No end to scams: Funny accounting introduced

"This may sound incredibly arcane, but what the FASB has done is declare that assets held by companies (including banks) on their books will no longer have to be valued at their current market value. Under new guidelines, effective retroactively to March 15, these assets can now be valued at what the corporate managers think (or pretend to think) they will be worth at some time in the future when they might try to sell them.Read more...

Cities Collapsing throughout the USA

From The Coming Depression, April 6, 2009:

"..."People are moving out of the city, trying to find work," said David Martin of Wayne State University's Urban Safety Program. Those who stay "can't afford to move out."

"Property abandonment is getting so bad in Flint that some in government are talking about an extreme measure that was once unthinkable -- shutting down portions of the city, officially abandoning them and cutting off police and fire service.
...
[Mayor] Brown said that as more people abandon homes, eating away at the city's tax base and creating more blight, the city might need to examine "shutting down quadrants of the city where we (wouldn't) provide services."
He did not define what that could mean -- bulldozing abandoned areas, simply leaving the vacant homes to rot or some other idea entirely."

"Cul-de-sac neighborhoods once filled with the sound of backyard barbecues and playing children are falling silent. Communities like Elk Grove, Calif., and Windy Ridge, N.C., are slowly turning into ghost towns with overgrown lawns, vacant strip malls and squatters camping in empty homes."... Read all here

More: More seniors using vehicles as shelter

More: More Squatters Are Calling Foreclosures Home

More: Housing collapse drives up consumer bankruptcies

More: Economy leaves millions of drivers uninsured

More: Video: Americans burning cars to avoid payments

In the meanwhile, in Canada...
From heaven to hell: 18 die as drugs war rages on streets of Vancouver
The Canadian city has been named the best place in the world to live. But those halcyon days are over

Eurasian Crossroads: The Caucasus In US-NATO War Plans

A good essay on geopolitics just published by Rick Rozoff. Quote [my emphasis]:

"...It is at the center of a strategy that alone ties together the three major wars of the past decade - Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) - and that aims at preventing regional economic, security and infrastructural development cooperation between Russia, Iran, China, India and Turkey in the same Balkans-to-Asia Silk Route area.

As it was insightfully described by a Pakistani analyst recently, the current century is witnessing the final act in a drama that could be called the West versus the rest. The South Caucasus is the linchpin and the battleground of this geopolitical and historical denouement.... " Read all here

Bush and Obama Administrations Broke the Law By Refusing to Close Insolvent Banks

Just in case you missed it, the bailout scam is effectively a crime. From Global Research, April 5:

"...Geithner's statements that he didn't have the power to close down the big banks is false. Moreover, Geithner and Paulson actually broke the law which requires the government to close down insolvent banks, no matter how big.

The Prompt Corrective Action Law (PCA) - 12 U.S.C. § 1831o - not only authorizes the government to seize insolvent banks, it mandates it.

As William K. Black - the senior regulator during the S&L crisis, and an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri - told Bill Moyers in their recent interview:

[Question] In other words, they could have closed these banks without nationalizing them?

[Black] Well, you do a receivership. No one -- Ronald Reagan did receiverships. Nobody called it nationalization.

[Question] And that's a law?

[Black] That's the law.

[Question] So, Paulson could have done this? Geithner could do this?

[Black] Not could. Was mandated .... " Read all here

No Gold. No Silver. Just Inflation and Hotcakes by the Mogambo Guru

An economic mystery, superbly defined by the Mogambo Guru today. Quote:

"...why is gold not shooting To The Freaking Moon (TTFM) in price, on its way to infinity dollars per ounce, which would be a mathematical imperative of a supply/demand dynamic where the price of gold cannot be determined by the market-clearing point where demand equals supply because supply is always is zero, regardless of the price”! Wow!

This is, indeed, Twilight Zone weird, trapped in some kind of spooky nether-world beyond space and time, between light and shadow, between the depths of despair and the heights of imagination where the Laws of Economics do not apply any longer, but the Laws of Physics still work 24/7, and you still have to work at your same stupid job, and you are married to the same stupid person and you have the same stupid kids as the ones you had in the “other world” where the Laws of Economics still worked, which shows how unfair life is..." Read all here