1. Action Item from activist Melanie Kurdys The House will likely vote this week on the state Department of Education’s budget. Please call/email/fax ASAP and inform your Rep to: STOP ALL funding for Common Core’s implementation in Michigan’s Department of Education budget. Last week, Melanie was invited to a debate about common core in Grand …
"It turns out that the FBI failed to register the fact that the Boston bomber flew to Russia in 2011. Someone misspelled his name when he got on the plane. You mean that the nation’s suspected-terrorist monitoring system is dependent on correctly spelled names? Yes. You mean that billions of dollars in sophisticated equipment can be tripped up by people with peculiar last names? So it seems. You mean that the TSA’s screening system, with X-ray machines, latex gloves, and long lines doesn’t work for bombers with odd last names. Sadly, yes." Continue reading →
"U.S. banks won’t be rescued by taxpayers, U.S. Treasury Department official Mary Miller said, rebutting investor skepticism that some lenders are too large to be allowed to fail. 'With respect to this understanding of too-big-to-fail, let me be very clear: It is wrong.' 'No financial institution, regardless of its size, will be bailed out by taxpayers again,' Miller said at a conference in New York. 'Shareholders of failed companies will be wiped out; creditors will absorb losses; culpable management will not be retained and may have their compensation clawed back.'" Continue reading →
"The idea of snapping up a Greek island certainly has its appeal. In March the Emir of Qatar bought six for £7 million, while a Russian oligarch bought Skorpios – previously owned by the Onassis family – earlier this month for a reported £65 million, as a present for his 24-year-old daughter Ekaterina Rybolovlev. To that end, the royal palace on Corfu, where Prince Philip was born, is now also for sale. So too is a large coastal estate which, the government boasts on its website, is next door to land owned by the Rothschild banking dynasty. Officials refuse to discuss prices, saying that it depends on offers and the development proposals." Continue reading →
"A person that I know with significant deposits in one of the primary Swiss banks, in allocated gold, wanted to take out his gold and was just refused on the basis of directives from the central bank. They told him the amount was in excess of 200,000 Swiss francs and the central bank had instructed them not to do it because it has to do with anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering precautions. I really wonder whether those are precautions or whether the gold simply isn’t there. It has to raise our suspicions that the lack of physical gold behind the paper gold is literally so severe that we are coming to understand that it is in fact not there." Continue reading →
"Precious metals dealers now find themselves being overwhelmed with orders in the United States, in Canada, in Europe and over in Asia. Will this massive run on physical gold and silver soon lead to widespread shortages of those metals? Instead of frightening people away from gold and silver, the takedown of paper gold seems to have had just the opposite effect. People just can't seem to get enough physical gold and silver right now. Those that wish that they had gotten into gold when it was less than $1400 an ounce are able to do so now, and it is absolutely insane that silver is sitting at about $23 an ounce." Continue reading →
So…yesterday was Earth Day. Typically I grit my teeth and do my best to ignore the whole thing. Why do we need a whole day dedicated to this subject? Aren’t we barraged with it everywhere we turn already? I thought I was doing just fine with “waste not, want not”, […]
"A total of five German states clubbed together to buy the CD for €4 million from an anonymous informant, said sources close to the Rhineland-Palatinate government, which arranged the deal. The information was distributed to tax authorities across Germany some six weeks ago. Tuesday's raids only mark the start of an extensive investigation that could last until the end of the year. Authorities expect that the media coverage of the raids will prompt many tax evaders to turn themselves in to authorities so that they can lessen their penalties. The current raids affected customers with accounts in Credit Suisse, the former Clariden Leu AG and Neue Aargauer Bank." Continue reading →
"Mark Carney says policy-makers are working diligently to devise an international 'bail-in' regime to prevent big bank failures, but he offered no guarantee that individual deposits would be protected. The Canadian central banker, who is a few months away from heading the Bank of England, says banks must have a set of buffers in place to draw on in an emergency. He notes the Canadian government has pledged not to dip into individual deposits. Carney did not answer whether there should be a total hands-off treatment to non-secured accounts as well, which in Canada would mean deposits over $100,000." Continue reading →
"As well as inflaming tensions between Germany and its smaller southern partners, the suggestion could also mean that Britons with holiday homes are dragged deeper into the eurozone crisis. Senior figures in Germany are now arguing that some richer home owners in countries like Spain, Portugal and Greece have so far avoided paying their fair share to rescue the euro, leaving Germany paying too much. Until now, the cost of rescue packages for countries like Ireland, Greece and Portugal has fallen largely on people who invest money in either those countries' bonds or – in the case of Cyprus – bank accounts." Continue reading →