Rollover – 1981 Movie Predicts Financial Terror Attack and Dollar Collapse

Posted on by

This 1981 political/financial thriller involves a plot by Arab countries to collapse the American economy. Because commie Jane Fonda is involved there’s plenty of Marxist hooey in here, but the scenes of the economic collapse are eerily similar to both the 2008 crisis and what most people are saying is coming this year.

Given the new book by Kevin Freeman that proves the 2008 collapse was just stage one in a three stage financial terror attack this movie proves that in some cases life imitates art:

Portugal in “Grecian Debt Spiral”

Posted on by

This article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard talks about the trouble in Portugal and how it disproves the myth Europe is suffering from just a “Greek Problem:”

Yields on Portugal’s 10-year bonds climbed to 14.39pc on Thursday. Credit default swaps measuring bond risk have reached 1270 points, pricing a two-thirds chance of default over the next five years.

While some of the latest damage reflects forced selling of Portuguese debt after Standard & Poor’s cut the country’s credit rating to junk status last Friday, there are deeper worries that sharp fiscal cuts by the free-market government of Pedro Passos Coelho may prove self-defeating.

Mr Passos Coelho has been praised by EU leaders and the International Monetary Fund for delivering on austerity, but the risk is that severe tightening – without offsetting monetary and exchange stimulus – will push Portugal into the same downward spiral that has already engulfed Greece.

Jurgen Michels, Europe economist at Citigroup, said Portugal’s economy will contract by a further 5.8pc this year and by 3.7pc in 2013, a far sharper decline than official forecasts. The peak-to-trough collapse would be 13pc, a full-fledged depression.

“As this gets worse it is going to be extremely difficult to go ahead with more austerity measures: political contagion will start to come through,” he said.

[…]

A new study by the Barometer for Democracy shows that confidence in Portugal’s democracy has fallen to the lowest since the end of the Salazar dictatorship. Barely more than half retain faith in the system and 15pc pine for “authoritarian” rule.

While Portugal’s public debt of 113pc of GDP is lower than Greece’s, the private sector has much larger debts and the country’s total debt-load is higher at 360pc of GDP – much of it external debt.

“There is huge private sector deleveraging going on and the banking system has big problems. It is unclear how much of this private debt is going to end up on the state’s door-step,” said Mr Michels.

“Without a sizeable haircut to its debt stock, Portugal will not be able to move into a viable fiscal path. We expect a haircut of 35pc at the end of 2012 or in 2013.”

Wow. Here’s the kicker:

Portugal is a troubling case for EU officials, who insist that Greece is a “one-off” case rather than the first of a string of countries trapped in a deeper North-South structural rift. The official line is that Portugal will pull through because it has grasped the nettle of retrenchment and reform.

Europe’s leaders have vowed that there will be no forced “haircuts” for holders of Portuguese bonds. If the country now spirals into a Grecian vortex as well they will have to repudiate that promise or accept that EU taxpayers will have to shoulder the burden of debt restructuring.

While all eyes are on Greece, it is the slower drama in Portugal that will ultimately determine the fate of the eurozone.

Get ready for some serious banking issues in 2012.

Mexican Border More Dangerous than Afghanistan

Posted on by

Just a little note on how secure our border is from CNS News:

(CNSNews.com) – Organized crime-related deaths in one Mexican border state during the first nine months of 2011 exceed the number of Afghan civilians killed in roughly the same period in all of war-torn Afghanistan.

According to the Mexican government, from January through September 2011 2,276 deaths were recorded in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which borders Texas and New Mexico.

A Nov. 2011 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report states that over nearly the same period – January through October 2011 – 2,177 civilians were killed in Afghanistan, where a U.S.-led war against the Taliban is underway. It did not provide a breakdown of responsibility for that period, but said that in 2010, 75 percent of civilian deaths were attributed to the Taliban and other “anti-government elements.”

Per capita, a person was at least nine times more likely to be murdered in Chihuahua last year than in Afghanistan. (Chihuahua has 3,406,465 inhabitants, according to Mexico’s 2010 census; the CIA World Factbook reports that in July 2011 the estimated population of Afghanistan was 29,835,392.)
According to the reported numbers, the drug-related murder rate was about 67 for every 100,000 inhabitants in Chihuahua last year, while in Afghanistan the civilian killing rate was an estimated seven for every 100,000 people living there.

There were more drug-related killings in Chihuahua than in any other Mexican state, according to the government figures.  Chihuahua, the largest state in Mexico, includes Ciudad Juarez, a border city located across from El Paso, Texas. It is the deadliest city in Mexico and is considered one of the most dangerous places in the world.

In other words it’s a feral city surrounded by lawless no-man’s land where neo-fuedal warlords fight for control of resources which included not only drug routes but slaves and even the economies of small towns who are extorted by cartel gangs.

So why would we need border security?

The idea that this violence doesn’t threaten our security no matter what policies we enact (legalizing drugs won’t create a functioning Mexican society) is a pipe dream. We need a strong border security policy that treats the border as the low intensity conflict zone that it is.

 

Moody’s Downgrades Illinois

Posted on by

Bad news for Obama’s home state:

Though too few noticed, this month Moody’s downgraded Illinois state debt to A2 from A1, the lowest among the 50 states. That’s worse even than California. The state’s cost of borrowing for $800 million of new 10-year general obligation bonds rose to 3.1%—which is 110 basis points higher than the 2% on top-rated 10-year bonds of more financially secure states.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Only a year ago, Governor Pat Quinn and his fellow Democrats raised individual income taxes by 67% and the corporate tax rate by 46%. They did it to raise $7 billion in revenue, as the Governor put it, to “get Illinois back on fiscal sound footing” and improve the state’s credit rating.

So much for that. In its downgrade statement, Moody’s panned Illinois lawmakers for “a legislative session in which the state took no steps to implement lasting solutions to its severe pension underfunding or to its chronic bill payment delays.” An analysis by Bloomberg finds that the assets in the pension fund will only cover “45% of projected liabilities, the least of any state.” And—no surprise—in part because the tax increases have caused companies to leave Illinois, the state budget office confesses that as of this month the state still has $6.8 billion in unpaid bills and unaddressed obligations.

h/t Hot Air

Conservative Union Members Gather Strength in Michigan

Posted on by

UAW member, Terry Bowman, was fed up with his union dues being spent in support of leftist causes. The tipping point was when his local union declared in a newsletter that Jesus would have supported Obamacare. In 2010, Bowman founded Union Conservatives, a group for union members who are pro-union but want their unions to be “grounded in truth and reality,” the main truth being that socialism doesn’t work and the reality that unions need to work with both political parties for the benefits of workers, not just kiss up to one.

In his op-ed piece in the Detroit News, Bowman relates how the unions still spend members’ money on political causes that are blatantly anti-conservative even though a large number of them vote Republican:

“A recent Harris poll shows that 60 percent of union households say that unions are too involved in politics, and we know that 40 percent or more of union households vote Republican. Unfortunately, union members who disagree with these partisan political attacks are forced, as a condition of employment, to financially support this message.”

He goes on to make to briefly make the case for right-to-work laws. From the comments I’ve seen on the Facebook page and elsewhere, Bowman has received the kind of treatment you’d expect from union members who oppose such laws. According to them, he’s a corporate shill or just too stupid to understand how the unions are saving the world. He was derided on the group’s Facebook page for asking people to be civil. Oh the horror of having to engage in intelligent debate! But we know that radicals can’t abide by rules of civility especially when a member of their own tribe gets uppity.

Bowman and the Union Conservatives have got an uphill battle in front of them against the extreme leftist union leadership in Michigan. But the group is moving on with two promising events this month that will hopefully gain it more recognition. The first is at the Michigan Prosperity Forum in Traverse City featuring Michelle Malkin and Andrew Breitbart. Bowman will be heading a panel discussion there. The group also will be hosting along with the University of Michigan Dearborn College Republicans a debate of the Republican candidates for the Michigan Senate. Event info and details about the group can be found at the Union Conservatives website.