JustThinking.us

From Debkafile one of the better sources for actual news anywhere.

As opposed to opinion dressed as news most everywhere.

Yes of course, the picture ... click on it.

India to pay gold instead of dollars for Iranian oil.

Oil and gold markets stunned

India is the first buyer of Iranian oil to agree to pay for its purchases in gold instead of the US dollar, DEBKAfile's intelligence and Iranian sources report exclusively.  Those sources expect China to follow suit. India and China take about one million barrels per day, or 40 percent of Iran's total exports of 2.5 million bpd. Both are superpowers in terms of gold assets.

By trading in gold, New Delhi and Beijing enable Tehran to bypass the upcoming freeze on its central bank's assets and the oil embargo which the European Union's foreign ministers agreed to impose Monday, Jan. 23. The EU currently buys around 20 percent of Iran's oil exports.

The vast sums involved in these transactions are expected, furthermore, to boost the price of gold and depress the value of the dollar on world markets.

You should be listening to your Uncle Roany here ..... buy gold!!!!!

The following chart is from Phoenix Capital Research via Zero Hedge.

As always, click on the chart for the entire piece.

That there is a depression.

We received emails from Katie and Chris P. suggesting that we missed the best video on the Northern lights offered at The Inquisitor site.

They're right.

This is about 5 minutes of real good stuff from NASA and includes an explanation on what and how.

I found this quote over at our friend Cheri P's facebook page the other day and can't source it.

If indeed source is a verb.

Among my final efforts to put a name to this quote, I called Terry D. who despite his claims of busyness and hard work is even less engaged by his employment than I am ..... and I'm retired.

My foolish thought being that he might be able/willing to provide some small help.

But nooooooooo!!!!!

In the middle of that conversation Terry asked the above question and then once again and as usual, suggested that I should look into it.

I'm pretty sure he sort of knows, just as I sort of know, but would like to have a more perfect understanding provided for him.

I'm pretty busy at the moment myself, but did find and attach a link to the quote below that will take you to a primer at Libertarian.org

I'll probably explore it some over the weekend.

We've been enjoying the effects of the largest solar storm since 2003.

All kinds of disruption to GPS, satalite guidance systems, air travel, and communications have been the result.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights as they are known in these parts have been going ape shit crazy.

From The Inquisitor here's one minute fourteen seconds of spectacular.

Two of the greatest professionals in the history of show business.

Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra singing the Isham Jones and Gus Kahn classic The One I Love Belongs To Somebody Else.

Thanks to the little wiffer for this one.

This from Reuters who unlike most of the rest of our national media, has recently awakened to the smell of coffee and is now rolling.

Ah well, better late than never.

Not a week goes by that somewhere in my reading somebody doesn't marvel that more than 3 years into this mess nobody is in jail or even under indictment for all of the fraud and basic malfeasance that has taken place at the banks.

Here's your likely answer.

As always click anywhere below for the entire story.

Highly educational.

Insight: Top Justice officials connected to mortgage banks

(Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.

The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington's biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

Both the Justice Department and Covington declined to say if either official had personally worked on matters for the big mortgage industry clients. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Holder and Breuer had complied fully with conflict of interest regulations, but she declined to say if they had recused themselves from any matters related to the former clients.

Reuters reported in December that under Holder and Breuer, the Justice Department hasn't brought any criminal cases against big banks or other companies involved in mortgage servicing, even though copious evidence has surfaced of apparent criminal violations in foreclosure cases.

The evidence, including records from federal and state courts and local clerks' offices around the country, shows widespread forgery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and illegal foreclosures on the homes of thousands of active-duty military personnel.

Change you can believe in.

I had never heard of Ferdinand Pecora.

The fact that his name is never mentioned in anybody's high school government class is a damnable shame.

He should have a day all his own in every government class at every school in every state of this union.

As an aside, his book is presently going for $550.00 at Amazon.

The following excerpt is taken from a short story at Smithsonian.com titled "The Man Who Busted The Banksters.

Click anywhere below for the entire piece.

Way super double highly recommended ..... plus ... and then some.

Just months before Hoover left office, Pecora was appointed chief counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Banking and Currency.  Assigned to probe the causes of the 1929 crash, he led what became known as the “Pecora commission,” making front-page news when he called Charles Mitchell, the head of the largest bank in America, National City Bank (now Citibank), as his first witness.

“Sunshine Charley” strode into the hearings with a good deal of contempt for both Pecora and his commission.  Though shareholders had taken staggering losses on bank stocks, Mitchell admitted that he and his top officers had set aside millions of dollars from the bank in interest-free loans to themselves.  Mitchell also revealed that despite making more than $1 million in bonuses in 1929, he had paid no taxes due to losses incurred from the sale of diminished National City stock ..... to his wife.  

Pecora revealed that National City had hidden bad loans by packaging them into securities and pawning them off to unwitting investors.  (Ever heard that one before?)  By the time Mitchell’s testimony made the newspapers, he had been disgraced, his career had been ruined, and he would soon be forced into a million-dollar settlement of civil charges of tax evasion.  “Mitchell,” said Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, “more than any 50 men is responsible for this stock crash.”

Whoa, a regulator actually doing his job.

As opposed to a regulator spending his time working on his next job.

"Approximately, three billion people of the world live on less than 2.5 dollars a day, and over a billion people live without having even one sufficient meal on a daily basis; 

Forty-percent of the poorest world populations only share five percent of the global income, while twenty percent of the richest people share seventy-five percent of the total global income.

More than twenty thousand innocent and destitute children die every day in the world because of poverty. In the United States, eighty percent of financial resources are controlled by ten percent of its population, while only twenty percent of these resources belong to the ninety percent of the population ...

Which country's military spending exceeds annually a thousand billion dollars, more than the military budgets of all countries of the world combined?

...What is the justification for the presence of hundreds of US military and intelligence bases in different parts of the world, including 268 bases in Germany, 124 in Japan, 87 in South Korea, 83 in Italy, 45 in the United Kingdom,and 21 in Portugal?

Does this mean anything other than military occupation?"

From Reuters.

It's always interesting when the thieves start turning on each other.

Click on the photo for the entire story.

In MF Global, JPMorgan again at center of a financial failure

(Reuters) - In late October, as MF Global Holdings Ltd teetered toward bankruptcy, Jon Corzine phoned his close-knit circle of Wall Street friends for help.

His firm, facing demands from customers and other firms for cash, needed to sell billions of dollars in securities to raise the money. As the week progressed, MF Global executives came to believe that JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of MF Global's primary bankers and a middleman moving that cash, was dragging its feet in forwarding the funds.

Scroll down one post to see who the boys are supporting in this years presidential election, having supported Obama in 2008.

From Open Secrets. 

As previously discussed, we love Fred Reed.

Click on Fred's photo to link up to his outstanding and provacative site

Vote? Why? ...

I want to roll back the onrushing police state and return to constitutional government. ...

Who do I vote for? ...

I want to end our stupid wars, now. Yesterday.

Who do I vote for?

There is no anti'war candidate (ERP). Obama sends the troops anywhere he can think of, and all the Republicans want to attack Iran. I want to reduce the military by half and end the militarization of the country that is bankrupting us.

Who do I vote for? (ERP) 

I want to reduce the size of government, get rid of the departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, and Commerce, toss the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and so on. What candidate wants to do these things? Republicans talk a good show, but which of them actually wants to cut?

I want to end affirmative action, which means governmental favor for some citizens over others, and rely on merit. No candidate speaks of this.

Who do I vote for?

I want to end the empire, quit meddling in the business of other countries, get out of South Korea, Japan, and NATO. I don't want to be the world's mommy.

Who do I vote for?

I want to reform America's dysfunctional system of taxation, go to a sales tax or flat tax or value-added tax, anything to get IRS off our backs. It isn't the amount of taxation that I dislike, but the intrusiveness, mystery, complexity, and lack of recourse.

Who do I vote for?

I want to reform the public schools, outlaw teachers unions, requires decent GRE scores from teachers, cut the propaganda and outlaw drugging of students.

Who do I vote for?

Why vote at all?

Nothing of substance is on the table, other than the desire of Republicans to attack Iran. 

The elections are supposed to indicate the presence of democracy, but they do not. Elections do not determine policy but only the division of spoils. An election in which candidates take no positions becomes a high-school popularity contest.

The way to have elections without having a democracy is to let the people vote, but not on anything.

Having a one party system called by two names is a technically slick way of disenfranchising the public without their noticing. In a parliamentary system all manner of politics would gain expression in proportion to their prevalence in the population.

With two identical parties, no dissenting view can ever gain office.

A masterly dodge, this.

Nobody around here has clue one what (ERP) means.