McGraw-Hill, the parent company of Standard & Poor’s, announced that Deven Sharma will resign on September 12.
Sharma is the president of S&P’s. The announcement did not mention if the resignation is related to the recent downgrade of the United States.
Sharma will be replaced by Citibank’s (evil) chief operating officer Douglas Peterson.
In Asian markets, gold went over $1,900 per ounce. The U.S. dollar continues to fall against most Asian money.
Even in Burma the U.S. dollar hit a ten year low. Nobody wants the worthless money: “Despite the falling price, most of the customers are selling their dollars.”-a foreign exchange dealer in Tamwe Township in Rangoon.
The reason for the exploding gold prices, and crashing U.S. dollar, is because many international market players believe the Federal Reserve Bank will try to stimulate the U.S. economy, by making credit easy, and printing more worthless dollars.
Here’s a little lesson in the concept of value: The more there is of something, the less it’s worth. So, if a country prints off money like there’s no tomorrow, and that money is already worthless, how do you think the world is going to react?
They’re going to react like they already are; buying gold and dumping U.S. dollars.
The Japanese central banks are trying to stop their yen from rising in value (which hurts their export economy), so they’ve been flooding their markets with cash. But the U.S. dollar is so worthless that it continues to fall against the yen, which pushes up the value of the yen.
Even the Australian and New Zealand dollars are now worth more than the U.S. dollar.
U.S. citizen Hunter Levan, 29, came to China in 2009. Initially it was to learn Chinese: “I realized if I ever wanted to learn Chinese, I would have to move here and ‘do as the Romans do’.”
But after learning the language, Levan realized it was a good place to find a job: “I sent out e-mails and resumes in Chinese, and got feedback in less than five days.” He now works as a consultant for Spring Airlines in Shanghai.
Alison Watts, 28, knew little about China: “But all my friends who have been here said it was incredibly fantastic, so I decided to take the big step forward.”
Watts’ experiences with journalism got her a job hosting an English-language TV show in Shanghai. She says “…amazing opportunities keep popping up.”
Ted Hornbein, a U.S. businessman, has worked in China since the early 1990s. Now he’s a board member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. He says a lot has changed since the 1990s: “Today you have local and Western restaurants and your whole family here with you…I have seen a 180-degree shift from my first July 4 party in China.”
In January 2011, CNN asked the U.S. Department of State how many U.S. citizens were leaving for jobs in China. The official response was that it was difficult to know because U.S. citizens are not required to tell the state department about living and working in China.
However, international employment agencies say they’ve seen a big jump in U.S. workers going to China for jobs, ever since 2007.
The Research Center for Chinese Politics and Business at Indiana University, says Shanghai and Beijing are the big hot spots for U.S. workers, but in the past couple of years other regions of China are opening up.
Seems like China is doing more to find jobs for U.S. citizens, than the U.S. government is doing here in the United States!
According to AARP, for the Baby Boomers that are still in the workforce, 40% of them plan to work “until they drop.”
A recent survey of U.S. workers, that included all age groups, found that 54% plan to keep working when they hit retirement age, and 39% plan to either work past age 70, or never retire at all.
A CESI Debt Solutions survey found that 56% of U.S. retirees still had outstanding debts when they retired.
The University of Michigan found that people 55 years of age, or older, now account for 20% of all bankruptcies in the United States. In 2001, they accounted for only 12% of all bankruptcies.
Between 1991 and 2007 the number of people between the ages of 65 and 74, that filed for bankruptcy rose by 178%!!!
The American Journal of Medicine reports that medical bills are a major factor in more than 60% of personal bankruptcies in the United States. Approximately 75% percent of the people who file bankruptcy due to medical bills have health insurance!
More than 30% of all U.S. investors, currently in their sixties, have more than 80% of their 401k retirement plans invested in the volatile stock markets.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system paid out more in benefits than it received in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.
The University of Chicago, and Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, calculated the combined pension liability for all 50 U.S. states. They found that all 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they have only $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds. That means, collectively, the state governments are short $3.2 trillion.
The U.S. government now says Medicare will run out of money five years sooner than they were projecting just last year.
President Obama has said over and over that the United States would play a supporting role for NATO, in the attacks on Libya.
Now the Pentagon admits they’ve been directly involved with attacking Libya.
U.S. forces have launched at least three air strikes per day, for the past 12 days. These attacks are done by UAVs. Even though the bombings are done with UAVs that does not negate the fact that it means direct U.S. military involvement.
The total cost of U.S. involvement in the attacks on Libya, have cost taxpayers $1 billion, so far. And don’t think the U.S. military industrial complex is making enough money off this to make up for the $1 billion in spent tax revenues, so far only $220 million in weapons and ammo have been sold to NATO members.
Iranian oil official, Mohammad Ali Khatibi, has just stated that OPEC will not allow oil prices to fall much further.
Iran currently holds the presidency of OPEC. Khatibi says Iran will call an emergency OPEC meeting if oil prices fall too much.
Iran blames the United States, and Europe, for creating highly unstable markets, that do not reflect the true value of resources.
“In our opinion, the longer-term deficit reduction framework adopted as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA) could undermine the already fragile economic recovery and complicate aspects of state and local government fiscal management.”-Gabriel Petek, S&P’s
Standard & Poor’s has already downgraded the credit rating of Nevada, New Jersey and several U.S. counties, for 2011.
Many counties and cities got super downgrades, meaning credit rankings of triple B, or less. S&P’s says many local governments are in very bad shape fiscally.
Six states were actually upgraded. They are Idaho, Nebraska, Wyoming, Oregon, South Dakota and Louisiana. But only Wyoming and Nebraska made the triple A rating.
In a statement issued by S&P’s on August 18, they indicate more downgrades for state and local governments are coming. It’s all based on state budget plans, and what happens with the Federal Debt Limit Deal (Budget Control Act of 2011).
S&P’s will make more credit rating decisions in November.
“Whether you’re a street sweeper or queen, we just didn’t have a table or enough manpower in the kitchen at that time and our hands were tied.”-Nadine Schellenberger, restaurant Zum Gueldenen Stern
Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf, and German-born Queen Silvia, were refused service at one of Germany’s oldest restaurants, the Zum Gueldenen Stern founded in the 16th century.
The hostess said they were busy hosting a wedding party, and she just didn’t recognize the royals: “I didn’t recognize them, I mean without crowns and scepters…I am just not up on royal families and I don’t have time for glossy magazines.”
A letter of apology will be sent. As far as finding something to eat that night, the Swedish royals had to settle for…a lowly pizza!
“Whoever visits Facebook.com or uses a plug-in must expect that he or she will be tracked by the company for two years.”-Thilo Weichert, privacy commissioner
German officials, in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, have discovered that every time the Facebook ‘like’ button is clicked, it sends your private info back to several U.S. databases. This violates European privacy laws.
Website owners are ordered to remove ‘like’ buttons, and other similar buttons, from their websites, or face a U.S.$72,000 fine.
In 1951 Iranians elected a Prime Minister for the first time. It meant the downfall of the British backed Pahlavi regime. But not for long.
The U.S. CIA has admitted many years ago, that it was ordered by President Eisenhower to overthrow the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh.
Now the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) has admitted they helped the CIA.
The British were upset about their Anglo-Iranian oil company (now called British Petroleum, aka BP) losing control of Iran’s oil fields. They convinced Eisenhower that the democratically elected Mosaddegh was a proxy of the Soviet Union. So begins the long history of the British government using the United States as a puppet to enact regime changes all over the world (most recently Afghanistan, Iraq, and ongoing efforts in Libya).
How did the CIA do it? The way they did it is now a classic text book example in University political science classes. They started small by finding corrupt news media sources within Iran. They paid them to write false news stories about the democratically elected government. The BBC now admits to taking a part in this role.
After getting enough media sources printing false stories, they then bribe corrupt individuals, and even unemployed people, to run a round claiming abuse at the hands of the government. This escalates to riots. In 1953 so many people in Iran were believing the false stories, and there were enough unemployed and disenfranchised Iranian people that there was a full blown coup. The Pahlavi regime was returned to power.
If you look at some of the “revolutions” in North Africa and the Middle East right now, they smack of classic CIA/British regime change tactics.
One of the reasons these regime change tactics work is that some of the false news reports actually contain examples of true abuses. However, the false media stories exaggerate the true abuses, to make it look like the government is out to get everybody. If this tactic lasts long enough, and the number of riots, with the expected police crack downs, increases it will create a downward spiral in social politics within the affected country.
The BBC admitted to the Iranian people that they helped overthrow their democratically elected government, back in 1953, though a documentary which recently aired on the BBC Persian TV channel.
It was the 1953 U.S./U.K. backed coup that led to the 1979 Iranian Revolution against the U.S. and U.K.
People of the United States don’t think it can’t happen here. You lovers of PBS should be aware that BBC now owns PBS. Why do you think there are so many British TV programs now playing on a supposedly U.S. TV channel? It’s not because the executives of PBS are Anglophiles. Oh, and don’t forget Rupurt Murdoch’s take over of many so called independent U.S. news corporations. Murdoch became a U.S. citizen solely so he could legally begin taking over U.S. media. Murdoch is member of the British Empire (aka Commonwealth).