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Wednesday, October 1, 2008 |
WashingtonPost: "A security researcher has published a software tool that makes it easy to copy and modify identification data encoded onto the computer chips embedded in passports issued by the United States and dozens of other countries."
TimesOnline: "New microchipped passports designed to be foolproof against identity theft can be cloned and manipulated in minutes and accepted as genuine by the computer software recommended for use at international airports.
Tests for The Times exposed security flaws in the microchips introduced to protect against terrorism and organised crime. The flaws also undermine claims that 3,000 blank passports stolen last week were worthless because they could not be forged."
1:43:06 PM 
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Guardian: "British troops who hand over prisoners in Iraq to US military personnel could find themselves facing prosecution, according to a legal opinion compiled for parliament. The finding has led to calls for the British government to rethink its current policy and investigate how the US treats its prisoners, and whether torture is employed against them."
1:38:44 PM
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PressTV: "The UN nuclear watchdog has unanimously agreed to put the issue of Israel's nuclear capabilities on the agenda of its annual meeting."
1:36:56 PM
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George Monbiot: "According to Senator Jim Bunning, the proposal to purchase $700bn of dodgy debt by the US government was 'financial socialism, it is un-American'. The economics professor Nouriel Roubini called George Bush, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke 'a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the United Socialist State Republic of America'. Bill Perkins, the venture capitalist who took out an ad in the New York Times attacking the plan, called it 'trickle-down communism'.
They are wrong. Any subsidies eventually given to the monster banks of Wall Street will be as American as apple pie and obesity. The sums demanded may be unprecedented, but there is nothing new about the principle: corporate welfare is a consistent feature of advanced capitalism. Only one thing has changed: Congress has been forced to confront its contradictions.
One of the best studies of corporate welfare in the US is published by my old enemies at the Cato Institute. Its report, by Stephen Slivinski, estimates that in 2006 the federal government spent $92bn subsidising business. Much of it went to major corporations such as Boeing, IBM and General Electric."
LATimes: "The $700-billion figure that won't really end up being anywhere near the actual cost because no one knows what all those mortgaged properties are really worth now anyway? Which is the whole problem in the first place because the institutions holding that paper don't know the value of what they're holding either, which is why everyone suddenly got so frightened?
You know where that very important $700-billion figure came from?
'It's not based on any particular data point,' a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. 'We just wanted to choose a really large number.'
They made it up to be sufficiently ginormous to frighten everyone into rapid action."
Fact is that the real value or worth of the banks is much less than advertised. Much of their 'assets' are non-existent, simply expected profits or transactions with the same money or stocks. Most banks are over-valued. When their future expectations (based on overrated assets) are not met, they are left with a huge hole. That is the essence of the bubble.
The $700 billion is another tactic to siphon the money out of government to the private sector. These are the last days of the Bush regime after all. And chances are that if the $700 billion are granted the banks will continue reckoning with a bearish mood, will go on until the crisis reaches the real economy. These people are used to being greedy, irresponsible and will continue demanding state welfare to keep up their fictional world. Nothing will change after the big injection. The real crisis will come later.
1:33:17 PM
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© Copyright 2008.
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