International Forecaster Weekly

No Privacy For Arab-Americans, Iraqi Power Vacuum Installs Armed Thugs Militias

No Privacy for Arab-Americans, Iraqi power vacuum installs armed thugs and militias... Strange Appointments... Plunge Protection Team recap, the illusion of solvency ... a cascade of bankruptcies ... Generous subsidies to Wal-Mart... Cooked Squibb, VOIP snooping, overestimating the body count in Iraq, ...and more!

Bob Chapman | August 8, 2004

The Census Bureau has provided specially tabulated population statistics on Arab-Americans to the Department of Fatherland Security, including detailed information on how many people of Arab backgrounds live in certain zip codes. This is legal but a serious breach of public trust and is the same thing the Census Bureau did during WWI. As this information on the antics of the Census Bureau and Fatherland Security becomes public knowledge, compliance with the census will be a thing of the past. The only way we would have ever known what these two agencies were doing was that Electronic Privacy Information Center made a Freedom of Information Act request and when they received the information they shared it with the NY Times, otherwise it would have remained a deep dark secret. Several entries in the documents have been blacked out by Fatherland Security, with notations citing the need to protect privacy and government operations. This is our government at work spying on its citizens and preparing for internment in the event of a red alert. Are we next?

The Bush cabal has agreed to make a 20% cut in some of the $19 billion in subsidies it pays to American farmers each year. This is a diplomatic collapse to the WTO. The cuts will be in Corn, rice, wheat and soybeans. An accord was also reached with four cotton-producing countries in West Africa, Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali to cut subsidies. Now that these concessions have been made by the US and UK they expect developing nations to reduce their tariffs on manufactured goods. Poor nations have also complained that the US often used food aid as a way to dump surplus food grown by American farmers, which is true. The US also agreed to limit the use of export credits, which are export subsidies.

The latest intelligence from Iraq is not good. The inability of the US and UK to establish law and order in parts of the country has crated a vacuum, into which criminals and militias have poured. The over-riding problem is an insufficient number of armed personnel and the result will be serious and regrettable. Iraq’s army and police will not for sometime be able to maintain security. They have to contend with al Queda, criminal gangs and former members of Saddam’s regime. Thus, terrible problems will be with us for some time.

George and the neocons have some very strange appointments in their administration. One is former New Hampshire State Supreme Court Justice, W. Stephen Thayer III, who resigned in disgrace four years ago. It was either resign or face criminal indictment. He currently oversees CAPPS II, which develops software to bar any passenger from getting on an airplane if a computer analysis of unidentified government terrorist watch-lists and private commercial electronic records judged him or her to be a security risk. To appoint a man such as Thayer to such a position is highly offensive to Americans, but then again he fits right in with the existing company. This is one of the most sensitive posts in government because we are talking about data-mining records of millions of Americans. Someone doing such a job should have a pristine background. CAPPS II is significantly behind schedule and has failed to fully address seven or eight targets for accuracy, privacy and security and Congress has prohibited the program’s deployment until those benchmarks are met. Had Thayer not resigned, the New Hampshire Attorney General would have sought felony charges against him for allegedly trying to influence the choice of a judge to hear his wife’s appeal of their divorce and threatening fellow justices if they allowed his conduct to be reported to judicial oversight groups. This scofflaw was trying to get his alimony reduced from $36,000 to $6,000 a year. This man is a real piece of work.

Long-time subscribers may find the following paragraph redundant but because we have had a large influx of new subscribers over the past few months we would like to impart what the “Plunge Protection Team” consists of.

The Working Group on Financial Markets, the PPT, was formed as a result of an executive order executed by Ronal Reagan on 3/18/88. Six months previous, the stock market had collapsed in a number of days and the Administration and the Fed wanted to stop such occurrences in the future. Prior to the order, during the debacle, the Fed was in the markets manipulating. The order appoints the Secretary of Treasury, the Fed Chairman, the SEC Chairman, CFTC Chairman and the had of the NY Fed and their designates; these are the people who actually execute the manipulation to fulfill their dictates. There is nothing democratic or fair about the process. It is done in secret, and even thought it is legal, those in government lie about its existence and the affects it has on markets. As you can see we no longer have free markets. This is the type of order you would expect in Nazi Germany – Corporatist fascism. The elitists, of course, say the purpose of these manipulations is to “enhance the integrity, efficiency, orderliness and competitiveness of our Nation’s financial markets and maintain investor confidence”. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Thus, the US Treasury provides the Working Group with administrative funds and support services as may be necessary for the performance of its functions. Thus, you have a massive staff 24 hours a day manipulating any market they choose and they do this every day. In the process they employ the assistance of anointed investment banks, banks and brokerage houses to assist in the manipulation. They are guaranteed against loss. This is the crew that supposedly smoothes out the market when there is downside volatility. They are not attending to volitility, they are rigging the market. In the final analysis, our government does not believe in free markets, they demand managed markets as any fascist state would. That is because they know best what is good for us. The PPT was the brainchild of Fed governor Robert Heller in 1989, who was a disaster as an economist. Even though the Fed intervened in the stock and gold markets in 1987, the program as we know it today really did not get underway until 1990 as the Japanese market began to come unglued. This was a deal between Sir Alan Greenspan and Yaseio Fukuda, who was Japanese Finance Minister at that time. We have taken this time to re-explain this issue so our readers can fully and truly understand what evil crooks are running our government. This is not some fantasy I have conjured up in my mind. This is provable, this is law, and this is reality. The “Working Group on Financial Markets” – the “Plunge Protection Team” exists. These one-world fascist, elitists want to regulate every facet of our economic life and if you think this is bad wait until they have their one-world government in place. This manipulation is against everything America stands for. Since 1987 the PPT has been rigging all world markets when it suits them and they have an endless supply of money to affect that.

Incidentally, these elitists control our media, particularly GEs CNBC, and that is why you never heard a word about what the government is doing in this regard. The Fed and the Treasury have to keep up the illusion of solvency and to that end, not only must they bamboozle the public, but they must also continually pour liquidity into the market. It also should not be overlooked that government and the elitists in the brokerage and investment business are making a fortune doing this, but ultimately in the process once and for all they will destroy the integrity of our markets. Finally, the Fed is finding that it cannot indiscriminately increase aggregates because when it does the dollar falls putting pressure on the stock market and assists gold’s upward movement. The only way the Fed can increase liquidity without anyone realizing it is to have the Treasury secretly do it via the PPT from offshore locations, which the Fed clandestinely funds. One of the problems the Fed and the Treasury has is they want to be flat after they have driven the market up or gold down, quickly. That is why the market has traded between 9,800 and 10,400 on the DOW for so long and why gold trades $20 to $40 lower and then turns around and comes right back. We are of the opinion that after the election these elitists know they can no longer hold the system of manipulation together and finally the markets will become unglued. If 3% growth with massive monetary and fiscal growth and tax cuts is all they can muster, then the second half of 2004 will be economically slower and 2005 will be worse. That means a plunging dollar and higher gold and silver prices as the Fed and Treasury lose control of the system and that is when the purging of the system begins. That means those who are short gold will drive gold higher as they attempt to exit their positions, this will also set up a chain reaction in derivatives, which will drive gold and silver higher and at the same time start a destructive sequence of events in the economy. This process does not keep the Fed from increasing aggregates by over trillion a year, which will drive interest rates higher and the dollar lower. These criminals will not go down without a fight, so it could be four to 6 years before we will finally smoke them. The Fed, Congress and the President will ultimately do what they did in the 1930s, too late they will abandon free trade and they will increase income taxes. The taxes will come beginning in 2005; the curtailment of free trade will come in 2006. These painful moves will bring on the depression after there is no way to any longer avoid it.

The latest hogwash coming out of Fatherland Security is that they have unusually specific evidence of possible al-Qaeda attacks against five key financial sector buildings, including the IMF and the NYSE. Mr. Ridge went on to say he has no specific information that says an attack is imminent, yet he posted an orange alert for that specific sector. The other possible targets were the World Bank, Prudential Financial Center and Citigroup. We are a little disappointed they did not consider some of the Federal Reserve Buildings, the Council on Foreign Relations building in NYC and the UN building. Just as we predicted, the federal agency that insures company pensions is facing a possible cascade of bankruptcies and pension defaults in the airline industry that some experts fear could lead to another multibillion-dollar taxpayer bailout. United Airlines, as we said last week, would no longer contribute to its pension plans. United wants to dump its four pension plans, which have $13 billion in pension obligations, so it can emerge from bankruptcy. At other airlines many of the pilots are retiring ASAP so they can nail-down benefits. Delta has already asked its pilots for a 35% pay cut and a proposed smaller pension. The Pension Guaranty Corporation is already $12 billion in debt and Congress has yet to refund the operation, which has been in that position for months. The PGC has had to rescue 3,200 pensions in its 30-year life. Through economic projections by the agency a bailout just through the next 10 years and beyond the airlines could cost taxpayers $110 billion. We have news for them. If the DOW goes back to 7268 and interest rates rise 4%, the losses will cripple all pension plans they and Social Security will get cut 50%. On top of that the bankruptcy loss in pensions to be paid by the PGC could be in the trillions of dollars, which, of course, is un-payable, just like government and personal debt is un-payable. In the case of United, they had only put aside $7 billion of the $13 billion needed to fulfill the pension program. Being 40 to 50% under-funded in pension plans in industry is not unusual. If a bankruptcy court allows United to terminate its pensions, then that becomes a very tempting business tool and, of course, taxpayers get to pay the bill. The whole issue of pension is a house of cards ready to collapse once the stock, bond and real estate markets head down. In 1974 companies were allowed to use a prudent investment to invest in for pensions; up until then they had only used bonds. They then went into stocks and real estate, which will prove to be a terrible mistake. We wrote of our disagreement of that and the introduction of listed options at that time, but no one was listening. Today pension funds even invest in hedge funds, junk bonds and other risky assets. The entire pension system is weak. Most pensions are under-funded and that situation can only get worse next year. Even with the plight of the airlines, no one is listening. This is a bomb that is certain to hit the American economy and particularly the American worker very hard. Just last April Congress loosened the pension rules again delivering them a two-year vacation from bringing their plans up to full funding. Congress is running away from the problem rather than fixing it and demanding full funding. Doctoring the numbers has done our country a terrible disservice. The problem will not go away; it will only get much worse. The pension problem is another S&L disaster, only this time the bill will not be $500 billion, it will be in the trillions, because we see a Dow at 4,000 and interest rates five points higher than they are presently, over the next two years. If that does not happen, inflation will officially be over 20%. Pick your poison. Our executives and Congress has allowed business to use funds earmarked for pensions as a piggy bank for restructuring. Next year begins the tidal wave.

A few factoids for your memory bank. Enron’s Chairman, Ken Lay, did meet with the President and Vice-President in the oval office. Of course, their meeting was secret. Enron gave the Republican Party $420,000 over three years. It donated $100,000 to the President’s inaugural festivities. Mr. Lay stayed at the White House eleven times. Enron had access to the administration at its highest levels and even enlisted the Commerce and State Departments to grease deals for it. Scandalously, the taxpayer supported Export-Import Bank subsidized Enron for more than $600 million in just one transaction. All this happened under Bill Clinton. As you can see the elitists such as Ken Lay does not have to take sides. They play both sides because there are no sides. It is all the same group of criminals with different name tags.

The Graduate Management Admission Council says 75% of schools with Masters’ programs report a 21% decline in enrollment. GMAT, the standardized test for business school admission, says there has been 30.7% less people taking their test. It looks like the rush for MBAs may be over.

Private prisons have become the fiefdom of wardens who do what they wish with little oversight from state authorities. The states will have to revert to direct control if any reform is attempted. That is if they choose to address recidivism, the AIDS and hepatitis epidemics, and court orders mandating humane treatment for inmates, especially the mentally ill. We see another wave of prison reform on the way because private industry has reverted to the same type of system we had in the 1920 and 1930s, where the guards are as bad as the inmates.

Attorney General, John Ashcroft says he wants the so-called “Blanket Letter of National Security Findings” signed, so he can issue secret arrest warrants and eliminate the need for law enforcement to request individual letters from the Department of Justice or other agencies. There are six bills pending to strip you of more of your freedoms and rights, the worst, which we have mentioned before is HR 3179, the Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Task Improvement Act, sponsored by James Sensenbrenner and ex-CIA operative Porter Goss (R-FL), who has blood all over his hands. The rest are the Pre-Trial Detention and Lifetime Supervision of Terrorists Act of 2003 HR 3040 and S1606; Terrorist Penalties Enhancement Act of 2003, HR 2934 and S 1604 and HR 3037, Anti-Terrorism Tools Enhancement Act of 2003.

Evidently, there is a liquidity problem in the junk bond market and the Bond Market Association is putting pressure on the SEC to keep records of bond transactions away from the public. This, of course, is government by regulation, better known as fascism. This is disgusting and disgraceful. The elitists manipulate anything they want and the SEC does anything they request. If you are not part of the elitist mob you go to jail. Just ask Martha Stewart. Incidentally, when interest rates seriously begin to rise the junk bond market will experience a blood bath, which is just beginning. Junk bonds will be illiquid assets just like real estate and the losses will be tremendous.

What will happen when real estate prices fall? Contractors, real estate people, mortgage brokers and many more will be driving cabs. The most seriously financially inured will be homeowners and the US banking system. Home mortgage debt accounts for 32% of total US non-financial debt. As a comparison, US Treasury debt held by the public accounts for only 18% of total domestic non-financial debt. Sixty percent of US banks’ earning assets are mortgage related. That means as real estate falls so will our banking institutions. If you remember in 1991, due to the real estate collapse, Citibank was on the verge of bankruptcy and its day-to-day operations were taken over by the Fed. They were secretly bailed out. Over the next four years, banks will be in deep trouble.

The National Association of Realtors said its housing affordability index fell to 133.6 in the second quarter of 2004, down from 144.1 in the first quarter and also lower than 143.8 in the second quarter of 2003. The median family income was $54,884 and the median price of a single-family home was $183,800. A typical family could afford a home costing $245,600. The first-time buyer index also fell to 77.0 from 83.4, which was also under 82.9 in the second quarter of 2003. A typical first-time buyer, age 25-44 with a median income of $31,103, had only 77% of the income needed to purchase a typical starter home with a 10% down payment. The median starter home was $156,200 up from $145,200 in the first quarter.

Seeking to forestall a criminal indictment, Wal-Mart is in settlement talks with federal prosecutors who are investigating whether company officials knew that its janitorial contractors were using illegal aliens to clean stores. Two hundred and fifty illegals were rounded up in 60 Wal-Mart stores in 21 states. Our guess is they will get a $5 million fine and nobody goes to jail. Nothing was done concerning shipping the illegals home.

Nearly 600 times in recent years, a judicial committee acting in private has stripped information from reports intended to alert the public to conflicts of interest involving federal judges. Specialists in judicial ethics said they were startled at the breadth of the excesses and particularly that the material cut included financial information that appeared to present little safety risk. There were 661 redaction requests and they came from about 10% or less of the more than 2,000 judges.

Franklin Resources, the largest publicly traded US mutual fund manager, without admitting or denying, agreed to pay a $50 million fine for defrauding its investors. As usual, no one goes to jail.

Our maternal socialist government in Washington has endorsed a sweeping reform of America’s intelligence agencies by creating a powerful new counter-terrorism Czar, just like in Nazi Germany and in the Soviet Union. It will not be a cabinet level post. The “Czar” will run 15 intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI and scores of others. We will also have a new counter-terrorism center. Trying to go one better, our fellow Illuminist Bonesmen John Kerry didn’t disagree with the new post, but thought the Czar should have control over budgets and make the post part of the president’s executive office. How pathetic and unimaginative. Kerry is almost no opposition at all for Bush.

Wal-Mart’s employee wages and benefits policy cost California taxpayers $86 million annually to provide health care and other public assistance to the retailers underpaid workers. Wal-Mart pays its workers so little that workers have to supplement their incomes with Medicaid, food stamps and other taxpayer assisted programs. Their 44,000 California workers make $9.70 an hour, 31% below the $14.01 per hour average of other large retailers with at least 1,000 employees. California pays an average $1,952 per Wal-Mart worker. Wal-Mart’s lower prices are the result of being subsidized by the state. The company hires many workers over 65 because they have Medicare. This is a wonderful example of why labor unions began in a big way in the 1930s. Here we are full circle.

The SEC has fined Bristol-Myers-Squibb $150 million for cooking its books.

Contractors, of which Halliburton is the largest in Iraq, are being paid at least $1.9 billion from Iraqi funds under an arrangement set up by the US-led occupation authority. Most of the money is for two controversial deals that originally had been financed with money approved by the US Congress, but later shifted to Iraq funds that were governed by fewer restrictions and less rigorous oversight. Most of the funds came from oil sales. During the last 14 months of occupation the CAP, Coalition Provisional Authority, never released information about specific contracts and identities of companies that won them. Nineteen of 37 major contracts funded by Iraq money went to US companies and at least 85% of the $2.26 billion was obligated to US companies. Most were no-bid contracts. Kellogg Brown & Root received $1.66 billion of $1.9 billion. You might say they had a monopoly on work due to former CEO Dick Cheney, who still gets paid by the company and you might say it is a war for the benefit of Halliburton. The TV, radio and newspapers set up by CAP via Harris Corp. are simple propaganda arms of the US government. Iraqis had nothing to say about anything. The disbursement of Iraqi funds bypassed US contracting rules on competition, oversight and monitoring on controversial projects. The CPA had $45 billion at its disposal, $22 billion from Congress and $23 billion from Iraqi oil sales and other seized assets. L. Paul Bremer said it was easier to use Iraqi funds. No-bid contracts worth $16.8 million went to Custer Battles for mercenaries and $15.6 million to Motorola for police radios. In all, KBR was paid $2.53 billion, $1.64 billion of which came from Iraqi funds. There is $100 million in payments that there is no proper accounting for. It looks like there were many hands in the till.

The IMF has admitted that forcing developing countries to open their markets to foreign investors could increase the risk of financial crisis. There is little evidence that its policies on liberalization, free trade and globalization have encouraged economic growth. The privatization schemes that were advocated by the IMF brought higher costs, stifled democracy and the people were left with no access to basics, like food, water and health care. This means globalization and international integration of the global economy was and is a hoax to expedite world government. In addition, what has transpired is simple looting. That is what WTO, NAFTA and the coming FTAA is all about. The money and profits have again gone to the rich and powerful elitists leaving nothing for the poor and in the case of the US it has destroyed the foundation of its economy.

Halliburton will pay $7.5 million to the SEC for defrauding shareholders and cooking the books. As you notice no one went to jail. Sensitive military secrets may be available by file-swapping program LIMEWIRE to download military rosters, discussions of tactics and other secret files. The Army Secretary was informed a month-ago and nothing has been done as yet to stop it.

The FCC approved plans to draft rules to subject voice-over “internet protocol” (VOIP) services to a 1994 law that requires new telecom technologies to remain open for authorized eavesdropping. The FCC will require wireless “push-to-talk” walkie-talkie services to meet the same law. It is estimated by 2008 VOIP may replace one-sixth of all US phone lines. Big Brother steals more of your freedom.

The SEC is investigating Marathon Oil and Amerada Hess for illegal payoffs in Equatorial Guinea.

Sibel Edmonds, FBI translator, claimed another FBI translator, working for Israel’s Mossad, tried to entice her to make phony translations that would misdirect the 9/11 investigation. She refused and the Mossad threatened her safety. She went to her superiors and they fired her for being disruptive. This upset the Mossad because Ms. Edmonds is not an Arab but is Jewish.

Shareholders of Computer Associates are trying to recapture $1.1 billion in ill begotten” bonuses based on fraudulent accounting. The company is under investigation and has restated $2.2 billion in revenue in 2000 and 2001. Charles Wang, ex-CEO, was granted $12 million. We exposed this scam in 2000 and brought it to the attention of authorities, yet it took them three years to pursue these crooks.

The Foreign Ministry is investigating why Mossad agent Uriel Kelman, currently jailed in Auckland, NZ, used a Canadian passport to gain entry to New Zealand. Kelman and fellow Israeli Elisha Cara were imprisoned for six months for attempting to fraudulently obtain a NZ passport. These agents were spying on their allies. Israel says it knows nothing of the matter.

Nothing appeared in the media, but the federal government in Ottawa has instructed that all foreign counter-terrorist operators from the US would have to have clearance from CSIS. That is because a Canadian citizen, who is a subscriber, brought to the attention of CSIS that the NYPD, FBI and CIA were running a joint operation out of Ontario, which the Canadian government was involved in. Mr. Fantino, the head of the police force in Toronto, had attempted to pull an “end run” around the federal government. Mr. Fantino’s contract, which expires in March 2005, will not be renewed. After Mr. Fantino’s term is over, a great deal of evidence will be released concerning the collusion between agencies of both governments. This is a good example of what one observant citizen can do. He stopped the elitists dead in their tracks.

Two men wrongly jailed for the murder of a newspaper boy were ordered to pay “board and lodgings” for the 18 years they were in prison, in a ruling condemned as sick by prison campaigners. This means these victims of one of the worst miscarriages of justice in post-war Britain will lose $110,000 each. In another case, another wrongly convicted man, will pay his saved living expenses for the 11 years he spent in prison after he was convicted of murder. Needless to say, the three unfairly imprisoned men are furious. All three were convicted based upon police fraud and false evidence. None of the police officers that made up the evidence were prosecuted. As you can see, the criminal justice system in Britain doesn’t work any better than ours does.

PM Tony Blair told us last November that 400,000 Iraqis had been found in mass graves. Only about 5,000 corpses have so far been recovered. Blair, like Bush, lies about just about everything.