ON BORROWED TIME

HOW DID THIS ALL COME ABOUT? A (bearish) hedge-fund operator, in a letter to his investors, describes how a senior Wall Street marketing director recounted the genesis of the current situation:

"'Real money' (U.S. insurance companies, pension funds, etc.) accounts had stopped purchasing mezzanine tranches of U.S. Subprime debt in late 2003 and [Wall Street] needed a mechanism that could enable them to 'mark up' these loans, package them opaquely, and EXPORT THE NEWLY PACKAGED RISK TO UNWITTING BUYERS IN ASIA AND CENTRAL EUROPE!!!!

"He told me with a straight face that these CDOs were the only way to get rid of the riskiest tranches of subprime debt. Interestingly enough, these buyers (mainland Chinese banks, the Chinese Government, Taiwanese banks, Korean banks, German banks, French banks, U.K. banks) possess the 'excess' pools of liquidity around the globe. These pools are basically derived from two sources: 1) massive trade surpluses with the U.S. in U.S. dollars, 2) petrodollar recyclers. These two pools of excess capital are U.S. dollar-denominated and have had a virtually insatiable demand for U.S. dollar-denominated debt...until now."

These investors then had standing orders on Wall Street desks for any U.S. debt rated triple-A. Through the "alchemy of CDOs" and "the help of the ratings agencies," the CDO managers collected triple-B and triple-B-minus subprime and repackaged them so the top tier got paid out first. Then leverage the lower mezzanine tranches by 10-20 times and, "POOF...you magically have 80% of the structure rated 'AAA' by the ratings agencies, despite the underlying collateral being a collection of BBB and BBB- rated assets."

The letter concludes: "This will go down as one of the biggest financial illusions the world has EVER seen."

And to think it's all played out is even more laughable.

History Channel Fraudsters Pass Off Joke Website as Representative Of 9/11

As part of a catalogue of dirty tricks employed to smear the truth movement in its 9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction special, The History Channel used screenshots of an inane parody website and passed it off as representative of people asking questions about the official story.

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History Channel Hit Piece: Dirty Tricks, Malicious Lies, Journalistic Fraud

The History Channel 9/11 special that aired last night was by far the worst hit piece we have ever witnessed, a completely savage, dishonest and deceptive abomination, replete with dirty tricks, malicious lies and a level of journalistic fraud that goes way beyond simple bias.

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Prelude to an Attack on Iran

The white house has told Time Mag, "There will be an attack on Iran".

Iraqi prisoners kept in wire cages

US forces and Iraq's own security forces have imprisoned tens of thousands of detainees without charge in the four years since the fall of President Saddam Hussein.NOTE FROM THE CORRUPTION TEAM: By allowing these people to be imprisoned without any rights you have all given the authorities the eternal right to do the same thing to any one of you.

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Return of the Robber Barons

As the Bush Regime outfits B-2 stealth bombers with 30,000 pound monster “bunker buster” bombs for its coming attack on Iran, the US economy continues its 21st century decline. While profits soar for the armaments industry, the American people continue to take it on the chin.

Will Bush cancel the 2008 election?

It is time to think about the "unthinkable."

The Bush administration has both the inclination and the power to cancel the 2008 election.

The GOP strategy for another electoral theft in 2008 has taken clear shape, though we must assume there is much more we don't know.

But we must also assume that if it appears to Team Bush/Cheney/Rove that the GOP will lose the 2008 election anyway (as it lost in Ohio 2006), we cannot ignore the possibility that they would simply cancel the election. Those who think this crew will quietly walk away from power are simply not paying attention.

The great biofuel fraud

That bowl of Kellogg's cornflakes on the breakfast table or the portion of pasta or corn tortillas, cheese or meat on the dinner table is going to rise in price over the coming months as sure as the sun rises in the East. Welcome to the new world food-price shock, conveniently timed to accompany the current world oil-price shock.

Lawmakers Being Investigated

This is a short list of US politicians who are being investigated on various CORRUPTION charges. There are already 8 others serving time in federal prison and the only reason they are not all there is the others have not stepped on anyones toes yet. If they get too greedy or try to buck the system they too will be cut out of the corruption loop.

Get used to it folks. This is your system of government and justice.

CORPORATE AMERICA: FREEDOM'S GREATEST THREAT

Most of us who believe in the free enterprise system have been taught that business interests normally work to the betterment of America's overall health, both commercially and politically. While there might have been a time when this was true, it is definitely not true today. Not only has Big Business become unfriendly to the principles of freedom, it has also become freedom's greatest threat.

To say that Corporate America is America's greatest threat is a harsh accusation, but one that I believe is warranted. I will even be so bold as to say that freedom has much more to fear from today's Chambers of Commerce than it does from Al Qaida.