Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley

Mayor Michael Nutter said the clock is counting down to the implementation of a devastating ‘doomsday budget’ in Philadelphia.

During a morning press conference…

How do the current deficits compare with past administrations? And how did the national debt get so big anyway? This video tries to answer those questions by looking at the debt as a road trip …

Y…

Jackson Hole

Every year, the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank sponsors a meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The 2009 event starts tonight. For prior year topics, click here.

By …

View Full Size Chart of The Day: Credit May Crunch Again Before Getting Back To Normal

Having received another repayment, I just made my next loan at Kiva.org to an entrepreneur in Palestine starting a grocery store. Learn more about the syndicate I have joined, and how you or your So…

By Ed Mendel

The CalPERS chief actuary says pension costs are “unsustainable,” and the giant public employee pension system plans to meet with stakeholders to discuss the issue.

So, are the critics …

By William Selway

JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to lend California $1.5 billion, a cash infusion that will allow the most-populous U.S. state to stop issuing IOUs to businesses, taxpayers and mun…

The “Impossible” Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash

Here are the costs of childbirth as of 1952 at one of the finest hospitals on the West Coast, The Santa Monica Hospital:

Having a baby cost $3…

YouTube

by Meg White

I don’t like it when scientists feel the need to explain that they’re scared out of their wits, or use exclamation marks.

I also get a little nervous when they say stuff like, “We’re …

YouTube

YouTube

Water Color by Lesta Frank

By Anne Stuhldreher

…Unless, that is, you’re friends with someone like Maria del Carmen Torres. In between serving up pupusas and plantain chips at local farmers’ mark…

Target, Burlington, MA

By Eric Janszen

The first half of 2009 goes like this:

1. After Christmas sales: 20% to 50% off
2. Liquidation sales: 50% to 80% off
3. Then 30% to 40% of retailers go out o…

If you planned to check out a library book, visit a city clinic or have your garbage picked up on Monday, you’re out of luck.

The City of Chicago is basically closed for business on Aug. 17, a redu…

If nuclear weapons exist, then nuclear war is a real possibility. And Delhi is a prime target. It is.

But where shall we go? Is it possible to go out and buy another life because this one’s not panni…

By Rebecca Smith

Only a third of nurses have said they are willing to have the vaccine against swine flu amid fears it has not been tested enough, a survey has found.

Continue reading Only a Third…

Sir! No Sir!

Sir! No Sir! is a documentary produced, and written by David Zeiger  about the opposition to the Viet Nam War in military ranks. Subtitled “the suppressed story of the GI movement to en…

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments at the blog.

Alas, not all those commenting had the readers and our best interests at heart. And despite lots of spam filters, the spam has become quite s…

The Lockheed Fire in Santa Cruz was one of nine big wildfires burning more than 100,000 acres in California last week. It was named after the largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, because it th…

The 2008 GAAP-based deficit (counting unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities, etc.), using accrual accounting, was $5.1 trillion, up from $1.2 trillion ($4 trillion-plus, using consistent a…

By Daniel Whitten and Simon Lomax

The U.S. Senate should abandon efforts to pass legislation curbing greenhouse-gas emissions this year and concentrate on a narrower bill to require use of renewable …

Congressman Paul Broun (R-Ga) also spoke of a “socialistic elite” – Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid – who might use a pandemic disease or natural disaster as a…

Dear Senator Boxer:

You were so right on when you scolded the general on TV for using the term, “ma’am,” instead of “Senator”. After all, in the military, “ma’am” is a term of respect when addressin…

By Laurence Gonzales

As a journalist, I’ve been writing about accidents for more than thirty years. In the last 15 or so years, I’ve concentrated on accidents in outdoor recreation, in an effort to…

By David Liechty

On December 23, 1913, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act (ch. 6, 38 Stat. 251) and again fundamentally changed the monetary structure of the United States, creating a mixed pub…

“”A lie keeps growing and growing until it’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

I keep getting e-mails that militia are on the rise in America. I don’t believe a word of it. There are a lot of Ame…

Nothing would please Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York more than to see both low long term yields and higher highs in equities. However, the juggling act required to ramp both equiti…

A friend of mine who has worked in the prison system tells me that the prisoners say the way to tell when the economy is in real trouble is prison riots trigged by dissatisfaction with food. The fol…

By Peter Whoriskey

Hate car salesmen? Want to skip the test drive?

General Motors has some cars to show you.

The government-rescued automaker announced on Monday that it is starting a trial in whi…

The Case-Shiller has been signalling an improvement in the second derivative of housing prices for a few months, and in the latest report it even showed a sequential increase. But check out the NAR’…

By Joe Weisenthal and Kamelia Angelova
Hopefully deficits don’t matter, because if they do, then boy are we screwed. Today’s chart was put together by Diapason Securities analyst Sean Corrigan (via A…

By Richard Milne in Amsterdam

Manufacturers are abandoning global supply chains for regional ones in a big shift brought about by the financial crisis and climate change concerns, according to e…

Secret Office, at The General Post-Office

Welcome to John Potter’s world. He’s the nation’s postmaster general. Yes, that’s right: for the last nine years, he has run the United States Posta…

When Mexico Had the Blues: A Transatlantic Tale of Bonds, Bankers, and Nationalists, 1862–1910

By Steven C. Topick

As Joseph Schumpeter lyrically described the broader phenomenon of public finance…

By Gretchen Morgenson and Don Van Natta Jr.

Before he became President George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary in 2006, Henry M. Paulson Jr. agreed to hold himself to a higher ethical standard than his…

Southern Presidential Peaks By Gary Tompkins

By Catherine Austin Fitts

As a child, my summers were spent hiking in the White Mountains (New Hampshire).

My grandparents had a farm that was listed …

“Our goal was to find out whether we could program DNA to assemble into shapes that exhibit custom curvature or twist, with features just a few nanometers wide,” says biophysicist Hendrik Dietz, a p…

The United States on Thursday issued new rules on oil market manipulation that prohibits market players from providing misleading information to influence prices.

The Federal Trade Commission said in…

Deutsche Bundesbank

Germany’s gold is in U.S. custody, Bundesbank confirms.

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

International journalist Max Keiser has just posted a nine-minute documentary he has done …

From Wikipedia

The South Atlantic Anomaly (or SAA) is the region where Earth’s inner Van Allen radiation belt makes its closest approach to the planet’s surface. For a given altitude, the radiation …

By Brody Mullins

Congress plans to spend $550 million to buy eight jets, a substantial upgrade to the fleet used by federal officials at a time when lawmakers have criticized the use of corporate j…

YouTube

By Charles Abbott

For the first time, more than 34 million Americans received food stamps, which help poor people buy groceries, government figures said on Thursday, a sign of the longest and one …

The picture above is an article about allegations of sex slave trafficking relating to a defense government contractor named DynCorp.

I became interested in DynCorp after observing their role as we…

By Joe Weisenthal and Kamelia Angelova

The severe bloodletting in the construction industry is slowly waning. The pace of layoffs is coming well off its peak, according to ADP, probably since compa…

Russian Nuclear-powered Submarine

By Mark Mazzeti and Thom Shanker

A pair of nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines has been patrolling off the eastern seaboard of the United States in recent d…

Penumbral Lunar Eclipse February 9, 2009
A penumbral lunar eclipse will take place on August 6, 2009, the third of four lunar eclipses in 2009. The moon’s small entry into the earth’s penumbral shad…

Credit & Copyright: Barry & Noemi Diacon

Continue reading Astronomy Picture of the Day

View full article at oftwominds.com

So when you’re reading the news about how randomly careless and stupid everybody was, just remember the Argentine plan: all the right people win, all the wrong p…

At tipstrategies.com

Go to the website to view an animated graphic of The Geography of Jobs between 2004 and 2009.

Photo: Moises Saman for The New York Times

By Campbell Robertson

Throughout the marshes, the reed gatherers, standing on land they once floated over, cry out to visitors in a passing boat.

“Maak…

President Barack Obama is nominating Robert Hormats, a vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, to a top economic position at the State Department.

Hormats, 66, will serve as undersecretary of s…

Jackpot

By Grant McCool 

The report said bonuses for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were “substantially greater” than the banks’ net income.

Goldman earned…

Our very own Susan Johann just took 1st place at the Artists Guild of Spartanburg with Winter Hydrangea.

Susan Johann – Fine Art and Commercial Photographer

Financial Permaculture Chautaqua?

Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal has transmitted the following memorandum and proposed resolution on state sovereignty to the Wyoming Legislature’s Management Council.

Continue Reading Wyoming…

Robert Orel Dean at Wikipedia

“Thriller”

1,500 plus inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in Cebu, Philippines practice Michael Jackson’s global mega hit, Thriller.

Why a Recovery May Still Feel Like a Recession
New York Times (31 Jul 09)  The recession has produced declines far greater than in previous downturns over the past half-century. As a result, th…

One of the great mysteries surrounding the spread of GMO plants around the world since the first commercial crops were released in the early 1990’s in the USA and Argentina has been the absence of …

Continue Reading Obama Passing New Law to Allow Searching of PC’s, Laptops, And Media Devices

Each business day, the United States Treasury Department publishes a report on the workings of the government’s income and spending. One of the items on this report is the “Withheld Income and Em…