GetLiberty.org >> ALG to Congressman Paul: Turn off the New York Feds Paper Shredders »
Posted By gbudavid 3 months ago in Business & Finance
Usually, one imagines that at the Federal Reserve, the sound that' s heard is the printing presses running at record speeds as the nation attempts to print its way out of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Indeed, the Fed has expanded its balance sheet to some $2.06 trillion since the crisis hit in 2007.
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mesodude3 months ago
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Big Surprise: Bush Administration Claims On Missing Emails Likely Overstated
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Yesterday, the Washington Post reported the claim by a Justice Department lawyer that the White House had, at the eleventh hour, found the famous "missing emails" which for four years it's been claiming that the dog ate -- I mean, that it lost when switching to a new email system after President Bush's re-election.
But it sounds like the Post was overly sanguine about the situation. In reality, the government's claim on behalf of the White House may not be worth much at all.
"It's definitely questionable that they're doing something to solve the problem," Meredith Fuchs, a lawyer for the National Security Archive, one of the groups suing to require the White House to recover the emails, told TPMmuckraker.
The emails at issue are from periods that will be crucial in assessing the Bush legacy, including the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, and Pat Fitzgerald's probe of the Valerie plame leak. We'll know more about just how much has been preserved by next Tuesday or Wednesday, when the records will be transferred to the National Archives.
But it doesn't sound like we'll get everything. The new email system that the White House switched to four years ago allowed all staff members to access storage files and delete messages -- unlike the previous system, which was designed to preserve all messages containing official business. Fuchs said that the White House has still declined to make a forensic copy of the records, so any emails that were deleted likely won't be recovered. And since we're talking about millions of emails, it may be impossible to know what we don't have.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/01/...
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mesodude3 months ago
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Billions Wasted In Iraq?
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The United States has spent more than a quarter of a trillion dollars during its three years in Iraq, and more than $50 billion of it has gone to private contractors hired to guard bases, drive trucks, feed and shelter the troops and rebuild the country.
It is dangerous work, but much of the $50 billion, which is more than the annual budget of the Department of Homeland Security, has been handed out to companies in Iraq with little or no oversight.
Billions of dollars are unaccounted for, and there are widespread allegations of waste, fraud and war profiteering. As 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft first reported in February, only one case, the subject of a civil lawsuit, has been unsealed. It involves a company called Custer Battles, and provides a window into the chaos of those early days in Iraq.
When U.S. troops entered Baghdad in the spring of 2003, there was no electricity, widespread looting and little evidence of postwar planning. With the American military stretched to the limit, the Pentagon set up the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to govern the country under Ambassador Paul Bremer, who began hiring private companies to secure and rebuild the country.
There were no banks or wire transfers to pay them, no bean counters to keep track of the money. Just vaults and footlockers stuffed with billions of dollars in cash.
"Fresh, new, crisp, unspent, just-printed $100 bills. It was the Wild West," recalls Frank Willis, who was the No. 2 man at the Coalition Provisional Authority’s Ministry of Transportation.
The money was a mixture of Iraqi oil revenues, war booty and U.S. government funds earmarked for the coalition authority. Whenever cash was needed, someone went down to the vault with a wheelbarrow or gunny sacks.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/09/60minute...
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mesodude3 months ago
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Energy Task Force Meetings Participants
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Vice President Cheney's energy task force had a busy spring in 2001. While drafting a national energy policy, the group, chaired by Cheney, met with approximately 300 groups and individuals, ranging from the American Petroleum Institute to Defenders of Wildlife. Below, a list of individuals and organizations who met with the energy task force, as detailed in a document provided to The Post by a former White House official.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/docu... -
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tadair9193 months ago
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"The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press, that allows it to produce as many dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost." --Ben Bernanke speech in 2002 discussing the supposed threat of _deflation_ in the American economy.
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"When words lose their meaning people will lose their liberty." --Confucius-
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wtagg3 months ago
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The path we are on was set in motion long before the current admin took over, as you point out. Everyone being upset should have started long ago, not after the 3rd week in January.
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Hopefully, at future elections, common sense will rule the day, though I unfortunately see nothing but a red and blue world and no worthwhile change will come from that. We need to break away from the 2 party mentality we are currently enjoying.
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