The Crash of '09—and the Collapse of '10

The word from Pakistan...

By Humayun Gauhar

Letters To My Son…

My dear Muhammad Ali -

I told you that it’s a funny world getting funnier. Many American analysts are saying that America’s real economic collapse could come by the end of this year. “It will come to known as The Crash of 09,” they say. Others, especially a Russian political analyst, are predicting its physical collapse too. There’s no doubt that the country is up the dirtiest of imaginable creeks without a paddle. But what’s amazing is that America remains mired in stunning denial, continuing to make bad situations worse with useless bailout plans and messing around with the world instead of facing up to the reality that its time as a hyper-power is up, that’s its economic system has failed and that its only recourse is to end its adversarial doctrine and get out of its lost wars as painlessly and honorably as possible. There’s no point in going on flogging dead horses. The only sensible thing that survival demands is to craft a new moral economic and financial system and a moral foreign policy.

The deep recession verging on depression that we have seen so far was caused by the crash in the US housing market. Since other developed industrialized nations, especially of Europe, were aping the shenanigans of unchecked and poorly regulated American bankers and financiers, the collapse of their markets, banks and economies followed like dominoes. Iceland was the first to officially declare bankruptcy. Its GDP is only about $6.5 billion but its banks had lent something like $65 billion while its regulators were asleep on the wheel. Britain has not declared bankruptcy officially but we all know that it is bankrupt for all intents and purposes and none of its banks and financial institutions has any legs left.

However, this is only the aperitif. Wait for the crash of US commercial real estate, which analysts think happen by autumn this year. Shops are closing down and there’s no one to rent them. Companies are retrenching and freeing up a lot of office space or closing down entirely and vacating even more precious office space with no one to rent it again. Huge skyscrapers are becoming ghost-scrapers. All this expensive commercial real estate is mortgaged to the hilt. With no rental income coming in, the loans against them will become difficult to service and there will be fearsome default. There’s insurance and re-insurance here also and the amounts involved are mind-boggling. No bailout plan would come even close to coping. When the commercial real estate collapse comes, all hell will break loose. And if multinationals like General Motors and Ford call it a day, it won’t just be thousands upon thousands of people unemployed (though its heartless to use the word ‘just’ here). Two entire towns will be become ghost towns. That’s terrible. If you count the number of people ­ wives, children and parents ­ who are dependent on those incomes, it becomes worse than terrible. It becomes absolutely and totally unconscionable, while corrupt and greedy bankers and the likes of Bernie Madoff have made off with billions ­ perhaps trillions ­ of dollars and are still doing so because “our contracts say so.”

Then there is Professor Igor Nikolavich Panarin whom I came across in a December 2008 article by Andrew Osborne of the Wall Street Journal no less, not some fly-by-night rag. If he has got it right, next year will come to be known as ‘The Collapse of 2010′ for that is when the USA will disintegrate into six separate entities. Those six entities, says Prof. Panarin, are The California Republic, The Central North American Republic, Atlantic America, The Texas Republic, Hawaii and Alaska going back to Russia.

With millions of Chinese living on America’s western seaboard (The People’s Daily’s circulation there alone is over five million) The California Republic, Prof. Panarin thinks, will either be part of China or come under Chinese influence. The Central North American Republic will be part of Canada or under Canadian influence, Atlantic America may join the European Union, The Texas Republic will be part of Mexico or under Mexican influence and Hawaii will go either to Japan or China.

Prof. Panarin is a former KGB analyst and a Russian professor of political science, Dean of the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs Diplomatic Academy in Moscow and author of several books on geopolitics. Thus one can hardly call him a fruitcake. Actually, he first made this prediction not after the economic meltdown that started last year but in Linz, Austria, in September 1998 in front of 400 delegates at a conference devoted to information warfare and the use of data to get an edge over a rival. Of course it was received with consternation. “When I pushed the button on my computer and the map of the United States disintegrated, hundreds of people cried out in surprise,” he says. Later, many delegates asked him to sign copies of the map. Its like when the French political scientist Emmanuel Todd made his famous forecast in 1976 about the collapse of the Soviet Union 15 years before it actually did and many people laughed. But Todd had the last laugh.

Prof. Panarin doesn’t say that America’s collapse is a forgone conclusion. “There’s a 55-45 percent chance right now that disintegration will occur,” he says. But if it comes it will be driven by three factors ­ “mass immigration, economic decline and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the US will break into six pieces. He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the US. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the Union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The US will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.” All we Pakistanis thus have to do is hang in there and soon America will not be meddling in our affairs any more, what to talk of General Patraeus’s adviser David Kilcullen saying that Pakistan could fall apart in five or six months.

It’s not easy to comprehend the collapse of an empire or a superpower. When termites are eating away at their vitals for years one cannot see it. People are too much in thrall of their power, wealth and panoply. Thus when the collapse comes it seems sudden, and takes people by surprise. “I went to sleep last night and when I woke up next morning the Soviet Union was gone.” The most powerful war machine ever built couldn’t save it. Remember the British Empire on which “the sun would never set”? It set so firmly that only six decades later Britain is not only bankrupt, it has become America’s appendage, a third rate power and could itself disintegrate soon with Scotland seceding. The history of the world is replete with the demise of civilizations, empires and superpowers. The graveyards of nations are full of their bones.

That there may be something to what Prof. Panarin says is borne out by the fact that the late Bush administration made contingency plans to impose martial law in case of economic collapse or massive and violent social unrest with blood on the streets. His predictions seem plausible, even probable, if all the dire scenarios come right, as they have thus far. According to Rand Clifford the US has already made plans to “round up insurgent US citizens” and detain them in what are called “Rex 84″ camps. Plus they have made “safe facilities” for members of Congress and their families. A report by the Phoenix Business Journal says that, “A new report by the US Army and War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.” The Journal’s story quote from the War College report: “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” It needs saying that the military regularly makes plans for the most dire of situations, however seemingly unlikely.

Let Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter and an early supporter of Barack Obama have the last word. The US is “going to have millions and millions of unemployed people really facing dire straits. And we’re going to be having that for some period of time before things hopefully improve. And at the same time there’s public awareness of this extraordinary wealth that was transferred to a few individuals at levels without historical precedent in Americahell there could even be riots.”

humayun.gauhar@gmail.com

Harman, Gonzalez, and AIPAC

Beware of hawks, of either party.

It's not democrat against republican. It's them against us.

via Truthout.org:

Wiretap: Rep. Harman Promised to Intervene for AIPAC

Sunday 19 April 2009

by: Jeff Stein | Visit article original @ Congressional Quarterly

Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman was wiretapped, leading to questions about her involvement with AIPAC. (Photo: Jewish Women)

Rep. Jane Harman, the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

Harman was recorded saying she would "waddle into" the AIPAC case "if you think it'll make a difference," according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

In exchange for Harman's help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.

Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, "This conversation doesn't exist."

Harman declined to discuss the wiretap allegations, instead issuing an angry denial through a spokesman.

"These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact," Harman said in a prepared statement. "I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves."

It's true that allegations of pro-Israel lobbyists trying to help Harman get the chairmanship of the intelligence panel by lobbying and raising money for Pelosi aren't new.

They were widely reported in 2006, along with allegations that the FBI launched an investigation of Harman that was eventually dropped for a "lack of evidence."

What is new is that Harman is said to have been picked up on a court-approved NSA tap directed at alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington.

And that, contrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for "lack of evidence," it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush's top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.

Why? Because, according to three top former national security officials, Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times and engulf the White House.

As for there being "no evidence" to support the FBI probe, a source with first-hand knowledge of the wiretaps called that "bull****."

"I read those transcripts," said the source, who like other former national security officials familiar with the transcript discussed it only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of domestic NSA eavesdropping.

"It's true," added another former national security official who was briefed on the NSA intercepts involving Harman. "She was on there."

Such accounts go a long way toward explaining not only why Harman was denied the gavel of the House Intelligence Committee, but failed to land a top job at the CIA or Homeland Security Department in the Obama administration.

Gonzales said through a spokesman that he would have no comment on the allegations in this story.

The identity of the "suspected Israeli agent" could not be determined with certainty, and officials were extremely skittish about going beyond Harman's involvement to discuss other aspects of the NSA eavesdropping operation against Israeli targets, which remain highly classified.

But according to the former officials familiar with the transcripts, the alleged Israeli agent asked Harman if she could use any influence she had with Gonzales, who became attorney general in 2005, to get the charges against the AIPAC officials reduced to lesser felonies.

Rosen had been charged with two counts of conspiring to communicate, and commnicating national defense information to people not entitled to receive it. Weissman was charged with conspiracy.

AIPAC dismissed the two in May 2005, about five months before the events here unfolded.

Harman responded that Gonzales would be a difficult task, because he "just follows White House orders," but that she might be able to influence lesser officials, according to an official who read the transcript.

Justice Department attorneys in the intelligence and public corruption units who read the transcripts decided that Harman had committed a "completed crime," a legal term meaning that there was evidence that she had attempted to complete it, three former officials said.

And they were prepared to open a case on her, which would include electronic surveillance approved by the so-called FISA Court, the secret panel established by the 1979 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to hear government wiretap requests.

First, however, they needed the certification of top intelligence officials that Harman's wiretapped conversations justified a national security investigation.

Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reviewed the Harman transcript and signed off on the Justice Department's FISA application. He also decided that, under a protocol involving the separation of powers, it was time to notify then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Pelosi, of the FBI's impending national security investigation of a member of Congress - to wit, Harman.

Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, deemed the matter particularly urgent because of Harman's rank as the panel's top Democrat.

But that's when, according to knowledgeable officials, Attorney General Gonzales intervened.

According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he "needed Jane" to help support the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.

Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program

He was right.

On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, "I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities."

Pelosi and Hastert never did get the briefing.

And thanks to grateful Bush administration officials, the investigation of Harman was effectively dead.

Many people want to keep it that way.

Goss declined an interview request, and the CIA did not respond to a request to interview former Director Michael V. Hayden , who was informed of the Harman transcripts but chose to take no action, two knowledgeable former officials alleged.

Likewise, the first director of national intelligence, former ambassador John D. Negroponte, was opposed to an FBI investigation of Harman, according to officials familiar with his thinking, and let the matter die. (Negroponte was traveling last week and did not respond to questions relayed to him through an assistant.)

Harman dodged a bullet, say disgusted former officials who have pursued the AIPAC case for years. She was protected by an administration desperate for help.

"It's the deepest kind of corruption," said a recently retired longtime national security official who was closely involved in AIPAC investigation, "which was years in the making.

"It's a story about the corruption of government - not legal corruption necessarily, but ethical corruption."

Ironically, however, nothing much was gained by it.

The Justice Department did not back away from charging AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman for trafficking in classified information.

Gonzales was engulfed by the NSA warrantless wiretapping scandal.

And Jane Harman was relegated to chairing a House Homeland Security subcommittee.

Adrian Salbuchi looks out from Argentina and sees our future

...and it's pretty terrifying...

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/596.html

Engineers at MIT discover a way to charge batteries in seconds news

this could be big...

domain-b.com:

16 March, 2009

Engineers at MIT have discovered a way to move en­er­gy faster in lithium ion batteries, an advance that could pos­sibly pav­e the way for smaller, light­er bat­ter­ies for cell phones and other devices, that re­charge in sec­onds rath­er than hours.

The work could also allow for the quick recharging of batteries in electric cars, although that particular application would be limited by the amount of power available to a homeowner through the electric grid.

The work, led by Gerbrand Ceder and Richard Simmons Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and reported in the March 12 issue of Nature said that because the material involved is not new, the researchers have simply changed the way they make it and could make it into the marketplace within two to three years.

State-of-the-art lithium rechargeable batteries have very high energy densities and they are good at storing large amounts of charge. The tradeoff is that they have relatively slow power rates, they are sluggish at gaining and discharging that energy.

It may change the way lithium ion batteries are recharged, which is widely used in cell phones, laptops, portable gaming systems and many other devices, but of prime importance will be, electric cars.

Consider current batteries for electric cars. "They have a lot of energy, so you can drive at 55 mph for a long time, but the power is low. You can't accelerate quickly," Ceder said.

In the case of a car, both the charging and discharging abilities are important since currently, a hybrid-electric car to accelerate, relies heavily on its internal combustion engine.

Why the slow power rates? Traditionally, scientists have thought that the lithium ions responsible, along with electrons, for carrying charge across the battery simply move too slowly through the material.

About five years ago, however, Ceder and colleagues made a surprising discovery. Computer calculations of a well-known battery material, lithium iron phosphate, predicted that the material's lithium ions should actually be moving extremely quickly.

"If transport of the lithium ions was so fast, something else had to be the problem," Ceder said.

Further calculations showed that lithium ions can indeed move very quickly into the material but only through tunnels accessed from the surface. If a lithium ion at the surface is directly in front of a tunnel entrance, there's no problem: it proceeds efficiently into the tunnel. But if the ion isn't directly in front, it is prevented from reaching the tunnel entrance because it cannot move to access that entrance.

Ceder and Byoungwoo Kang, a graduate student in materials science and engineering as well as a coauthor of the Nature paper, devised a way around the problem by creating a new surface structure that does allow the lithium ions to move quickly around the outside of the material, much like a beltway around a city. When an ion traveling along this beltway reaches a tunnel, it is instantly diverted into it.

Using their new processing technique, the two went on to make a small battery that could be fully charged or discharged in 10 to 20 seconds (it takes six minutes to fully charge or discharge a cell made from the unprocessed material).

Ceder notes that further tests showed that unlike other battery materials, the new material does not degrade as much when repeatedly charged and recharged. This could lead to smaller, lighter batteries, because less material is needed for the same result.

"The ability to charge and discharge batteries in a matter of seconds rather than hours may open up new technological applications and induce lifestyle changes," Ceder and Kang conclude in their Nature paper.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation through the Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers program and the Batteries for Advanced Transportation Program of the U.S. Department of Energy. It has been licensed by two companies.

Alzheimers may be type 3 Diabetes...!

domain-b.com:

Study suggests insulin may be treatment for Alzeheimer's
03 February 2009

Insulin appears to shield the brain from toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease, U.S. researchers said on Monday, supporting a theory that Alzheimer's may be a third form of diabetes.

Nerve cells from the hippocampus a part of the brain that is critical to memory, were treated with insulin and the drug Avandia in a study conducted at the Northwestern University. Avandia is a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes. Researchers discovered that insulin protected the cells from proteins called amyloid beta-derived diffusible ligands (ADDLs), which attack nerve connections in the brain.

The study said that GlaxoSmithKline's diabetes drug Avandia, or rosiglitazone appears to enhance the protective effect.

Researchers say that the discovery that insulin may slow or prevent Alzheimer's-related memory loss support theories that propose that the disease may be a third type of diabetes.

In Alzheimer's large sticky plaques of a substance called amyloid beta protein are appear in the brain tissue. These plaques cause memory loss, confusion and the inability to care for oneself with the condition finally progressing to death.

Persons who have type 2 diabetes lack the capacity to produce enough insulin, or the body is unable to use insulin properly. The latest research suggests that there may be a ''type 3'' diabetes. According to available evidence brain cells need insulin to survive and a drop in insulin levels leads to brain cell damage. If the damaged cells are located in the hippocampus it may lead to memory loss.

"Recognizing that Alzheimer's disease is a type of brain diabetes points the way to novel discoveries that may finally result in disease-modifying treatments for this devastating disease," says Sergio T. Ferreira, a member of the research team and a professor of biochemistry in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

In the current study, researchers found that insulin prevent ADDLs from attaching to connections between nerve cells, protecting them from damage. They also discovered that Avandia boosts the capacity of insulin at lower levels to shield against the harmful effects of ADDLs. They say that the discovery opens up new ways and new hope for fighting the debilitating disease.

"Therapeutics designed to increase insulin sensitivity in the brain could provide new avenues for treating Alzheimer's disease," says William L. Klein, a professor of neurobiology and physiology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and a researcher in Northwestern's Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center. "Sensitivity to insulin can decline with aging, which presents a novel risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. Our results demonstrate that bolstering insulin signaling can protect neurons from harm."

US forgets how to manufacture Trident missile warhead component

domain-b.com:

Defence Bureau
10 March 2009

Joint American-British plans to upgrade the Trident nuclear weapons had to be temporarily stalled as the US scientific establishment either forgot how to manufacture, or mislaid blue prints of a critical component, an investigation by a US Congressional watchdog body has revealed.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said that the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) "lost knowledge" of how to make a little known, but very hazardous material, codenamed Fogbank. This oversight resulted in the warhead upgrade programme being put back by at least a year, and cost the taxpayer an extra $69 million.

The Trident missile is a multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV) submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) designed by American defence contractor, Lockheed Martin Space Systems. The Trident is armed with nuclear warheads and is launched from nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines.

Trident missiles are carried by fourteen active US Navy Ohio class submarines, with US-designed warheads, and four Royal Navy Vanguard class submarines, with British warheads.

The US and the UK are trying to upgrade the ageing W76 warheads that arm the Trident missiles in order to prolong their life, and ensure safety and reliability. The upgrade requires that the mysterious material Fogbank be replaced.

Nothing is known about the nature, or function, of Fogbank. But existing material on the topic describes it as a likely 'interstage' between the fission and fusion stages of a thermonuclear bomb. In physical nature it could be some kind of foam, or an aerogel.

In Congressional hearings US officials have let it be known that manufacturing the material requires a solvent cleaning agent which is "extremely flammable" and "explosive". The process also involves dealing with "toxic materials" hazardous to workers.

An unclassified version of the GAO report on the subject was released last week. The report concluded: "NNSA did not effectively manage one of the highest risks of the programme - the manufacture of a key material known as Fogbank - resulting in $69 million in cost over-runs and a schedule delay of at least one year that presented significant logistical challenges for the navy."

The report pointed out that a new production facility was set up at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, because an old one had been demolished in the 1990s.

Interestingly, it said vital information on how Fogbank was actually manufactured was somehow mislaid. "NNSA had lost knowledge of how to manufacture the material because it had kept few records of the process when the material was made in the 1980s, and almost all staff with expertise on production had retired or left the agency," the report said.

The NNSA's principal deputy administrator, William Ostendorff, said that the agency "generally agrees" with the findings of the GAO report.

Cold Fusion Experimentally Confirmed

Typical mad scientist comspiracy scheme—by that notorious crackpot, the US Navy...

EE Times: I believe that's Electrical Engineering Times....

R. Colin Johnson
EE Times
(03/23/2009 8:43 PM EDT)

PORTLAND, Ore. — U.S. Navy researchers claimed to have experimentally confirmed cold fusion in a presentation at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting.

"We have compelling evidence that fusion reactions are occurring" at room temperature, said Pamela Mosier-Boss, a scientist with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (San Diego). The results are "the first scientific report of highly energetic neutrons from low-energy nuclear reactions," she added.

Cold fusion was first reported in 1989 by researchers Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, then with the University of Utah, prompting a global effort to develop the technology. Normal fusion reactions, where hydrogen is fused into helium, occur at millions of degrees inside the Sun. If room temperature fusion reactions could be realized commercially, as Fleishchmann and Pons claimed to have achieved inside an electrolytic cell, it promised to produce abundant nuclear energy from deuterium--heavy hydrogen--extracted from seawater.

Other scientists were unable to duplicate the 1989 results, thereby discrediting the work.

The theoretical underpinnings of cold fusion have yet to be adequately explained. The hypothesis is that when electrolysis is performed on deuteron, molecules are fused into helium, releasing a high-energy neutron. While excess heat has been detected by researchers, no group had yet been able to detect the missing neutrons.

Now, the Naval researchers claim that the problem was instrumentation, which was not up to the task of detecting such small numbers of neutrons. To sense such small quantities, Mosier-Boss used a special plastic detector called CR-39. Using co-deposition with nickel and gold wire electrodes, which were inserted into a mixture of palladium chloride and deutrium, the detector was able to capture and track the high-energy neutrons.

Silvered Dewar calorimeter used by Navy researchers to detect neutron emissions from a cold fusion process.

The plastic detector captured a pattern of tiny clusters of adjacent pits, called triple tracks, which the researchers claim is evidence of the telltale neutrons.

Other presenters at the conference also presented evidence supporting cold fusion, including Antonella De Ninno, a scientist with New Technologies Energy and Environment (Rome), who reported both excess heat and helium gas.

"We now have very convincing experimental evidence," De Ninno claimed.

Tadahiko Mizuno of Japan's Hokkaido University also reported excess heat generation and gamma-ray emissions.

All three research groups are currently exploring both experimental and theoretical studies in hopes of better understanding the cold fusion process well enough to commercialize it.

Research funding was provided by the Department of the Navy and JWK International Corp. (Annandale, Va.).

Fraud, yells Denninger

Karl Denninger in MarketTicker:

Yoo Hoo! Yes, Mr. Cop - Over THERE! (AIG)

Hmmm..... this is interesting....

"He is the golden boy of the casino," said Rep. Speier. "They basically took peoples' hard earned money and threw it away, gambled it and lost everything. And he must be held accountable for the fraud, for the dereliction of his duty, and for the havoc that he's wrought on America."

Oh, I see. There's that nasty "F" word, and this one you can say on TV!

But let's not be misdirected by bonus payments and "special legislation" eh? After all, anyone who believes this guy acted alone must be smoking something....

After the huge losses became known, Cassano was fired from AIG in early 2008, but he still received a salary of $1 million a month until Congress intervened. AIG has received about a $180 billion in bailout funds so far.

Ah. Let me see if I can grok this. Here's a guy who allegedly "hid" huge losses, was fired for it, but got a $1 million a month "salary" after being "fired", and he acted alone? That's why they paid him $1 million a month after firing him?

You expect The American People to believe that?

It gets better:

An ABC News investigation found that Cassano set up some dozens of separate companies, some off-shore, to handle the transactions, effectively keeping them off the books of AIG and out of sight of regulators in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

"This is the other very important issue underneath the AIG scandal," said Blum. "All of these contracts were moved offshore for the express purpose of getting out from under regulation and tax evasion."

Yes, and again, there was nobody else within the firm that saw something like "Lichtenstein Subsidiary Profit, $10 billion" in the internal accounting of the company and thought that was funny?

Anyone remember the infamous "barge transactions" from the era of ENRON?

Of course AIG's CEO didn't see anything wrong with this.....

Earlier this month, AIG CEO Edward Liddy told Congress Cassano had done nothing wrong.

"I'm not a lawyer but there is no evidence of wrongdoing in any of this," said Liddy.

Really Mr. Liddy?

There's nothing wrong with moving transactions offshore through a series of shell companies to both avoid taxation and regulation, nor with having the accountant assigned to that unit intentionally kept away from the guy who's structuring the transactions so he can't ask "too many" questions? You seem to imply that you knew about it, but that sort of subterfuge (if it is as reported) in a company you are operating is all ok?

I must admit that in my time as a CEO I never ran a company as large as AIG (or anything even close to it) but I did, a couple of times, find people in the company who were intentionally concealing some aspect of what they were doing from me (and by extension, the other shareholders.)

My response? They were immediately fired and no, they didn't continue to be paid their salary or bonus.

Oh, and what about the external auditors? AIG has those, right? After all, it is a public company. Hmmmm....

Again I ask - who's interest does Mr. Liddy represent? Is it the taxpayer (as it should be, since this firm would not exist but for our largesse) or is it Goldman Sachs and other banking interests, given that Mr. Liddy was a director at Goldman before Hank Paulson, Goldman's former chief, tapped him to work for a "mere" $1 salary?

This is what the NY Daily News said back on March 17th (which unfortunately went under my radar at the time):

Company auditor Joseph St. Denis became concerned about the Financial Products unit, but Cassano barred him from checking.

St. Denis later quoted Cassano as saying, "I have deliberately excluded you ... because I was concerned that you would pollute the process."

St. Denis would recall Cassano saying he did not want to be promoted even further up the corporate ladder "because it would separate [him] from the money." St. Denis would remember Cassano telling him "AIG's corporate management was "scared to death" of him."

That's very interesting. What's even more interesting is his written testimony to the House Oversight Committee:

"I have deliberately excluded you from the valuation of the Super Seniors because I was concerned that you would pollute the proces."

My belief is that the "pollution" Mr. Cassano was concerned about was the transparency I brought to AIGFP's accounting policy process.

Ah, so Mr. St. Denis, the accountant, puts in writing (on October 4th 2008, before much in the way of funds were disbursed to AIG) claims that appear to be a "smoking gun" in regards to what has been going on within AIG (read the whole thing; its rather ugly) and yet somehow both Henry Paulson and Tim Geithner agree to transfer nearly $170 billion of taxpayer money to AIG to "bail it out", with full knowledge of this written testimony not only within the administration but also within the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform!

And where did this guy (Cassano) come from?

Joseph Cassano started out at Drexel Burnham Lambert under Michael Milken, "the Junk Bond King." Drexel imploded in 1990 and Milken landed in prison.

AIG promptly hired a team of Drexel people to start a Financial Products unit, Cassano among them. Cassano became the head and began dealing in securities known as "credit default swaps" out of one office in Wilton, Conn., and another in England, dubbed "the London casino."

You can't be serious? Drexel?

How does this sort of thing "fly under the radar" in Washington DC? Why you just make some "campaign contributions" to Chris Dodd and Barack Obama, the latter of whom wins the election and then allows yet another slug of money to be funneled through your former "employer" to hide the bad bets you made that now are being paid down to foreign banks?

Nor does this appear to be "just him" giving those "donations" either:

In March 2009 Cassano was linked to e-mails he authored in 2006 which solicited contributions from AIG executives for Dodd's campaign due to Dodd's position as incoming chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.^[10]

Oh Mr. Cop! Mr. Cop! Mr. ERIC HOLDER!

One has to wonder - is the reason that Mr. Eric Holder, United States Attorney General, is not after this is due to campaign contributions made to his boss?

Has Barack Obama told his employee Eric Holder not to go after this guy?

And how about Chris Dodd? Nothing wrong there either?

Hmmmmm.

And no, I will not be satisfied if the law just goes after Joe here. Every single individual and firm that knew of this and did nothing, if criminal culpability is proved (and it sure looks like this "business" was intentionally structured in an attempt to avoid regulatory oversight and perhaps to unlawfully avoid paying taxes!), needs to hang from the (lawful) yardarm, including the accountants, external auditors and every single person within our government who knew and yet allowed the Treasury to be looted to pay off these "bad bets", including Henry Paulson, Tim Geithner and the entire Federal Reserve Board who approved the AIG transactions with The Fed.

Anyone remember Arthur Anderson?

PS: Mr. Cassano is alleged to have very extensive property holdings in The United States as well as having been paid some $300 million dollars over the last few years. Can we find a cop interested in serving up clawbacks and forfeiture actions for lunch?

Goldman Sachs, J. P. Morgan, financial terrorists

Two different worlds... we live in two different worlds....