The Bank of Greece in Athens

From New York Magazine:

The news from Greece today is … well, it’s not good. Greek citizens are angry, European politicians are testy, equity investors worldwide are getting nervous, and the headlines are getting increasingly hysterical. This morning, things even took a dip into surreality when Greece’s Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos, frustrated by Germany’s criticism of his country’s accounting skills, actually whipped out the Hitler card.

“They [the Nazis] took away the Greek gold that was in the Bank of Greece, they took away the Greek money and they never gave it back,” he said. “I don’t say they have to give back the money necessarily,” he remarked to the BBC. “But they have to say thanks.”

Compared to that, the Times sounded like the voice of reason with their story pinning blame on our old friend credit default swaps, which prompted Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to announce he would investigate Goldman Sachs and financial institutions that might use instruments “in a way that intentionally destabilizes” the country. But is the rising price of insuring for risky assets, like Greek bonds, really driven by dastardly speculation, or just common sense? Remember, you can only bet against Greece if you find someone willing to bet for Greece.

Meanwhile, in Nature magazine, Jared Diamond, an esteemed scholar of societal collapse, has cited a parallel between the current crisis and the one suffered by Greece in, yes, the Bronze Age, when an advanced society was plunged into 400 years of illiteracy. This made us feel a bit better, actually. Because we strongly suspect that ain’t gonna happen this time. (Three hundred years, maybe.)

What we do think will happen is that the Greek debt crisis will, before too long, go the way of the Dubai debt crisis. Which is to say, this is a problem that we’ll soon stop having to worry about, because it will get superseded by other problems, such as fiscal crises in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Japan, the Baltics, or — can’t wait! — here.

Or we can just worry about where the next earthquake is going to strike…

[continues in New York Magazine]

Imagine being forced to skip your senior year of high school. Or having the option.

If you live in Utah, that could become a reality. In an effort to bridge a $700 million budget shortfall, Republican state Sen. Chris Buttars has put forth a plan to eliminate 12th grade in high school, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Facing a wealth of criticism from parents, teachers and students alike, Buttars defended a scaled down version of the idea wherein students simply had the option to exit before their final year, claiming the proposal could save the state about $60 million…

[continues at Raw Story]

Italy’s mafia crime syndicates bucked the recession in 2009 to raise ‘profits’ by almost 8 percent with the financial crisis making companies and even the stock market even more vulnerable to cash-flush mobsters.

“Mafia Inc. is reinforcing its position as the number one Italian company,” said a report published on Wednesday by a body whose members bear the brunt of mafia extortion and crimes, the small business and shopkeepers’ association Confesercenti.

It estimated that the impact on business equaled about 7 percent of Italy’s economic output, enjoying healthy growth in a year when the Italian economy shrank by almost 5 percent.

Experts had predicted when the crisis began that Calabria’s ‘Ndrangheta, with its huge slice of the global drugs trade, Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, Naples’ violent Camorra and Puglia’s Sacra Corona Unita would see more demand for loan-sharking.

But the report said mobsters had also been able to launder their earnings by buying up cheap assets and had found a cheap and willing workforce among the newly unemployed…

[continues at Reuters]

The U.S. budget deficit will hit $1.3 trillion in 2010, congressional budget analysts estimated Tuesday, in a fresh piece of grim news for President Barack Obama.

The estimate from the Congressional Budget Office assumes current laws and policies remain unchanged.

Economic growth will also probably be “muted” for the next few years, the CBO said in its budget outlook for 2010.

The CBO’s estimates come about a week before Obama transmits his fiscal 2011 budget to Congress, on Feb. 1. Obama is under mounting pressure to cut the deficit but also to create jobs, in the wake of last week’s victory in a special Senate election in Massachusetts by Republican Scott Brown.

In his first State of the Union address on Wednesday night, Obama is expected to call for a three-year freeze in spending for a portion of the federal budget in a first step toward reining in the deficit.

The federal government recorded a staggering deficit of $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2009 — more than three times as much as in 2008.

The government has reported a consistent flow of red ink in the past several months. In December, the federal government ran a budget deficit of $91.8 billion, marking the 15th consecutive month in which outlays exceeded receipts…

By Ron Paul, Special to CNN:

A year after a nearly $800 billion stimulus package was passed, the U.S. economy still finds itself mired in mediocrity.

Economic growth is stagnant, unemployment remains higher than almost any time since the Great Depression and millions of Americans are upset that trillions of taxpayer dollars have been committed to numerous government bailout programs with no improvement of the economy within sight.

They question, rightfully, is where this money is going and why it hasn’t been as helpful as the government has claimed.

The problems with stimulus packages are manifold. The primary reason they fail is because they do not address the roots of the problem. If you are unable to identify the cause of your problem, then your solution is doomed to fail.

In the case of the current economic crisis, it had its root in loose monetary policy and easy credit that skewed the allocation of resources within the economy.

Combined with other measures to promote home ownership, these easy money policies caused a massive housing bubble. Money that would have been put to other uses was used to produce raw materials, hire workers and loaned to homebuyers, all while home prices spiked…

[continues at CNN]

The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that there have now been 1,000,000 foreclosures filed so far in 2009 and the group expects the foreclosure number to double before the end of the year.

U.S. Home Vacancies Hit 18.7 Million on Bank Seizures (Update2) [1]

Thanks to our controlled and uncontrolled media, we know when you take the derivative of the foreclosure crisis you get those greedy predatory lenders at AIG, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America plotting to steal our tacky (I mean tract-y) houses.

Conventional wisdumb and the media always blame the usual suspects and FOX News wraps it up: “It’s the age-old Wall Street vs. Main Street smackdown again”

Is this foreclosure for profit?

Read the rest at the Marketoracle

The Great U.S. Housing Market Foreclosure Robbery Of The 21st Century

I didn’t believe this story was true at first — thought it had to be a spoof. But it turns out to be true. The great banks of the world have gone on a p.r. counteroffensive in Europe, and are sending spokescrooks in shiny suits into churches to persuade the masses that Christ would have approved of the latest round of obscene bonuses.

Goldman Sachs international adviser Brian Griffiths explains it this way: that Christ’s famous injunction to love others as one would love oneself actually means that one should love oneself as one would love oneself. This seemingly baffling outburst by a Goldman executive in what appears to have been a prepared speech — someone actually wrote this, and thought about it, before saying it out loud — gets even weirder when one tries to figure out what could possibly have motivated this person, and by extension his employer Goldman Sachs, to make such statements in such a place as St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Disinfo’s Joe points out at Mutate that the Griffiths has a connection to the political cult The Family:

This shouldn’t be surprising for anyone who has read Jeff Sharlet’s book _The Family_. This rhetoric is straight out of their play book. This guy is likely a member (he *spoke at* the funeral of Wallace Haines, The Family’s ‘man in Europe’, in 2007). http://www.wallacehaines.com/inmemoryof.htm