“There is a real danger this is going to be a double dip and that after six months or so we’ll have some more bad news,” Feldstein, the former head of the National Bureau of Economic Research and Reagan administration adviser, said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “We could slide down again in the fourth quarter.”

The economy could “flatten out” or “even be positive” in the third quarter, and then it’s likely to contract again in the last three months of the year as the effects of the federal stimulus program wear off and companies finish rebuilding inventories, he said.

“There isn’t going to be enough to sustain a really solid recovery,” he said, even though recent data has provided some “good news” on the economy…

Full report here.

“…in this week’s Barron’s (on page M4 in the

“The Trader” column) to the effect that nearly 70% of the stocks on the NYSE

that are piercing their 200-day moving averages — stating that this is the highest

level “since the summer of 2007”.

Our only comment to that, which is not addressed in the article, is: was the

summer of 2007 really the best time to have been loading up on equities?  That

70% number only tells us how overdone this bear market rally is…”

“…

The clincher came last week in the most bizarre and unexpected twist to this unpredictable decades-long tale.

Federal prosecutors accused a guy named Sergey Aleynikov of stealing proprietary “black box” computer codes from Goldman. The agent in charge of the case said the following in court: “The bank (Goldman) has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate the market in unfair ways.” What was Goldman doing with a program that could “ma nipulate the market in unfair ways”?…

Full article here.

Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression

MATT TAIBBIPosted Jul 02, 2009 8:38 AM

“In Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83, Matt Taibbi takes on “the Wall Street Bubble Mafia” — investment bank Goldman Sachs. The piece has generated controversy, with Goldman Sachs firing back that Taibbi’s piece is “an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories” and a spokesman adding, “We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good.” Taibbi shot back: “Goldman has its alumni…”

Full article + short videos here.

See it here. 

“…In order to compensate, the government has stepped in with massive spending of $2.2 trillion or almost 20% of GDP. Where they get the “money” for this I’ve discussed many times. Our public debt could one day soon surpass those kings of inflation — the Japanese. In addition to stimulus, the government has also “borrowed” to bailout directly or indirectly the financial system. This adds nothing to GDP but probably saves it from nose-diving via consumption and investment. Not many people know that if you add up all the bailouts, direct and indirect, it comes to $30 trillion. Truly mind-boggling numbers.”

FUll article here.

“…In order to compensate, the government has stepped in with massive spending of $2.2 trillion or almost 20% of GDP. Where they get the “money” for this I’ve discussed many times. Our public debt could one day soon surpass those kings of inflation — the Japanese. In addition to stimulus, the government has also “borrowed” to bailout directly or indirectly the financial system. This adds nothing to GDP but probably saves it from nose-diving via consumption and investment. Not many people know that if you add up all the bailouts, direct and indirect, it comes to $30 trillion. Truly mind-boggling numbers.”

FUll article here.

“The cost of daily living, from buying food to getting medical care, will become difficult for all but a few as the dollar plunges. States and cities will see their pension funds drained and finally shut down. The government will be forced to sell off infrastructure, including roads and transport, to private corporations. We will be increasingly charged by privatized utilities—think Enron—for what was once regulated and subsidized. Commercial and private real estate will be worth less than half its current value. The negative equity that already plagues 25 percent of American homes will expand to include nearly all property owners. It will be difficult to borrow and impossible to sell real estate unless we accept massive losses. There will be block after block of empty stores and boarded-up houses. Foreclosures will be epidemic. There will be long lines at soup kitchens and many, many homeless. Our corporate-controlled media, already banal and trivial, will work overtime to anesthetize us with useless gossip, spectacles, sex, gratuitous violence, fear and tawdry junk politics. America will be composed of a large dispossessed underclass and a tiny empowered oligarchy that will run a ruthless and brutal system of neo-feudalism from secure compounds. Those who resist will be silenced, many by force. We will pay a terrible price, and we will pay this price soon, for the gross malfeasance of our power elite.”

Link to full article in the previous post.

Wikimedia Commons

By Chris Hedges

(Page 2)

“China is trying to get rid of all the dollars they can in a trash-for-resource deal,” Hudson said. “They will give the dollars to countries willing to sell off their resources since America refuses to sell any of its high-tech industries, even Unocal, to the yellow peril. It realizes these dollars are going to be worthless pretty quickly.”

The architects of this new global exchange realize that if they break the dollar they also break America’s military domination. Our military spending cannot be sustained without this cycle of heavy borrowing. The official U.S. defense budget for fiscal year 2008 is $623 billion, before we add on things like nuclear research. The next closest national military budget is China’s, at $65 billion, according to the Central Intelligence Agency…

Read full article here.