are restrained in their derivatives dealings by government regulation, and even more arrogantly, demanded greater access to European politicians.

Germany would do well to send a strong message that the European government will not be intimidated by financial threats and manipulation by foreign banks, no matter how powerful in both size and political connections.

Appeasement does not work against unbridled greed and pervasive fraud. It picks its victims, one by one, but none are safe.

The solution to this is simple. Take away the power of the large Multinational Banks to sway markets with their enormous derivatives positions.

They seek to control you by controlling your currencies and the issuance of debt. This is nothing new, except for the scale and power of a few Banks, most of which are US based.

This interview could be the result of a cultural misunderstanding. The New York Bankers are accustomed to threatening the US politicians and people if they do not get their way. This is what they had done when they received their trillions in public money with much secrecy and little accountability

Break the Banks up, and put them to the traditional task of allocating capital to commercial markets. If the US will not reform the financial system, ban them from any banking activities in your region.

Change the dollar reserve currency system which is firmly in the hands of the Wall Street money center banks, their friends at the Treasury and in the Congress, and their employees at the Fed.

Do it now while you still can.

Reuters
JPMorgan chief warns of overregulation
By Vera Eckert
April 18, 2010

(Reuters) - The head of JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) in a German newspaper interview on Sunday turned against the possibility of stricter bank regulation and asked for better access for bankers to politicians.

"When profits fall too sharply then capital will move somewhere else, where there is more money to be earned, for example non-regulated markets," Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said in the German mass circulation Sunday paper Welt am Sonntag.

"The question is, is that what regulators want?," said Dimon who heads the second-largest U.S. bank.

Dimon has been an outspoken critic of the Obama administration's proposed financial regulatory reforms, particularly of a proposed bailout fee on big banks which he has called a "punitive bank tax."

In the German interview, he also said the banking industry could do with more influence on politicians.

Both the industry and government wanted what was best for their country and the economic system but there were areas where the banks lacked possibilities to demonstrate their arguments to politicians and supply them with the right facts, he said.

A Modern Tale of Financial Loss

A developer (Goldman) built houses that looked well built, but were in reality designed to be firetraps, using plans provided by an architect (Paulson). They were sold as conforming to code with certain characteristics represented and endorsed by the building inspectors (Ratings Agencies) and overseen by fire inspectors who did spot checks (the SEC).

After the sale, the developer and the architect bought huge amounts of fire insurance on the homes from a friendly insurance agent (AIG London) who was eager to collect the commissions. The amounts that were insured were sometimes well in excess of what a home might actually be worth. They even took out policies on nearby homes that they had not even built or sold.

The developer had also encouraged the city government to allow the firetrucks and safety equipment to fall into disrepair, and for too few inspectors to be hired to do spot safety checks. So when the houses inevitably burned, the fire department was unable to adequately respond. The fires became so bad that they destroyed entire neighborhoods and threatened whole sections of the city.

The developer and architect were able to submit their insurance claims for sums that were so staggering that the insurance company for which the London agent worked was itself facing bankruptcy. This would have placed at risk the holders of its other policies in completely unrelated areas such as life and auto insurance, and retirement annuities.

So the developer had government people, whom he had helped to elect, provide government backing for the insurance company, for the good of the public. The people who had lost their homes and those who were forced to help to pay the developer were very upset.

But the developer was a large advertiser in the local newspaper, and a old school friend of the owner, so it ignored the complaints, and reported on the story from every perspective except what had really happened. It blamed the people who had lost their homes for being foolish and not inspecting the homes more closely, and taking the developer and the housing inspectors at their word, and trusting the fire departments and its inspectors to do their jobs.

And anyone who complained too loudly was at first ignored, then ridiculed, and finally threatened with arrest. After all, the developer was one of the most important and influential people in the city, and had many powerful friends. Any suggestion that they had done anything wrong was simply unbelievable.

After all, it is inconceivable that an upstanding member of the commuity would ever endanger so many people's lives and homes like that just for personal profit.

The End (for now)