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Wednesday 11.30.2011

New Developments In MF Global Collapse

Celente: MF Global Receivers
Have Defaulted On Underlying Contracts
If this is indeed the case, then then this is a few orders of magnitude worse than understood for the past month or so.
The staggering thing here seems to be that they simply out-and-out defaulted on the underlying contracts (offering a "correction" to a new contract at a higher price, which you can re-up the cash to accept, is a default of the exchange). I hadn't heard anything about that previously -- supposedly they just raided the "excess" cash balances (if not collateral). Indeed; upping the value of the contract, and then asking for the entire par value to accept it, is an additional two instances of theft.

Gerald Celente:
The Prestitutes are Out to Pillage All Accounts 1/2

Gerald Celente:
The Prestitutes are Out to Pillage All Accounts 2/2

KPMG Recovered $500 Million of MF Global U.K. Client Assets
By Kit Chellel - Bloomberg.com
MF Global (MF)’s U.K. administrators have recovered about half of the estimated $1 billion of customer funds frozen when the brokerage collapsed on Oct. 31.
The final recovery amount will depend on how much can be taken back from the third-party financial firms which held money for MF Global’s U.K. clients, said Richard Heis, a partner at KPMG LLP.
KPMG, which was appointed to supervise the administration of MF Global UK Ltd., said Nov. 27 that it hoped to return some money to the broker’s clients by March.

BofA, Goldman, Citi Credit Ratings Cut by S&P
By Dakin Campbell - Bloomberg.com
Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Citigroup Inc. had long-term credit grades reduced to A- from A byStandard & Poor’s after the ratings firm revised criteria for dozens of the world’s biggest lenders.
S&P made the same cut to Morgan Stanley and Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch unit today. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) was reduced one level to A from A+. S&P upgraded Bank of China Ltd. (3988) and China Construction Bank Corp. to A from A- and maintained the A rating on Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (1398), giving all three lenders higher grades than most big U.S. banks.

Lehman Brothers’ Liquidation Plan
Is Supported by $450 Billion in Claims
By Linda Sandler - Bloomberg.com
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ) won support for its latest payout plan from more than 150 creditors holding about $450 billion in claims, moving it closer to paying some of its debt, the defunct firm said.
Lehman, which filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history in September 2008, had said it can probably get a judge’s approval for a $65 billion liquidation plan next month, with the first distributions starting early next year. The company, whose creditors range from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) to the New York Giants and individual bondholders, gave its vote count in court filings today after a Nov. 4 voting deadline.

Bank of America stock nearing $5 danger zone
By Maureen Farrell - CNNMoney.com
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Another trading day and another low for Bank of America's stock.
Shares of Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) dropped more than 3% Tuesday, hitting a new 52-week low of $5.03 -- its lowest level since March 12, 2009.
After the close of trading Tuesday, Bank of America was one of 37 financial institutions downgraded by S&P.
Beyond the S&P downgrade, trading could become even more complicated in Bank of America's stock, if it falls below $5. Under that threshold, many broker-dealers will not allow investors to buy or short a stock on margin, according to a spokesperson for the New York Stock Exchange.

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How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word
By Richard Teitelbaum - Bloomberg.com
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were mounting. Four months earlier, Bear Stearns Cos. had sold itself for just $10 a share to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)
Now, amid tumbling home prices and near-record foreclosures, attention was focused on a new source of contagion: Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac, which together had more than $5 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and other debt outstanding, Bloomberg Markets reports in its January issue.

Fed's Yellen Sees Scope
for Further Asset Purchases to Spur U.S. Recovery
By Vivien Lou Chen - Bloomberg.com
Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Janet Yellen said the central bank has leeway to spur the U.S. recovery and reduce unemployment by buying more assets or clarifying its plan to sustain record-low borrowing costs.
"The Federal Reserve has some scope for action," Yellen said today. “We are actively considering methods that we could use to provide greater clarity” on the central bank’s pledge to keep rates low through at least mid-2013, and new purchases have the potential to "flatten the yield curve."

Fed's Lockhart Is 'Skeptical'
More Bond-Buying Will Help Stimulate Economy
By Steve Matthews - Bloomberg.com
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Dennis Lockhart said expanding securities purchases is unlikely to give a sufficient boost to U.S. growth, without ruling out the strategy or other easing options.
"I am skeptical that further asset purchases will produce much gain in terms of increased economic activity," Lockhart, who votes on monetary policy next year, said in a speech in Atlanta. "I don’t believe further bond purchasing by the Fed is a potent policy option given the set of circumstances we currently face."

Money Charts
Dollars, Thousands, Millions, Billions, Trillions

Will central banks' hidden gold demand boost gold prices?
LONDON (Commodity Online): The release of last week’s IMF statistics for October revealed a continuation of central bank appetite for Gold with net purchases of just over 20 tonnes. A number of existing buyers, such as Russia, added to holdings (a sizeable 19.5 tonnes), said Barclays Capital in a research note.
According to Barclays, data to October shows Russia has increased reserves by 82 tonnes so far in 2011, compared to 139.6 tonnes last year. Russian central bank First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev has said, "We have been implementing a programme of raising the share of gold in the reserves for several years... we are acquiring huge volumes... we are not planning to step away from this path".

John Williams:
Hyperinflation Warning, Preserve Value with Gold
JT Long of The Gold Report - IBTimes.com
Among the specters lurking in ShadowStats.com's Editor John Williams' gloomy outlook for the U.S. are the demise of the dollar, hyperinflation and the ongoing lack of political will to take sound corrective measures. Still, as he tells The Gold Report in this exclusive interview, investors have options. Williams contends that turning to gold, silver and strong foreign currencies would protect wealth and position savvy investors to take advantage of extraordinary opportunities likely to flow out of the turmoil ahead.
The Gold Report: When we talked in May, you predicted that hyperinflation could be a reality as soon as 2014, something you addressed at length in your Hyperinflation Special Report. Have six months of euro debt crises, Middle East revolts and U.S. Treasuries' downgrading altered your outlook?
John Williams: Not a bit. We still seem to be moving down that road to a relatively near-term break toward hyperinflation. The most important thing that's happened since we last talked was the global response to the U.S. legislators' negotiations over the debt-limit ceiling and the deficit reduction problems at that time. Clearly, no one controlling the White House or Congress was serious about addressing the nation's long-term solvency issues. That sparked a panic selloff on the dollar against currencies such as the Swiss franc, and of course gold, which made the gold price rally sharply.

MARC FABER ON GOLD 26 NOV 2011

Why Politicians Are Good for Gold
By: Julian D. W. Phillips - GoldSeek.com
After a long and lengthening political debacle on both sides of the Atlantic, the developed world remains embedded in a crisis that the political systems are unable, or unwilling, to resolve despite all the hopeful talks. The leaders of the developed world are capable, competent men who have what it takes to surmount the debt crises that are consuming confidence day by day. So why don’t they?
Current Status - U.S.
Fitch Ratings gave the United States until 2013 to come up with a "credible plan" to tackle its ballooning budget deficit or risk a downgrade of the country's coveted, AAA rating. The ratings agency revised the outlook from stable to negative on the U.S. credit rating after a special congressional committee failed last week to agree on at least $1.2 trillion in deficit-reduction measures. The committee failure made it unlikely that any meaningful deficit plan will be adopted next year, increasing the fiscal burden on the next administration that will be elected in late 2012, Fitch said. Fitch said the chance of a downgrade is "slightly greater than 50%".

BNP Paribas forecast:
Gold to hit $2025 in 2012 and $2280 in 2013
LONDON (Commodity Online): The growing demand forGold bars and coins reflects safe haven demand, while exchange-traded fund buying in November has recorded inflows, said Anne-Laure Tremblay, precious metals strategist at BNP Paribas.
According to Tremblay, the sell-off in gold holdings may have occurred in the over-the-counter market, which is dominated by institutional participants. The decline in exposure to gold may be linked to large-scale, cross-asset liquidation. Notably, gold holdings may have been sold to meet losses elsewhere and added that selling in indexes may have also resulted in price falls.

Gold, oil, natural gas & agri:
What to expect in 2012
Hard Assets Investor: Since oil and Gold are the big headline makers, which will perform better in 2012?
Dennis Gartman: Gold will probably continue to move from the lower left to the upper right on the charts. With the continued problems and the budgetary circumstances here in the United States, along with the political circumstances in Europe that are not going to go away and are probably only going to get worse, we’ll tend to put a bid to the gold market, all other things being equal.

What if Europe uses Gold as collateral for loans?
By Julian Phillips - CommodityOnline.com
If Eurozone governments secured their borrowing with gold, what would that do to the Gold Price...? We have never believed it would return as day-to-day money. That is why for years Gold Forecaster has pointed to gold's coming monetary role as collateral.
We have always seen its return tied into its use on a global basis, most likely between governments, as we saw under the Bretton Woods system after the Second World War. We have always pointed to a time when it would return to a key monetary position in the global financial system.

Greek banks suffer surge in withdrawals
By Kerin Hope in Athens - FT.com
The head of Greece’s central bank said on Tuesday that deposits had shrunk significantly in the past two months as the public withdrew billions of euros in reaction to mounting political tension.
George Provopoulos, the central bank governor, told a parliamentary committee that outflows from the banking system increased to €5.5bn in September and €6.5bn in October.
"These were two very bad months because of political uncertainty," said Mr Provopoulos, who was presenting the bank’s first-half report on the Greek economy to the house economic affairs committee.

What Is the European Central Bank Thinking?
By Clive Crook - TheAtlantic.com
Paul De Grauwe explains why the ECB, rationally by its own lights, is refusing to act as a lender of last resort. Once it has to deal with a full-scale banking crisis, it will step up, says De Grauwe: the costs of failing to do so are vast and instantaneous. But a sovereign debt crisis, which is all we have at the moment, unfolds more slowly, which makes delay seem more attractive.
The sovereign debt crisis occurs at a snail's pace compared to banking crises. When investors sell government bonds and push the interest rate upwards, they affect the cost of borrowing of governments with some delay because the maturity of the bonds is typically of the order of five to seven years. As a result, there is not the imminent threat of a rapid collapse as there is with a banking crisis.

European ministers
plan to turn to IMF for more help in debt crisis
By Howard Schneider and Michael Birnbaum - WashingtonPost.com
European officials said Tuesday that they plan to appeal for deeper involvement by the International Monetary Fund in addressing the region’s debt crisis, an acknowledgment that their own efforts to date have fallen short.
With international investors continuing to press on weak links in the euro currency union, European finance ministers said they would turn to the IMF to help supplement their own emergency bailout fund.

The British economy just got worse
Autumn Statement 2011: it just got even worse
We knew it was going to be bad, but as the Chancellor George Osborne made clear in his Autumn Statement, Britain is facing many more years of misery.
By Jeremy Warner - Telegraph.co.uk
This piece carries a government health warning; be careful not to choke on your cornflakes. Everyone knew, when Lehman Brothers went bust three years ago, that we were facing an almighty economic adjustment; it is only now becoming clear just how long that adjustment will take.
New forecasts contained in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s assessment of the Autumn Statement paint a grim picture of relative economic decline and ballooning debt. It’s now going to take six years to eliminate the structural deficit, two years longer than originally forecast, and even then, cash spending on public services will be higher at the end of the period than at the beginning.

Wolfgang Schauble admits euro bail-out fund won't halt crisis
Europe's "big bazooka" bail-out fund is not ready and won't stem the debt crisis that on Tuesday pounded Italy and the European Central Bank (ECB), admitted Wolfgang Schauble, Germany's finance minister.
By Louise Armitstead - Telegraph.co.uk
Mr Schauble said eurozone finance ministers, who are meeting in Brussels, could not agree on the terms of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). He told Germany’s Handelsblatt that although Europe needed a fund "capable of action", plans for the EFSF were too "intricate and complex" for investors to understand.
The finance ministers, who were meeting ahead of a full Ecofin summit today, acknowledged the €440bn (£376bn) fund would not win support to leverage it up to €1 trillion. Its capacity would be betwen €500bn and €700bn instead – a total that is unlikely to be big enough to rescue Spain and Italy.

Brian Pretti−A Macro Potpourri:
The Sovereign Debt Crisis, Who Is Next?
Eventual Day of Reckoning Coming for the US [audio files]
James J Puplava CFP with Brian Pretti CFA - FinancialSense.com
Brian Pretti joins Jim for a macro potpourri, including who will be next in the sovereign debt crisis, shorter business cycles coming, and surviving zero interest rates with dividends.
Brian is the managing editor of ContraryInvestor.com and is written, edited and published by a very small group of "real world" institutional buy-side portfolio managers and analysts with, at minimum, 20 years of individual Street experience. Their credentials include CFA, CPA and CFP, as well as the obligatory MBA's in Finance. They are all either partners or employees of institutions with at least $1 billion under management.

Treasury 30-Year Yield
Below German Bond for First Time Since May 2009
By Cordell Eddings and Daniel Kruger - Bloomberg.com
Yields on U.S. 30-year bonds dropped below those on similar maturity German government securities for the first time since May 2009 as European officials struggle to contain the region’s sovereign-debt crisis.
Treasuries fell as finance ministers from the 17-member European monetary union meet in Brussels amid speculation regional officials are struggling to support member nations' debt markets. Government debtdeclined earlier after a boost in U.S. consumer sentiment eased concern the U.S. economy may falter.

Despite earmark ban,
lawmakers try to give money to hundreds of pet projects
By Kimberly Kindy - WashingtonPost.com
Members of the House and the Senate attempted to pack hundreds of special spending provisions into at least 10 bills in the summer and fall, less than a year after congressional leaders declared a moratorium on earmarks, congressional records show.
The moratorium, announced last November in the House and in February in the Senate, is a verbal commitment by the Republican leadership to prohibit lawmakers from directing federal funds to handpicked projects and groups in their districts. Lawmakers have tried to get around the moratorium by promising to allow other groups to compete for the funds. But the legislative language is so narrowly tailored that critics consider the practice to be earmarking by another name.

Bitcoin on Freedom Watch with Judge Napolitano
Nov. 27, 2011

The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin
By Benjamin Wallace - Wired.com
In November 1, 2008, a man named Satoshi Nakamoto posted a research paper to an obscure cryptography listserv describing his design for a new digital currency that he called bitcoin. None of the list’s veterans had heard of him, and what little information could be gleaned was murky and contradictory. In an online profile, he said he lived in Japan. His email address was from a free German service. Google searches for his name turned up no relevant information; it was clearly a pseudonym. But while Nakamoto himself may have been a puzzle, his creation cracked a problem that had stumped cryptographers for decades. The idea of digital money—convenient and untraceable, liberated from the oversight of governments and banks—had been a hot topic since the birth of the Internet. Cypherpunks, the 1990s movement of libertarian cryptographers, dedicated themselves to the project. Yet every effort to create virtual cash had foundered. Ecash, an anonymous system launched in the early 1990s by cryptographer David Chaum, failed in part because it depended on the existing infrastructures of government and credit card companies. Other proposals followed—bit gold, RPOW, b-money—but none got off the ground.

Where Would We Be Without Rules?
By: Adrian Ash - GoldSeek.com

"Where would be if we didn't have rules?"
"FRANCE!"
"And where would we be if we had too many rules?"
"GERMANY!"
– UK comedian Al Murray, the (very British) Pub Landlord

"The GREAT DEPRESSION was caused by the Gold Standard," reckons NYU professor and professional media star, Nouriel Roubini.
Like pretty much everyone else, Roubini thinks the Gold Standard's tiresome rules brought about that cataclysm. Those manacles meant having to swap paper for bullion every time investors and savers got jumpy about the size of your deficit, your debt or your money-printing.
Really, what an idea! So 80 years later, the Gold Standard is deader than punk. Yet here we are in another depression again.
What's caused this catastrophe if gold was to blame before?

Altering health law by executive order a no-go, report says
By Paige Winfield Cunningham - The Washington Times
Despite promises by Republican presidential candidates that they would gut key parts of President Obama’s health care law on their first day in office, Congress‘ nonpartisan research agency says that trying to repeal major components of the overhaul through executive order just won't work.
The Congressional Research Service has weighed in on questions of whether a Republican successor to Mr. Obama could halt portions of the Affordable Care Act by wielding an often-controversial power reserved exclusively for the president.

No consensus among states on tack for health law
By Paige Winfield Cunningham - The Washington Times
Love it or hate it, states across the country are facing a looming dilemma over whether to get to work implementing a key component of President Obama’s massive health care overhaul.
With deadlines approaching to set up mandatory state-level "exchanges" to offer affordable health insurance, some states are scurrying to get started, others are refusing to play by the rules and still others are falling somewhere in between.

Medicare in America: 'It has to get better'
By Amanda Gengler - CNNMoney
(MONEY Magazine) -- As administrator of Medicare and Medicaid, Donald Berwick has been in charge of paying for the health care of nearly one in three Americans. He has also had an important role in implementing last year's health reform law, which uses the Medicare system as a big lever to change how doctors and hospitals do business, in hopes of containing costs.
Before taking the job -- which he'll leave in early December -- the Harvard-trained pediatrician was a leading advocate for quality and patient safety, and often a blunt critic of our health system.

States face bleak economic forecast, report says
By Michael A. Fletcher - WashingtonPost.com
States are caught in a fiscal vise as weak economic growth, dwindling federal help and increasing appeals from hard-pressed local governments squeeze their budgets.
Things have improved since the worst of the recession, but states still face a dire fiscal situation, according to a report to be released Tuesday by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO).
The Fiscal Survey of States says that even as states struggle with tepid revenue growth, they will be called on to spend more because of the economic distress caused by continued high unemployment.

Home Prices in 20 U.S. Cities Fall More Than Forecast,
Case-Shiller Says
By Alex Kowalski - Bloomberg.com
Residential real estate prices dropped more than forecast in the year ended September, showing the industry at the center of the 2008 financial crisis continues to struggle.
The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities dropped 3.6 percent in September from the same month in 2010 after decreasing 3.8 percent in the year ended August, the group said today in New York. The median forecast of 32 economists in a Bloomberg News survey projected a 3 percent decrease.

Home prices fall to 8-year lows
By Les Christie @CNNMoney
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Home prices continued to sink in the third quarter, falling to levels not seen since early 2003.
Home prices dropped 3.9% year-over-year during the three months ended Sept. 30, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller national home price index. On a quarterly basis, prices were slightly higher, squeezing out a 0.1% gain.
One bright spot was that the declines have started to slow. During the second quarter, prices were down 5.8% year-over-year.

As Home Prices Sink, Home Ownership Heads to New Lows
By: Diana Olick - CNBC Real Estate Reporter
Home prices across the nation are now right back where they were at the beginning of 2003. All that was gained is largely now lost, and the effect on home ownership could continue for decades.
"Consumer attitudes have gotten a lot more negative about long-term commitment," said Standard and Poors' David Blitzer, after reporting home prices through September had fallen a deeper-than-expected 3.9 percent compared to the third quarter of 2010. "They dropped to new lows. This takes them below the point we saw in 2009, where briefly we all thought this thing was about to turn around."
And that's the problem.

Economy is So Good People are Living in Cars
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
I have never seen, in all my time, so many people holding signs on street corners asking for money, food and work. My wife spotted a couple in their forties living in their car in the middle of a crowded WalMart parking lot. I am seeing more of that, too. I was watching CNBC Monday, and one analyst basically said the economy was good and getting better. He pointed to the great sales numbers on Black Friday. Of course, no one adjusted the sales numbers for inflation. Also, many think the retailers just stole sales from the rest of the holiday shopping season. The number of people living in cars and tents have gone up, and it is not the sign of a healthy economy. The true unemployment rate is nearly 23% (according to Shadowstats.com) if it was calculated the way Bureau of Labor and Statistics reported it in 1994 and earlier. The homelessness phenomenon is making it’s way into the mainstream media because it is a national problem that is also reflected in the record numbers of people on food stamps. The number is nearly 46 million and growing as the real economy sinks. Please watch the story below from 60 Minutes that aired this past weekend. It is a sad mile marker on the road to perdition here in the U.S.:

Tens Of Millions Of American Families
Are Living On The Edge Of Desperation –
And The Economy Is About To Get A Whole Lot Worse
TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
Have you ever been so poor that you had to live in your car? Have you ever been so low on funds that the only place you could afford to live was a rat-infested motel? Have you ever spent a night living in a tent city or sleeping in the streets? If not, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate. As the recent Black Friday madnessdemonstrated, there are still lots of Americans that are doing well enough to go on wild shopping sprees, but the reality is that there are also millions of American families that are falling through the "safety net" to a place of total desperation. In a previous article I talked about the fact that the U.S. Census Bureau recently announced that a higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty than has ever been measured before. Not only that, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty last year. That was also a new all-time record. As you read this, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one our of every four U.S. children is on food stamps. Tens of millions of American families are living on the edge of desperation. In many communities across the United States, there is so much despair in the air that it is almost tangible. When you look into the eyes of many Americans these days, it almost seems as if all the hope has been sucked right out of their hearts. Economic despair is at epidemic levels, and unfortunately the economy is about to get a whole lot worse.

Growth of Online Retailers
Makes Internet the New Shopping Battleground
BY DAVID ZEILER, Associate Editor, Money Morning
While online retailers have celebrated the growth of online shopping, conventional retailers determined not to lose customers have been ramping up their Internet efforts.
Forrester Research Inc. (NYSE: FORR) estimates that online shopping will increase by 15% to $59.5 billion this holiday season. And more Americans said they were planning to shop online yesterday, "Cyber Monday," this year - 122.9 million, according to a survey conducted by BIGresearch for Shop.org, up from 106.9 million in 2010.
Cyber Monday spending last year exceeded $1 billion for the first time.

How the U.S. Will Become a 3rd World Country (Part 2)
By Ron Hera ©2011 Hera Research, LLC - GoldSeek.com
The United States is quickly coming to resemble a post industrial neo-3rd-world country. Unemployment, lack of economic opportunity, falling real wages and household incomes, growing poverty and increasing concentration of wealth are major trends in the U.S. today. Behind these growing problems are monetary inflation created by the Federal Reserve’s monetary policies, federal government deficit spending and the dominant influence of "too big to fail" banks and large corporations in Washington D.C., which has altered the direction of law in the United States. To make matters worse, the U.S. government faces a historic fiscal crisis.

Researcher’s Video Shows
Secret Software on Millions of Phones Logging Everything
By David Kravets - Wired.com
The Android developer who raised the ire of a mobile-phone monitoring company last week is on the attack again, producing a video of how the Carrier IQ software secretly installed on millions of mobile phones reports most everything a user does on a phone.
Though the software is installed on most modern Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones, Carrier IQ was virtually unknown until 25-year-old Trevor Eckhart of Connecticut analyzed its workings, revealing that the software secretly chronicles a user’s phone experience — ostensibly so carriers and phone manufacturers can do quality control.

Malignantocracy
By Thomas Berry - PatriotPost.com
A new word recently surfaced: Ineptocracy. While not yet officially part of the language, it has been defined as, "A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers." As good a working description of our current culture as that is, I submit another: Malignantocracy.
Merriam-Webster defines "malignant," as "evil in nature, influence, or effect: injurious," as "passionately and relentlessly malevolent: aggressively malicious," and, in the context of health, "tending to produce death or deterioration <malignantmalaria>; especially: tending to infiltrate, metastasize, and terminate fatally < a malignant tumor>."

Obama ordering agencies to keep better digital records
By Ed O’Keefe - WashingtonPost.com
President Obama has ordered federal agencies to make wider use of digital-based recordkeeping systems in what his aides promise will be the most significant change to government archiving since Harry S. Truman’s presidency.
The White House on Monday gave agency bosses four months to draft plans to improve how they archive government records, with specific government-wide instructions to follow soon after. The goal is to make federal recordkeeping cheaper, faster and easier to access for Americans eager to explore government data, deliberations and decisions.

Horton Named CEO as AMR Files Bankruptcy
By Phil Milford, Mary Schlangenstein
and David McLaughlin - Bloomberg.com
American Airlines parent AMR Corp. (AMR) filed for bankruptcy after failing to secure cost-cutting labor agreements and sitting out a round of mergers that dropped it from the world’s largest airline to No. 3 in the U.S.
With the filing, American became the last of the so-called U.S. legacy airlines to seek court protection from creditors. The Fort Worth, Texas-based company, which traces its roots to 1920s air-mail operations in the Midwest, listed $24.7 billion in assets and $29.6 billion in debt in Chapter 11 papers filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

Federal Judge Orders Google,
Facebook to Disappear Hundreds of Sites
By Nate Anderson, Ars Technica - Wired.com
After a series of one-sided hearings, luxury goods maker Chanel has won recent court orders against hundreds of websites trafficking in counterfeit luxury goods. A federal judge in Nevada has agreed that Chanel can seize the domain names in question and transfer them all to US-based registrar GoDaddy. The judge also ordered "all Internet search engines" and "all social media websites" — explicitly naming Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google — to "de-inde" the domain names and to remove them from any search results.

China made me do it
Will Obama endorse the one-child policy next?
By Eric Wang-The Washington Times
Of the adjectives commonly associated with Washington policymakers, "childish" inevitably ranks among the most frequently used. This month’s congressional hearing on the Solyndra scandal is a perfect example of why. Listening to Energy Secretary Steven Chu and members of Congress citing China as justification for the deeply troubled federal clean energy loan program, we are reminded of parents admonishing recalcitrant children that just because someone else jumps off a bridge, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to follow suit.

Georgetown students shed light
on China’s tunnel system for nuclear weapons
By William Wan - WashingtonPost.com
The Chinese have called it their "Underground Great Wall" — a vast network of tunnels designed to hide their country’s increasingly sophisticated missile and nuclear arsenal.
For the past three years, a small band of obsessively dedicated students at Georgetown University has called it something else: homework.
Led by their hard-charging professor, a former top Pentagon official, they have translated hundreds of documents, combed through satellite imagery, obtained restricted Chinese military documents and waded through hundreds of gigabytes of online data.

'Iran prepping al-Qaida for large-scale attacks'
Warning raises concern nuclear device
could pass to terrorists targeting U.S.
By Aaron Klein © 2011 WND
JERUSALEM – In response to any future Israeli military strike on its nuclear sites, Iran has been training al-Qaida elements in the Egyptian Sinai desert on how to coordinate retaliatory attacks, a senior Egyptian security official told WND.
The al-Qaida attacks are meant to target both Israeli and Egyptian installations, the security official said, as part of an Iranian plot to widen any Israeli-Iranian conflict to involve other countries

Iranian hard-liners storm British Embassy,
residential compound
By Thomas Erdbrink and Joby Warrick - WashingtonPost.com
TEHRAN — Young Iranians stormed the British Embassy compound and a separate diplomatic residence here on Tuesday as security forces looked on, triggering a dramatic escalation in tensions between Iran and the West at a time of already high anxiety over Iran's nuclear ambitions.
The apparently deliberate decision by Iranian authorities to allow demonstrators and paramilitary members to pillage the two sites is likely to increase Tehran’s global isolation. It also could increase the strain in Iran between two rival blocs: forces loyal to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and those aligned with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

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