William K. Black's Testimony to the Congress on Lehman's fraud

The recent US financial crisis is always and everywhere founded in regulatory capture, dissembling, influence peddling, and fraud.

'Third Party' Liberal Democrats Jump Into Contention in British Polls

British elections became a 'three way' race as Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg electrified audiences in the recent televised debate.

UK Election

"Many will have learned more about the three main parties' policies in 90 minutes than they had ever known before. In an election in which trust and integrity are likely to prove crucial all will have had the chance to contrast close up and under fire the personal mettle of Messrs. Cameron, Clegg and Brown."

This speaks volumes about what is likely to become a trend and perhaps a preview of the US November elections in which incumbents drop and give way to a more independent and third party candidates.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg speaks in a recent press conference about banking reform and the Goldman Sachs scandal in the States.



I am informed by a UK reader that this poll understates the push the Liberal Democrats have made, and that in other polls they trail the Tories by only two points, or are at par.

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...