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The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week’s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all. |
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| France renewed efforts on Wednesday to become the first big economy to tax harmful carbon emissions, with the government due to thrash out new plans for the measure to curb climate change |
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| Ten years ago, US lawmakers publicly accused the China Ocean Shipping Co of being a front for espionage and blocked plans to expand its Long Beach, Calif. |
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| The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show |
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| McClatchy has obtained previously undisclosed documents that provide a closer look at the shadowy $1.3 trillion market since 2002 for complex offshore deals, which Chicago financial consultant and frequent Goldman critic Janet Tavakoli said at times met "every definition of a Ponzi scheme." |
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| To close out 2009, I decided to do something I bet no member of Congress has done -- actually read from cover to cover one of the pieces of sweeping legislation bouncing around Capitol Hill. |
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| rior to the financial collapse, Goldman and others figured out a way to package risky securities, such as subprime mortgages, and sell them to investors who were told they were buying sound investments. |
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| Eric Sprott's most recent report has generated serious ripples within financial circles due to his unique interpretation of some rather nebulous data in the latest December Treasury Bulletin. |
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| A Securities and Exchange Commission official received full retirement benefits and a $25,000 buyout package from the agency despite assisting a Ponzi scheme operator in Arizona who later was fined for defrauding investors, according to a new report by the agency's watchdog. |
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| The CEOs of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, the two investment banks that collapsed during last year's financial meltdown, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation even as the company's shareholders lost everything, says a new report from Harvard Law School. |
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| Three of the largest Wall Street firms -- which together received $45,000,000,000 in taxpayer bailouts -- are on track to hand out $29,700,000,000 in bonuses this year. |
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| When California wildfires ruined their jewelry business, Tony Becker and his wife fell months behind on their mortgage payments and experienced firsthand the perils of subprime mortgages. |
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| A global body with legal powers may be needed over time to enforce the world's new financial rules, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) said on Wednesday. |
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| Some of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s closest aides, none of whom faced Senate confirmation, earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and other Wall Street firms, according to financial disclosure forms. |
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| Tony Blair, the favourite to become Europe’s first president, is believed to have accepted tens of thousands of pounds from a steel billionaire campaigning for Ukraine to join the European Union. |
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| Sigurdur Einarsson under scrutiny by Icelandic prosecutors for Qatari investment made shortly before bank's collapse |
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| Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. misled the public about the financial weakness of Bank of America and other early recipients of the government's $700 billion Wall Street bailout, creating "unrealistic expectations" about the companies and damaging the program's credibility, according to a report by the program's independent watchdog |
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Goldman Sachs stands to receive a payment of $1bn – while US taxpayers would lose $2.3bn – if embattled commercial lender CIT files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, people familiar with the matter said. |
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| The government secretly tried to orchestrate a deal involving Goldman Sachs in the week following Lehman Brothers’ collapse and considered using the Federal Reserve to help support such a transaction, Andrew Ross Sorkin reports in the new issue of Vanity Fair. |
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| Two years of a deep and prolonged recession and we still can’t seem to get a hold of the toxic assets plaguing the books of banks. Much of this comes from the scamming and blood sucking from banks on the taxpayer. How can $13 trillion in backstops and commitments not resolve the problem? |
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You may have heard how the big ratings agencies - Moody's, S&P and Fitch - "sold their soul" by rating toxic assets and mismanaged companies much more highly than they should have been rated. |
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| Safety of Blackhawk Helicopters and C-130 Transport Planes Potentially Compromised |
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| A radical plan to raise £100 billion by privatising the motorway network has been presented to the three main political parties by NM Rothschild, the influential investment bank. |
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| And so the guns come out blazing. The Clearing House Association, another name for all the banks that were bailed out over the past year with the generous contributions from all of you, dear taxpayers, are now threatening with another instance of complete systemic collapse if Bloomberg's lawsuit is allowed to proceed unchallenged, let alone if any of the "Audit The Fed" measures are actually implemented |
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| It inspects schools, trains our armed forces, helps protect our borders, maintains our nuclear weapons, runs our trains and operates our prisons. In partnership with Lockheed Martin and Jacobs Engineering, Serco also manages the Atomic Weapons Establishment, which provides and maintains Britain's atomic warheads. |
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Those of us who proposed the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney for violating his oath of office and engaging in a Nixon-on-steroids spree of high crimes and misdemeanors began to recognize the abusive nature of the previous administration when Cheney refused to release details of the industry insiders with whom he met to craft energy policies. |
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| Wal-Mart Stores Inc is discussing with U.S. health officials the possibility of putting vaccination sites at some of its stores for an H1N1 swine flu inoculation campaign this fall, a company official said on Thursday. |
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| Several financial giants that received federal bailout money in the last year paid out bonuses to employees in 2008 that greatly exceeded the amount of profit generated by the banks, according to a study on executive compensation released by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo Thursday. |
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| The world has been gripped with fears of swine flu in recent weeks. In an interview with SPIEGEL, epidemiologist Tom Jefferson speaks about dangerous fear-mongering, misguided, money-driven research and why we should all be washing our hands a lot more often. |
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| 2,600 Detroit Public School teachers, counselors and administrators from nearly 50 schools have been forced to reapply for their jobs at the schools where they teach. All of these supposedly “failed” schools are being “reconstituted” as mandated under the Bush administration’s 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). |
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Morgan Stanley is setting aside a huge sum to pay out bonuses despite posting its third consecutive quarterly loss and admitting it is disappointed with key departments. |
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| Due to the fact that Goldman Sachs is currently the favorite of Washington they are raking in massive profits during a time when most banks and brokerage firms are struggling for survival. |
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| Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs on Tuesday posted second-quarter profit of 3.44 billion dollars, beating market expectations and possibly signaling recovery in the battered US financial sector. |
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| Quietly and almost unnoticed by most Americans, the US Federal Government introduced a fourth branch to its political structure in 2006 |
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| The Harrisburg Chapter of the NAACP is calling on Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell to suspend some civil liberties and impose martial law in the city to halt the wave of recent lawlessness. |
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| The World Bank maintains the database of Gross External Debt Positions of countries |
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| Combined cost of major historical events does not even come close |
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| Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner defended the administration’s proposal to give the Federal Reserve increased powers in his first public tussle with lawmakers skeptical whether the central bank is up to the job. |
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| The governor of the Bank of England has called for greater powers to allow it to fulfil its new role of promoting financial stability. |
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| U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern said that there was “no question” that China would receive both financial and technological assistance from the United States as part of upcoming climate change talks to be conducted in Copenhagen, Denmark. |
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| British groups BP, BG International and Premier Oil have been shortlisted to bid for contracts to work on Iraq's oil and gasfields |
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| The true cost of oil |
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| It’s no secret we’re facing a big opportunity in agriculture. It’s something we’ve delved into quite a bit over the past few years. |
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Big banks in the U.S. say they’re on the mend. The five largest were profitable in the first quarter, rebounding from record losses for the industry in the fourth quarter. Share prices have jumped, with the KBW Bank Index doubling since March 6. |
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| Firms storing oil in anticipation of price increases |
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When financial stocks slumped in February to the lowest level in at least 17 years, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told Congress the government might end up owning “substantial” stakes in the country’s biggest banks. |
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As the financial crisis entered one of its darkest phases in October, a handful of the nation’s largest banks began holding daily telephone sessions. Murmurs were already emanating from Washington about the need for a wide-ranging regulatory overhaul, and Wall Street executives girded for a fight. |
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| Financial regulators revealed today that they were testing how British banks would cope if unemployment hit 3.7 million, house prices halved and the recession lasted another one and a half years. |
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| A handful of high-ranking Obama administration officials this month delivered private briefings at the annual invitation-only conference held by an elite international organization known as the Bilderberg group. |
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| Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee put their cap and trade global warming bill–that would increase U.S. energy prices, including electricity bills–on the fast track Monday. |
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| Here's a little-known fact: Under current law, it's possible to hold a patent on a piece of human DNA, otherwise known as a gene. |
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| The US Treasury’s effort to stabilise the banking system through the TARP programme is a hopelessly ill-conceived policy that enriches speculators at public expense, according to the buy-out firm supposed to be pioneering the joint public-private bank rescues. |
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| The Venezuelan government on Friday started the process to nationalize 60 oil service contractors and place them under the control of the state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela. |
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| Fifty two percent of Americans support legalizing, taxing and regulating marijuana, according to a new Zogby poll released late Wednesday. |
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Sen. Dick Durbin, on a local Chicago radio station this week, blurted out an obvious truth about Congress that, despite being blindingly obvious, is rarely spoken: "And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place." The blunt acknowledgment that the same banks that caused the financial crisis "own" the U.S. Congress -- according to one of that institution's most powerful members -- demonstrates just how extreme this institutional corruption is. |
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| A landmark human rights lawsuit, accusing Royal Dutch Shell of complicity in the execution of author and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa some 14 years ago, will proceed to trial in a New York courtroom. |
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| Taking aim at the way news is spread across the Internet, The Associated Press said on Monday that Web sites that used the work of news organizations must obtain permission and share revenue with them, and that it would take legal action against those that did not. |
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| Crops die, equipment is auctioned over dept dating back to 19th century |
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| The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. would create a division to take over and shut non-bank financial companies as part of the overhaul of U.S. regulations, Chairman Sheila Bair said. |
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| If the G20 meeting of world leaders this week results in nothing but more hot air, billionaire George Soros says all bets are off — the global economy is heading for a huge meltdown. |
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| Former Sen. Tom Daschle said today the nation's best chance for health care reform is in a stronger "public-private partnership," where private insurers remain at the center of the system but with greater government oversight. |
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| The MindSet headset resembles a pair of headphones with one distinct difference--an electrode-laden arm that is in contact with the user's forehead. |
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| Water police could ban power showers... and summer bills may soar in purge on waste |
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| The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, according to an administration document. |
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| The Treasury Department will unveil the next step in its financial rescue efforts tomorrow, announcing that it intends to create a government body, called the Public Investment Corp., to finance the purchase of as much as $1 trillion in soured loans and toxic assets from ailing banks, according to sources. |
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| Lawmaker says 13 companies receiving bailout money owe more than $220M in back taxes |
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| The House passed a bill yesterday which includes disturbing language indicating young people will be forced to undertake mandatory national service programs as fears about President Barack Obama’s promised “civilian national security force” intensify. |
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| A U.N. panel will next week recommend that the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies, a member of the panel said on Wednesday, adding to pressure on the dollar |
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| Investments of $750 billion could create a "Green New Deal" to revive the world economy and protect the environment, perhaps aided by a tax on oil, the head of the U.N. environment agency said on Thursday. |
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| Fort Lewis and Lakewood police are working together to build a better understanding of what happens on ‘the other side.’ Lakewood police are enlisting the help of Fort Lewis for times when city cops need to cooperate with the Army, including when soldiers get in trouble off post. |
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| It's no secret...The economy in the United States is in shambles. With unemployment at an all-time high and everyone struggling to make ends meet while living paycheck to paycheck, it would unimaginable that bankers, most which have net worth's in the billions, would receive even more multi-million dollar bonuses, courtesy of taxpayer dollars. But, according to an article posted on the New York Times website early Sunday morning, that is precisely what AIG executives are going to receive. |
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| Hitler marked the margins of his books with vertical lines beside paragraphs or sentences he thought important. And one marked sentence in Magic is quite chilling, given Hitler’s history: “He who does not carry demonic seeds within him will never give birth to a new world.” |
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| After the $700 billion bailout of the financial industry and the $17.4 billion bailout of domestic automakers, Americans are now being asked to pony up billions more to rescue states that have been fiscally irresponsible |
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