On November 18 Suzuki said their marriage with Germany’s Volkswagen was over, and they wanted their dowry back.
Suzuki wants VW to sell back the 19.9% stake they have in the Japanese car maker. VW says no way. Now the case has gone to arbitration in a London, England, court. The arbitration could take two years!
As a sign of how bad things are getting for European countries, it’s just been revealed that eight major Japanese life insurance companies are dumping their sovereign debt (bonds) from Italy, Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain.
All together, the Japanese companies sold off 44% of their bonds, by the end of October. According to Japanese media, two of the eight insurance companies sold off all their Italian bonds!
Combine natural disasters, corporate and government incompetence, and regular inspections, and you end up with more than 80% of Japan’s nuclear power turned off. That’s disastrous when you realize that Japan’s industries rely on nuclear power! Can you say poor planning?
On November 25, another nuke plant will be shut down for regular inspection. But that’s not all. The remaining operating nuclear power plants will also be shut down going into spring 2012, because of the timing of scheduled inspections. That means all 54 Japanese nuke plants will be off line!
This means there will be a huge demand coming from Japan for petroleum (oil, gasoline, diesel), natural gas and coal to run traditional electrical generators. Now imagine what will happen to the price such commodities when an entire country suddenly starts sucking up millions of barrels of fuel per day!
“The service has been there since last Friday. It’s really good news for our customers and local application developers.”-Apple China statement
California based Apple Incorporated decided to accept the Chinese yuan (aka Renminbi, or RMB) in an unannounced move last week. One reason is that China is now the world’s biggest internet market!!!
The App Store will now accept yuan credit and debit cards issued by more than 20 Chinese banks. Another reason for the move is that many Chinese customers using credit and debit cards issued from outside China, were getting their info ripped off.
Apple’s fiscal 4th quarter revenues from China hit $4.5 billion. Their U.S. operations had more revenue, but revenue from China is growing so fast it will soon pass up the revenues made in the U.S.
On November 22, the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released another revised Real GDP report. It says the second revision of GDP for the third quarter 2011 was a stagnant 2%.
Gross Domestic Product is the “the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States”. Real GDP means it’s been adjusted for inflation, specifically: “‘Real’ estimates are in chained (2005) dollars.”
The BEA report has some other important information, that the mainstream media rarely reports.
Inflation: Overall prices increased 1.9% in the third quarter, and 3.3% in the second quarter.
Expenses: Overall consumption expenditures increased 2.3% in the third quarter, 0.7% in the second quarter.
Property Investment: Non-residential property investment increased 14.8% in the third quarter, 10.3% in the second quarter. Residential property investment increased 1.6% in the third quarter, 4.2% in the second quarter.
Exports: Products made in the U.S. and shipped to other countries increased 4.3% in the third quarter, 3.6% in the second.
Imports: Products brought into the U.S. increased 0.5% in the third quarter, 1.4% in the second quarter.
Government: Federal spending on the military increased 4.7% in the third quarter, 7.0% in the second. Federal spending on non-military decreased 3.8% in the third quarter, decreasing 7.6% in the second. State and local spending decreased 1.4% in the third quarter, decreasing 2.8% in the second.
Production: Real Gross National Product increased 2.1% in the third quarter, and 2.2% in the second.
Value of Products Produced: Market value increased 4.6% in the third quarter, 4.0% in the second quarter.
Income: Real Gross Domestic Income increased 0.4% in the third quarter, and 0.2% in the second.
To be significant the amount of change should be 3% or greater. Between 0% and 3% should be considered stagnation, below 0% is retraction.
Notice the huge jumps in property investment.
Notice that U.S. exports are above 3%. This corresponds to the increase in production. The value of products produced are more than 4%! Yet look at the income of U.S. workers, a 0.4% pittance! Some reward for making more products and providing more service!
The BEA’s data on production and income shows you that Corporate America views labor as slave wage workers. After all it’s obviously not the workers who’re benefiting from the increased production, and the increased value of their products and services!
What about government spending of your tax dollars? The BEA report shows what many are dealing with, a drop in State and local government spending (social services and education are the big ones), and a huge drop (more than 7% in the 2nd quarter, more than 3% in the 3rd) in Federal non-military spending (again, social programs, education, etc). But look at the huge jump in military spending, it almost matches the cuts in non-military spending!
The BEA’s data on government spending is a real indicator of who the government really cares about!
“I’m flabbergasted. The bottom line is, there’s going to be a haircut involved. It’s devastating, what this has done to the industry.”-Tom Ward, retired Chicago Board of Trade member whose two sons have been blocked from accessing their money
Officials with MF Global, formerly Man Financial, are now admitting that they lost much more money than first reported. They’re now saying they lost $1.2 billion!
“What did the CFTC know three weeks ago and what do they know now? If the amount has changed that much over three weeks, where did the money go? What were (regulators) looking at before?”-Tim Butler, attorney representing group of MF Global customers
MF Global originated in England, but after several moves, ended up in New York City in 2009. They were a primary trader of U.S. sovereign debt (bonds).
Regulators have taken over the company, and are now liquidating it. The process has frozen $5.45 billion of customers’ money!
MF Global says they lost the money making a bad trade deal with the very bonds they deal with! The latest reports say that MF Global may have used its customers’ investment money to make the deals for itself, a violation of regulations.
Investors are trying to get their money back, so far it takes hiring an attorney, but not everyone can do that: “Unlike the big banks, the average farmer who lost money in this fiasco can’t afford to hire an attorney and attend proceedings in a Manhattan courtroom.”-Chuck Grassley, U.S. Senator from Iowa
MF Global filed bankruptcy on October 31.
“Hezbollah’s security is as good as any in the world’s. It’s the best. It’s better than that of the KGB.”-Bob Baer, former CIA operations officer
“Beirut station is out of business.”-unnamed CIA official
Call it a major set back for the United States, in their espionage of Iran and Lebanon. The U.S. media says more than a dozen undercover agents working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were caught. Iranian media say it was at least 30 spies in Iran, and at least 42 in other countries! To show you how incompetent our government has become, CIA officials learned of the espionage catastrophe while watching an Iran Today newscast.
Normally U.S. officials always play down anything reported by the Iranian media, but this time CIA officials say the info presented was hardcore CIA tactics, the Iranians could only know about it because they did indeed catch the undercover spies.
ABC News quoted a U.S. official as calling the situation an “occasional setback”. During the Cold War this would have been a major embarrassment, to say the least!
The Iranian program that reported the U.S. spy disaster is called Iran Today, it’s presented by the news service PressTV. According to Iranian media the arrests of the U.S. paid spies began back in May! In Lebanon, Hezbollah Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, announced the arrest of several spies working for the CIA back in June!
You can watch the two Iran Today programs here and here.
But arrests of spies in Lebanon actually go back to April 2009, when hundreds of spies were arrested, many working for Israel’s Mossad. Where was the U.S. media then?
ABC News has been reporting that most of the spies were executed. Since the U.S. is now ‘blind’ in Lebanon and Iran, the only way U.S. officials can assume their undercover agents are dead, is because their actions resulted in the deaths of Iranians and Lebanese.
According to Iranian media, spies who’re not connected to the death of one of their citizens will be sentenced to hard labor. Only if they are found to have been involved with the assassination, or killing, of a citizen would they be executed. If you’ve paid attention to news from Iran you’d know that many Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in the past few years, as well as many seemingly random explosions that have killed Iranian civilians.
Why is the U.S. media now running with this story? Could it be that the failed FBI sting operation, that was presented as an attempted Iranian assassination of a Saudi Arabian official, has failed to rouse enough support for war with Iran, so now the Obama administration has decided to somehow use this major CIA FAIL to generate support for war with Iran?
“Let me tell you, we recommend for a long time to all players to act sincerely and intensively to…deprive them or prevent them from turning nuclear. And we have kept recommending to all to leave no option, not to remove any option from the table.”-Ehud Barak, Defense Minister of Israel
The Chinese media is quoting Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, as pushing for war with Iran right now, because of the implications of the questionable IAEA report: “But I can tell you that the IAEA report has a sobering impact on many in the world leaders, as well as the publics, and people understand that the time had come.”
Days before the official release of the IAEA report, Israeli media stated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were pushing for a military strike on Iran.
The leaders of Israel are now telling the world that Iran must be stopped: “People understand now that Iran is determined to reach nuclear weapons. No other possible or conceivable explanation for what they have been actually doing. And that should be stopped.”-Ehud Barak
In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Barak was asked how supportive the Obama administration is of Israeli policies. Barak says Obama’s support surpasses all other U.S. Presidents: “He’s extremely strong supporter of Israel in regard to security. Traditionally Presidents will support Israel in keeping its quality military aids, and taking care of its security, but this administration is excelling in this.”
“Iran doesn’t have a bomb. There’s no proof. There’s no new information regardless of this new report [IAEA report], and for us to overreact and to talk about bombing Iran, that’s much more dangerous.”-Ron Paul, U.S. Representative from Texas
Presidential candidate Ron Paul made that statement on CBS’s Face the Nation. But the interviewer, Bob Schieffer, tried his darnedest to make Ron Paul look unAmerican, and the interview really came across as Ron Paul bashing.
Schieffer stated: “No one has suggested, in the U.S. government, that we are going to bomb Iran. What they have said is we’re going to impose very tough sanctions. You have said you’re against sanctions.”
Paul replied: “Yeah, because sanctions are the initial steps to war…”
If you take political science courses on war then you’ll learn that sanctions are the first step towards war.
Ron Paul then questioned Schieffer’s statment that “no one” in our government wants to bomb Iran: “…if your saying that nobodies suggesting it why don’t you listen to the debates, I mean listen to some of the other candidates…” At that point Schieffer cuts Paul off, claiming that he is listening to the debates.
A great example is another Republican candidate, Newt Gingrich, who, on November 12, called for the assassination of Iranian scientists (something the Israeli Mossad has already done).
Schieffer admits that candidates, including Mitt Romney, has made such suggestions, but he says “the government” hasn’t made such statements.
Paul then blasts Schieffer: “Obviously they [U.S. government] haven’t said that, but the implication is that nothing is off the table. You’ve heard them say that!”
Schieffer replies: “Well yes, alright, lets move on then.”
Yes, people of the Untied States, lets move on away from the mainstream, entrenched, warmongering, working class enslaving Elites! Vote against any candidate that sounds mainstream, and Ron Paul sure isn’t mainstream!
Thousands of British prison officers say they might join the planned nationwide strikes on November 30.
The Prison Officers Association has 35,000 members, and at least 15,000 will go on strike. That’s enough to shut down the operations of British prisons. To make matters worse, the number of people now in British prisons hit a record 87,945 last week. The prisons are nearly maxed out.
The U.K. government wants to cut retirement plans, and that seems to be the straw that is breaking the prison guards’ back: “We are hoping that we can come to a settlement on pensions, but if we can’t, then we will support the November 30 day of action.”-Steve Gillan, Prison Officers Association