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09.25 State Elections Boards Seeks Volunteers to Help Process Unprecedented Number of Voter Applications
09.18 Reviewing Danny Schechter's "Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal"
Ref. : Letters to the editor
09.30 To Joe Biden: Time for Confession
09.28 Open Letter to Senator Barack Obama
09.26 Bailout Package Must be Transparent to the American People
09.18 Possible $2 Million Donation to Support Md. Slots Sends Wrong Message
10.10 Ayers = Keating?
10.02 Project Censored's Media Democracy Advocacy
09.23 Satire: Louella Reads the Baltimore Sun
09.22 CBS Cheats on Tax Coverage
09.10 Post's Post-Convention 'Balancing' Act
09.10 McCain/Palin Campaign Relies on Lazy Thinking and Prejudice to Win
09.10 The Rising Cost of the Iraq 'Surge'
10.09 McCain-Palin Put 'Country Last'
10.07 GOP Judges Aid White House Cover-up
10.07 Voting the Fate of the Nation
10.07 Alaska GOP's Last-Ditch Palin Defense
10.07 Election '08: Here Comes the Sludge
10.02 John McCain v. The Truth
10.02 Drinking at the Public Fountain
10.01 Who won the Mississippi debate? Obama—but for different reasons than you think
09.30 The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic Attack as Bailout Goes Bust
09.29 The Resurrectionists: Beltway's Big Money Cultists Bail Out the Dead
09.29 We Have the Money
09.27 Debate Evades Dark Realities
09.26 Alaskan Officials Allege Palin Cover-up
09.24 Don’t Worry, Be Happy
09.24 Text of Draft Proposal for Bailout Plan
09.24 Hey, Government! How About Calling on Us?
09.23 Coming Attractions: War Without End, Amen
09.22 The Evolution of John McCain
09.21 Palin's 'Troopergate' Battle Rages
09.19 Burning the First Amendment
09.15 Subverting Democracy Through Electoral Fraud
09.15 Military Industrial Complex 2.0
09.13 Acceptable Sacrifice: For the Right to Endorse
09.13 Why More Soldiers from Alaska?
09.12 Experience is Over-Rated
09.10 Obama Must Call for Palin's Removal from the Ticket
09.10 9/11 Plus Seven
09.10 Palin's Strange Probe of a Trooper
09.10 Dear Democrats: Integrity Won’t Win this Election
10.09 The Surge That Failed
10.08 The Orwellosphere: Anglo-American Drive to 'Total Security State' Rolls On
10.08 Justice for Yemini Sheik
10.06 The Wounded Shark: 'Good War' Lost, But the Imperial Project Goes On
10.02 U.S. Army Troops To Serve As U.S. Policemen?
09.25 Life on the Ledge
09.16 "Awakening" Into Nightmare: Seeding More Sectarian War in Iraq
10.06 Thinking About Treason
10.06 The Fleecing of America
10.03 Can a bailout succeed?
10.02 Empire of Greed
10.02 No Surprise in the Senate Bailout Vote
10.02 How Wall Street Can Bail Itself Out Without Destroying The Dollar
10.02 The Specter of Wall Street
10.01 We Need to Demand Hearings!
09.30 Surprise! Congress Listened to the Voting Public!
09.29 Thinking About Gyrations
09.29 Grand Theft America
09.26 Seizing America by Withholding the Mother’s Milk of Politics
09.26 Framing the $700 Billion Question
09.26 Bail Out NO, Buy Out YES
09.26 Just Say "No" to Any Immediate Bailout
09.26 Has Deregulation Sired Fascism?
09.25 Don't Fuel the Fire: Fire the Arsonists
09.25 America Pays the Piper, Big Time
09.24 Just Thinking Aloud Here
09.23 What Nobody's Saying: The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar
09.22 Thinking About Escalations
09.18 US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling From Direct Hits
09.18 US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling From Direct Hits
09.17 Creative Destruction: The Solid Core Behind the Financial Crisis
09.16 You Can't Feel Blue About the Economy If You Want To. There Are No Blue Chips Anymore
09.15 Thinking About Spotlights
09.15 U.S. Economy—Temporary Respite, Permanent Decline
10.10 Another Israeli West Bank Land Grab Scheme
09.26 Annals of Liberation: Sex is Death in a Darkened Land
09.25 New Coup D'Etat Rumblings in Venezuela
09.22 Remembering Edward Said Five Years On
09.20 Filter Tips: Distortion and Demonization on the Iran Beat
09.11 Wall Street and Washington
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS:
Thinking about Truth and Illusion
The stock market benchmark averages stumbled over themselves setting new record highs-one after another. But . . . typical news stories headlined Foreclosures Dip, But That Won't Last, Retailers Struggle with Sluggish June, Trade Gap Up on Higher Oil, Trade Deficit Widened as Expected in May, Forecast: Housing Slump Not Going Away Soon, Bernanke Says Inflation Expectations Still Remain 'Imperfectly Anchored', U.S. Housing Sales Seen Tumbling to Six-Year Low on Rates, Defaults, Refinery woes push up Midwest gas prices, Oil surges to new 11-month high above $77, Dow Soars to Record Highs, Mortgage Demand Climbs in Spite of Rising Interest Rates, Buying American? It's not in the bag, Consumer Borrowing Jumps in May. Once again many of the explanations given by mainstream pundits were a ludicrous grasping at straws and bore no real cause to effect relationship. While Wal-Mart may shown a recent 2% increase in comparable (same store) sales over a year ago, most retailers saw their sales decline. Consumer confidence was anything but rosy. If you factor-in only a 3% inflation rate over the 12 month period even the super-seller behemoth Walmart's sales were down.
Housing stagnation was a central theme as rating agencies downgraded scores of the mortgage backed securities, CDO's, and Real Estate Investment Trust vehicles. The problem here is “knowing” what adjustment to book value should be. Since any house is only worth what someone will pay for it, how do you mark-it-to-market when few are buying what homes are being offered. Each day more come onto the market-be they offered by owners or the lenders.
The US Dollar continued its slide South in its relative valuation to other world currencies. This is theoretically confusing as other fiat currencies are being “printed” at a higher % rate than the Buck. But since there are already Mega TRILLIONS of dollars out there, the qualified, or relative %, increases of other currencies are by default (no pun intended) bigger. The dollar was further shaken last week when Iran (who provides a significant share of Japan's energy imports) requested that the Japanese henceforth pay for their purchases in Yen-not in US Dollars.
Iraq made the news, but not for what was actually happening with the troops in the Middle East. The headlines focused on the growing list of senior Republican Congressmen and Senators who were “defecting” to the growing “its time to cut our losses, and set a timetable to get out” camp on Capitol Hill. An interim report on progress since the SURGE began cited minimal progress in only 8 of the 18 criteria areas. (And . . . 478 more US troops were killed.) Bush called a special press conference to solidify support for his “no change in policy” until General Petraeus reports on September 15. It didn't work as Senator Warner and Senator Lugar “defected” the next day. Even Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Malaki said it's time for US/us to get out.
Edward Albee's play “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” deals with four individuals who try to come to grips with what is real in their world(s). Each one deceives themselves in a comfortable/ lapsed-into fantasyland. The Martha character summed things up by finally confronting her husband at the turning point in the play with the words: “Truth or illusion, George (you should insert/substitute “America” here), doesn't it make any difference to you at all?”
I'm Fred Cederholm and I've been thinking. You should be thinking, too.
Copyright 2007 Questions, Inc. All rights reserved. Fred Cederholm is a CPA/CFE, a forensic accountant, and writer. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois (B.A., M.A. and M.A.S.). He can be reached at asklet@rochelle.net.
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This story was published on July 16, 2007.
