AMERICA (POLITICAL BABYLON)
EZEKIEL 39:21
21 And I will set my glory among the heathen, and all the heathen shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid upon them.
ISAIAH 18:1-2
1 Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia:
2 That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled!
JEREMIAH 50:11,37,12
11 Because ye were glad, because ye rejoiced, O ye destroyers of mine heritage, because ye are grown fat as the heifer at grass, and bellow as bulls;(BACKSLIDERS)
37 A sword is upon their horses, and upon their chariots, and upon all the mingled people that are in the midst of her; and they shall become as women: a sword is upon her treasures; and they shall be robbed.(A NATION OF MINGLED PEOPLE)
12 Your mother shall be sore confounded; she that bare you shall be ashamed:(MOTHER ENGLAND) behold, the hindermost of the nations shall be a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert.
JEREMIAH 51:13,7,53
13 O thou that dwellest upon many waters, abundant in treasures, thine end is come, and the measure of thy covetousness.
7 Babylon hath been a golden cup in the LORD's hand, that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad.
53 Though Babylon should mount up to heaven, and though she should fortify the height of her strength, yet from me shall spoilers come unto her, saith the LORD.
REVELATION 18:3,5,7
3 For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
5 For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
7 How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.
JEREMIAH 50:3,24
3 For out of the north there cometh up a nation against her, which shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell therein: they shall remove, they shall depart, both man and beast.
24 I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware: thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against the LORD. (RUSSIA A SNEAK ATTACK)
REVELATION 18:10
10 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.
VIDEO TO THIS STORY
http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=89612
VIDEONETDAILY Alan Keyes: Stop Obama or U.S. will cease to exist. Claims communist usurper plunges country into chaos February 21, 2009 10:00 pm Eastern By Drew Zahn 2009 WorldNetDaily
Alan Keyes
Alan Keyes, a 2008 presidential candidate who is also a plaintiff in one of the many lawsuits challenging Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility to occupy the Oval Office, charged at a pro-life rally that unless Obama's social and economic policies are stopped, the United States as we know it is over. Keyes' comments were part of an interview with a reporter from KHAS-TV at a fundraiser for the AAA Crisis Pregnancy Center in Hastings, Neb. Obama is a radical communist, and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois and now everybody realizes it's true, said Keyes, who ran unsuccessfully against Obama for the state's open Senate seat in 2004. He is going to destroy this country, and we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist.Keyes also reasserted his belief that unless the question of Obama's eligibility to serve as president is answered definitively, America may face the startling crisis of an executive branch run by a usurper.Is he president of the United States? Keyes asked the reporter of Obama. According to the Constitution, in order to be eligible for president you have to be a natural born citizen. He has refused to provide proof.
Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the natural-born American clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, join more than 240,000 others and sign up now! I'm not sure he's even president of the United States,Keyes continued,neither are many of our military people now who are now going to court to ask the question,Do we have to obey a man who is not qualified under the constitution?' We are in the midst of the greatest crisis this nation has ever seen, and if we don't stop laughing about it and deal with it, we're going to find ourselves in the midst of chaos, confusion and civil war.Keyes, who stated he refuses even to refer to Obama as president, labeled the man in the Oval Office as somebody who is kind of an alleged usurper, who is alleged to be someone who is occupying that office without constitutional warrant to do so.Keyes' comments included harsh criticism of Obama's policies on immigration, abortion, and the mortgage crisis. He concluded the interview by railing against the president's push for hundreds of billions of dollars in government economic stimulus spending. We are claiming that a bankrupt government can save a bankrupt banking system, Keyes said. The fact that we have just elected an individual – who may or may not be qualified – and he presents silly ideas like this and says, Let's move forward now, and we're all acting like the laws of economics have been repealed and we can actually afford to foot the bill with money nobody's got, this is insane. It's got to lead to the collapse of our economy,Keys declared,and it's going to.
WND has reported on multiple legal challenges, including Keyes' case, that have alleged Obama does not meet the natural born citizen clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, which reads, No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.Some claim he was not born in Hawaii, as he insists, but in Kenya. Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time. Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born. The Keyes case is being handled largely by Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation, but others playing a key role in the legal actions include Orly Taitz of California as well as Philip Berg, both of whom already have had their arguments rejected as not worthy of hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court. Here is a partial listing and status update for some of the cases over Obama's eligibility: New Jersey attorney Mario Apuzzo has filed a case on behalf of Charles Kerchner and others alleging Congress didn't properly ascertain that Obama is qualified to hold the office of president.Philip J. Berg, a Pennsylvania Democrat, demanded that the courts verify Obama's original birth certificate and other documents proving his American citizenship. Berg's latest appeal, requesting an injunction to stop the Electoral College from selecting the 44th president, was denied.Leo Donofrio of New Jersey filed a lawsuit claiming Obama's dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court but denied a full hearing.Cort Wrotnowski filed suit against Connecticut's secretary of state, making a similar argument to Donofrio. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court, but was denied a full hearing.Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes headlines a list of people filing a suit in California, in a case handled by the United States Justice Foundation, that asks the secretary of state to refuse to allow the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast in the 2008 presidential election until Obama verifies his eligibility to hold the office. The case is pending, and lawyers are seeking the public's support.
Chicago attorney Andy Martin sought legal action requiring Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle to release Obama's vital statistics record. The case was dismissed by Hawaii Circuit Court Judge Bert Ayabe.Lt. Col. Donald Sullivan sought a temporary restraining order to stop the Electoral College vote in North Carolina until Barack Obama's eligibility could be confirmed, alleging doubt about Obama's citizenship. His case was denied.In Ohio, David M. Neal sued to force the secretary of state to request documents from the Federal Elections Commission, the Democratic National Committee, the Ohio Democratic Party and Obama to show the presidential candidate was born in Hawaii. The case was denied.In Washington state, Steven Marquis sued the secretary of state seeking a determination on Obama's citizenship. The case was denied.In Georgia, Rev. Tom Terry asked the state Supreme Court to authenticate Obama's birth certificate. His request for an injunction against Georgia's secretary of state was denied by Georgia Superior Court Judge Jerry W. Baxter.California attorney Orly Taitz has brought a case, Lightfoot vs. Bowen, on behalf of Gail Lightfoot, the vice presidential candidate on the ballot with Ron Paul, four electors and two registered voters.In addition, other cases cited on the RightSideofLife blog as raising questions about Obama's eligibility include: In Texas, Darrel Hunter vs. Obama later was dismissed.In Ohio, Gordon Stamper vs. U.S. later was dismissed.In Texas, Brockhausen vs. Andrade.In Washington, L. Charles vs. Obama.
In Hawaii, Keyes vs. Lingle, dismissed.
WND senior reporter Jerome Corsi had gone to both Kenya and Hawaii prior to the election to investigate issues surrounding Obama's birth. But his research and discoveries only raised more questions.The governor's office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii, which the state's procedures allowed at the time?
Obama's goal? Directed chaos February 23, 2009 1:00 am Eastern WND
When we think of the word chaos, normally we associate it with spontaneous acts of malcontents rebelling without a cause. But most of the chaos in the world today is what I call directed chaos – usually government-directed and with one single-minded purpose: the consolidation of power. That's the way I interpret the so-called economic stimulus legislation approved by the Democrat-controlled Congress and signed by President Obama. There is no way it will stimulate the economy. It will have the opposite effect – lengthening and deepening the economic crisis in which America finds itself. Does anyone truly believe we're in this mess because the U.S. government didn't spend enough recently? Of course not. Congress and President Bush spent money like drunken sailors. They caused this calamity because of their irresponsibility and their disregard for the Constitution. Can the cure be possibly more of the same? I don't think so. But take a look at how the money will be spent, for evidence of the cure is actually worse than the disease. Of the $800 billion in the so-called stimulus bill, only $90 billion will actually go toward things like building highways, upgrading the electrical power grid or meaningful business tax cuts. Far more, however, will be used to revive welfare as we used to know it. Some $264 billion will be directed to encouraging states to sign up more people on welfare. But it gets worse. This welfare is worse than the old one that everyone – Democrats and Republicans alike – agreed to dismantle in the 1990s. It's called the Make Work Pay program, and it includes $23 billion per year to provide up to $500 cash to low-income adults who pay no taxes. The program will mark the first time the federal government will hand out significant cash to able-bodied adults without dependent children! Does that make sense to you? Probably not.
But it has been thought out. I want you to know that. This program, along with the whole of the so-called stimulus bill, has been considered carefully. No member of Congress may have read the bill. But that bill was written by someone. The programs it creates have been in the works for years. Money is being handed out to people who helped get Obama and the Democrats elected. Groups like ACORN, the shock troops and brown shirts of their movement, are being paid off with billions of dollars. It has all been planned. And the goal is not to help the economy. The goal is to achieve chaos, because chaos leads to more government control – and that's what Obama and the Democratic Congress want more than anything. They don't believe they should be bothered with elections or dissent or any of the nuisances of a free society. They believe they deserve perpetual power, because they are part of the enlightened elite. They know socialism hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried. But they also believe they can do better. They can make it work, because they are smarter than the guys who have bungled it in the past. In the meantime, prepare for chaos. Prepare for harder times than you have seen in your lifetime. Prepare for more debt. Prepare for more redistribution of wealth, more unfairness and inequity. Prepare for one bailout after another. Prepare for more emergency legislation like the so-called stimulus bill. Prepare for unilateral executive action through presidential decision directives. Prepare for attacks on the free press and free speech. This is where we are inevitably going with the change promises by Obama. You're going to get change all right.The government is going to show you how bad it can get, so you will accept its most draconian solutions.You haven't seen anything yet.
DOCTOR DOCTORIAN FROM ANGEL OF GOD
then the angel said, Financial crisis will come to Asia. I will shake the world.
JAMES 5:1-3
1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
REVELATION 18:10,17,19
10 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.
17 For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,
19 And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.
EZEKIEL 7:19
19 They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumblingblock of their iniquity.
REVELATION 13:16-18
16 And he(FALSE POPE) causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:(CHIP IMPLANT)
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.(6-6-6) A NUMBER SYSTEM
WORLD MARKET RESULTS
http://money.cnn.com/data/world_markets/
HALF HOUR DOW RESULTS MON FEB 23,2009
09:30 AM +3.03
10:00 AM +16.17
10:30 AM -8.12
11:00 AM -61.88
11:30 AM -61.41
12:00 PM -90.00
12:30 PM -110.22
01:00 PM -165.11
01:30 PM -137.31
02:00 PM -163.04
02:30 PM -111.19
03:00 PM -207.32
03:30 PM -214.73
04:00 PM -250.89 7114.78
S&P 500 743.33 -26.72
NASDAQ 1387.72 -53.51
GOLD 994.70 -7.50
OIL 38.03 -2.00
TSE 300 7642.20 -307.79
CDNX 878.94 -13.96
S&P/TSX/60 457.79 -19.47
MORNING,NEWS,STATS
YEAR TO DATE PERFORMANCE
Dow -16.07%
S&P -14.75%
Nasdaq -8.61%
TSX Advances 389,declines 1,193,unchanged 234,Volume 2,746,067,748.
TSX Venture Exchange Advances 339,Declines 480,Unchanged 377,Volume 253,759,708.
Dow +63 points at 4 minutes of trading today.
Dow -39 points at low today.
Dow +76 points at high today so far.
Gold opens at $987.40 today,Oil opens at $40.50 today.
AFTERNOON,NEWS,STATS
Dow -165 points at low today so far.
Dow +76 points at high today so far.
DAY TODAY PERFORMANCE - 12:30PM STATS
NYSE Advances 903,declines 2,814,unchanged 91,New Highs 6,New Lows 309.
Volume 3,253,125,074.
NASDAQ Advances 783,declines 1,837,unchanged 130,New highs 2,New Lows 224.
Volume 822,121,042.
TSX Advances 487,declines 831,unchanged 282,Volume 1,251,175,649.
TSX Venture Exchange Advances 230,Declines 330,Unchanged 264,Volume 107,449,651.
Dow drops below 7200 points today.
Dow falls below closing lows set in 2002.
Dow on track for lowest close since MAY 1997.
S&P 500 tests NOV lows.
OIL drops below $40.00 on economic woes.
WRAPUP,NEWS,STATS
Dow -260 points at low today.
Dow +76 points at high today.
Dow -3.40% today Volume 405,707,821.
Nasdaq -3.71% today Volume 1,866,024,655.
S&P 500 -3.47% today Volume N/A
Dow,S&P 500 close at 11 year lows.
Dow,S&P 500,Nasdaq down about 3.5% today.
Dow closes at level not seen since MAY 7,1997.
S&P 500 down 10% over last 6 sessions.
S&P 500 ends at lowest level since APR 11,1997.
S&P 500 ALL sectors lower today.
Nasdaq still above closing lows set last NOVEMBER.
LATIMES:News COR President Chernin is leaving company.
BANKING CRISIS VIDEOS
http://www.euronews.net/en/article/17/11/2008/eu-and-the-crisis/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW1003o7ZzQ&eurl=http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=eu%20financial%20summit&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv&feature=player_embedded
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1275907794399871469&hl=en
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Dh_vFxxX8
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=eu%20financial%20summit&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv#
EU DICTATOR (WORLD LEADER)
REVELATION 17:12-13
12 And the ten horns (NATIONS) which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.
13 These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.
REVELATION 6:1-2
1 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
2 And I saw, and behold a white horse:(PEACE) and he that sat on him had a bow;(EU DICTATOR) and a crown was given unto him:(PRESIDENT OF THE EU) and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.(MILITARY GENIUS)
REVELATION 13:1-10
1 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.(THE EU AND ITS DICTATOR IS GODLESS)
2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.(DICTATOR COMES FROM NEW AGE OR OCCULT)
3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death;(MURDERERD) and his deadly wound was healed:(COMES BACK TO LIFE) and all the world wondered after the beast.(THE WORLD THINKS ITS GOD IN THE FLESH, MESSIAH TO ISRAEL)
4 And they worshipped the dragon (SATAN) which gave power unto the beast:(JEWISH EU DICTATOR) and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?(FALSE RESURRECTION,SATAN BRINGS HIM TO LIFE)
5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.(GIVEN WORLD CONTROL FOR 3 1/2YRS)
6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God,(HES A GOD HATER) to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.(HES A LIBERAL OR DEMOCRAT,WILL PUT ANYTHING ABOUT GOD DOWN)
7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints,(BEHEAD THEM) and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.(WORLD DOMINATION)
8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.(WORLD DICTATOR)
9 If any man have an ear, let him hear.
10 He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.(SAVED CHRISTIANS AND JEWS DIE FOR THEIR FAITH AT THIS TIME,NOW WE ARE SAVED BY GRACE BUT DURING THE 7 YEARS OF HELL ON EARTH, PEOPLE WILL BE PUT TO DEATH (BEHEADINGS) FOR THEIR BELIEF IN GOD (JESUS) OR THE BIBLE.
THE WEEK OF DANIEL 9:27 WE KNOW ITS 7 YRS
Heres the scripture 1 week = 7 yrs Genesis 29:27-29
27 Fulfil her week, and we will give thee this also for the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years.
28 And Jacob did so, and fulfilled her week: and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife also.
29 And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be her maid.
DANIEL 9:26-27
26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come (ROMANS IN AD 70) shall destroy the city and the sanctuary;(ROMANS DESTROYED THE 2ND TEMPLE) and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
27 And he( EU ROMAN, JEWISH DICTATOR) shall confirm the covenant with many for one week:( 7 YEARS) and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease,( 3 1/2 YRS) and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
WORLD GOVERNMENT
DANIEL 7:23-25
23 Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.
25 And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.
DANIEL 12:4,1
4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
1 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
REVELATION 13:1-3,7,8,12,16-18
1 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.
7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
REVELATION 17:3,7,9-10,12,18
3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
7 And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns.
9 And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.
10 And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.
12 And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.
18 And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.
EU leaders back sweeping financial regulations ahead of G20 summit
Sun Feb 22, 12:32 PM By Patrick Mcgroarty, The Associated Press
BERLIN - European leaders backed sweeping new regulations for financial markets and hedge funds at a summit Sunday in Berlin as politicians and countries scrambled to tame the global economic crisis. German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted heads of state and finance ministers from Europe's largest economies to try to establish a common European position on economic reforms before an April 2 summit in London of the Group of 20 countries. All financial markets, products and participants including hedge funds and other private pools of capital which may pose a systematic risk must be subjected to appropriate oversight or regulation, Merkel said in a statement released on behalf of the summit members, following the talks. Top officials from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain, the Netherlands and Czech Republic agreed on seven key points during their one-day meeting in Berlin, the statement said. A clear message and concrete action are necessary to engender new confidence in the markets and to put the world back on a path toward more growth and employment, Merkel said. But the call for blanket global regulation was sure to be resisted by the financial industry and may not be welcomed completely by other members of the G20, which in addition to European countries includes Canada, Japan and the United States as well as developing countries like China, India and Brazil.European leaders backed Merkel's call for a charter of sustainable economic activity to reduce economic imbalances and stabilize financial markets.
The charter would subject all financial market activities around the globe to regulation, including credit rating agencies. Merkel said the charter would be based on market forces but prevent excess and ultimately lead to the establishment of a global governance (WORLD GOVERNMENT) structure.The leaders also agreed to strengthen the International Monetary Fund and to support doubling its funds. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the IMF needs some $500 billion and called for a global new deal to be adopted to help right the world economy. The IMF's resources must be doubled to enable it to help its members swiftly and flexibly when they experience difficulties with respect to their balance of payments,Merkel said. Other key points included adopting sanctions to safeguard against tax havens and urging banks to keep larger reserves of capital. Officials said a final copy of the summit agreement would not be circulated Sunday, in order to allow European Union members not present to view it first.The ideas were based on an agenda adopted by the G20 in November and will be taken up by the European Council on March 19-20, then presented to the G20 meeting in London.U.S. President Barack Obama and other top world leaders are scheduled to attend the summit.
AMEICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGk6LG0GA4A&eurl=http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2009/02/american-form-of-government.html&feature=player_embedded
THE POWER ELITE AND THE SECRET NAZI PLAN PART 1 By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D.
February 23, 2009 NewsWithViews.com
[NOTE: As I’ve written many times before, the goal of the Power Elite (PE) is a World Socialist Government. Critical to coercing Americans to accept Socialism is the nationalization of key sectors of the economy, such as banking. I’ve indicated in the past that this type of coercion would be brought about by an economic crisis, such as the one we are currently experiencing. Relevant to this, Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas wrote We Are All Socialists Now (Newsweek, Feb. 16, 2009), and Matthew Richardson and Nouriel Roubini wrote Nationalize the Banks! We’re all Swedes Now! (The Washington Post, Feb. 15, 2009) which begins: The U.S. banking system is close to being insolvent, and unless we want to become like Japan in the 1990s—or the United States in the 1930s—the only way to save it is to nationalize it. Even Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham on ABC’s This Week (Feb. 15, 2009) indicated we should consider the possibility of nationalizing banks.
[And in case you think this crisis happened accidentally, just consider the fact that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) waived the 12 to 1 leverage ratios for the five biggest investment banks. Those banks then leveraged 40 to 1 and collapsed the worldwide financial system (January 5, 2009 Financial Sense editorial by James Quinn of the Wharton Business School). Do you really believe no one could see what the disastrous results of going from 12 to 1 leveraging to 40 to 1 would be? When these banks started taking losses, Quinn has also pointed out, their capital was immediately wiped out and the problem was dumped in the taxpayers’ laps.]
In previous columns, I’ve mentioned the secret Nazi plan described in American official Sumner Welles’ The Time for Decision (1944). It was a plan (for a Nazi loss in WWII) which would come to fruition two generations later. It included Nazi agents going underground into two successive countries to avoid detection (Paul Dickopf went underground into Switzerland in 1942). These agents would eventually rise to positions of power in those second nations.Welles must have learned of this secret plan when he was on friendly terms with the Nazi leadership long before the U.S. entered WWII. A Google search of sumner welles portraits shows a photograph of Welles and Hermann Goering on March 19, 1940. But why almost two years before the U.S. entered WWII would the Nazis plan for a loss? And why after WWII was there never an investigation of this secret plan? Robert Ludlum in his fictional The Apocalypse Watch referred to The Brotherhood of the Watch a global neo-Nazi secret organization formed in the days after the Third Reich’s defeat and exposed about 50 years later.As I’ve written before, Hitler’s rise and demise were facilitated by the PE. In the same year (1942) the Nazi agent Paul Dickoff went underground into Switzerland and the U.S. was already in the war, Standard Oil of New Jersey managers shipped the enemy’s fuel through neutral Switzerland and the enemy was shipping Allied fuel. The Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge of the heard office in Manhattan. Ford trucks were being built for the German occupation troops in France with authorization from Dearborn, Michigan. Col. Sosthenes Behn, head of ITT, flew from New York to Madrid to Berne during the war to help improve Hitler’s communications systems and improve the robot bombs that devastated London. And ITT built the Focke-Wulfs that dropped bombs on British and American troops. (Charles Higham’s Trading With the Enemy, p. xv).As I’ve also written before, I.G. Farben’s war industries (e.g. chemicals, rubber, etc.) staffed and directed Hitler’s intelligence section and ran the Nazi slave labor camps. So why at the end of WWII were 87% of Farben’s industries still intact?
At the end of the war, U.S. Justice Department attorney James Stewart Martin (author of All Honorable Men, 1950) went to Germany to sort out the relationship of American and German businesses during the war, but he was thwarted in his efforts, saying: We had not been stopped in Germany by German businesses. We had been stopped in Germany by American business. The forces that stopped us had operated from the United States but had not operated in the open. We were not stopped by a law of Congress, by an Executive Order of the President, or even by a change of policy approved by the president…. In short, whatever it was that stopped us was not the government. But it clearly had command of channels through which the government normally operates. The relative powerlessness of government… is of course not new…. National governments have stood on the sidelines while bigger operators arranged the world’s affairs. Relevant to this, it’s important to remember that the PE is NOT the government of any country, but the PE’s agents are IN the governments of countries.In order to explain what the PE was doing, it is important to look at how they operate, and John J. McCloy as an agent of the PE is a useful example of this regard. In the 1930s, PE agent McCloy’s law firm of Cravath, de Gersdorff, Swaine & Wood were attorneys for I.G. Farben. This is perhaps one reason McCloy sat in Hitler’s box at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin (because the PE is neither right nor left politically, McCloy in late July 1961 went swimming with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in the Black Sea).
On October 29 of the same year (1936), American Ambassador to Germany William E. Dodd wrote to President Wilson’s chief advisor Col. Edward M. House expressing his surprise and wonder that in spite of all the debts and all the huge losses since the great war, more than a hundred of our greater corporations have subsidiaries here and are of course involved in a great deal of the acute business which goes on. At the same time no corporation can take profits out of the country, although some I am told earn as much as half a million dollars a year…. Yet a great many of these corporations are supplying the means for rearmament, actually supplying arms. It’s strange to me that they are willing to risk the property of their stockholders in such a way.Four years later, Skull & Bones member Henry Stimson went to Washington to become President Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, and he brought McCloy with him as Assistant Secretary of War. To demonstrate the importance of McCloy, Stimson would later question whether anyone in the Administration ever acted without having a word with McCloy.McCloy’s lawfirm had as one of its clients the Rockefeller family, and during WWII McCloy was a senior member of John D. Rockefeller III’s intelligence group, the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC). With this background, McCloy established the highly secret U.S. Army’s Psychological Warfare Division at the time of D-Day in 1944. It was also during this time from 1940 to 1946that American Thomas Harrington McKittrick (an associate of J.P. Morgan Banking) was president of the Nazi-controlled Bank for International Settlements (BIS) where $378 million of the Nazis’ looted gold had been sent.Dennis Cuddy.Dennis Laurence Cuddy, historian and political analyst, received a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (major in American History, minor in political science). Dr. Cuddy has taught at the university level, has been a political and economic risk analyst for an international consulting firm, and has been a Senior Associate with the U.S. Department of Education.
EU leaders back sweeping financial regulations FEB 22,09,Germany recommends all financial bodies be subjected to appropriate oversight,DAILY TIMES
BERLIN: European leaders backed sweeping new regulations for financial markets and hedge funds at a summit on Sunday as politicians and nations scrambled to tame the global economic crisis.German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted heads of state and finance ministers from Europe’s largest economies to try to establish a common European position on economic reforms before an April 2 summit of the group of 20 nations. All financial markets, products and participants, including hedge funds and other private pools of capital, which may pose a systematic risk, must be subjected to appropriate oversight or regulation, Merkel said in a statement released on behalf of the summit members. Top officials from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain, the Netherlands and Czech Republic agreed on seven key points during their one-day meeting in Berlin, the statement said.But the call for blanket global regulation is sure to be resisted by the financial industry and may not be welcomed completely by other members of the G-20, which in addition to European nations includes the United States, China, Japan, and developing nations like India and Brazil. European leaders backed Merkel’s call for a charter of sustainable economic activity to reduce economic imbalances and stabilise financial markets.
Strengthen IMF: The charter would subject all financial market activities around the globe to regulation, including credit rating agencies. The leaders also agreed to strengthen the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and to support doubling its funds. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the IMF needed some $500 billion and called for a global new deal to be adopted to help right the world economy.Other key points included adopting sanctions to safeguard against tax havens and urging banks to keep larger reserves of capital. Officials said a final copy of the summit agreement would not be circulated on Sunday, in order to allow EU members not present to view it first.ap
Mini EU summit calls for strict financial regulation FEB 22,09
The President of the European Central Bank warned that there is no obvious way to restore trust in financial markets. Jean-Claude Trichet was speaking after talks in Berlin where European heads of state attended a German-hosted mini-summit assessing the economic crisis ahead of a major G20 summit in London in April. Mr. Trichet said the absence of any clear forecast of future developments was complicating efforts to restore trust in free market mechanisms. The summit agreed that all financial market sectors should be regulated and strictly monitored, with early warning systems in place to signal any future impending market collapses. Feb. 22, 15:03
EU nations call for better financial regulation
ANDREW WILLIS Today @ 09:18 CET
Leaders from the EU's largest economies have called for stricter regulation of the financial sector to prevent a repetition of the current crisis after meeting in Berlin on Sunday (22 February).All financial markets, products and participants - including hedge funds and other private pools of capital which may pose a systemic risk - must be subjected to appropriate oversight or regulation, a summit statement said.Sunday's meeting was called by German chancellor Angela Merkel earlier this month to help the EU hammer out a unified position ahead of the G20 meeting on 2 April, which will be attended by Barak Obama on his first visit to Europe as president of the United States. Leaders from France, Germany, the UK, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain all took part in the meeting, as well as Czech prime minister Mirek Topolanek, as Prague currently holds the EU presidency.The conclusions from the meeting will feed into two EU summits of its 27 leaders in March and the G20 gathering of developed and developing nations in London.The leaders agreed on the need to improve market transparency, setup regulation on hedge funds, crack down on tax havens and to compel banks to save more capital. We can't afford failure in London, French President Nicholas Sarkozy told reporters in Berlin after the talks. We have to succeed and we can't accept that anyone or anything will get in the way of this [G20] summit.The leaders also called for the International Monetary Fund's resources to be doubled to $500 billion. We decided that the international institutions have got to play a bigger role in working with individual countries, UK prime minister Gordon Brown said.
We decided that the international institutions should have at least $500bn, to enable them not just to deal with crises but to enable them to be able to prevent crises,The appearance of a unified position on greater regulation for financial institutions such as hedge funds can be seen as a victory for Berlin and Paris who were concerned that London was backing away from the idea. It's not a case of talking up the situation but we want to send the message that we have a real opportunity to come out strengthened from this crisis, Ms Merkel said regarding the need for a new financial framework. But Mr Topolanek painted a different picture to that of the unified front displayed by the EU leaders at a press conference after the meeting.If I put it very tenderly, the divergence in opinions was rather big, Topolanek told AFP on a plane home. It was obvious that the four countries representing the EU in the G20 (France, Germany, Britain, Italy) do not have the same opinion on a number of issues,he added.Our responsibility [as holders of the presidency] is to look for some unity. This won't be easy at all.Mr Topolanek will represent the European Union at the G20 on 2 April in London where preparations are already under way for the meeting. Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the London Metropolitan police's public order branch, told the Guardian newspaper that he had major concerns over the upcoming meeting. We've got G20 coming and I think that is being advertised on some of the sites as the highlight of what they see as a summer of rage, he said, referring to websites encouraging activists to come and demonstrate.
Major stock market indexes fall to 1997 levels By SARA LEPRO, AP Business Writer FEB 23,09
NEW YORK – Investors' sagging confidence has pulled the major stock market indexes to their lowest levels in over a decade.The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell to April 1997 levels Monday, while the Dow Jones industrial average, down about 150 points, reached its levels of October 1997 as investors succumbed to their growing worries about a recession that has no end in sight.People left and right are throwing in the towel, said Keith Springer, president of Capital Financial Advisory Services.Most financial stocks were pounded even as government agencies led by the Treasury Department said they will launch a revamped bank rescue program that includes the option of increasing government ownership in financial institutions without having to pour more taxpayer money into them.Although the government has said it doesn't want to nationalize banks, many investors are clearly still concerned that this could be a possibility as banks continue to suffer severe losses because of the recession. They're also worried that banks' losses will keep escalating as the recession sends more borrowers into default.The biggest thing I see here is the incredible pessimism, Springer said. The government is doing a lousy job of alleviating fears.The Treasury and other agencies issued a statement after The Wall Street Journal reported that Citigroup is in talks for the government to boost its stake in the bank to as much as 40 percent. Analysts said the market, which initially rose on the statement, wanted more details of the government's plans.
It's only a very partial picture of what we may get, said Quincy Krosby, chief investment strategist at The Hartford. This proverbial lack of clarity is damaging market psychology.Meanwhile, technology stocks are also falling after The Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo Inc.'s new chief executive is planning a companywide reorganization. But the selling came across the market as pessimism about the recession and its toll on companies deepened.There's no where to hide anymore,said Jim Herrick, director of equity trading at Baird & Co.The market's decline extends massive losses from last week when the major stock indexes tumbled more than 6 percent. The major indexes plunged through the lows they reached in late November, at the height of the credit crisis.In early afternoon trading, the Dow dropped 149.66, or 2.03 percent, to 7,216.01, after earlier falling to 7,188.77, its lowest level since Oct. 28, 1997.The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 16.61, or 2.16 percent, to 753.44. Earlier, the S&P fell to 750.62, its lowest level since April 1997.The technology-laden Nasdaq composite index dropped 34.77, or 2.41 percent, to 1,406.46.The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 10.46 or 2.55 percent, to 400.50.Declining issues outnumbered advancers by about 5 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to a light 793 million shares.Among tech stocks, Hewlett-Packard Co. fell $1.47, or 4.7 percent, to $29.77, and Intel Corp. dove 58 cents, or 4.5 percent, to $12.20.Other big decliners included General Electric Co., which dropped to a 14-year low of $8.80, but later traded down 33 cents, or 3.5 percent, to $9.05. Alcoa Inc. tumbled 40 cents, or 5.9 percent, to $5.86.
Some financial stocks managed to hold on to their earlier gains, including Citigroup, which rose 25 cents, or 12.8 percent, to $2.20, and Bank of America Corp., which gained 28 cents, or 7.4 percent, to $4.07. Bond prices fell Monday. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, rose to 2.80 percent from 2.79 percent late Friday. The yield on the three-month T-bill, considered one of the safest investments, rose to 0.27 percent from 0.26 percent Friday. The dollar was mixed against other major currencies, while gold prices fell. Light, sweet crude fell $1.90 to $38.13 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.Overseas, Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.99 percent, Germany's DAX index fell 1.95 percent, and France's CAC-40 slipped 0.82 percent. Earlier, Japan's Nikkei stock average fell 0.54 percent. On the Net: New York Stock Exchange: http://www.nyse.com Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.nasdaq.com
Eastern member states to hold own mini-summit
LEIGH PHILLIPS Today @ 09:24 CET
The European Union's eastern members are to hold their own separate mini-summit ahead of an emergency summit of all EU premiers and presidents in order to co-ordinate their approach to the crisis.Poland called the meeting in response to the larger, wealthier nations retreating into protectionist positions, particularly regarding their car sectors. It will take place in Brussels on 1 March on the morning of the wider summit to build a common front in defence of the single market.
We want to send a clear message that we support the European Union's position in favour of defending the common market and that we are against protectionism, Poland's Europe minister, Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, told Poland's PAP new agency.France, Italy and Spain have in recent weeks each announced packages of billions of euros in public funds for their domestic auto industries.The European Commission, normally quick to jump on such measures as market distortions, has said relatively little, although it is currently investigating Paris' €6 billion support measures for Renault and Peugeot-Citroen. Similar packages of public monies to support car companies in Italy and Spain are also under scrutiny.The scrum of eastern nations will also consider the region's tottering banks, which have not been supplied with the re-capitalisation or loan guarantees that their western counterparts have been, as their governments have not been able to afford such moves.Exacerbating the crunch in the east, the western parent banks of subsidiaries in the region have substantially reduced the credit available.Western European banks have a financial engagement of some €1.1 trillion in the region, with Austria's financial institutions particularly exposed, being owed €220 billion - equivalent to around three quarters of the country's GDP. Over the last fortnight, Vienna has been calling for a co-ordinated EU-level bail-out of the east out of fear its loans may not be able to be paid back.Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, France and Belgium are also among western Europe's big lenders to the east.However, outside Hungary and the Polish Chamber of Commerce, Austria's request has fallen on deaf ears, and Germany, likely to get stuck with much of the tab for such action, has publicly said it is opposed to an eastern bail-out.Speaking to reporters in Berlin on Sunday, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek hinted at a growing rift between the west and the east.Central and Eastern European countries [have] concerns about certain discrimination regarding for instance their access to financing by means of the European Central Bank, he said.There is certain fear that Europe - the old EU members and eurozone countries - may create a situation that will somehow secondarily affect Central and Eastern Europe, he continued, according to AFP.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso is also to attend the eastern nations' mini-summit.Separately, on Friday, the World Bank warned western EU member states not to deploy domestic counter-crisis measures that would hurt the economies of their neighbours to the east.
Latvian government falls
LEIGH PHILLIPS 20.02.2009 @ 18:02 CET
The Latvian prime minister and his government have resigned amid growing political and economic strife in the Baltic country.Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis submitted his resignation to the president, Valdis Zatlers, on Friday (20 February) afternoon after the two largest parties in the ruling four-party coalition demanded he step down.Earlier in the day, Mareks Seglins, the head of the People Party, which held the most seats in the coalition, said that his party and the Union of Greens and Farmers asked him to go.President Zatlers has said he is to immediately start talks with all parties on the formation of a new government.Mr Godmanis, of the Latvian Way party - the third largest within the coalition - survived a no-confidence motion in the parliament on 3 February.The economic crisis has hit Latvia harder than most other EU states, with the country receiving a €7.5 billion emergency bail-out from the IMF and the EU.Latvia's economy contracted by 10.5 percent year on year in the final quarter of 2008 and its GDP is expected to fall 12 percent in 2009.
The economic collapse has in turn provoked rolling civil unrest, in which thousands rioted in the capital on 13 January and farmers in February blocked roads and surrounded government buildings, ultimately winning the resignation of the agriculture minister.The fall of Mr Godmanis' coalition is the first European Union government to fall as a result of the economic crisis, and the second such collapse after Iceland.
Dublin hit by mass protests over economic crisis
HONOR MAHONY Today @ 09:18 CET
Around 120,000 citizens hit the streets of Dublin on Saturday to protest the government's handling of the economic crisis.The demonstration was organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and was the first major public signal of disapproval by the Irish people as they feel the blast of the world economic downturn.The country is officially in recession, unemployment is up, the property bubble which fuelled the booming economy in Celtic Tiger times has burst and popularity ratings for Brian Cowen's government have plummeted.ICTU general secretary David Begg said that people were full of fear and anger as the economic situation is set to worsen.Fear because their whole generation of young people, very highly educated, for whom redundancy was never in their frame of reference, don't know what is going to happen to them for the future, he told RTE radio.Anger because they know they had nothing to do with causing it.Mr Cowen has announced a package of measures designed to cut government spending by €2 billion and has previously said the government needs to cut back to the tune of €15 billion. The measure that has attracted the most criticism and which was the focus of Saturday's demonstration is a pension levy on public servants. Ahead of the protest, the government released a statement justifying its measures.
The Government recognises that the measures which it is taking are difficult and, in some cases, painful,it said.The Government is also convinced, however, that they are both necessary and fair. They are necessary because it is essential that we show a credible start on the correction of an emerging unsustainability in our public finances.A series of further protests are expected during the course of this week, the Irish Times reports, including one by civil servants on Thursday and by Dublin Bus on Saturday.Meanwhile, other public service staff including teachers and mid-ranking civil servants are also considering protests.Public sector workers feel they are being made to pay for the sins of the private sector. This feeling has been intensified as details of a scandal concerning Anglo Irish bank have kept the nation agog for much of last week. The bank, which last month was nationalised because of the size of its debt, admitted it has lent €451 million to ten clients to purchase shares in the financial institution in 2008. While the recipients of the loans have not been named, the bank has already indicated it expects that it will not get most of the money back.Ireland's protests come after news that the Latvian government fell before the weekend due to the effects of the economic crisis.Non-EU member Iceland was the first country to see a political casualty due to the world economic downturn. Its government fell on 26 January after weeks of protest. It has also been bailed out by the International Monetary Fund.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
TORAH PORTION FROM FEB 22 - 28 2009
SINCE WHAT ISRAEL READS WILL BE FULFILLED IN THAT WEEK I WILL BE PUTTING THE WEEKLY TORAH PORTION ON FOR ALL OF US TO KEEP TRACK OF ISRAEL HAPPENINGS.
TORAH PORTION FROM FEB 22 2009 6PM - FEB 28 6PM 2009
EXODUS 25:1 - 27:19
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring me an offering: of every man that giveth it willingly with his heart ye shall take my offering.
3 And this is the offering which ye shall take of them; gold, and silver, and brass,
4 And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair,
5 And rams' skins dyed red, and badgers' skins, and shittim wood,
6 Oil for the light, spices for anointing oil, and for sweet incense,
7 Onyx stones, and stones to be set in the ephod, and in the breastplate.
8 And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.
9 According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it.
10 And they shall make an ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.
11 And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown of gold round about.
12 And thou shalt cast four rings of gold for it, and put them in the four corners thereof; and two rings shall be in the one side of it, and two rings in the other side of it.
13 And thou shalt make staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold.
14 And thou shalt put the staves into the rings by the sides of the ark, that the ark may be borne with them.
15 The staves shall be in the rings of the ark: they shall not be taken from it.
16 And thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee.
17 And thou shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof.
18 And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat.
19 And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the other end: even of the mercy seat shall ye make the cherubims on the two ends thereof.
20 And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be.
21 And thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark; and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee.
22 And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.
23 Thou shalt also make a table of shittim wood: two cubits shall be the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.
24 And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, and make thereto a crown of gold round about.
25 And thou shalt make unto it a border of an hand breadth round about, and thou shalt make a golden crown to the border thereof round about.
26 And thou shalt make for it four rings of gold, and put the rings in the four corners that are on the four feet thereof.
27 Over against the border shall the rings be for places of the staves to bear the table.
28 And thou shalt make the staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold, that the table may be borne with them.
29 And thou shalt make the dishes thereof, and spoons thereof, and covers thereof, and bowls thereof, to cover withal: of pure gold shalt thou make them.
30 And thou shalt set upon the table shewbread before me alway.
31 And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold: of beaten work shall the candlestick be made: his shaft, and his branches, his bowls, his knops, and his flowers, shall be of the same.
32 And six branches shall come out of the sides of it; three branches of the candlestick out of the one side, and three branches of the candlestick out of the other side:
33 Three bowls made like unto almonds, with a knop and a flower in one branch; and three bowls made like almonds in the other branch, with a knop and a flower: so in the six branches that come out of the candlestick.
34 And in the candlestick shall be four bowls made like unto almonds, with their knops and their flowers.
35 And there shall be a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, according to the six branches that proceed out of the candlestick.
36 Their knops and their branches shall be of the same: all it shall be one beaten work of pure gold.
37 And thou shalt make the seven lamps thereof: and they shall light the lamps thereof, that they may give light over against it.
38 And the tongs thereof, and the snuffdishes thereof, shall be of pure gold.
39 Of a talent of pure gold shall he make it, with all these vessels.
40 And look that thou make them after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount.
EXODUS 26:1-37
1 Moreover thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet: with cherubims of cunning work shalt thou make them.
2 The length of one curtain shall be eight and twenty cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits: and every one of the curtains shall have one measure.
3 The five curtains shall be coupled together one to another; and other five curtains shall be coupled one to another.
4 And thou shalt make loops of blue upon the edge of the one curtain from the selvedge in the coupling; and likewise shalt thou make in the uttermost edge of another curtain, in the coupling of the second.
5 Fifty loops shalt thou make in the one curtain, and fifty loops shalt thou make in the edge of the curtain that is in the coupling of the second; that the loops may take hold one of another.
6 And thou shalt make fifty taches of gold, and couple the curtains together with the taches: and it shall be one tabernacle.
7 And thou shalt make curtains of goats' hair to be a covering upon the tabernacle: eleven curtains shalt thou make.
8 The length of one curtain shall be thirty cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits: and the eleven curtains shall be all of one measure.
9 And thou shalt couple five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves, and shalt double the sixth curtain in the forefront of the tabernacle.
10 And thou shalt make fifty loops on the edge of the one curtain that is outmost in the coupling, and fifty loops in the edge of the curtain which coupleth the second.
11 And thou shalt make fifty taches of brass, and put the taches into the loops, and couple the tent together, that it may be one.
12 And the remnant that remaineth of the curtains of the tent, the half curtain that remaineth, shall hang over the backside of the tabernacle.
13 And a cubit on the one side, and a cubit on the other side of that which remaineth in the length of the curtains of the tent, it shall hang over the sides of the tabernacle on this side and on that side, to cover it.
14 And thou shalt make a covering for the tent of rams' skins dyed red, and a covering above of badgers' skins.
15 And thou shalt make boards for the tabernacle of shittim wood standing up.
16 Ten cubits shall be the length of a board, and a cubit and a half shall be the breadth of one board.
17 Two tenons shall there be in one board, set in order one against another: thus shalt thou make for all the boards of the tabernacle.
18 And thou shalt make the boards for the tabernacle, twenty boards on the south side southward.
19 And thou shalt make forty sockets of silver under the twenty boards; two sockets under one board for his two tenons, and two sockets under another board for his two tenons.
20 And for the second side of the tabernacle on the north side there shall be twenty boards:
21 And their forty sockets of silver; two sockets under one board, and two sockets under another board.
22 And for the sides of the tabernacle westward thou shalt make six boards.
23 And two boards shalt thou make for the corners of the tabernacle in the two sides.
24 And they shall be coupled together beneath, and they shall be coupled together above the head of it unto one ring: thus shall it be for them both; they shall be for the two corners.
25 And they shall be eight boards, and their sockets of silver, sixteen sockets; two sockets under one board, and two sockets under another board.
26 And thou shalt make bars of shittim wood; five for the boards of the one side of the tabernacle,
27 And five bars for the boards of the other side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the boards of the side of the tabernacle, for the two sides westward.
28 And the middle bar in the midst of the boards shall reach from end to end.
29 And thou shalt overlay the boards with gold, and make their rings of gold for places for the bars: and thou shalt overlay the bars with gold.
30 And thou shalt rear up the tabernacle according to the fashion thereof which was shewed thee in the mount.
31 And thou shalt make a vail of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen of cunning work: with cherubims shall it be made:
32 And thou shalt hang it upon four pillars of shittim wood overlaid with gold: their hooks shall be of gold, upon the four sockets of silver.
33 And thou shalt hang up the vail under the taches, that thou mayest bring in thither within the vail the ark of the testimony: and the vail shall divide unto you between the holy place and the most holy.
34 And thou shalt put the mercy seat upon the ark of the testimony in the most holy place.
35 And thou shalt set the table without the vail, and the candlestick over against the table on the side of the tabernacle toward the south: and thou shalt put the table on the north side.
36 And thou shalt make an hanging for the door of the tent, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, wrought with needlework.
37 And thou shalt make for the hanging five pillars of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold, and their hooks shall be of gold: and thou shalt cast five sockets of brass for them.
EXODUS 27:1-19
1 And thou shalt make an altar of shittim wood, five cubits long, and five cubits broad; the altar shall be foursquare: and the height thereof shall be three cubits.
2 And thou shalt make the horns of it upon the four corners thereof: his horns shall be of the same: and thou shalt overlay it with brass.
3 And thou shalt make his pans to receive his ashes, and his shovels, and his basons, and his fleshhooks, and his firepans: all the vessels thereof thou shalt make of brass.
4 And thou shalt make for it a grate of network of brass; and upon the net shalt thou make four brasen rings in the four corners thereof.
5 And thou shalt put it under the compass of the altar beneath, that the net may be even to the midst of the altar.
6 And thou shalt make staves for the altar, staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with brass.
7 And the staves shall be put into the rings, and the staves shall be upon the two sides of the altar, to bear it.
8 Hollow with boards shalt thou make it: as it was shewed thee in the mount, so shall they make it.
9 And thou shalt make the court of the tabernacle: for the south side southward there shall be hangings for the court of fine twined linen of an hundred cubits long for one side:
10 And the twenty pillars thereof and their twenty sockets shall be of brass; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver.
11 And likewise for the north side in length there shall be hangings of an hundred cubits long, and his twenty pillars and their twenty sockets of brass; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets of silver.
12 And for the breadth of the court on the west side shall be hangings of fifty cubits: their pillars ten, and their sockets ten.
13 And the breadth of the court on the east side eastward shall be fifty cubits.
14 The hangings of one side of the gate shall be fifteen cubits: their pillars three, and their sockets three.
15 And on the other side shall be hangings fifteen cubits: their pillars three, and their sockets three.
16 And for the gate of the court shall be an hanging of twenty cubits, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, wrought with needlework: and their pillars shall be four, and their sockets four.
17 All the pillars round about the court shall be filleted with silver; their hooks shall be of silver, and their sockets of brass.
18 The length of the court shall be an hundred cubits, and the breadth fifty every where, and the height five cubits of fine twined linen, and their sockets of brass.
19 All the vessels of the tabernacle in all the service thereof, and all the pins thereof, and all the pins of the court, shall be of brass.
PROPHETS PORTION
1 KINGS 5:12-6:13
12 And the LORD gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him: and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they two made a league together.
13 And king Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men.
14 And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses: a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home: and Adoniram was over the levy.
15 And Solomon had threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains;
16 Beside the chief of Solomon's officers which were over the work, three thousand and three hundred, which ruled over the people that wrought in the work.
17 And the king commanded, and they brought great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house.
18 And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the stonesquarers: so they prepared timber and stones to build the house.
1 KINGS 6:1-13
1 And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD.
2 And the house which king Solomon built for the LORD, the length thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits.
3 And the porch before the temple of the house, twenty cubits was the length thereof, according to the breadth of the house; and ten cubits was the breadth thereof before the house.
4 And for the house he made windows of narrow lights.
5 And against the wall of the house he built chambers round about, against the walls of the house round about, both of the temple and of the oracle: and he made chambers round about:
6 The nethermost chamber was five cubits broad, and the middle was six cubits broad, and the third was seven cubits broad: for without in the wall of the house he made narrowed rests round about, that the beams should not be fastened in the walls of the house.
7 And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.
8 The door for the middle chamber was in the right side of the house: and they went up with winding stairs into the middle chamber, and out of the middle into the third.
9 So he built the house, and finished it; and covered the house with beams and boards of cedar.
10 And then he built chambers against all the house, five cubits high: and they rested on the house with timber of cedar.
11 And the word of the LORD came to Solomon, saying,
12 Concerning this house which thou art in building, if thou wilt walk in my statutes, and execute my judgments, and keep all my commandments to walk in them; then will I perform my word with thee, which I spake unto David thy father:
13 And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake my people Israel.
NEW TESTAMENT PORTION
HEBREWS 8:1-6
1 Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens;
2 A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.
3 For every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer.
4 For if he were on earth, he should not be a priest, seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law:
5 Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.
6 But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.
HEBREWS 9:23-24
23 It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
24 For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:
HEBREWS 10:1
1 For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.
TORAH PORTION FROM FEB 22 2009 6PM - FEB 28 6PM 2009
EXODUS 25:1 - 27:19
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring me an offering: of every man that giveth it willingly with his heart ye shall take my offering.
3 And this is the offering which ye shall take of them; gold, and silver, and brass,
4 And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair,
5 And rams' skins dyed red, and badgers' skins, and shittim wood,
6 Oil for the light, spices for anointing oil, and for sweet incense,
7 Onyx stones, and stones to be set in the ephod, and in the breastplate.
8 And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.
9 According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it.
10 And they shall make an ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.
11 And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown of gold round about.
12 And thou shalt cast four rings of gold for it, and put them in the four corners thereof; and two rings shall be in the one side of it, and two rings in the other side of it.
13 And thou shalt make staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold.
14 And thou shalt put the staves into the rings by the sides of the ark, that the ark may be borne with them.
15 The staves shall be in the rings of the ark: they shall not be taken from it.
16 And thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee.
17 And thou shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof.
18 And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat.
19 And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the other end: even of the mercy seat shall ye make the cherubims on the two ends thereof.
20 And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be.
21 And thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark; and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee.
22 And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.
23 Thou shalt also make a table of shittim wood: two cubits shall be the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.
24 And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, and make thereto a crown of gold round about.
25 And thou shalt make unto it a border of an hand breadth round about, and thou shalt make a golden crown to the border thereof round about.
26 And thou shalt make for it four rings of gold, and put the rings in the four corners that are on the four feet thereof.
27 Over against the border shall the rings be for places of the staves to bear the table.
28 And thou shalt make the staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold, that the table may be borne with them.
29 And thou shalt make the dishes thereof, and spoons thereof, and covers thereof, and bowls thereof, to cover withal: of pure gold shalt thou make them.
30 And thou shalt set upon the table shewbread before me alway.
31 And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold: of beaten work shall the candlestick be made: his shaft, and his branches, his bowls, his knops, and his flowers, shall be of the same.
32 And six branches shall come out of the sides of it; three branches of the candlestick out of the one side, and three branches of the candlestick out of the other side:
33 Three bowls made like unto almonds, with a knop and a flower in one branch; and three bowls made like almonds in the other branch, with a knop and a flower: so in the six branches that come out of the candlestick.
34 And in the candlestick shall be four bowls made like unto almonds, with their knops and their flowers.
35 And there shall be a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, according to the six branches that proceed out of the candlestick.
36 Their knops and their branches shall be of the same: all it shall be one beaten work of pure gold.
37 And thou shalt make the seven lamps thereof: and they shall light the lamps thereof, that they may give light over against it.
38 And the tongs thereof, and the snuffdishes thereof, shall be of pure gold.
39 Of a talent of pure gold shall he make it, with all these vessels.
40 And look that thou make them after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount.
EXODUS 26:1-37
1 Moreover thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet: with cherubims of cunning work shalt thou make them.
2 The length of one curtain shall be eight and twenty cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits: and every one of the curtains shall have one measure.
3 The five curtains shall be coupled together one to another; and other five curtains shall be coupled one to another.
4 And thou shalt make loops of blue upon the edge of the one curtain from the selvedge in the coupling; and likewise shalt thou make in the uttermost edge of another curtain, in the coupling of the second.
5 Fifty loops shalt thou make in the one curtain, and fifty loops shalt thou make in the edge of the curtain that is in the coupling of the second; that the loops may take hold one of another.
6 And thou shalt make fifty taches of gold, and couple the curtains together with the taches: and it shall be one tabernacle.
7 And thou shalt make curtains of goats' hair to be a covering upon the tabernacle: eleven curtains shalt thou make.
8 The length of one curtain shall be thirty cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits: and the eleven curtains shall be all of one measure.
9 And thou shalt couple five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves, and shalt double the sixth curtain in the forefront of the tabernacle.
10 And thou shalt make fifty loops on the edge of the one curtain that is outmost in the coupling, and fifty loops in the edge of the curtain which coupleth the second.
11 And thou shalt make fifty taches of brass, and put the taches into the loops, and couple the tent together, that it may be one.
12 And the remnant that remaineth of the curtains of the tent, the half curtain that remaineth, shall hang over the backside of the tabernacle.
13 And a cubit on the one side, and a cubit on the other side of that which remaineth in the length of the curtains of the tent, it shall hang over the sides of the tabernacle on this side and on that side, to cover it.
14 And thou shalt make a covering for the tent of rams' skins dyed red, and a covering above of badgers' skins.
15 And thou shalt make boards for the tabernacle of shittim wood standing up.
16 Ten cubits shall be the length of a board, and a cubit and a half shall be the breadth of one board.
17 Two tenons shall there be in one board, set in order one against another: thus shalt thou make for all the boards of the tabernacle.
18 And thou shalt make the boards for the tabernacle, twenty boards on the south side southward.
19 And thou shalt make forty sockets of silver under the twenty boards; two sockets under one board for his two tenons, and two sockets under another board for his two tenons.
20 And for the second side of the tabernacle on the north side there shall be twenty boards:
21 And their forty sockets of silver; two sockets under one board, and two sockets under another board.
22 And for the sides of the tabernacle westward thou shalt make six boards.
23 And two boards shalt thou make for the corners of the tabernacle in the two sides.
24 And they shall be coupled together beneath, and they shall be coupled together above the head of it unto one ring: thus shall it be for them both; they shall be for the two corners.
25 And they shall be eight boards, and their sockets of silver, sixteen sockets; two sockets under one board, and two sockets under another board.
26 And thou shalt make bars of shittim wood; five for the boards of the one side of the tabernacle,
27 And five bars for the boards of the other side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the boards of the side of the tabernacle, for the two sides westward.
28 And the middle bar in the midst of the boards shall reach from end to end.
29 And thou shalt overlay the boards with gold, and make their rings of gold for places for the bars: and thou shalt overlay the bars with gold.
30 And thou shalt rear up the tabernacle according to the fashion thereof which was shewed thee in the mount.
31 And thou shalt make a vail of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen of cunning work: with cherubims shall it be made:
32 And thou shalt hang it upon four pillars of shittim wood overlaid with gold: their hooks shall be of gold, upon the four sockets of silver.
33 And thou shalt hang up the vail under the taches, that thou mayest bring in thither within the vail the ark of the testimony: and the vail shall divide unto you between the holy place and the most holy.
34 And thou shalt put the mercy seat upon the ark of the testimony in the most holy place.
35 And thou shalt set the table without the vail, and the candlestick over against the table on the side of the tabernacle toward the south: and thou shalt put the table on the north side.
36 And thou shalt make an hanging for the door of the tent, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, wrought with needlework.
37 And thou shalt make for the hanging five pillars of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold, and their hooks shall be of gold: and thou shalt cast five sockets of brass for them.
EXODUS 27:1-19
1 And thou shalt make an altar of shittim wood, five cubits long, and five cubits broad; the altar shall be foursquare: and the height thereof shall be three cubits.
2 And thou shalt make the horns of it upon the four corners thereof: his horns shall be of the same: and thou shalt overlay it with brass.
3 And thou shalt make his pans to receive his ashes, and his shovels, and his basons, and his fleshhooks, and his firepans: all the vessels thereof thou shalt make of brass.
4 And thou shalt make for it a grate of network of brass; and upon the net shalt thou make four brasen rings in the four corners thereof.
5 And thou shalt put it under the compass of the altar beneath, that the net may be even to the midst of the altar.
6 And thou shalt make staves for the altar, staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with brass.
7 And the staves shall be put into the rings, and the staves shall be upon the two sides of the altar, to bear it.
8 Hollow with boards shalt thou make it: as it was shewed thee in the mount, so shall they make it.
9 And thou shalt make the court of the tabernacle: for the south side southward there shall be hangings for the court of fine twined linen of an hundred cubits long for one side:
10 And the twenty pillars thereof and their twenty sockets shall be of brass; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver.
11 And likewise for the north side in length there shall be hangings of an hundred cubits long, and his twenty pillars and their twenty sockets of brass; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets of silver.
12 And for the breadth of the court on the west side shall be hangings of fifty cubits: their pillars ten, and their sockets ten.
13 And the breadth of the court on the east side eastward shall be fifty cubits.
14 The hangings of one side of the gate shall be fifteen cubits: their pillars three, and their sockets three.
15 And on the other side shall be hangings fifteen cubits: their pillars three, and their sockets three.
16 And for the gate of the court shall be an hanging of twenty cubits, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, wrought with needlework: and their pillars shall be four, and their sockets four.
17 All the pillars round about the court shall be filleted with silver; their hooks shall be of silver, and their sockets of brass.
18 The length of the court shall be an hundred cubits, and the breadth fifty every where, and the height five cubits of fine twined linen, and their sockets of brass.
19 All the vessels of the tabernacle in all the service thereof, and all the pins thereof, and all the pins of the court, shall be of brass.
PROPHETS PORTION
1 KINGS 5:12-6:13
12 And the LORD gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him: and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they two made a league together.
13 And king Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men.
14 And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses: a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home: and Adoniram was over the levy.
15 And Solomon had threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains;
16 Beside the chief of Solomon's officers which were over the work, three thousand and three hundred, which ruled over the people that wrought in the work.
17 And the king commanded, and they brought great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house.
18 And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the stonesquarers: so they prepared timber and stones to build the house.
1 KINGS 6:1-13
1 And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD.
2 And the house which king Solomon built for the LORD, the length thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits.
3 And the porch before the temple of the house, twenty cubits was the length thereof, according to the breadth of the house; and ten cubits was the breadth thereof before the house.
4 And for the house he made windows of narrow lights.
5 And against the wall of the house he built chambers round about, against the walls of the house round about, both of the temple and of the oracle: and he made chambers round about:
6 The nethermost chamber was five cubits broad, and the middle was six cubits broad, and the third was seven cubits broad: for without in the wall of the house he made narrowed rests round about, that the beams should not be fastened in the walls of the house.
7 And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.
8 The door for the middle chamber was in the right side of the house: and they went up with winding stairs into the middle chamber, and out of the middle into the third.
9 So he built the house, and finished it; and covered the house with beams and boards of cedar.
10 And then he built chambers against all the house, five cubits high: and they rested on the house with timber of cedar.
11 And the word of the LORD came to Solomon, saying,
12 Concerning this house which thou art in building, if thou wilt walk in my statutes, and execute my judgments, and keep all my commandments to walk in them; then will I perform my word with thee, which I spake unto David thy father:
13 And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake my people Israel.
NEW TESTAMENT PORTION
HEBREWS 8:1-6
1 Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens;
2 A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.
3 For every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer.
4 For if he were on earth, he should not be a priest, seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law:
5 Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.
6 But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.
HEBREWS 9:23-24
23 It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
24 For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:
HEBREWS 10:1
1 For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
IRAN CAN MAKE ONE ATOM BOMB LOOKOUT
AUDIO Max Keizer of the Oracle interviewed on BBC radio 5 live.Rekovik on the Thames....serious banking crisis in london in next few months.State sanctioned Socialism-Nationalization of the banking industry. We'd call it Marxism with Capitalist flavour.The current financial tsunami,.collapse of banks anticipated. Reason for new Banking Secrecy Rules.Sterling a giant ponzi scheme.....Government promulgating fraudulent policies. Screw savers, back speculators.
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2009/02/max-keizer-of-oracle-interviewed-on-bbc.html#links
John Loeffler Steel on Steel: The Global Geopolitical Tour.
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2009/02/2212009-global-geopolitical-tour-if-we.html#links
NEW BANKING POWERS - VIDEO
uk/1/hi/business/7901814.stm
THIS WILL BE THE BEGINING OF BANK NATIONALIZATIONS THAT WILL BE POWERFUL AND TAKE WORLDWIDE CONTROL,JUST WATCH AND SEE.
New Banking Act comes into effect FEB 21,09
Customers of a failed bank can be compensated sooner under the act
The UK's new Banking Act, which gives greater powers of intervention to the Bank of England, is coming into force. The act enables the Bank to intervene more quickly to help troubled banks and protect investors. The Bank will be able to give hidden support to stricken banks, with the aim of maintaining financial stability. However, critics of the act say it throws a cloak of secrecy around the banking world, which could be detrimental for consumers. The act allows certain decisions to be exempt from disclosure under Freedom of Information laws. If a bank collapses, the act allows for savers to receive compensation within a week. The idea is that, if there is a bank that gets into trouble, to insulate it and make the wider impact of that less Peter Thal-Larsen, Financial Times
Call for £20bn economy boost
At present, payouts for savers with failed banks can take weeks, leaving many customers concerned about access to money in the interim. Transferring customers from a failed bank to another should also now be easier. One of the Bank of England's formal objectives under the act is to maintain stability. Peter Thal-Larsen, banking editor of the Financial Times, told the BBC's Working Lunch programme the act will basically allow financial authorities to take early action to move savers' deposits from a failing bank before tackling other problems. The idea is that, if there is a bank that gets into trouble, to insulate it and make the wider impact of that less, but I don't think they can actually stop banks from getting into trouble in the future, he said.
Stigma
Colin Melvin, chief executive of Hermes Equity Ownership Services, said: We welcome the new Banking Act and the enhancement it will bring to the regulatory framework, including the strengthening of the Bank of England. However, we need to do more to stimulate growth and restore confidence and trust in the financial sector.The new laws make permanent temporary laws introduced in the wake of the collapse of Northern Rock, which was nationalised after confidence in it disappeared. BBC business correspondent Joe Lynam said that until recently it was unusual for Britain's banks to apply for emergency funding from the Bank of England due to the stigma attached and the ensuing drop in confidence. Northern Rock's very public appeal for funds accelerated its demise 18 months ago. The new legislation is unlikely to prevent banks collapsing but it arms the financial authorities with the ability to act behind the scenes in the overall interest of the economy, our correspondent adds.
The Big Banks vs. America: A Roundtable with David Kotok and Josh Rosner
By Chris Whalen - January 29th, 2009, 11:56AM
Banking bailouts were sold to us as a necessary evil because we were told only our existing network of banks could irrigate the economy with cash and so rescue industry. Now we know they can’t do that because their legacy absorbs all the resources, it would appear more sensible to let the old banks fail and start a new generation of banks. After all, the best credit risk is the institution that has no debt. So you could say the error wasn’t to let Lehman collapse, but not to have allowed all the banks to collapse in order to have a fresh start. And right now the job market has plenty of bankers available to set up and run new institutions. With just a quarter of the $800 billion or so already splashed about you could start a whole new Wall St. It’s not a matter of saying no more banking system but no more fatally compromised old banking system burdened with structural insolvency.(Ban)king is dead. long live (ban)king.
A reader of The IRA
The term bad bank is being tossed around Washington dinner tables this week, a sign that the situation facing the largest banks is reaching a boiling point. It is amazing to us to see how little people understand the choices facing us with the big banks, how narrow those choices truly are and how the numbers in terms of losses are so BIG that they will ultimately force us to do the right thing. A couple of points:
First, IRA’s estimate for accumulated bank charge offs for 2009 is in the neighborhood of $1 trillion vs. $1.5 trillion in Tier 1 Risk Based Capital at all US banks today. Good news, though, is that 2/3 to 3/4 of that loss number comes from the top 4 - Citigroup (NYSE:C), Bank of America (NYES:BAC), JPMorganChase (NYSE:JPM) and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), in that order of risk profile.Since most of the toxicity in the banking system is concentrated among the larger banks, with perhaps US Bacorp (NYSE:USB) on down viable in the long run, perhaps we can rebuild the industry using the next round of TARP funds to bulk up these relatively smaller banks and thereby end up with 10-15 larger super regionals in the $300-$500 billion asset range. There may even be banks of this size still doing business under the current names of C, JPM, BAC, etc, but these new banks will have new owners and creditors.Second, the Good Bank/Bad Bank debate is really a political battle between the large banks listed above plus Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) et al among the Sell Side survivors in NYC vs. the rest of the industry and the US economy. In preparing their plans for review by the White House, we hear that the Fed and OCC are supporting further bailouts for the larger banks, while the rest of the industry is being resolved and recapitalized a la Washington Mutual and Lehman Brothers.
Perhaps we ought to feed the good bank parts of the too big to fail crowd, a crowd prone to leverage and bad risk management, to the smaller and plain vanilla bankers that comprise the nominal majority of the industry. This would solve many things including reducing the lobbying power that Wall Street has in Washington. Come to think of it, President Obama should think about banning lobbying by any company participating in the TARP.Remember that the entire banking industry stands in front of the taxpayers in terms of loss absorption at the FDIC, so you can understand why the smaller banks in the industry are SERIOUSLY PISSED OFF at the large banks and their minions in the Obama Administration like Tim Geithner and Robert Rubin. Oh, and don’t forget Chairman Ben Bernanke and the entire Fed board of governors. These leading officials are increasingly talking the side of the large banks in the battle over limited financial resources, a fact that is causing the community bankers to rise in anger. Stay tuned.Third, juxtapose the Fed/OCC position of let’s bail out the big banks (equity and debt) which Tim Geithner established in the Bear Stearns and AIG rescues, and reiterated in his confirmation testimony, with the modified tough love position of Sheila Bair, where she proposes to buy bad assets from the Big Four Zombies w/o a resolution. It seems clear that both sides of the equation in Washington are prepared to socialize the large bank losses and in particular subsidize the bond holders at public expense, an act of generosity that could cost the industry and taxpayers another $1 trillion before all is said and done.But at least with the modified tough love proposed by Bair, the US government still would clearly end up as the explicit owner and the existing equity and preferred would be diluted out of existence as the quid pro quo for the bad asset purchases. That is the little detail people in Washington still don’t understand. Indeed, if you think about C as perhaps accounting for one third of the $1 trillion IRA charge off estimate, then Washington must impose a haircut on debt or ask the banking industry and the taxpayer to subsidize the loss.
The better course for the economy outside NYC is to resolve these large institutions over the course of 2009 and beyond, first by diluting the equity (common and preferred) and effecting a conservatorship a la Fannie/Freddie. This eliminates the issue for the markets. A formal open bank assistance might be a default under the ISDA contract template, something the Fed’s conflicted madarins would not initially accept, but when the charge-offs at C rise above total risk based capital and keep rising, perhaps minds in DC will begin to change. Then we can haircut the Big Four Bank debt in a negotiated deal pre-receivership, and sell the non M2M bank assets and liabilities to stronger hands. This is the traditional American way of dealing with insolvency in the absence of political meddling by the Fed and the Congress. Let Sheila Bair and the FDIC do the job and we can make the economy rebound with surprising speed. It only takes political courage. We have the money.
Roundtable: David Kotok & Josh Rosner
For additional perspective on this issue, The IRA spoke last week to Josh Rosner of Graham Fisher & Co and David Kotok of Cumberland Advisors:The IRA: The basic question everyone’s asking is what do we do with the big banks, particularly C and BAC and the growing tension between the cost of supporting the big banks w/o a resolution and the rest of the industry, which is being resolved according to the law. You can see our discussion of the issue and our view of loss rates above.
Rosner: First, I am very cautious about making loss estimates because your loss number could be very low. I can actually draw a scenario that gets us well above that level of charge offs, especially if we assume worsening macro conditions and their further impacts on ADC books, corporate defaults and other areas outside of the structured exposures.
The IRA: We shall so stipulate. Let’s just say we all agree that the actual level of 2009 losses will probably not be below our 2x 1990 estimate.
Kotok: At the end of the day, what difference does it make? Either way, the path to a solution must deal with the number whatever it ends up to be.
Rosner: Yes and this is why I wanted to have this conversation. I am hearing very clearly from within the regulatory community that it is their primary concern that whatever they are planning is predicated on the notion that we must keep the large banks alive. But if we start off with saving the big banks as the point of departure, then there is no way we can marry that to an efficient or effective proposal. Lets define the solution based first on what is workable not by tying a hand behind our back with preconceptions.
Kotok: I am hearing the same thing. The motivation of keeping big banks alive is driven by a desire to avoid another Lehman on the Obama watch. I hear people saying that we cannot have another Lehman, therefore we cannot permit a failure…
The IRA: And by that we mean a good old fashioned failure of a publicly listed parent holding company a la Lehman or Washington Mutual, where the equity was entirely wiped out and the unsecured debt holders got pennies on the dollar?
Kotok: Yes, precisely. Hence, whatever it takes we must avoid it. It is the Lehman failure and the contagion that is driving this policy.
The IRA: Well this just confirms that nobody in Washington understand the problem. As we have heard from many people in the industry who did the diligence on Lehman, there was no way for a private buyer to do the deal, so bankruptcy was the only choice w/o a very large, several hundred billion public bailout. The fact that the Fed and Treasury professional staff support this type of idiocy, over tinme, will destabilize the political consensus in this country behind an independent central bank. We might as well just make the Fed part of Treasury now.
Kotok: It looks to me as well that we now have Paul Volcker saying that we cannot tolerate another Lehman failure. Maybe Chris has some thoughts on this?
The IRA: My conversations with Chairman Volcker are OTR unless he says otherwise.
Rosner: In the Lehman failure, we had the tree that came down in a windstorm that nobody had prepared to allow to fall. But when you fell a tree deliberately, that is another matter. Remember, even if you wipe out these banks, the debt holders are guaranteed under the new temporary FDIC powers so the tree can safely fall.
Kotok: If they can find a way to fell the tree without new risk of contagion, perhaps, but remember that the big banks are also the primary dealers of US government bonds and agency paper. Of the 16 primary dealers that remain, nine of them are foreign owned. Therein lies the other problem.
The IRA: So fine, we resolve C and sell the bank, the branches and the capital markets business to the new investors on the other side. Take a couple of years to complete the process for say C, BAC and JPM. Not sure if WFC will need a restructure. Look, Barclays bought the Lehman broker dealer on the other side of a bankruptcy and JPM bought a clean WaMu. This is the way to fix the problem. The loss rates coming out of C, then BAC, then JPM this year are going to be so large that a managed sale process is the only rational choice. The equity is impaired in economic terms. Thus the question comes, what do you do with the debt? I don’t think Paul Volcker is embracing a subsidy for debt holders of banks, but maybe so.
Rosner: I think what you are going to see is, on the one hand, the Fed, Treasury and OCC put together a proposal for a continuing or institutionalization of the insurance wrap approach used with C and BAC. This is a useless approach, in my view, and as we saw in the case of C because it created greater market confusion, which assets were circled, etc. The market does not seem to be confident based on the performance of C stock. It is also unclear how it will be possible to get an independent view of the government’s share of losses since they will be managed by the banks themselves.
The IRA: Nobody in the Congress or the White House wants to acknowledge that the policy prescriptions coming from the Fed and Treasury are badly flawed when it comes to bank solvency. The market liquidity measures have had success, but the save the big banks approach by the Fed is just more of the same nonsense that cause the problem in the first place.
Rosner: Exactly. In operational terms, there are no longer institutions that are too big to be resolved. As we discussed with the tree analogy, that is different from ‘failing’. Any risk of a run on C or the other banks is now ameliorated. The recently enacted changes to guarantees on deposits, non-interest bearing transactions accounts, etc, addressed that issue. The other systemic issue was counterparty risk, but with the qualified financial contract rule just put in place by the FDIC that risk is also largely gone and you can resolve a bank’s counterparty exposures into a good bank/bad bank configuration with little problem and without creating larger systemic risk. If the a counterparty’s financial contracts are adequately collateralized, then they can go with the good bank, but the FDIC must retain unilateral power as receiver to reject or accept contracts. The notion that we can’t allow C to be wound down and broken up is a spurious argument. I think this arguement has less to with Lehman and more to do with the fact that the Fed of New York and the Board have always benefited from the failure of small institutions and the absorption of those assets by the big banks. There is no way that they can stomach seeing their regulatory power dissipated by those institutions now being broken up and sold. Perhaps we have to go back to the question of whether it makes sense for the Fed to be a regulator as well as a central bank.
The IRA: Especially to investors outside of the New York district and even outside the Fed’s immediate jurisdiction, to foreign investors. But whether anyone at the Fed or Treasury likes it or not, we are talking about the absorption by the US Treasury of at least half a trillion in losses for the top three banks in the next 12-18 months if an FDIC resolution is to be avoided. Putting the ill-informed discussion in Washington aside, we see a continuation of the open bank assistance now in place for C, with asset sales and an eventual pre-pack for the debt holders, in a process that lasts years. The dealers will be kept open. If we use the power of time and changes in accounting rules, the C bond holders might see some recovery but make no mistake that the bond holders of C are the current owners in economic terms.
Rosner: If the FDIC, which is supposed to be the sole and non-politically motivated regulator in charge of winding down troubled institutions, play their cards right, they may come closer to what we all agree is good policy in terms of forcing a resolution. I would guess that the bad bank approach we have heard the FDIC float would be to buy the bad assets. You mark the assets to value (not market price) in a relatively fair way, closer to what a mark plus a reversal of the liquidity discount would suggest and then buy them. If the bank is then able to privately raise 50% of the capital that it would take to get them to CAMELS level 1 or 2 the government can invest the rest at the same terms. If they can’t do it then they are out of luck. This is not nationalization, many of these banks are ill enough that in any other environment we would just resolve them. The government would probably take equity warrants or hopefully new preferred. Unfortunately, the FDIC can’t own straight equity and I hate the idea of warrants. Warrants create a conflict where regulators can’t resolve an unsafe institutions because lobbyists will say if you resolve that institution you will be wiping out taxpayer assets.They also push off the day of dilution. People forget that Chrysler was bailed out in 1980 and after they returned to profitability they almost succeeded in having Congress rip up the warrants.
The IRA: The taxpayer equity in C is already gone, at least in economic terms. David, are you playing in this investment opportunity Rosner describes?
Kotok: No and I think that as soon as you do anything conditional it fails.
Rosner: Well, but understand the motive. The FDIC is essentially telling the markets what bad assets it will buy and then offers an opportunity for investors to participate. Banks that are able to raise money in this way are given another chance. Those that cannot, then the FDIC can go back to the Fed and Treasury and say look, we tried, this bank needs to be resolved.Then we take all the assets into the FDIC.
Kotok: Tell me who sells this to whom and under what authorities does it occur?
Rosner: If the FDIC determined C is sick enough, were it not politically blocked by the Fed and OCC, then the FDIC has the authority to resolve C tomorrow.
The IRA: We are reminded of one of the drafts of the TARP legislation where somebody inserted language that would have allowed the FDIC unilateral authority to declare an institution insolvent without first getting a declaration of same from the primary regulator. Needless to say, the provision was not included in the final bill, but this illustrates the civil war that rages between the Fed and OCC, on the one hand, and the FDIC and the state regulators on the other. This issue of resolving the larger banks has been a political issue going back to Paul Volcker’s day. Democracy is inefficient.
Kotok: The Fed has a problem here because it cannot function without the dealers. The lesson of Lehman was that a foreign government ended up making the decision about the failure of a primary dealer. I hear that the FSA and the Bank of England stopped Barclays from advancing a deal with Lehman and essentially the BOE, through Barclays, put requirements on the deal that the Fed could not swallow. Or Bernanke decided that he did to want to lose $180 billion of the taxpayers money and have to account for this to the Congress later. Because he couldn’t explain it, nobody would believe him, but today if he said he needed $180 billion to prevent another Lehman they would give it to him. Bernanke changed his story on Lehman, don’t forget, from saying that they did not bring us a plan at the NABE luncheon last year right after the Lehman bankruptcy to his current story which is we did not have the legal authority. Geithner took the same lack of authority position in his testimony.
The IRA: Well, we were speaking to one investor who actually did the diligence and he said that the fact that Lehman had outsourced much of the record keeping for their MBS conduit and portfolio was a major obstacle to completing a deal. What is the view on Geithner? Looks like a confirmation?
Rosner: Yes, the conservative Republicans refuse to skewer this guy because they are afraid that there is a socialist in the wings.
The IRA: You mean Larry Summers? How could an avowed socialist be any worse than the statist policies followed by Geithner, Paulson and Bernanke today? We think the conservatives are making a big mistake turning their backs on the community bankers. The small banks will be paying higher insurance premiums for decades to offset the large bank losses to the DIF.
Kotok: Bill Dudley will go to the NY Fed presidency and he’ll be fine from a policy perspective, but it remains to be seen if he can hammer out deals in the internal battles. Geithner is sufficiently wounded that he is not going to be a factor, so the drivers end up as Volcker and Summers, in my view. My question to you Chris, tell me if I am right, but Volcker is the elder statesman here. Volcker will propose, Obama will approve and Geithner will implement. Do you agree?
The IRA: Well, I don’t think that the final battle internally between Rubin and Volcker has been decided. IMHO, Paul Volcker and Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers, represent very different and ultimately incompatible world views. Volcker is all about public service, transparency and fairness. Rubin and also Summers represent political duplicity and malfeasance on a grand scale, especially when you look at their role in blocking regulation of OTC derivatives and structured finance. Ultimately, one tendency or the other will prevail and if the winner is Volcker, then Rubin must be publicly rejected by Obama, especially as the situation at C unfolds and the true cost of the large bank rescue is made public. Otherwise the Democrats end up owning this mess politically.
Kotok: They will reject Rubin, but you have known Paul Volcker for a long time. Did you ever think you would see the day when he would go before the Congress and embrace a tax scofflaw?
The IRA: No, it is an indication of the fear and uncertainty that prevails within the Obama Administration and in our society. Our leaders including Volcker are grasping for straws and Geithner is a very slender reed indeed. There are some conservatives in the House who will be glad to see Geithner confirmed. They plan to use him as a punching bag, especially with conservative audience that are antithetical to the big New York banks and Wall Street. But Geithner seems to have Volcker’s full support.
Rosner: I don’t think that it is Volcker at this point, but rather Summers on a day-to-day basis that will be calling in the plays that Geithner will execute. Unlike Paulson, I expect Geithner will have to manage up and report back to Summers and the White House. He is expected to be on the team executing the President’s policies and not creating his own. My only concern with Summers is that while he is a fine economist, he is not a financial markets guy either.
The IRA: We’d be happier with Summers if he would publicly acknowledge the policy mistakes of which he was a part. I’m not sure there is any hope of turning Larry Summers into a proponents of resolving the large banks.
Rosner: Summers is just as capable of being misdirected by the same Wall Street inputs as caused this mess. We need to somehow communicate to Summers et al, though the media if necessary, that the managed breakup of the big New York banks does not necessarily mean a systemic failure and another crisis. I believe that we can restructure these banks without a resolution, wipe the equity and maybe the preferred, and start from there.
The IRA: How do you avoid a haircut for the C bond holders if we see loss rates at 5-6% of total loans and leases? A 30% loss rate at C wipes out the equity several times.
Kotok: I agree. How do you restructure these banks without a bankruptcy for the parent, especially given the loss estimate from you and Chris among others?
Rosner: The answer is that the FDIC has the power to abrogate contracts and seize institutions, we have already guaranteed the debt holders. The Machiavellian mandarins at the Treasury and the Fed seem to have sold us on the notion of taking equity warrants. It means that if the FDIC comes in to do their jobs, they must wipe out the taxpayer equity.
Kotok: But the problem you have is how do you get the bond holders to agree? These are very loss-averse, well-organized investors. Why should they agree to a haircut? This is why the sub-debt of Fannie and Freddie has not been touched.
The IRA: At least not yet. As we’ve said before, the loss numbers from the GSEs and the large banks will be so large that we will no longer have a choice but to embrace a resolution and receivership. We’ll leave it there. Thanks.
Questions? Comments? info@institutionalriskanalytics.com
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STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES
LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
Spring flooding forecast for southern Manitoba Friday, February 20, 2009 | 3:51 PM CT CBC News
River waters are once again forecasted to rise in southern Manitoba this spring but flood forecasters don't foresee any major disasters. (CBC)It could be a wet spring in southern Manitoba, so communities are being urged to prepare volunteers to hold back the rising tide.The Manitoba government released the first flood outlook of the year on Thursday and it suggests the province is on pace for the fourth highest flood levels on record.While there has been average snowfall this winter, soil moisture levels are 150 per cent higher than normal, which means the ground won't be able to absorb much water come spring thaw, according to Manitoba Water Stewardship (MWS).As a result, emergency planners have contacted communities along the Red River to warn them. Near-record water levels are expected along the Red River Valley, the Interlake, and areas around the Souris and Pembina rivers.Don Brennan, spokesperson for the Emergency Measures Organization (EMO), told CBC that detailed plans are already in the works to deal with flooding in those areas.
Failing to plan is planning to fail.
—Don Brennan, Emergency Measures OrganizationBut the best-laid plans aren't any good without volunteers to help carry them out, he said.Volunteers are absolutely essential. Especially in Manitoba we depend a lot on volunteers and they should be revisiting the volunteer list to see who's ready and willing, Brennan said, adding the EMO is working closely with municipalities to get equipment to the regions before the flooding starts.While there could be cause for some evacuations, the potential for major disaster is small, Brennan said.This is done every single year. We bring the evacuation committee together, not that we anticipate evacuations, but failing to plan is planning to fail,he said.The forecast is based on the assumption the province will receive average precipitation until the spring thaw. Should that hold, officials predict a flood of inconvenience, one that affects fields and municipal roads, but is not expected to damage homes or communities.It would affect the transportation system and two ring-dyke communities would have to have partial closure — those would be Morris and St. Adolphe, said MWS spokesperson Steve Topping.
Minor, localized flooding could occur during the early part of the run-off due to ice jams and, while the probability of major ice jams on larger rivers is only average, these larger ice jams cannot be ruled out, says the flood forecast by MWS.
No repeat of 1997 flood
Should the province receive more than average precipitation leading to the thaw, we could experience the second-highest water levels recorded, but they will still fall far short of what has been called the Flood of the Century in 1997, according to MWS.
Even with unfavourable weather, peak water levels on the Red are predicted to be significantly lower than 1997. Under present conditions, there is less than a five per cent chance of a flood comparable to 1997, the flood forecast states.That flood, the most severe in the region since 1826, caused $4.4 billion in damages along the Red River Valley between Winnipeg and Grand Forks, N.D. About 80,000 people were evacuated from their homes.The 2009 outlook also calls for much less concern to communities along the Assiniboine River, where the flood potential is listed as average.The risk is average to below average in the Westman area from Riding Mountain to The Pas and in the north of the province.
Fresh snowstorm to hit parts of U.S. Northeast By Haitham Haddadin Haitham Haddadin –Fri Feb 20, 4:42 pm ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A fresh snowstorm is expected to hit parts of the U.S. Northeast starting this weekend, possibly dumping as much as a foot of snow in the northernmost reaches of the region, forecasters said on Friday.The main thrust of this fast clipper system will be in New England as key Northeastern cities dodge the storm.Below-normal temperature readings on average across the Northeast Sunday to Tuesday could spell an uptick in demand for home heating oil in the world's biggest market for the fuel.Washington, Philadelphia and New York will probably miss a big snow, but New England will not, said AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist John Kocet. Up to 12 inches of snow were possible from central New Hampshire to northern New Brunswick, he noted on the company's website.Andrew Rosenthal, a meteorologist with private forecaster WeatherBug.com, noted that the storm approaching the East Coast late Saturday into Sunday will likely bring light snow for the interior Northeast but significant accumulations closer to the coast, especially into New England.Before heading east, the storm system reaches the northern Plains Friday evening, spreading snow across the Dakotas, Iowa and Minnesota, Rosenthal said on the WeatherBug.com website.Temperatures in Northeastern states average 0-3 degrees Fahrenheit below normal on Sunday, 2-4 F below normal Monday and 3-6 F below normal Tuesday, said DTN Meteorlogix.Heating load is expected to average near to above normal Friday through Tuesday, the forecaster noted.
However, DTN's 6 to 10 day forecast sees temperatures near to above normal.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, March heating oil futures finished down 0.78 cent at $1.1967 per gallon on Friday, well above session lows of $1.1470.Meanwhile, in the New York Harbor cash market, heating oil differentials were marginally lower on Friday with supplies seen ample to meet any uptick in demand, traders said.
Government data on Thursday showed that in the PADD 1 East Coast region, heating oil stocks fell a little last week and stood 3 percent below year-ago levels, but in the New England section the inventories were up on a weekly basis.Stephen Schork, editor of the Schork Report, pointed out that the data was bearish, noting that a 700,000-barrel draw in national inventories of heating oil last week was a third of what we normally see at this point in the season.
MOSTLY DRY SATURDAY
Weather Channel's Weather.com said the Boston to Washington megalopolis will be dry Saturday with mostly sunny skies.But the Midwestern clipper storm that will approach the Northeast is expected to spread snow into western Upstate New York and western Pennsylvania later that day, and by Sunday southern New England, Boston and Providence could pick up several inches.Maine could be New England's big snow winner Sunday into Monday with locally over a foot possible, Weather.com added.The remainder of the Northeast will start the week dry but cold with temperatures 5 to 15 degrees below average for the most part,it noted, adding temperatures rise later though some rain or snow was due in Upstate New York and New England. (Editing by Jim Marshall)
SOROS VIDEO OIL AS A WEAPON
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kao5vH4m5ec&eurl=http://www.infowars.com/soros-admits-lindsey-williams-assertion-oil-is-a-weapon/&feature=player_embedded
LINDSAY WILLIAMS PREDCTIONS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UomBdZYObh0&eurl=http://www.infowars.com/soros-admits-lindsey-williams-assertion-oil-is-a-weapon/&feature=player_embedded
Soros Confirms Lindsey William’s Assertion Oil is a Weapon
Kurt Nimmo Infowars February 20, 2009
If you scrub the above YouTube video to 3 minutes, 45 seconds, you will hear the globalist George Soros at the elite confab last month in Davos, Switzerland, admit that the price of oil is being used as a weapon against the enemies of the prevailing world order, i.e, the New World Order. Soros pegs these enemies as Venezuela, Iran, and Russia. Chavez, declares Soros, his days are numbered.In Iran, the price of oil will lead to the defeat Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and bring in a “more reasonable regime,that is to say a regime that takes orders from the global elite.
In the case of Russia, Soros is worried. He believes the falling price of oil and the resulting social and political chaos in that country will prompt Putin and the Russian leadership into some foreign adventure… to divert attention, possibly in Ukraine or elsewhere in the neighborhood. Soros confirms in spades the prediction of Lindsey Williams, who told Alex Jones on several occasions that the global elite have planned to drastically reduce the price of oil in order to take out the oil-producing states and also foment a world-wide economic depression. America will see a financial collapse so great that it will take years to come out of it, Williams told Alex Jones on November 21, 2008. On February 18, Pastor Williams, appearing on Alex Jones TV, updated and added details to his prediction, based on insider information.Listening to George Soros, one might get the idea that the radical drop in the price of oil is simply a result of market dynamics and a coincidental opportunity to deal a crushing blow to enemies of the prevailing world order, when in fact it is a carefully orchestrated event. George Soros knows this, but he is not about to tell you.
MUSLIM NATIONS
EZEKIEL 38:1-12
1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2 Son of man, set thy face against Gog,(RULER) the land of Magog,(RUSSIA) the chief prince of Meshech(MOSCOW)and Tubal,(TOBOLSK) and prophesy against him,
3 And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech(MOSCOW) and Tubal:
4 And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,(GOD FORCES THE RUSSIA-MUSLIMS TO MARCH) and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords:
5 Persia,(IRAN,IRAQ) Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:
6 Gomer,(GERMANY) and all his bands; the house of Togarmah (TURKEY)of the north quarters, and all his bands:(SUDAN,AFRICA) and many people with thee.
7 Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.
8 After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.
9 Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee.(RUSSIA-EGYPT AND MUSLIMS)
10 Thus saith the Lord GOD; It shall also come to pass, that at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought:
11 And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates,
12 To take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land.
ISAIAH 17:1
1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
PSALMS 83:3-7
3 They (ARABS,MUSLIMS) have taken crafty counsel against thy people,(ISRAEL) and consulted against thy hidden ones.
4 They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.
5 For they (MUSLIMS) have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee:(TREATIES)
6 The tabernacles of Edom,and the Ishmaelites;(ARABS) of Moab, and the Hagarenes;
7 Gebal, and Ammon,(JORDAN) and Amalek;(SYRIA) the Philistines (PALESTINIANS) with the inhabitants of Tyre;(LEBANON)
DANIEL 11:40-43
40 And at the time of the end shall the king of the south( EGYPT) push at him:(EU DICTATOR IN ISRAEL) and the king of the north (RUSSIA AND MUSLIM HORDES OF EZEK 38+39) shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over.
41 He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon.(JORDAN)
42 He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape.
43 But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.
EZEKIEL 39:1-8
1 Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog,(LEADER OF RUSSIA) and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech (MOSCOW) and Tubal: (TUBOLSK)
2 And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north parts,(RUSSIA) and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel:
3 And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand.
4 Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands,( ARABS) and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured.
5 Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.
6 And I will send a fire on Magog,(NUCLEAR BOMB) and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I am the LORD.
7 So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel.
8 Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord GOD; this is the day whereof I have spoken.
JOEL 2:3,20,30-31
3 A fire(NUCLEAR BOMB) devoureth before them;(RUSSIA-ARABS) and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
20 But I will remove far off from you the northern army,(RUSSIA,MUSLIMS) and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great things.(SIBERIAN DESERT)
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.(NUCLEAR BOMB)
31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS WILL BE USED.
PSALMS 97:3
3 A fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies round about.
REVELATION 14:18-20
18 And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe.
19 And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.
20 And the winepress was trodden without the city,(JERUSALEM) and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.(200 MILES) (THE SIZE OF ISRAEL)
ISAIAH 66:15-18
15 For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.
16 For by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh: and the slain of the LORD shall be many.
17 They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the LORD.
18 For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory.
ISAIAH 26:21
21 For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.(WW3,1/2 earths population die).
ISAIAH 13:6-13 KJV
6 Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.
7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt:(FROM FRIGHT)
8 And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.
9 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.
10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.
11 And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.
12 I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.
13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.
ISAIAH 24:17-23 KJV
17 Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth.
18 And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake.
19 The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly.
20 The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again.
21 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth.
22 And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited.
23 Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the LORD of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously.
2 TIMOTHY 3:1
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous (DANGEROUS) times shall come.
JOEL 2:3,30
3 A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.
EZEKIEL 20:47
47 And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.
ZEPHANIAH 1:18
18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD'S wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.
MALACHI 4:1
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
REVELATION 8:7
7 The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
REVELATION 9:18
18 By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.
HALF OF EARTHS POPULATION DIE DURING THE 7 YR TRIBULATION.(THESE VERSES ARE JUDGEMENT SCRIPTURES NOT RAPTURE SCRIPTURES)
LUKE 17:34-37
34 I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.
35 Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
36 Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
37 And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.(Christians have new bodies,this is the people against Jerusalem during the 7 yr treaty)(Christians bodies are not being eaten by the birds).
MATTHEW 24:37-51
37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
40 Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
41 Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
42 Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.
43 But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.
44 Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.
45 Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season?
46 Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.
47 Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.
48 But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;
49 And shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken;
50 The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of,
51 And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
US IRAN - NOGOTIATIONS - AUDIO
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2009/02/nuclear-confrontation-watch-this.html#links
Iran holds enough uranium for bomb By Daniel Dombey in Washington
February 20 2009 00:51
Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought.If such a quantity were further enriched it could produce more than 20kg of fissile material – enough for a bomb.It appears that Iran has walked right up to the threshold of having enough low enriched uranium to provide enough raw material for a single bomb, said Peter Zimmerman, a former chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.The new figures come in a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, released on Thursday. This revealed that Iran’s production of low enriched uranium had previously been underestimated.When the agency carried out an annual stocktaking of Natanz in mid-November Iran had produced 839kg of low enriched uranium hexafluoride – more than 200kg more than previously thought. Tehran produced an additional 171kg by the end of January.It’s sure certain that if they didn’t have it [enough] when the IAEA took these measurements, they will have it in a matter of weeks, Mr Zimmerman said.Iran’s success in reaching such a breakout capacity – a stage that would allow it to produce enough fissile material for a bomb in a matter of months – crosses a red line that for years Israel has said it would not accept.UN officials emphasise that to produce fissile material Iran would have to reconfigure its Natanz plant to produce high enriched uranium rather than low enriched uranium – a highly visible step that would take months – or to shift its stockpile to a clandestine site.No such sites have been proved to exist, although for decades Iran concealed evidence of its nuclear programme.A senior UN official added that countries usually waited until they had an enriched uranium stockpile sufficient for several bombs before proceeding to develop fissile material. He conceded that Iran now had enough enriched uranium for one bomb.Do they have enough low enriched uranium to produce a significant quantity [enough high enriched uranium for a bomb]? he said.In theory this is possible, [although] with the present configuration at Natanz it isn’t.
David Albright, the head of the Institute for Science and International Security, said: If Iran did decide to build nuclear weapons, it’s entering an era in which it could do so quickly.The Financial Times Limited 2009.
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.
A-BOMB EFFECTS
http://www.geocities.com/athens/agora/4526/index1.html
http://www.hiroshima-cdas.or.jp/HICARE/en/12/index.html
Damages Caused by Atomic Bombs
The Manhattan Project
The United States concealed its project to develop an atomic bomb under the name Manhattan Engineer District. Popularly known as the Manhattan Project, it carried out the first successful atomic explosion on July 16, 1945, in a deserted area called Jornada del Muerto (Journey of the dead) near Alamagordo, New Mexico.
Dropping the First Atomic Bomb
At 2:45 A.M. local time, the Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber loaded with an atomic bomb, took off from the US air base on Tinian Island in the western Pacific. Six and a half hours later, at 8:15 A.M. Japan time, the bomb was dropped and it exploded a minute later at an estimated altitude of 580 +- 20 meters over central Hiroshima.
The Hiroshima Bomb Size: length - 3 meters, diameter - 0.7 meters.
Weight: 4 tons. Nuclear material: Uranium 235. Energy released: equivalent to 12.5 kilotons of TNT. Code name: Little Boy.
Initial Explosive Conditions
Maximum temperature at burst point: several million degrees centigrade. A fireball of 15-meters radius formed in 0.1 millisecond, with a temperature of 300,000 degrees centigrade, and expanded to its huge maximum size in one second. The top of the atomic cloud reached an altitude of 17,000 meters.
Black Rain
Radioactive debris was deposited by black rain that fell heavily for over an hour over a wide area.
Demaging Effects of the Atomic Bomb
Thermal Hear. Intense thermal heat emitted by the fireball caused severe burns and loss of eyesight. Thermal burns of bare skin occurred as far as 3.5 kilometers from ground zero (directly below the burst point). Most people exposed to thermal rays within 1-kilometer radius of ground zero died. Tile and glass melted; all combustible materials were consumed.
Blast. An atomic explosion causes an enormous shock wave followed instanteneously by a rapid expansion of air called the blast; these represent roughtly half the explosion's released energy. Maximum wind pressure of the blast: 35 tons per square meter. Maximum wind velocity: 440 meters per second. Wooden houses within 2.3 kilometers of ground zero collapsed. Concrete buildings near ground zero (thus hit by the blast from above) had ceilings crushed and windows and doors blown off. Many people were trapped under fallen strunctures and burned to death.
Radiation. People exposure within 500 meters of ground zero was fatal. People exposed at distances of 3 to 5 kilometers later showed symptoms of aftereffects, including radiation-induced cancers.
Bodily Injuries
Acute symptoms. Symptoms appearing in the first four months were called acute. Besides burns and wounds, they included: general malaise, fatigue, headaches, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, abnormally low white blood cell count, bloody discharge, anemia, loss of hair.
Aftereffects. Prolonged injuries were associated with aftereffects. The most serious in this category were: keloids (massive scar tissue on burned areas), cataracts, leukemia and other cancers.
Atomic Demographics
Population. The estimated pre-bomb population was 300,000 to 400,000. Because official documents were burned, the exact population is uncertain.
Deaths. With an uncertain population figure, the death toll could only be estimated. According to data submitted to the United Nations by Hiroshima City in 1976, the death count reached 140,000 (plus or minus 10,000) by the end of December, 1945.
Health Card Holders. Persons qualifying for treatment under the A-bomb Victims Medical Care law of 1957 received Health Cards; holders as of March 31, 1990, numbered 352,550.
Nagasaki. The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki exploded at 11:02 A.M. on August 9. Using plutonium with an explosive power of 20 kilotons of TNT-equivalent, it left an estimated 70,000 dead by the end of 1945, although both population and the deaths are uncertain.
GM, Chrysler ask for billions in Canadian aid Chrysler resubmits U.S. plan to Canadian authorities Saturday, February 21, 2009 | 12:31 AM ET CBC News
People walk through the parking lot at the General Motors Canada Oshawa Car Assembly Plant in Oshawa, Ont., on Tuesday. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)General Motors has outlined a restructuring plan that would cut its Canadian workforce to 7,000 and seek as much as $7 billion from the federal and Ontario governments, while Chrysler is requesting around $2.8 billion in aid.GM didn't specify how much it will ask for, but Reuters quoted federal Industry Minister Tony Clement as saying the company is asking for between $6 and $7 billion.GM expects there will be no further plant closures in Canada, but it plans to slash executive salaries by 10 per cent, cut benefits to hourly employees and build new models at its Ontario plants.Under the plan, GM's Canadian workforce — which numbered 20,000 in 2005 and currently stands at 12,500 — would be pared down to 7,000 by 2010.Clement said Friday he's encouraged that GM is committed to not closing any more Canadian plants.We're not bailing out pension plans. Let me be crystal clear on that.—Tony Clement, Federal Industry Minister.This is an existential moment for the Canadian car industry. Everyone needs to come to the table. Executives have to cut their salaries and costs,he said.What that means specifically, I'm leaving up to the automakers. We're in constant contact with the union and the automakers. We're following their discussions. The only thing I've said to both of them is Canada has to be cost-competitive.GM Canada had already been offered $3 billion by the Ontario and federal governments, but it later declined that aid, saying it didn't need it immediately.
Possible showdown over pensions
GM wants the Canadian Auto Workers agreement to achieve long-term cost reductions, including pensions.Pensions are important for General Motors Canada, because we've been here for 100 years and we have more than three retirees for every active worker. That ratio is actually increasing and will actually move up to five to one, said David Paterson, GM Canada's vice-president of corporate and environmental affairs.We really need to get at those disproportionate legacy costs that our competitors do not share and find ways to stop the growth in those costs.CAW president Ken Lewenza stressed that pensions must be protected.The GM plan was underfunded even when it was profitable,he said at a Friday evening news conference in Toronto.I don’t think it’s necessary to go into the pockets of our pensioners.Our pensioners deserve the respect that they received when they signed on to retire.
Clement said the companies have to do the math themselves.But we're not bailing out pension plans, he said. Let me be crystal clear on that.Clement said he would need to see specifics before he could commit any taxpayers' money.
No Canada-specific plan from Chrysler
We understand the severity of the auto industry, said Chris Buckley, head of the local in Oshawa, Ont.We understand what it means to be competitive in nature. So we’ll do what we can in a responsible manner in order to protect our members' interests and our retirees' interests.Even though Friday was the deadline for the companies to put in their restructuring plans, Chrysler had no Canada-specific plan ready to submit. Instead, the company simply resubmitted the plan offered to Washington on Tuesday.Chrysler CEO Reid Bigland said in a letter to Clement and Ontario Economic Development Minister Michael Bryant that the plan submitted to the U.S. Treasury was an integrated one that includes Canadian operations.Chrysler requested aid from the federal and provincial governments proportionate to the $9 billion US asked of Washington. That would be around $2.8 billion Cdn.Our members could work for nothing every day and not resolve the global financial crisis or the loss of market share.—— Chris Buckley, CAW OshawaBenoît Charette, editor of l'Annuel de L'Automobile, criticized GM and Chrysler's plans for a lack of specifics.What this tells me today is they're not ready, he told CBC News from Montreal. They improvised a lot but they need money to continue the improvisation.They haven't done their work, and today, basically what they presented was a pile of general stuff and we're going nowhere with this.Auto analyst Tony Faria with the University of Windsor expected most of the job losses set for Canada have already been announced.But long-term, certainly GM and Chrysler, and Ford as well, are going to be looking for significant concessions from the Canadian Auto Workers in line with what the UAW is coming up with in the U.S. And in the future, they’re certainly going to be evaluating labour costs between Canada and the U.S., said Faria. On Tuesday, GM and Chrysler asked for $21.6 billion US in additional aid from Washington.GM, which had previously received $13.4 billion, asked for an additional $16.6 billion, bringing its total to $30 billion. Chrysler, which had secured $4 billion in December, asked for $5 billion more.Both companies are also cutting 50,000 jobs in an effort to turn operations around.Ford has said it will not likely need immediate assistance.North American automakers are suffering from their slowest sales in 26 years and dwindling operating cash.Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said earlier his province won't put a limit on how much it's willing to spend on a bailout until it knows how many jobs will be affected by the automakers' proposals.
THE GAY,HOMOSEXUAL NAME IS JUST A MEDIA MADE NAME,I FROM NOW ON WILL BE CALLING GAY,HOMOSEXUALS THE TRUTH,THE SODOMITE RAINBOW GROUP SINCE ITS A PROUD CULT BUILT ON RIGHTS,BUT ARE HATERS OF OTHERS RIGHTS.
SPEECHLESS SILENCING CHRISTIANS - VIDEO
http://www.silencingchristians.com/
ISAIAH 66:15
15 For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.
ISAIAH 26:21
21 For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.(WW3,1/2 earths population die).
MALACHI 4:1
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
REVELATION 19:17-21
17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;
18 That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.
19 And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.
20 And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
21 And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.
MEDIA MATTERS Censorship query uncovers pro-gay activist,Spokesman worked at station that silenced Christian program February 20, 2009 11:40 pm Eastern By Drew Zahn 2009 WorldNetDaily
A Michigan television station agreed to broadcast a Christian documentary critical of the gay rights movement, but later backed out – and now a family values organization is questioning whether the station's about-face was influenced by a former newsroom executive who is a homosexual activist. As WND reported, WOOD-TV of Grand Rapids, Mich., originally agreed to air the hour-long paid program Speechless: Silencing Christians, a documentary seeking to expose the agenda of homosexual activists and their impact on families and freedom of religion. The station later canceled the agreement shortly after the Human Rights Campaign, a pro-homosexual organization, issued a national alert against the film urging people to call for its cancellation. The American Family Association of Michigan, however, has now learned that Trevor Thomas, the deputy communications director for the HRC in Washington, D.C., once worked in WOOD-TV's newsroom. Gary Glenn, president of AFA-Michigan, said in a statement to WOOD-TV General Manager Diane Kniowski that he originally suspected the cancellation was merely a matter of political correctness, but now wonders how deeply the connection runs between Thomas and the station. Now, Glenn wrote to Kniowski, we learn that a public spokesman for the so-called Human Rights Campaign – the national homosexual activist group that claimed credit for pressuring your station to censor and breach its agreement to air AFA's paid documentary – is a former long-time WOOD-TV newsroom executive who while holding that position was allowed by the station to actively and publicly campaign against the Marriage Protection Amendment approved by Michigan voters in 2004. That new information, Glenn continued, leads us to question whether the real story is that WOOD-TV management was unduly influenced by or even acted in collusion with a former high-level staffer who you allowed to openly campaign for homosexual activists' political agenda while with the station and who now promotes that agenda full-time nationwide.
According to the HRC website, Thomas worked as an assignment editor and news producer at WOOD-TV from at least September 2001 through November 2004. During his tenure at the station, Thomas also wrote an essay for The Grand Rapids Press, speaking out against Michigan's 2004 marriage amendment. Following its publication, he served on a number of college panels on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues. Thomas' work also includes a three-year tenure on the board of directors for the Network of Western Michigan: a non-profit that aides the GLBT community. Two television station professionals, according to a Michigan Messenger report, denied any hint of collusion between Thomas and the station, and scoffed at the AFA description of Thomas' news room producer position as either an executive or a high-level staffer.The Messenger reached Thomas by phone, but he declined to comment on the allegations of collusion. A WOOD-TV statement released following cancellation of Speechless suggested the station was attempting to back out of the controversy over the program. Our station is being bombarded with calls and messages, and we find ourselves in the middle of someone else's fight, Kniowski said in the statement. We are removing ourselves from this matter.Glenn, however, says the timing of WOOD-TV's cancellation announcement – coming only an hour after the HRC's action alert was issued – suggests there may have been an intentional coordination. He said WOOD-TV's claim that it cancelled the broadcast to avoid controversy is simply nonsensical in light of the station's actual actions, which were tailor-made to generate as much controversy and publicity as possible.The question, Glenn continued, is whether WOOD-TV was influenced by its former editor and producer to handle it this way on purpose to make sure its censorship of the AFA video got as much publicity as possible and their former newsroom executive's new employer got the credit.Speechless, hosted by talk show host Janet Parshall, emphasizes the media's role in promotion of homosexuals' radical agenda, and includes examples of how television shows and movies such as Friends,Will & Grace,The L-Word,The War at Home,ER and Entourage attempt to persuade viewers that aversions to homosexuality stem from bigotry and ignorance. Speechless explores the homosexual lobby's impact on school curriculums. Videos promoted as anti-bullying actually endorsed gay lifestyles, and students were forced to view them during school hours. It claims homosexual lobbyists also push for gay literature in schools. According to the program, the homosexual activist agenda demands same-sex marriage, teaches children that homosexuality is normal, promotes homosexual service in the armed forces, pushes for hate crime laws that threaten freedom of speech, calls for laws forcing Christian business to hire homosexuals and insists upon reserving minority status and preferential treatment for them. If you think that agenda is bad for America, you must do something, a female voiceover states.
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2009/02/max-keizer-of-oracle-interviewed-on-bbc.html#links
John Loeffler Steel on Steel: The Global Geopolitical Tour.
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2009/02/2212009-global-geopolitical-tour-if-we.html#links
NEW BANKING POWERS - VIDEO
uk/1/hi/business/7901814.stm
THIS WILL BE THE BEGINING OF BANK NATIONALIZATIONS THAT WILL BE POWERFUL AND TAKE WORLDWIDE CONTROL,JUST WATCH AND SEE.
New Banking Act comes into effect FEB 21,09
Customers of a failed bank can be compensated sooner under the act
The UK's new Banking Act, which gives greater powers of intervention to the Bank of England, is coming into force. The act enables the Bank to intervene more quickly to help troubled banks and protect investors. The Bank will be able to give hidden support to stricken banks, with the aim of maintaining financial stability. However, critics of the act say it throws a cloak of secrecy around the banking world, which could be detrimental for consumers. The act allows certain decisions to be exempt from disclosure under Freedom of Information laws. If a bank collapses, the act allows for savers to receive compensation within a week. The idea is that, if there is a bank that gets into trouble, to insulate it and make the wider impact of that less Peter Thal-Larsen, Financial Times
Call for £20bn economy boost
At present, payouts for savers with failed banks can take weeks, leaving many customers concerned about access to money in the interim. Transferring customers from a failed bank to another should also now be easier. One of the Bank of England's formal objectives under the act is to maintain stability. Peter Thal-Larsen, banking editor of the Financial Times, told the BBC's Working Lunch programme the act will basically allow financial authorities to take early action to move savers' deposits from a failing bank before tackling other problems. The idea is that, if there is a bank that gets into trouble, to insulate it and make the wider impact of that less, but I don't think they can actually stop banks from getting into trouble in the future, he said.
Stigma
Colin Melvin, chief executive of Hermes Equity Ownership Services, said: We welcome the new Banking Act and the enhancement it will bring to the regulatory framework, including the strengthening of the Bank of England. However, we need to do more to stimulate growth and restore confidence and trust in the financial sector.The new laws make permanent temporary laws introduced in the wake of the collapse of Northern Rock, which was nationalised after confidence in it disappeared. BBC business correspondent Joe Lynam said that until recently it was unusual for Britain's banks to apply for emergency funding from the Bank of England due to the stigma attached and the ensuing drop in confidence. Northern Rock's very public appeal for funds accelerated its demise 18 months ago. The new legislation is unlikely to prevent banks collapsing but it arms the financial authorities with the ability to act behind the scenes in the overall interest of the economy, our correspondent adds.
The Big Banks vs. America: A Roundtable with David Kotok and Josh Rosner
By Chris Whalen - January 29th, 2009, 11:56AM
Banking bailouts were sold to us as a necessary evil because we were told only our existing network of banks could irrigate the economy with cash and so rescue industry. Now we know they can’t do that because their legacy absorbs all the resources, it would appear more sensible to let the old banks fail and start a new generation of banks. After all, the best credit risk is the institution that has no debt. So you could say the error wasn’t to let Lehman collapse, but not to have allowed all the banks to collapse in order to have a fresh start. And right now the job market has plenty of bankers available to set up and run new institutions. With just a quarter of the $800 billion or so already splashed about you could start a whole new Wall St. It’s not a matter of saying no more banking system but no more fatally compromised old banking system burdened with structural insolvency.(Ban)king is dead. long live (ban)king.
A reader of The IRA
The term bad bank is being tossed around Washington dinner tables this week, a sign that the situation facing the largest banks is reaching a boiling point. It is amazing to us to see how little people understand the choices facing us with the big banks, how narrow those choices truly are and how the numbers in terms of losses are so BIG that they will ultimately force us to do the right thing. A couple of points:
First, IRA’s estimate for accumulated bank charge offs for 2009 is in the neighborhood of $1 trillion vs. $1.5 trillion in Tier 1 Risk Based Capital at all US banks today. Good news, though, is that 2/3 to 3/4 of that loss number comes from the top 4 - Citigroup (NYSE:C), Bank of America (NYES:BAC), JPMorganChase (NYSE:JPM) and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), in that order of risk profile.Since most of the toxicity in the banking system is concentrated among the larger banks, with perhaps US Bacorp (NYSE:USB) on down viable in the long run, perhaps we can rebuild the industry using the next round of TARP funds to bulk up these relatively smaller banks and thereby end up with 10-15 larger super regionals in the $300-$500 billion asset range. There may even be banks of this size still doing business under the current names of C, JPM, BAC, etc, but these new banks will have new owners and creditors.Second, the Good Bank/Bad Bank debate is really a political battle between the large banks listed above plus Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) et al among the Sell Side survivors in NYC vs. the rest of the industry and the US economy. In preparing their plans for review by the White House, we hear that the Fed and OCC are supporting further bailouts for the larger banks, while the rest of the industry is being resolved and recapitalized a la Washington Mutual and Lehman Brothers.
Perhaps we ought to feed the good bank parts of the too big to fail crowd, a crowd prone to leverage and bad risk management, to the smaller and plain vanilla bankers that comprise the nominal majority of the industry. This would solve many things including reducing the lobbying power that Wall Street has in Washington. Come to think of it, President Obama should think about banning lobbying by any company participating in the TARP.Remember that the entire banking industry stands in front of the taxpayers in terms of loss absorption at the FDIC, so you can understand why the smaller banks in the industry are SERIOUSLY PISSED OFF at the large banks and their minions in the Obama Administration like Tim Geithner and Robert Rubin. Oh, and don’t forget Chairman Ben Bernanke and the entire Fed board of governors. These leading officials are increasingly talking the side of the large banks in the battle over limited financial resources, a fact that is causing the community bankers to rise in anger. Stay tuned.Third, juxtapose the Fed/OCC position of let’s bail out the big banks (equity and debt) which Tim Geithner established in the Bear Stearns and AIG rescues, and reiterated in his confirmation testimony, with the modified tough love position of Sheila Bair, where she proposes to buy bad assets from the Big Four Zombies w/o a resolution. It seems clear that both sides of the equation in Washington are prepared to socialize the large bank losses and in particular subsidize the bond holders at public expense, an act of generosity that could cost the industry and taxpayers another $1 trillion before all is said and done.But at least with the modified tough love proposed by Bair, the US government still would clearly end up as the explicit owner and the existing equity and preferred would be diluted out of existence as the quid pro quo for the bad asset purchases. That is the little detail people in Washington still don’t understand. Indeed, if you think about C as perhaps accounting for one third of the $1 trillion IRA charge off estimate, then Washington must impose a haircut on debt or ask the banking industry and the taxpayer to subsidize the loss.
The better course for the economy outside NYC is to resolve these large institutions over the course of 2009 and beyond, first by diluting the equity (common and preferred) and effecting a conservatorship a la Fannie/Freddie. This eliminates the issue for the markets. A formal open bank assistance might be a default under the ISDA contract template, something the Fed’s conflicted madarins would not initially accept, but when the charge-offs at C rise above total risk based capital and keep rising, perhaps minds in DC will begin to change. Then we can haircut the Big Four Bank debt in a negotiated deal pre-receivership, and sell the non M2M bank assets and liabilities to stronger hands. This is the traditional American way of dealing with insolvency in the absence of political meddling by the Fed and the Congress. Let Sheila Bair and the FDIC do the job and we can make the economy rebound with surprising speed. It only takes political courage. We have the money.
Roundtable: David Kotok & Josh Rosner
For additional perspective on this issue, The IRA spoke last week to Josh Rosner of Graham Fisher & Co and David Kotok of Cumberland Advisors:The IRA: The basic question everyone’s asking is what do we do with the big banks, particularly C and BAC and the growing tension between the cost of supporting the big banks w/o a resolution and the rest of the industry, which is being resolved according to the law. You can see our discussion of the issue and our view of loss rates above.
Rosner: First, I am very cautious about making loss estimates because your loss number could be very low. I can actually draw a scenario that gets us well above that level of charge offs, especially if we assume worsening macro conditions and their further impacts on ADC books, corporate defaults and other areas outside of the structured exposures.
The IRA: We shall so stipulate. Let’s just say we all agree that the actual level of 2009 losses will probably not be below our 2x 1990 estimate.
Kotok: At the end of the day, what difference does it make? Either way, the path to a solution must deal with the number whatever it ends up to be.
Rosner: Yes and this is why I wanted to have this conversation. I am hearing very clearly from within the regulatory community that it is their primary concern that whatever they are planning is predicated on the notion that we must keep the large banks alive. But if we start off with saving the big banks as the point of departure, then there is no way we can marry that to an efficient or effective proposal. Lets define the solution based first on what is workable not by tying a hand behind our back with preconceptions.
Kotok: I am hearing the same thing. The motivation of keeping big banks alive is driven by a desire to avoid another Lehman on the Obama watch. I hear people saying that we cannot have another Lehman, therefore we cannot permit a failure…
The IRA: And by that we mean a good old fashioned failure of a publicly listed parent holding company a la Lehman or Washington Mutual, where the equity was entirely wiped out and the unsecured debt holders got pennies on the dollar?
Kotok: Yes, precisely. Hence, whatever it takes we must avoid it. It is the Lehman failure and the contagion that is driving this policy.
The IRA: Well this just confirms that nobody in Washington understand the problem. As we have heard from many people in the industry who did the diligence on Lehman, there was no way for a private buyer to do the deal, so bankruptcy was the only choice w/o a very large, several hundred billion public bailout. The fact that the Fed and Treasury professional staff support this type of idiocy, over tinme, will destabilize the political consensus in this country behind an independent central bank. We might as well just make the Fed part of Treasury now.
Kotok: It looks to me as well that we now have Paul Volcker saying that we cannot tolerate another Lehman failure. Maybe Chris has some thoughts on this?
The IRA: My conversations with Chairman Volcker are OTR unless he says otherwise.
Rosner: In the Lehman failure, we had the tree that came down in a windstorm that nobody had prepared to allow to fall. But when you fell a tree deliberately, that is another matter. Remember, even if you wipe out these banks, the debt holders are guaranteed under the new temporary FDIC powers so the tree can safely fall.
Kotok: If they can find a way to fell the tree without new risk of contagion, perhaps, but remember that the big banks are also the primary dealers of US government bonds and agency paper. Of the 16 primary dealers that remain, nine of them are foreign owned. Therein lies the other problem.
The IRA: So fine, we resolve C and sell the bank, the branches and the capital markets business to the new investors on the other side. Take a couple of years to complete the process for say C, BAC and JPM. Not sure if WFC will need a restructure. Look, Barclays bought the Lehman broker dealer on the other side of a bankruptcy and JPM bought a clean WaMu. This is the way to fix the problem. The loss rates coming out of C, then BAC, then JPM this year are going to be so large that a managed sale process is the only rational choice. The equity is impaired in economic terms. Thus the question comes, what do you do with the debt? I don’t think Paul Volcker is embracing a subsidy for debt holders of banks, but maybe so.
Rosner: I think what you are going to see is, on the one hand, the Fed, Treasury and OCC put together a proposal for a continuing or institutionalization of the insurance wrap approach used with C and BAC. This is a useless approach, in my view, and as we saw in the case of C because it created greater market confusion, which assets were circled, etc. The market does not seem to be confident based on the performance of C stock. It is also unclear how it will be possible to get an independent view of the government’s share of losses since they will be managed by the banks themselves.
The IRA: Nobody in the Congress or the White House wants to acknowledge that the policy prescriptions coming from the Fed and Treasury are badly flawed when it comes to bank solvency. The market liquidity measures have had success, but the save the big banks approach by the Fed is just more of the same nonsense that cause the problem in the first place.
Rosner: Exactly. In operational terms, there are no longer institutions that are too big to be resolved. As we discussed with the tree analogy, that is different from ‘failing’. Any risk of a run on C or the other banks is now ameliorated. The recently enacted changes to guarantees on deposits, non-interest bearing transactions accounts, etc, addressed that issue. The other systemic issue was counterparty risk, but with the qualified financial contract rule just put in place by the FDIC that risk is also largely gone and you can resolve a bank’s counterparty exposures into a good bank/bad bank configuration with little problem and without creating larger systemic risk. If the a counterparty’s financial contracts are adequately collateralized, then they can go with the good bank, but the FDIC must retain unilateral power as receiver to reject or accept contracts. The notion that we can’t allow C to be wound down and broken up is a spurious argument. I think this arguement has less to with Lehman and more to do with the fact that the Fed of New York and the Board have always benefited from the failure of small institutions and the absorption of those assets by the big banks. There is no way that they can stomach seeing their regulatory power dissipated by those institutions now being broken up and sold. Perhaps we have to go back to the question of whether it makes sense for the Fed to be a regulator as well as a central bank.
The IRA: Especially to investors outside of the New York district and even outside the Fed’s immediate jurisdiction, to foreign investors. But whether anyone at the Fed or Treasury likes it or not, we are talking about the absorption by the US Treasury of at least half a trillion in losses for the top three banks in the next 12-18 months if an FDIC resolution is to be avoided. Putting the ill-informed discussion in Washington aside, we see a continuation of the open bank assistance now in place for C, with asset sales and an eventual pre-pack for the debt holders, in a process that lasts years. The dealers will be kept open. If we use the power of time and changes in accounting rules, the C bond holders might see some recovery but make no mistake that the bond holders of C are the current owners in economic terms.
Rosner: If the FDIC, which is supposed to be the sole and non-politically motivated regulator in charge of winding down troubled institutions, play their cards right, they may come closer to what we all agree is good policy in terms of forcing a resolution. I would guess that the bad bank approach we have heard the FDIC float would be to buy the bad assets. You mark the assets to value (not market price) in a relatively fair way, closer to what a mark plus a reversal of the liquidity discount would suggest and then buy them. If the bank is then able to privately raise 50% of the capital that it would take to get them to CAMELS level 1 or 2 the government can invest the rest at the same terms. If they can’t do it then they are out of luck. This is not nationalization, many of these banks are ill enough that in any other environment we would just resolve them. The government would probably take equity warrants or hopefully new preferred. Unfortunately, the FDIC can’t own straight equity and I hate the idea of warrants. Warrants create a conflict where regulators can’t resolve an unsafe institutions because lobbyists will say if you resolve that institution you will be wiping out taxpayer assets.They also push off the day of dilution. People forget that Chrysler was bailed out in 1980 and after they returned to profitability they almost succeeded in having Congress rip up the warrants.
The IRA: The taxpayer equity in C is already gone, at least in economic terms. David, are you playing in this investment opportunity Rosner describes?
Kotok: No and I think that as soon as you do anything conditional it fails.
Rosner: Well, but understand the motive. The FDIC is essentially telling the markets what bad assets it will buy and then offers an opportunity for investors to participate. Banks that are able to raise money in this way are given another chance. Those that cannot, then the FDIC can go back to the Fed and Treasury and say look, we tried, this bank needs to be resolved.Then we take all the assets into the FDIC.
Kotok: Tell me who sells this to whom and under what authorities does it occur?
Rosner: If the FDIC determined C is sick enough, were it not politically blocked by the Fed and OCC, then the FDIC has the authority to resolve C tomorrow.
The IRA: We are reminded of one of the drafts of the TARP legislation where somebody inserted language that would have allowed the FDIC unilateral authority to declare an institution insolvent without first getting a declaration of same from the primary regulator. Needless to say, the provision was not included in the final bill, but this illustrates the civil war that rages between the Fed and OCC, on the one hand, and the FDIC and the state regulators on the other. This issue of resolving the larger banks has been a political issue going back to Paul Volcker’s day. Democracy is inefficient.
Kotok: The Fed has a problem here because it cannot function without the dealers. The lesson of Lehman was that a foreign government ended up making the decision about the failure of a primary dealer. I hear that the FSA and the Bank of England stopped Barclays from advancing a deal with Lehman and essentially the BOE, through Barclays, put requirements on the deal that the Fed could not swallow. Or Bernanke decided that he did to want to lose $180 billion of the taxpayers money and have to account for this to the Congress later. Because he couldn’t explain it, nobody would believe him, but today if he said he needed $180 billion to prevent another Lehman they would give it to him. Bernanke changed his story on Lehman, don’t forget, from saying that they did not bring us a plan at the NABE luncheon last year right after the Lehman bankruptcy to his current story which is we did not have the legal authority. Geithner took the same lack of authority position in his testimony.
The IRA: Well, we were speaking to one investor who actually did the diligence and he said that the fact that Lehman had outsourced much of the record keeping for their MBS conduit and portfolio was a major obstacle to completing a deal. What is the view on Geithner? Looks like a confirmation?
Rosner: Yes, the conservative Republicans refuse to skewer this guy because they are afraid that there is a socialist in the wings.
The IRA: You mean Larry Summers? How could an avowed socialist be any worse than the statist policies followed by Geithner, Paulson and Bernanke today? We think the conservatives are making a big mistake turning their backs on the community bankers. The small banks will be paying higher insurance premiums for decades to offset the large bank losses to the DIF.
Kotok: Bill Dudley will go to the NY Fed presidency and he’ll be fine from a policy perspective, but it remains to be seen if he can hammer out deals in the internal battles. Geithner is sufficiently wounded that he is not going to be a factor, so the drivers end up as Volcker and Summers, in my view. My question to you Chris, tell me if I am right, but Volcker is the elder statesman here. Volcker will propose, Obama will approve and Geithner will implement. Do you agree?
The IRA: Well, I don’t think that the final battle internally between Rubin and Volcker has been decided. IMHO, Paul Volcker and Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers, represent very different and ultimately incompatible world views. Volcker is all about public service, transparency and fairness. Rubin and also Summers represent political duplicity and malfeasance on a grand scale, especially when you look at their role in blocking regulation of OTC derivatives and structured finance. Ultimately, one tendency or the other will prevail and if the winner is Volcker, then Rubin must be publicly rejected by Obama, especially as the situation at C unfolds and the true cost of the large bank rescue is made public. Otherwise the Democrats end up owning this mess politically.
Kotok: They will reject Rubin, but you have known Paul Volcker for a long time. Did you ever think you would see the day when he would go before the Congress and embrace a tax scofflaw?
The IRA: No, it is an indication of the fear and uncertainty that prevails within the Obama Administration and in our society. Our leaders including Volcker are grasping for straws and Geithner is a very slender reed indeed. There are some conservatives in the House who will be glad to see Geithner confirmed. They plan to use him as a punching bag, especially with conservative audience that are antithetical to the big New York banks and Wall Street. But Geithner seems to have Volcker’s full support.
Rosner: I don’t think that it is Volcker at this point, but rather Summers on a day-to-day basis that will be calling in the plays that Geithner will execute. Unlike Paulson, I expect Geithner will have to manage up and report back to Summers and the White House. He is expected to be on the team executing the President’s policies and not creating his own. My only concern with Summers is that while he is a fine economist, he is not a financial markets guy either.
The IRA: We’d be happier with Summers if he would publicly acknowledge the policy mistakes of which he was a part. I’m not sure there is any hope of turning Larry Summers into a proponents of resolving the large banks.
Rosner: Summers is just as capable of being misdirected by the same Wall Street inputs as caused this mess. We need to somehow communicate to Summers et al, though the media if necessary, that the managed breakup of the big New York banks does not necessarily mean a systemic failure and another crisis. I believe that we can restructure these banks without a resolution, wipe the equity and maybe the preferred, and start from there.
The IRA: How do you avoid a haircut for the C bond holders if we see loss rates at 5-6% of total loans and leases? A 30% loss rate at C wipes out the equity several times.
Kotok: I agree. How do you restructure these banks without a bankruptcy for the parent, especially given the loss estimate from you and Chris among others?
Rosner: The answer is that the FDIC has the power to abrogate contracts and seize institutions, we have already guaranteed the debt holders. The Machiavellian mandarins at the Treasury and the Fed seem to have sold us on the notion of taking equity warrants. It means that if the FDIC comes in to do their jobs, they must wipe out the taxpayer equity.
Kotok: But the problem you have is how do you get the bond holders to agree? These are very loss-averse, well-organized investors. Why should they agree to a haircut? This is why the sub-debt of Fannie and Freddie has not been touched.
The IRA: At least not yet. As we’ve said before, the loss numbers from the GSEs and the large banks will be so large that we will no longer have a choice but to embrace a resolution and receivership. We’ll leave it there. Thanks.
Questions? Comments? info@institutionalriskanalytics.com
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STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES
LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
Spring flooding forecast for southern Manitoba Friday, February 20, 2009 | 3:51 PM CT CBC News
River waters are once again forecasted to rise in southern Manitoba this spring but flood forecasters don't foresee any major disasters. (CBC)It could be a wet spring in southern Manitoba, so communities are being urged to prepare volunteers to hold back the rising tide.The Manitoba government released the first flood outlook of the year on Thursday and it suggests the province is on pace for the fourth highest flood levels on record.While there has been average snowfall this winter, soil moisture levels are 150 per cent higher than normal, which means the ground won't be able to absorb much water come spring thaw, according to Manitoba Water Stewardship (MWS).As a result, emergency planners have contacted communities along the Red River to warn them. Near-record water levels are expected along the Red River Valley, the Interlake, and areas around the Souris and Pembina rivers.Don Brennan, spokesperson for the Emergency Measures Organization (EMO), told CBC that detailed plans are already in the works to deal with flooding in those areas.
Failing to plan is planning to fail.
—Don Brennan, Emergency Measures OrganizationBut the best-laid plans aren't any good without volunteers to help carry them out, he said.Volunteers are absolutely essential. Especially in Manitoba we depend a lot on volunteers and they should be revisiting the volunteer list to see who's ready and willing, Brennan said, adding the EMO is working closely with municipalities to get equipment to the regions before the flooding starts.While there could be cause for some evacuations, the potential for major disaster is small, Brennan said.This is done every single year. We bring the evacuation committee together, not that we anticipate evacuations, but failing to plan is planning to fail,he said.The forecast is based on the assumption the province will receive average precipitation until the spring thaw. Should that hold, officials predict a flood of inconvenience, one that affects fields and municipal roads, but is not expected to damage homes or communities.It would affect the transportation system and two ring-dyke communities would have to have partial closure — those would be Morris and St. Adolphe, said MWS spokesperson Steve Topping.
Minor, localized flooding could occur during the early part of the run-off due to ice jams and, while the probability of major ice jams on larger rivers is only average, these larger ice jams cannot be ruled out, says the flood forecast by MWS.
No repeat of 1997 flood
Should the province receive more than average precipitation leading to the thaw, we could experience the second-highest water levels recorded, but they will still fall far short of what has been called the Flood of the Century in 1997, according to MWS.
Even with unfavourable weather, peak water levels on the Red are predicted to be significantly lower than 1997. Under present conditions, there is less than a five per cent chance of a flood comparable to 1997, the flood forecast states.That flood, the most severe in the region since 1826, caused $4.4 billion in damages along the Red River Valley between Winnipeg and Grand Forks, N.D. About 80,000 people were evacuated from their homes.The 2009 outlook also calls for much less concern to communities along the Assiniboine River, where the flood potential is listed as average.The risk is average to below average in the Westman area from Riding Mountain to The Pas and in the north of the province.
Fresh snowstorm to hit parts of U.S. Northeast By Haitham Haddadin Haitham Haddadin –Fri Feb 20, 4:42 pm ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A fresh snowstorm is expected to hit parts of the U.S. Northeast starting this weekend, possibly dumping as much as a foot of snow in the northernmost reaches of the region, forecasters said on Friday.The main thrust of this fast clipper system will be in New England as key Northeastern cities dodge the storm.Below-normal temperature readings on average across the Northeast Sunday to Tuesday could spell an uptick in demand for home heating oil in the world's biggest market for the fuel.Washington, Philadelphia and New York will probably miss a big snow, but New England will not, said AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist John Kocet. Up to 12 inches of snow were possible from central New Hampshire to northern New Brunswick, he noted on the company's website.Andrew Rosenthal, a meteorologist with private forecaster WeatherBug.com, noted that the storm approaching the East Coast late Saturday into Sunday will likely bring light snow for the interior Northeast but significant accumulations closer to the coast, especially into New England.Before heading east, the storm system reaches the northern Plains Friday evening, spreading snow across the Dakotas, Iowa and Minnesota, Rosenthal said on the WeatherBug.com website.Temperatures in Northeastern states average 0-3 degrees Fahrenheit below normal on Sunday, 2-4 F below normal Monday and 3-6 F below normal Tuesday, said DTN Meteorlogix.Heating load is expected to average near to above normal Friday through Tuesday, the forecaster noted.
However, DTN's 6 to 10 day forecast sees temperatures near to above normal.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, March heating oil futures finished down 0.78 cent at $1.1967 per gallon on Friday, well above session lows of $1.1470.Meanwhile, in the New York Harbor cash market, heating oil differentials were marginally lower on Friday with supplies seen ample to meet any uptick in demand, traders said.
Government data on Thursday showed that in the PADD 1 East Coast region, heating oil stocks fell a little last week and stood 3 percent below year-ago levels, but in the New England section the inventories were up on a weekly basis.Stephen Schork, editor of the Schork Report, pointed out that the data was bearish, noting that a 700,000-barrel draw in national inventories of heating oil last week was a third of what we normally see at this point in the season.
MOSTLY DRY SATURDAY
Weather Channel's Weather.com said the Boston to Washington megalopolis will be dry Saturday with mostly sunny skies.But the Midwestern clipper storm that will approach the Northeast is expected to spread snow into western Upstate New York and western Pennsylvania later that day, and by Sunday southern New England, Boston and Providence could pick up several inches.Maine could be New England's big snow winner Sunday into Monday with locally over a foot possible, Weather.com added.The remainder of the Northeast will start the week dry but cold with temperatures 5 to 15 degrees below average for the most part,it noted, adding temperatures rise later though some rain or snow was due in Upstate New York and New England. (Editing by Jim Marshall)
SOROS VIDEO OIL AS A WEAPON
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kao5vH4m5ec&eurl=http://www.infowars.com/soros-admits-lindsey-williams-assertion-oil-is-a-weapon/&feature=player_embedded
LINDSAY WILLIAMS PREDCTIONS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UomBdZYObh0&eurl=http://www.infowars.com/soros-admits-lindsey-williams-assertion-oil-is-a-weapon/&feature=player_embedded
Soros Confirms Lindsey William’s Assertion Oil is a Weapon
Kurt Nimmo Infowars February 20, 2009
If you scrub the above YouTube video to 3 minutes, 45 seconds, you will hear the globalist George Soros at the elite confab last month in Davos, Switzerland, admit that the price of oil is being used as a weapon against the enemies of the prevailing world order, i.e, the New World Order. Soros pegs these enemies as Venezuela, Iran, and Russia. Chavez, declares Soros, his days are numbered.In Iran, the price of oil will lead to the defeat Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and bring in a “more reasonable regime,that is to say a regime that takes orders from the global elite.
In the case of Russia, Soros is worried. He believes the falling price of oil and the resulting social and political chaos in that country will prompt Putin and the Russian leadership into some foreign adventure… to divert attention, possibly in Ukraine or elsewhere in the neighborhood. Soros confirms in spades the prediction of Lindsey Williams, who told Alex Jones on several occasions that the global elite have planned to drastically reduce the price of oil in order to take out the oil-producing states and also foment a world-wide economic depression. America will see a financial collapse so great that it will take years to come out of it, Williams told Alex Jones on November 21, 2008. On February 18, Pastor Williams, appearing on Alex Jones TV, updated and added details to his prediction, based on insider information.Listening to George Soros, one might get the idea that the radical drop in the price of oil is simply a result of market dynamics and a coincidental opportunity to deal a crushing blow to enemies of the prevailing world order, when in fact it is a carefully orchestrated event. George Soros knows this, but he is not about to tell you.
MUSLIM NATIONS
EZEKIEL 38:1-12
1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2 Son of man, set thy face against Gog,(RULER) the land of Magog,(RUSSIA) the chief prince of Meshech(MOSCOW)and Tubal,(TOBOLSK) and prophesy against him,
3 And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech(MOSCOW) and Tubal:
4 And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,(GOD FORCES THE RUSSIA-MUSLIMS TO MARCH) and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords:
5 Persia,(IRAN,IRAQ) Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:
6 Gomer,(GERMANY) and all his bands; the house of Togarmah (TURKEY)of the north quarters, and all his bands:(SUDAN,AFRICA) and many people with thee.
7 Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.
8 After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.
9 Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee.(RUSSIA-EGYPT AND MUSLIMS)
10 Thus saith the Lord GOD; It shall also come to pass, that at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought:
11 And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates,
12 To take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land.
ISAIAH 17:1
1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
PSALMS 83:3-7
3 They (ARABS,MUSLIMS) have taken crafty counsel against thy people,(ISRAEL) and consulted against thy hidden ones.
4 They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.
5 For they (MUSLIMS) have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee:(TREATIES)
6 The tabernacles of Edom,and the Ishmaelites;(ARABS) of Moab, and the Hagarenes;
7 Gebal, and Ammon,(JORDAN) and Amalek;(SYRIA) the Philistines (PALESTINIANS) with the inhabitants of Tyre;(LEBANON)
DANIEL 11:40-43
40 And at the time of the end shall the king of the south( EGYPT) push at him:(EU DICTATOR IN ISRAEL) and the king of the north (RUSSIA AND MUSLIM HORDES OF EZEK 38+39) shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over.
41 He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon.(JORDAN)
42 He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape.
43 But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.
EZEKIEL 39:1-8
1 Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog,(LEADER OF RUSSIA) and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech (MOSCOW) and Tubal: (TUBOLSK)
2 And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north parts,(RUSSIA) and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel:
3 And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand.
4 Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands,( ARABS) and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured.
5 Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.
6 And I will send a fire on Magog,(NUCLEAR BOMB) and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I am the LORD.
7 So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel.
8 Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord GOD; this is the day whereof I have spoken.
JOEL 2:3,20,30-31
3 A fire(NUCLEAR BOMB) devoureth before them;(RUSSIA-ARABS) and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
20 But I will remove far off from you the northern army,(RUSSIA,MUSLIMS) and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great things.(SIBERIAN DESERT)
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.(NUCLEAR BOMB)
31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS WILL BE USED.
PSALMS 97:3
3 A fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies round about.
REVELATION 14:18-20
18 And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe.
19 And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.
20 And the winepress was trodden without the city,(JERUSALEM) and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.(200 MILES) (THE SIZE OF ISRAEL)
ISAIAH 66:15-18
15 For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.
16 For by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh: and the slain of the LORD shall be many.
17 They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the LORD.
18 For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory.
ISAIAH 26:21
21 For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.(WW3,1/2 earths population die).
ISAIAH 13:6-13 KJV
6 Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.
7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt:(FROM FRIGHT)
8 And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.
9 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.
10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.
11 And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.
12 I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.
13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.
ISAIAH 24:17-23 KJV
17 Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth.
18 And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake.
19 The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly.
20 The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again.
21 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth.
22 And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited.
23 Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the LORD of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously.
2 TIMOTHY 3:1
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous (DANGEROUS) times shall come.
JOEL 2:3,30
3 A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.
EZEKIEL 20:47
47 And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.
ZEPHANIAH 1:18
18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD'S wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.
MALACHI 4:1
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
REVELATION 8:7
7 The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
REVELATION 9:18
18 By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.
HALF OF EARTHS POPULATION DIE DURING THE 7 YR TRIBULATION.(THESE VERSES ARE JUDGEMENT SCRIPTURES NOT RAPTURE SCRIPTURES)
LUKE 17:34-37
34 I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.
35 Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
36 Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
37 And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.(Christians have new bodies,this is the people against Jerusalem during the 7 yr treaty)(Christians bodies are not being eaten by the birds).
MATTHEW 24:37-51
37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
40 Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
41 Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
42 Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.
43 But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.
44 Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.
45 Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season?
46 Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.
47 Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.
48 But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;
49 And shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken;
50 The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of,
51 And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
US IRAN - NOGOTIATIONS - AUDIO
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2009/02/nuclear-confrontation-watch-this.html#links
Iran holds enough uranium for bomb By Daniel Dombey in Washington
February 20 2009 00:51
Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought.If such a quantity were further enriched it could produce more than 20kg of fissile material – enough for a bomb.It appears that Iran has walked right up to the threshold of having enough low enriched uranium to provide enough raw material for a single bomb, said Peter Zimmerman, a former chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.The new figures come in a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, released on Thursday. This revealed that Iran’s production of low enriched uranium had previously been underestimated.When the agency carried out an annual stocktaking of Natanz in mid-November Iran had produced 839kg of low enriched uranium hexafluoride – more than 200kg more than previously thought. Tehran produced an additional 171kg by the end of January.It’s sure certain that if they didn’t have it [enough] when the IAEA took these measurements, they will have it in a matter of weeks, Mr Zimmerman said.Iran’s success in reaching such a breakout capacity – a stage that would allow it to produce enough fissile material for a bomb in a matter of months – crosses a red line that for years Israel has said it would not accept.UN officials emphasise that to produce fissile material Iran would have to reconfigure its Natanz plant to produce high enriched uranium rather than low enriched uranium – a highly visible step that would take months – or to shift its stockpile to a clandestine site.No such sites have been proved to exist, although for decades Iran concealed evidence of its nuclear programme.A senior UN official added that countries usually waited until they had an enriched uranium stockpile sufficient for several bombs before proceeding to develop fissile material. He conceded that Iran now had enough enriched uranium for one bomb.Do they have enough low enriched uranium to produce a significant quantity [enough high enriched uranium for a bomb]? he said.In theory this is possible, [although] with the present configuration at Natanz it isn’t.
David Albright, the head of the Institute for Science and International Security, said: If Iran did decide to build nuclear weapons, it’s entering an era in which it could do so quickly.The Financial Times Limited 2009.
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.
A-BOMB EFFECTS
http://www.geocities.com/athens/agora/4526/index1.html
http://www.hiroshima-cdas.or.jp/HICARE/en/12/index.html
Damages Caused by Atomic Bombs
The Manhattan Project
The United States concealed its project to develop an atomic bomb under the name Manhattan Engineer District. Popularly known as the Manhattan Project, it carried out the first successful atomic explosion on July 16, 1945, in a deserted area called Jornada del Muerto (Journey of the dead) near Alamagordo, New Mexico.
Dropping the First Atomic Bomb
At 2:45 A.M. local time, the Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber loaded with an atomic bomb, took off from the US air base on Tinian Island in the western Pacific. Six and a half hours later, at 8:15 A.M. Japan time, the bomb was dropped and it exploded a minute later at an estimated altitude of 580 +- 20 meters over central Hiroshima.
The Hiroshima Bomb Size: length - 3 meters, diameter - 0.7 meters.
Weight: 4 tons. Nuclear material: Uranium 235. Energy released: equivalent to 12.5 kilotons of TNT. Code name: Little Boy.
Initial Explosive Conditions
Maximum temperature at burst point: several million degrees centigrade. A fireball of 15-meters radius formed in 0.1 millisecond, with a temperature of 300,000 degrees centigrade, and expanded to its huge maximum size in one second. The top of the atomic cloud reached an altitude of 17,000 meters.
Black Rain
Radioactive debris was deposited by black rain that fell heavily for over an hour over a wide area.
Demaging Effects of the Atomic Bomb
Thermal Hear. Intense thermal heat emitted by the fireball caused severe burns and loss of eyesight. Thermal burns of bare skin occurred as far as 3.5 kilometers from ground zero (directly below the burst point). Most people exposed to thermal rays within 1-kilometer radius of ground zero died. Tile and glass melted; all combustible materials were consumed.
Blast. An atomic explosion causes an enormous shock wave followed instanteneously by a rapid expansion of air called the blast; these represent roughtly half the explosion's released energy. Maximum wind pressure of the blast: 35 tons per square meter. Maximum wind velocity: 440 meters per second. Wooden houses within 2.3 kilometers of ground zero collapsed. Concrete buildings near ground zero (thus hit by the blast from above) had ceilings crushed and windows and doors blown off. Many people were trapped under fallen strunctures and burned to death.
Radiation. People exposure within 500 meters of ground zero was fatal. People exposed at distances of 3 to 5 kilometers later showed symptoms of aftereffects, including radiation-induced cancers.
Bodily Injuries
Acute symptoms. Symptoms appearing in the first four months were called acute. Besides burns and wounds, they included: general malaise, fatigue, headaches, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, abnormally low white blood cell count, bloody discharge, anemia, loss of hair.
Aftereffects. Prolonged injuries were associated with aftereffects. The most serious in this category were: keloids (massive scar tissue on burned areas), cataracts, leukemia and other cancers.
Atomic Demographics
Population. The estimated pre-bomb population was 300,000 to 400,000. Because official documents were burned, the exact population is uncertain.
Deaths. With an uncertain population figure, the death toll could only be estimated. According to data submitted to the United Nations by Hiroshima City in 1976, the death count reached 140,000 (plus or minus 10,000) by the end of December, 1945.
Health Card Holders. Persons qualifying for treatment under the A-bomb Victims Medical Care law of 1957 received Health Cards; holders as of March 31, 1990, numbered 352,550.
Nagasaki. The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki exploded at 11:02 A.M. on August 9. Using plutonium with an explosive power of 20 kilotons of TNT-equivalent, it left an estimated 70,000 dead by the end of 1945, although both population and the deaths are uncertain.
GM, Chrysler ask for billions in Canadian aid Chrysler resubmits U.S. plan to Canadian authorities Saturday, February 21, 2009 | 12:31 AM ET CBC News
People walk through the parking lot at the General Motors Canada Oshawa Car Assembly Plant in Oshawa, Ont., on Tuesday. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)General Motors has outlined a restructuring plan that would cut its Canadian workforce to 7,000 and seek as much as $7 billion from the federal and Ontario governments, while Chrysler is requesting around $2.8 billion in aid.GM didn't specify how much it will ask for, but Reuters quoted federal Industry Minister Tony Clement as saying the company is asking for between $6 and $7 billion.GM expects there will be no further plant closures in Canada, but it plans to slash executive salaries by 10 per cent, cut benefits to hourly employees and build new models at its Ontario plants.Under the plan, GM's Canadian workforce — which numbered 20,000 in 2005 and currently stands at 12,500 — would be pared down to 7,000 by 2010.Clement said Friday he's encouraged that GM is committed to not closing any more Canadian plants.We're not bailing out pension plans. Let me be crystal clear on that.—Tony Clement, Federal Industry Minister.This is an existential moment for the Canadian car industry. Everyone needs to come to the table. Executives have to cut their salaries and costs,he said.What that means specifically, I'm leaving up to the automakers. We're in constant contact with the union and the automakers. We're following their discussions. The only thing I've said to both of them is Canada has to be cost-competitive.GM Canada had already been offered $3 billion by the Ontario and federal governments, but it later declined that aid, saying it didn't need it immediately.
Possible showdown over pensions
GM wants the Canadian Auto Workers agreement to achieve long-term cost reductions, including pensions.Pensions are important for General Motors Canada, because we've been here for 100 years and we have more than three retirees for every active worker. That ratio is actually increasing and will actually move up to five to one, said David Paterson, GM Canada's vice-president of corporate and environmental affairs.We really need to get at those disproportionate legacy costs that our competitors do not share and find ways to stop the growth in those costs.CAW president Ken Lewenza stressed that pensions must be protected.The GM plan was underfunded even when it was profitable,he said at a Friday evening news conference in Toronto.I don’t think it’s necessary to go into the pockets of our pensioners.Our pensioners deserve the respect that they received when they signed on to retire.
Clement said the companies have to do the math themselves.But we're not bailing out pension plans, he said. Let me be crystal clear on that.Clement said he would need to see specifics before he could commit any taxpayers' money.
No Canada-specific plan from Chrysler
We understand the severity of the auto industry, said Chris Buckley, head of the local in Oshawa, Ont.We understand what it means to be competitive in nature. So we’ll do what we can in a responsible manner in order to protect our members' interests and our retirees' interests.Even though Friday was the deadline for the companies to put in their restructuring plans, Chrysler had no Canada-specific plan ready to submit. Instead, the company simply resubmitted the plan offered to Washington on Tuesday.Chrysler CEO Reid Bigland said in a letter to Clement and Ontario Economic Development Minister Michael Bryant that the plan submitted to the U.S. Treasury was an integrated one that includes Canadian operations.Chrysler requested aid from the federal and provincial governments proportionate to the $9 billion US asked of Washington. That would be around $2.8 billion Cdn.Our members could work for nothing every day and not resolve the global financial crisis or the loss of market share.—— Chris Buckley, CAW OshawaBenoît Charette, editor of l'Annuel de L'Automobile, criticized GM and Chrysler's plans for a lack of specifics.What this tells me today is they're not ready, he told CBC News from Montreal. They improvised a lot but they need money to continue the improvisation.They haven't done their work, and today, basically what they presented was a pile of general stuff and we're going nowhere with this.Auto analyst Tony Faria with the University of Windsor expected most of the job losses set for Canada have already been announced.But long-term, certainly GM and Chrysler, and Ford as well, are going to be looking for significant concessions from the Canadian Auto Workers in line with what the UAW is coming up with in the U.S. And in the future, they’re certainly going to be evaluating labour costs between Canada and the U.S., said Faria. On Tuesday, GM and Chrysler asked for $21.6 billion US in additional aid from Washington.GM, which had previously received $13.4 billion, asked for an additional $16.6 billion, bringing its total to $30 billion. Chrysler, which had secured $4 billion in December, asked for $5 billion more.Both companies are also cutting 50,000 jobs in an effort to turn operations around.Ford has said it will not likely need immediate assistance.North American automakers are suffering from their slowest sales in 26 years and dwindling operating cash.Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said earlier his province won't put a limit on how much it's willing to spend on a bailout until it knows how many jobs will be affected by the automakers' proposals.
THE GAY,HOMOSEXUAL NAME IS JUST A MEDIA MADE NAME,I FROM NOW ON WILL BE CALLING GAY,HOMOSEXUALS THE TRUTH,THE SODOMITE RAINBOW GROUP SINCE ITS A PROUD CULT BUILT ON RIGHTS,BUT ARE HATERS OF OTHERS RIGHTS.
SPEECHLESS SILENCING CHRISTIANS - VIDEO
http://www.silencingchristians.com/
ISAIAH 66:15
15 For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.
ISAIAH 26:21
21 For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.(WW3,1/2 earths population die).
MALACHI 4:1
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
REVELATION 19:17-21
17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;
18 That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.
19 And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.
20 And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
21 And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.
MEDIA MATTERS Censorship query uncovers pro-gay activist,Spokesman worked at station that silenced Christian program February 20, 2009 11:40 pm Eastern By Drew Zahn 2009 WorldNetDaily
A Michigan television station agreed to broadcast a Christian documentary critical of the gay rights movement, but later backed out – and now a family values organization is questioning whether the station's about-face was influenced by a former newsroom executive who is a homosexual activist. As WND reported, WOOD-TV of Grand Rapids, Mich., originally agreed to air the hour-long paid program Speechless: Silencing Christians, a documentary seeking to expose the agenda of homosexual activists and their impact on families and freedom of religion. The station later canceled the agreement shortly after the Human Rights Campaign, a pro-homosexual organization, issued a national alert against the film urging people to call for its cancellation. The American Family Association of Michigan, however, has now learned that Trevor Thomas, the deputy communications director for the HRC in Washington, D.C., once worked in WOOD-TV's newsroom. Gary Glenn, president of AFA-Michigan, said in a statement to WOOD-TV General Manager Diane Kniowski that he originally suspected the cancellation was merely a matter of political correctness, but now wonders how deeply the connection runs between Thomas and the station. Now, Glenn wrote to Kniowski, we learn that a public spokesman for the so-called Human Rights Campaign – the national homosexual activist group that claimed credit for pressuring your station to censor and breach its agreement to air AFA's paid documentary – is a former long-time WOOD-TV newsroom executive who while holding that position was allowed by the station to actively and publicly campaign against the Marriage Protection Amendment approved by Michigan voters in 2004. That new information, Glenn continued, leads us to question whether the real story is that WOOD-TV management was unduly influenced by or even acted in collusion with a former high-level staffer who you allowed to openly campaign for homosexual activists' political agenda while with the station and who now promotes that agenda full-time nationwide.
According to the HRC website, Thomas worked as an assignment editor and news producer at WOOD-TV from at least September 2001 through November 2004. During his tenure at the station, Thomas also wrote an essay for The Grand Rapids Press, speaking out against Michigan's 2004 marriage amendment. Following its publication, he served on a number of college panels on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues. Thomas' work also includes a three-year tenure on the board of directors for the Network of Western Michigan: a non-profit that aides the GLBT community. Two television station professionals, according to a Michigan Messenger report, denied any hint of collusion between Thomas and the station, and scoffed at the AFA description of Thomas' news room producer position as either an executive or a high-level staffer.The Messenger reached Thomas by phone, but he declined to comment on the allegations of collusion. A WOOD-TV statement released following cancellation of Speechless suggested the station was attempting to back out of the controversy over the program. Our station is being bombarded with calls and messages, and we find ourselves in the middle of someone else's fight, Kniowski said in the statement. We are removing ourselves from this matter.Glenn, however, says the timing of WOOD-TV's cancellation announcement – coming only an hour after the HRC's action alert was issued – suggests there may have been an intentional coordination. He said WOOD-TV's claim that it cancelled the broadcast to avoid controversy is simply nonsensical in light of the station's actual actions, which were tailor-made to generate as much controversy and publicity as possible.The question, Glenn continued, is whether WOOD-TV was influenced by its former editor and producer to handle it this way on purpose to make sure its censorship of the AFA video got as much publicity as possible and their former newsroom executive's new employer got the credit.Speechless, hosted by talk show host Janet Parshall, emphasizes the media's role in promotion of homosexuals' radical agenda, and includes examples of how television shows and movies such as Friends,Will & Grace,The L-Word,The War at Home,ER and Entourage attempt to persuade viewers that aversions to homosexuality stem from bigotry and ignorance. Speechless explores the homosexual lobby's impact on school curriculums. Videos promoted as anti-bullying actually endorsed gay lifestyles, and students were forced to view them during school hours. It claims homosexual lobbyists also push for gay literature in schools. According to the program, the homosexual activist agenda demands same-sex marriage, teaches children that homosexuality is normal, promotes homosexual service in the armed forces, pushes for hate crime laws that threaten freedom of speech, calls for laws forcing Christian business to hire homosexuals and insists upon reserving minority status and preferential treatment for them. If you think that agenda is bad for America, you must do something, a female voiceover states.
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