Is Dubai is the world's biggest toxic timebomb ?

All questions about how this growth is being financed have been brushed aside. While the West has suffered, Dubai's extravagance has reached new levels: from its vast Terminal 3 at the international airport, which is due to be redundant when the even bigger Jabel Ali airport is built in 2015, to the $20m launch party of the Atlantis hotel two weeks ago.

But in recent weeks the cracks in Dubai's economy have become undeniable. Property prices have slumped, demand has dried up and, for the first time, the emirate is being forced to consider calling a halt to its expansion. Some analysts are claiming that Dubai could implode, weighed down under a pile of debt and, given that it has relatively small oil reserves, no obvious way of paying for it. One said: "This has been the most spectacular spending mission on Earth. But it's a mirage. If complex debt structures have brought the financial world to its knees, Dubai is the world's biggest toxic timebomb."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3536012/Dubai-vows-to-keep-building-despite-global-crisis.html

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Citigroup says gold could rise above $2,000 next year as world unravels

The bank said the damage caused by the financial excesses of the last quarter century was forcing the world's authorities to take steps that had never been tried before.

This gamble was likely to end in one of two extreme ways: with either a resurgence of inflation; or a downward spiral into depression, civil disorder, and possibly wars. Both outcomes will cause a rush for gold.

"They are throwing the kitchen sink at this," said Tom Fitzpatrick, the bank's chief technical strategist.

"The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they have pushed into the system will feed though into an inflation shock.

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Are We Human Livestock?

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Bailout Cost

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Secret History of the Credit Card (2004)

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A Shopping Guernica ?

From the Great Depression, we remember the bread lines. From the oil shocks of the 1970s, we recall lines of cars snaking from gas stations. And from our current moment, we may come to remember scenes like the one at a Long Island Wal-Mart in the dawn after Thanksgiving, when 200 frantic shoppers trampled to death an employee who stood between them and the bargains within.


It was a tragedy, yet it did not feel like an accident. All those people were there, lined up in the cold and darkness, because of sophisticated marketing forces that have produced this day now called Black Friday. They were engaging in early-morning shopping as contact sport. American business has long excelled at creating a sense of shortage amid abundance, an anxiety that one must act now or miss out.

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Is Britain going bankrupt?

The bond vigilantes are restive.

We are not yet facing a replay of the 1970s 'Gilts Strike', but we are not that far off either.

There is now a palpable fear that global investors may start to shun British debt as the budget deficit rockets to £118bn - 8 per cent of GDP - or charge a much higher price to cover default risk.

The cost of insuring against the bankruptcy of the British state has broken out - upwards - over the last month. Yes, credit default swaps (CDS) are dodgy instruments, but they are the best stress barometer that we have.

Today they reached 86 basis points, near Portuguese debt in the league table. For good reason. Alistair Darling has had to admit that the British economy faces the most sudden economic collapse since World War Two, and the worst budget deficit of any major country in the world.

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Warren Buffett: 10 ways to get rich

http://www.warrenbuffett.com/warren-buffett-10-ways-to-get-rich/

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Why Unemployment Could Be Worse This Time

This fall a number of economists began predicting that unemployment would rise to 8% during this recession, up from a reading of 6.5% in October. It would be the highest jobless rate in years. But put into historical perspective, that forecast isn't too bad. A quarter of all adults were out of work during the Great Depression. More recently, unemployment reached 7.8% in the early 1990s, and climbed all the way to 11% in the beginning of the 1980s.

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Bailout Is the Costliest U.S. Expenditure Ever

In comparison, the total U.S. cost of World War II adjusted for inflation was $3.6 trillion. The bailout will cost more than the total combined costs in today's dollars of the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the entire historical budget of NASA, including the moon landing, according to data compiled by Bianco Research.

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Everyone has to eat !

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Peter Schiff Sees More Pain Ahead

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The Crash Course

The Crash Course seeks to provide you with a baseline understanding of the economy so that you can better appreciate the risks that we all face. The Intro below is separated from the rest of the sections because you'll only need to see it once...it tells you about how the Crash Course came to be.

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse

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History of U.S. Gov't Bailouts

http://www.propublica.org/special/government-bailouts

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Niall Ferguson: The ascent of money

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Is China Headed for a Hard Landing?

The news from China in recent weeks has been dire. Strikes and protests — some of them violent and involving as many as ten thousand people — are reported almost daily. Millions of workers are being thrown out of their jobs, and economic indicators seem to presage more gloom, with electricity production for industry falling 4% in October, the first time it has declined in a decade. Even the country's seemingly insatiable thirst for oil to fuel its decades' long boom seems to be fading: China's national oil company said late in November that demand had declined "sharply" in recent months as industrial production slowed and was set to fall further.

So is China — the "fragile superpower" as one historian memorably called it — about to experience the one thing its leaders and many analysts and academics outside the country have feared for years: a violent contraction in its economy that some fear could spark widespread social unrest among its billion inhabitants?

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Battlestar Galactica Palin

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Peter Schiff BLOOMBERG 28 Oct 2008 - The Dollar is dooooomed

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11/20/2008 Peter Schiff On Fast Money - Buy Gold. The movements in oil and the dollar are temporary

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Ron Paul: See why silver and gold are the best investment you can have right now

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According to Gladwell, you are statistically more likely to be rich if you were born in 1935 than in any other year in the 20th century

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Ron Paul Confronts Bernanke On Global Currency Plans

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The Coming American Revolution !

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Gold to double in the medium term ?

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The Money Hole

In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?

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Peter Schiff's greatest hits 2006 - 2007

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Peter Schiff on Auto Industry

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Naomi Klein Blames Greenspan, Deregulation for Economic Crisis

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Obama: New World Order

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

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Sarah Palin in defeat

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

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Peter Schiff - Obama = print print print print print

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Chinese economic growth will halve

Until recently, many economists had insisted that China was insulated from the global financial crisis rippling through the United States and Europe, and that the Chinese Communist Party had the tools to keep the economy chugging along. But newly released data suggests that nearly every sector of the economy is slowing and credit is tightening in a nation that has grown accustomed to sizzling hot growth.

While few economists expect China to fall into recession, analysts are forecasting the worst growth in more than a decade, with the economy expected to expand by as little as 5.8 percent in the fourth quarter this year, down from about 11 percent in 2007.

Analysts worry that a sharp downturn could undermine the country’s already weakening investment climate and impair some of China’s biggest banks, which have bankrolled much of the boom.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/business/worldbusiness/07yuan.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

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NIALL FERGUSON on planet finance

Not so long ago, the dollar stood for a sum of gold, and bankers knew the people they lent to. The author charts the emergence of an abstract, even absurd world—call it Planet Finance—where mathematical models ignored both history and human nature, and value had no meaning.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/12/banks200812?printable=true¤tPage=all

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Secret Palin Stories Now Coming Out ?

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Palin Didn't Know Africa Is A Continent

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/05/palin-didnt-know-africa-i_n_141653.html>

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Obama headlines from around the world

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/5/04621/2283/311/653622

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US Election Results

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Peter Schiff On Squawk Box:Economic Impact Of Obama Victory

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Silly Money - The real story of the financial crisis

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The US braces for next crisis: Credit cards

The defaults that started with the sub-prime loans crisis in the US leading to a global $7.7-trillion loss in stock market value since October, are now showing signs of moving into the US credit card industry that will hit the balace sheets of the card issuing banks.

Reports indicate that a substantial portion of of the 158 million US card holders using 1.5 billion cards have started defaulting and banks had to write of approx $21 billion in bad credit loans in the first six months of this year and expect a further loss of $55 billion in the next 12 months.

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A number of financial experts now fear that the federal government's $143 billion attempt to rescue troubled insurance giant AIG may not work

A number of financial experts now fear that the federal government's $143 billion attempt to rescue troubled insurance giant American International Group may not work, and some argue that company shareholders and taxpayers would have been better served by a bankruptcy filing.

The Treasury Department leapt to keep AIG from going bankrupt on Sept. 16, and in the past seven weeks, AIG has drawn down $90 billion in federal bailout loans. But some key AIG players argue that bankruptcy would have offered more structure and greater protections during a time of intense market volatility.

AIG declined to comment on the matter.

Echoing some other experts, Ann Rutledge, a credit derivatives expert and founding principal of R&R Consulting, said she is not sure how badly the financial system would have been rocked if the government had let AIG file for bankruptcy protection. But she fears that the government is papering over the problem with a quick fix that was not well planned.

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Very powerful Obama ad - best yet ?

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Sarah Palin Pic: I may be broke but I'm not flat busted

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U.S HELPING FUND IRAN NUKES

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John McCain: Comedian-in-Chief

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In the Land of Queen Esther: The Unauthorized Sarah Palin Story

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AIG needs ever increasing amounts of bailout money to cover CDSs as the housing market declines

The American International Group said Thursday that it had been given access to the Federal Reserve’s new commercial paper program, allowing it to reduce its reliance on a costlier emergency loan from the Fed.

The company said it would be able to borrow up to $20.9 billion under the new program, raising its maximum available credit from the Fed to $144 billion under three different programs. The credit includes an earlier emergency loan of $85 billion from the Fed that carries a much higher interest rate.

A.I.G.’s big borrowings underscore the company’s bewilderingly rapid decline. When it suddenly faced a cash crisis in mid-September, the original estimate of the amount it needed was just $20 billion. A few days later, the Fed stepped forward with its $85 billion credit line. And now, the stunning size of that original bailout has grown by almost 70 percent.

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Sarah Palin Gets Pranked by Two Comedians on Quebec Radio, Believes She is Speaking with Nicolas Sarkozy

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