Links 10/27/11

Hillary Clinton knew of Qaddafi ‘White Flag’ truce: US drone fired at Qaddafi convoy after negotiated truce AsianTribune

Yemen women burn veils in Sanaa in anti-Saleh protest BBC (hat tip reader Sock Puppet)

Tony Blair ‘visited Libya to lobby for JP Morgan’ Telegraph (hat tip reader 1SK)

If Greek Bank Run is Underway, It Means an Ugly End to EU Crisis Bnet (hat tip reader Jay)

BNP, SocGen Accelerate Trading-Book Cuts Bloomberg

Full Text: Euro Summit Statement on Greek Hard Restructuring Ed Harrison

Europe’s grand gamble risks failure without ECB Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph

Norman Davies on Europe’s Vanished States The Browser (hat tip Richard Smith)

Is Berlusconi being sacrificed? BBC (hat tip reader Maju)

Germany Is Already Printing Money – Deutsche Marks Seeking Alpha (hat tip reader 1SK)

Eurozone Crisis: Fist Fight In Italian Parliament As ‘Dysfunctional’ Government Threatens Euro Plans Huffington Post (reader 1SK)

Shanghai outlaws property discounting MacroBusiness

Solidarity with Oakland | Exposing Police Lies OccupyWallStreet

Veteran Scott Olsen Could Be The First Person To Die At A Wall Street Protest Business Insider (hat tip reader tyaresun)

Occupy Wall Street: The Primary the President Never Had? Matt Stoller, AlterNet

Crony Capitalism Comes Home Nicholas Kristof, New York Times

Occupy first. Demands come later Slavoj Žižek, Guardian (hat tip reader Peter J)

St Paul’s Cathedral canon resigns Guardian (hat tip Richard Smith)

More Than 80 Percent of Hedge Funds Underwater Institutional Investor (hat tip reader Mark P.)

Europe’s Debt Threatens MF Global, and Corzine New York Times

Why Economic Models Are Always Wrong Scientific American

Antidote du jour:

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61 comments

      1. ambrit

        Friends;
        Do we have reliable correspondants in Greece to give real time uncompromised data? It may get a bit like ‘Rashomon,’ but then, that was great moviemaking.

  1. G3

    The neocon hit list : Libya? Check. On to Syria. Wesley Clark interview in 2007 :

    http://www.democracynow.org/2007/3/2/gen_wesley_clark_weighs_presidential_bid

    =====
    “I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”
    ———————————

        1. ambrit

          Dear ScottS;
          I beg to differ. NOLA is the hub of the central Gulf. Just southwest of here are Morgan City and Port Fourchon, the entrepots to the gulfs’ oil fields. Indirectly, at least, NOLA does have oil, real oil, not Wall Street snake oil.

  2. auskalo

    It’s a pity to read a bullshit of the size of the Seeking Alpha article in your blog, Yves.

    Thanks for the others.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      Did you actually read the piece? It makes it clear that it cites as report in a German newspaper and that this was a single report. Your objection seems to be to the headline and the idea of Seeking Alpha, not the piece proper.

  3. Sock Puppet

    I hope OWS stays outside party politics and does not allow itself to be co-opted by the dems, ie the 1%. The solutions to our problems can only come from a broad discussion in society at large. That’s a rare phenomomemon these days and way too easy to stifle by tptb. The more blatant faux populists on the right – Limbaugh, Beck et al, who have made a career out turning populist rage into support for the slavemasters – are running scared. Let the people find a voice and speak!

    1. Jim3981

      Hey a Sockpuppet is here!

      working today eah? Time for a little public perception control? I guess the OWS posts got your attention?

      :O)

      You guys are crawling the web. You hiring by any chance? wonder what it takes to become a sockpuppet? Other than being a socio-path, you got to have psychology training I would imagine….

          1. ambrit

            Dear Sock Puppet;
            Don’t let a little ad pseudohominem throw you.
            Also, as for the 1% issue; I like Gore Vidals quip; “America has one political party with two right wings.”
            See ya round socky!

    2. taunger

      I agree with Jim, there are plenty of dems, ie democratic party voters, that are 99%s. However, your implied point that the party leadership serves the 1% is certainly right as well.

      I think that we need not necessarily demonize “democrats” so much as “leadership.” There are plenty of dems that we need on our side, such as historically democratic constituencies of unions, african americans, and environmentalists, to name a few.

    1. nikhil

      HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

      Man The Nuge has really fallen far into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole.

  4. Carolyn Befonte

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    All the best to you,
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  5. Dave of Maryland

    So they suckered Qaddafi in the end, eh?

    Someone somewhere in Washington must realize that every world leader with a pulse will want his very own nuke. Not a nuke for his country, mind. His very own personal nuke, along with a delivery system with enough range to get it onto someone else’s property. Ideally in a package small enough to sit on the back of two ton truck that he can take with him when he flees.

  6. dilbert dogbert

    Re: Cute Horse Photo
    NOT!!!!!!
    Or explain that is a very old horse that is being well cared for.
    As horse owners we know the difference between an abused horse and an old horse. When you see their ribs it could be either. Just use cute colt photos in the future. Please?

  7. dearieme

    By golly, Norman Davies is a silly old sod – I do hope he knows more Continental history than he knows British, where he’s hopeless. Consider:

    “Welsh – aliens.” Nope, “Welsh” means Romanised aliens. The Saxons didn’t call the Gaels or Picts “Welsh” for that very reason. Bloody obvious point, really: for a Saxon, “Welsh” distinguishes one sort of alien from other sorts.

    “And the indigenous population of the region where Glasgow is – Strathclyde, as it’s called now – was Welsh. The chief hero of medieval Scotland was William Wallace. Wallace means Welsh. The Scots don’t tell you that.” The Scots who taught me history at school told me precisely that. Twerp.

    “They didn’t know that these Welsh of the north were not intruders from Wales, they were there long before the Scots.” Who didn’t know, for heaven’s sake? When did anyone in Scotland not know that the substantially Romanised Britons of what is now Southern Scotland were first invaded by Anglo-Saxons, then defeated them and re-established a British (or “Welsh”, if you prefer)kingdom stretching from Dumbarton, north of Glasgow, down through Cumbria in what is now England? It was a kingdom, it’s worth noting, that didn’t come under the Scottish Crown until the 11th century. And what was this Kingdom called? Contrary to Davies’ dim remark “…Strathclyde, as it’s called now…” was called in the history books – wait for it – Strathclyde! In its native tongue that was “Ystrad Clud”. I mean, what period of historical ignorance is the old boy discussing? Long before my lifetime, clearly, and long before his too, I’ll bet.

    Jeez, I hope he’s sounder on Poland-Lithuania.

  8. aletheia33

    re: credit checks on job applicants, is this piece a sample of the prevailing sentiment?
    (i.e., i’m a nice guy and i wish we didn’t have to do this to you…)

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/21/1028905/-Boxed-out-of-a-job:-Applicants-who-fear-Credit-Checks?via=sidebyuserrec

    i’ve been concerned about this practice for some time now. this item makes it clear that this is nothing other than “profiling” in a perhaps more insidious form. we don’t want to hire “someone like that”–if they’ve filed bankruptcy, they’re likely to be “the kind of person” “we” can’t depend on.

    (can i just interrupt here to SCREAM OUT LOUD. okay, thanks.)

    so we’d better keep all those “criminals” and drug addicts, too, whom we really can’t employ god forbid, locked up for their own good, as they have nowhere else to go and no other way to stay alive–except maybe by camping out with those nice young people, downtown. and we wouldn’t want to see that kind of mixing going on, it could be dangerous… for someone.

    question for nc readers: is our prison archipelago currently a concentration camp system for culling unwanted, disaffected people out of our society, or is that just perhaps an unrealized potential at this point and the term “concentration camp” too far a stretch?

    1. craazyman

      It’s reprehensible. I took a full-time job last winter with a long-term consulting client. Even though they’ve known me for nearly a decade, in order to get the job I had to submit to a credit check and personal background check — which is standard procedure these days from what I gather. 99% of me wanted to tell them to go f*ck themselves, but the 1% who needed to pay the rent somehow won out, which made me feel bad about myself frankly. I’ve led a boring life and have nothing to hide, so it was a non-event, but it really irked me.

      What also infuriated me was that the background check revealed an individual who had my name (a common one, not quite like John Smith but close) and a prurient criminal record in a state far away geographically (and I have no idea if any other information was similar). Before the company officially extended me the job, they coyly asked if I’d ever resided in that state. They told me why they asked after I assured them I had not and asked them what it had to do with anything. I had worked for them for a nearly a decade previous to this with a record of stellar performance and cordial relations with everyone there.

      I can only imagine the folks who get in trouble with medical bills, student loans and now mortgages, and whose credit rating has tanked. I’ve known and loved people in that position and I’ve seen them try, hard, in ways that the 1% could never, ever even understand. And it burns my blood that the worlds’ financial fascists and their useful idiots have found new ways to build debtors prisons to jail them.

      1. PQS

        +1

        I found drug testing to be a total invasion of my privacy (and typically pretty fraudulent to boot back when they were clipping my hair to test it…), but looking into my personal finances just seems over the top. Like snooping in my garbage or peeping into my living room at night.

        I don’t work in high security or with national or even corporate secrets. Who’s business is it, anyway? MINE.

        Not quite a boot on my neck, but certainly a sharp-toed slipper.

  9. dearieme

    “Why Economic Models Are Always Wrong”: happily, Scientific American knows that Climate Models are always right. Even when they disagree with each other.

  10. BondsOfSteel

    Hmm. All the news reports I read at the time said it was the French who fired on the Qaddafi convoy. I’m not sure the Clinton article (source from one site) passes the smell test.

  11. b.

    Reading these side by side, the phrase that comes to mind is opportunity cost.

    http://www.salon.com/2011/10/27/elizabeth_warren_and_the_ows_election_test/
    http://www.alternet.org/story/152845/can_the_power_of_occupy_wall_street_make_obama_a_populist/

    If Warren had spoken out against Obama’s policies (and stayed tellingly quiet on his winning personality) after being abandoned, how would any announcement to run in the primaries have worked out?

    But then, enforcement of law and regulation, fighting control fraud, raising marginal tax, ending corporate donations or cutting defense spending are aspects of inequality that go far beyond the safe topics of bankruptcy and debt service – it means challenging the structures.

    Warren is not criticizing the man or the system, so the connection to OWS is tenuous at best. Doing the research is not the same as policy and prescription. Hers is a useful voice because the national discourse has become utterly dysfunctional… only?

  12. Gary Greenberg

    Yves, sent you a couple of emails but no reply. You may find them interesting. I amy have the wrong address. Best, Gary Greenberg (g.greenberg@hermes.co.uk) ex Silkstone

  13. Johann

    To everyone who sympathizes with OWS.
    Why are you still handing many dollars or more per day to
    Wall Street when you could easily avoid it?

    Take your money out of large Wall Street banks and place it in the smallest local bank you can find, preferably a cr
    credit union. Credit unions are non-profit banks that return earnings to their depositors as lower fees or free
    checking.

    Refuse to use debit or ATM cards that charge you or the
    merchant a swipe or service fee.
    Withdraw enough cash for a couple of weeks. Use it with small merchants to avoid allowing the card company to skim a nickel or more per dollar you charge from the merchant. Write checks for larger amounts if you afraid of carrying cash.

    Dump credit cards or accounts that charge an annual feed or service charges. Use banks and cards to your
    advantage. You goal should be to never give then even one cent except for the use of your money in their accounts which cannot be avoided.

    Pay cash, pay cash pay cash. This will do more damage
    to Wall Street in the aggregate than the most powerful
    demonstrations.

          1. ambrit

            Dear EmilianoZ;
            Several observations:
            (1) Obamas FUTURE job???
            (2) Scum of the earth is an equal opportunity occupation.
            (3) Scum of the earth would be capitalized if it was a singular case.
            (4) You any relation to a former denizen of this blog thread section?

  14. Mark Curran

    In the Oct 27 NY Times article “Rule Allows U.S. a Closer Look at Hedge Funds” it is reported that after intense lobbying hedge funds won several concessions, among them “eliminate any penalty of perjury for misleading reports.” No further clarification is given. Can someone explain what this regulation means? I can’t believe it means that hedge fund managers can lie under oath and get away with it.

    Mark

  15. spit

    That is a very, very unhealthy horse. I did horse rescue for years, and I have a lot of “day one” photos of horses in that kind of shape who then had to be nursed carefully back to health to see whether they even _could_ be retrained.

    If they look like that, they’re usually nearly dead from neglect. Even most very, very old horses have more flesh around the withers than this.

    Just FYI. I realize it’s a minor topic in the grand scheme (the photo, not animal cruelty), but that photo is, like, the anti-antidote du jour for horse people.

  16. Knative

    Yo. That Asian Tribune article has Larry Sinclair as a source. Visited that Larry Sinclair website. It seems a little cray cray.

    1. Valissa

      Yup, suggest folks type “Larry Sinclair” into any search engine and note what comes up. I was really quite shocked to see his site touted as a reliable source… bwhahahahahaha…

  17. Typing Monkey

    And, proving that people never learn (and suggesting that the demographic of protesters to the nest OWS-type event will be widows in their early 70s…)

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/27/us-column-personalfinance-idUSTRE79P7F620111027

    “For example, a 62-year-old with a $500,000 Maryland house could borrow as much as $306,323 at a variable rate starting at 3.99 percent. But it would cost as much as $27,701 in up-front closing costs and reverse mortgage insurance”

Comments are closed.