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Laureati in 007 all'Università della Calabria

Continua a crescere in Italia la cultura dell’intelligence.

Infatti, all’Università della Calabria, primo esempio in Italia, si è conclusa, con la discussione delle tesi, la seconda edizione del Master in Intelligence, il cui presidente del Comitato scientifico, è il Presidente onorario della Repubblica, Francesco Cossiga.

A presiedere la commissione, che ha esaminato i ventotto partecipanti, è stato il Direttore del master, Mario Caligiuri, assistito anche dal Comandante dei ROS dei Carabinieri di Reggio Calabria, Valerio Giardina e dal Vice prefetto del Ministero dell’Interno Marco Valentini.

Vari, importanti e di qualità sono stati i temi elaborati nelle tesi: l’impatto nel sistema politico nazionale di un eventuale partito politico islamico in Italia, le carceri come bacini di informazioni, il ruolo della criminalità cinese in Italia, le nuove tecniche di intercettazione e di analisi linguistiche, i metodi dell’intelligence per contrastare la pedopornografia on line, una comparazione a livello internazionale sulla formazione e selezione degli operatori delle agenzie. Particolare attenzione, da parte dei candidati è stata riservata alla ‘ndrangheta, in particolar modo ai rapporti che intercorrono fra le associazioni mafiose e le amministrazioni pubbliche, all’organizzazione cellulare alla Al-Quaeda e al mercato ittico come area anche criminale.

Le tesi che sono risultate di maggior interesse scientifico saranno approfondite e pubblicate, in quanto numerosi argomenti saranno oggetto di approfondimenti ed analisi da parte del Centro dipartimentale di studi e documentazione scientifica sull’Intelligence già istituito all’Università della Calabria e coordinato da Mario Caligiuri.

La qualità dei lavori conclusivi e delle lezioni tenute durante l’anno, l’ampio interessamento già registrato per partecipare alla terza edizione che prenderà il via nel mese di Settembre (con un convegno d’intesa con il Consiglio Nazionale delle ricerche sul tema “Intelligence e scienze umane”), i risultati ottenuti in termini di ricerche e pubblicazioni stanno testimoniando l’indubbio interesse che sta suscitando lo studio del settore, entrato proprio con l’organizzazione di questo master per la prima volta all’interno del panorama universitario pubblico Italiano.

Come fare per sapere chi sono i signori del signoraggio?

Central Banking Hazard Awareness

Do you want absolute, incontrovertible proof we are around the corner from the Greatest depression the world has ever seen? Does your family have $900,000 to help pay off the Federal debt? The head of the Federal Reserve Bank Of Dallas, Robert Fisher, gave a speech in May 2008 (Storms on the Horizon) in which he said that the US government's unfunded liabilities are now $ 99.2 trillion (for future Social Security and Medicare obligations) . This is in addition to the Federal debt of over $ 11 trillion. With 112 million households, each family's share of this future debt is $ 888,750. For each and every family! It gets worse. Elizabeth Coleman is Inspector General of the Federal Reserve (which isn't federal and has no reserves). They lost 9 trillion dollars of YOUR tax money. Just misplaced 9 trillion dollars. The GNP of this country is only 14 trillion. That's $63,000 for each taxpayer. That's three times the entire annual budget of the United States. Lost, gone, misplaced, stolen, whatever. Our GNP is only $14 trillion.

The fed is secretly owned by the largest U.S. banks. That's right- it's a secret who owns the Fed and no one has ever proven which banks own it. Go to their website so you can see for yourself. We don't even know who prints our Monopoly Money.

Congress to put hundreds of Madoffs in jail

Bernie Madoff: Fall Guy or First of Many?

By Eric Lotke, Campaign for America's Future. June 30, 2009.

Congressional Commission on financial fraud has the ability to put hundreds of Madoffs in jail and lead the way for real bank reform.

Bernard Madoff has been sentenced to 150 years in prison for one of the biggest investment frauds in Wall Street history. The punishment seems to fit the crime....

But there is no closure here. We can’t let Madoff’s sentence distract us from the underlying problems.

This isn’t just about Madoff. This is about the system in which Madoff’s scam took place. This is about systemic fraud and malpractice, the cultural trade of due diligence for easy profit. It’s about conflicts of interest where companies paid ratings agencies for their ratings. It’s about ideological blinders that let regulators and the Federal Reserve look the other way while banks turned into betting parlors.

So Madoff got 150 years for breaking into the bank. Fine.

But what about the guard who was asleep out front? What about the clerk who forgot to lock the door? What about the $300 billion that Citigroup walked out with from one vault, and the $200 billion that AIG took from another? Does anybody know where that money went or what we got for it? Don’t they get in trouble too? Did you know that, or do you know why, Goldman Sachs is paying its biggest bonus payouts in its 140 year history?

That’s why we need a Pecora Commission. We’ve been calling for a “grand inquest” in the spirit of Ferdinand Pecora, the fierce New York City prosecutor who investigated the crash of 1929 as general counsel of the Senate Banking and Currency Committee. Pecora hauled the robber barons into daylight and dismantled them on public cross examination. He subpoenaed the documents, dug behind the deals and took testimony under oath. His efforts paved the way for the regulatory reforms — the Securities Act of 1933, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 — that held the house together until modern conservatives took them apart in the name of efficient deregulation.

To its credit, Congress is leaning towards a do-over. It created the new Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to investigate how fraud, regulatory lapses, monetary policy, and obscure accounting and lending practices contributed to the current financial crisis. After much opposition, the Commission even has subpoena power.

All the Commission needs now — and fast — is members. Real ones, with fire in their bellies. Members who aren’t afraid to put people in jail.

This isn't just about politics. Fundamental financial reform is essential to the future of the economy and the country. President Obama is right to warn that we can't go back to an economy where we spend more than we earn, and where finance captures 40 percent of the country’s profits. He's right to condemn the culture of "arrogance and greed" that took over Wall Street.

Now is the time. If we don't get comprehensive financial reform now, we're setting up even bigger dangers in the future — banks and financial firms officially recognized “as too big to fail,” who think they get to keep the winnings and the public will cover the losses. It’s a gigantic “moral hazard” that doesn’t just leave the vault unlocked, it posts an OPEN sign in the window.

Commission members are expected to be named soon. Will they be ghosts of Ferdinand Pecora? Will they be well-behaved bankers or fiery prosecutors? Will Congressional leaders give them the staff and the budget to dig hard, dig deep and broadcast what they find? Stay tuned. Find a way to turn up the heat. Congress is going to show us who’s in charge.

Congress Pushing for Federal Reserve Audit

ECONOMY-US:
Congress Pushing for Federal Reserve Audit
Matthew Cardinale

ATLANTA, 30 Jun (IPS) - A majority of the U.S. House of Representatives is now in support of a historic bill by Republican lawmaker Ron Paul to audit the Federal Reserve (the Fed), the privately run central bank that sets monetary policy for the United States.

A similar bill in the U.S. Senate was proposed by Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, and has three right-wing Republican co-sponsors.

Meanwhile, a House committee recently approved an amendment offered by left-leaning Democrat Dennis Kucinich to a bill granting more oversight to the Government Accountability Office, which would audit the Fed's response to the economic crisis specifically.

Notably, the amendment passed committee unanimously, with broad bipartisan support, and now heads to the full House for action.

"The Fed has taken a number of extraordinary and unprecedented steps to address the financial crisis," Kucinich told IPS in an email. "In so doing, it has committed over one trillion dollars to the purchase and financing of many different kinds of assets. It has selectively intervened in certain economic sectors, while it has ignored others."

"All of these interventions mark a departure from traditional monetary policy, raise significant public policy questions, and impact taxpayers considerably," Kucinich said.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is "not revealing what they did with the two trillion dollars they created on their books. It was loans to banks for sure. There have been several actions under the Freedom of Information Act to get them to say who they were to and what the terms were, but they won't do it," Ellen Brown, author of 'Web of Debt', told IPS.

Most people in the United States do not understand what the Federal Reserve is or what it does, except some know the Fed sets a federal interest rate, which in turn affects interest rates on some variable private loans.

However, the Fed's impact is much greater than this. Essentially, the Fed, which is made up of private bank representatives, can determine how much money is in the nation's money supply.

"The money supply helps determine the general level of interest rates paid for the use of money, employment, prices, and economic growth. Many economists believe the money supply is the most important determinant of these variables," according to a 1964 Congressional report, "Money Facts," by the Committee on Banking and Currency.

One way the Fed impacts the money supply is by taking actions that open or restrict credit.

The vast majority of money in the U.S. economy was created through the issuance of loans by private banks. "Created" might seem like a strong word, but in fact, banks typically create money as a bookkeeping entry that did not exist before. Because of what is called "fractional reserve lending", banks can create up to 10 times more money than they have on deposit with the central bank.

"How does the Federal Reserve change the money supply?" the Congressional report notes. "By regulations which tell the member banks the maximum amount of bank deposits they may create per dollar of reserves."

It may seem obscure, but author Ellen Brown argues that "reserve ratio" decisions by the Fed may have preceded several economic crises in U.S. history, including the Great Depression in the 1930s.

"When the Federal Reserve raised the reserve requirements [from 10 percent] to 20 percent right before the Depression, that's what brought on the Depression," she argued.

"Let's say you have a reserve requirement of 10 percent, and for every 10 dollars of reserves, you've got 100 dollars on loans. If they suddenly change the reserve requirement, they have to call in 50 dollars of loans. That caused the Depression. They have the power to shrink the money supply," Brown explained.

Meanwhile, in the last year, the Fed has taken on incredible new powers, including managing the Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP); purchasing parts of new federal debt; and issuing funds to unknown parties.

"There is a large number of members of Congress and Americans in general who believe that such an extraordinary and unprecedented commitment of taxpayer money demands Congressional oversight. That is why my amendment was adopted unanimously in committee when I introduced it in the committee of jurisdiction of the GAO," Kucinich said.

"Reforms may be necessary, but first it is critical to shine a light in the shadows. The Fed's actions have ballooned their balance sheet from 874 billion dollars to more than two trillion dollars. This is more than double the cost of TARP and we still do not really know where the money went. That's unacceptable," Kucinich said.

"The Constitution provides 'the Congress shall have power to coin money, regulate the value thereof,'" the Congressional report notes. "The Supreme Court interpreted this clause, again and again over a period of 150 years, to mean that 'whatever power there is over the currency is vested in the Congress.'"

Congress delegated its authority to create and regulate money to the Federal Reserve, an independent agency it created in 1913. The "independence" of the Fed creates two problems, according to the report.

"Since the Federal Reserve is independent it is not accountable to anyone for the economic policies it chooses to pursue. But this runs counter to normally accepted democratic principles," it says.

"The President and Congress are responsible to the people on election day for their past economic decisions. But the Federal Reserve is responsible, neither to the people directly nor indirectly through the people's elected representatives. Yet the Federal Reserve exercises great power in controlling the money-creating activities of the commercial banks," the report notes.

"With an 'independent' Federal Reserve, Congress and the President can be moving in one direction while the Federal Reserve is moving in the other," it says.

Prior to 1913, the U.S. went through several different phases of monetary policy, including President Abraham Lincoln's decision to print whatever funds he needed to win the U.S. Civil War, rather than relying on private banks.

Some believe it is appropriate, even inevitable, that the Federal Reserve be nationalised again.

"Nationalising the Fed would be a great idea that would solve a lot of problems," Brown said.

"What they really should do is buy out the shareholders, which are private banks. So if you bought them out at what they paid years ago, it wouldn't cost much money," she said.

It is remarkable that the Fed has purchased part of the federal debt in the last year, Brown says, although the public is mostly unaware of this development.

The U.S. government pays three to four percent interest to bondholders of the federal debt, but it could borrow the money from the Fed at less than half a percent, she said.

Brown believes a publicly-run Fed should eventually purchase the entire U.S. debt from foreign countries.

"That's what we'll have to go to. Our banks will end up public banks. You can have private lenders, but the fractional reserve system should be a public system. Creating credit on the books should be a public function because nothing backs the dollar but the full faith and credit of the United States," Brown said.

"Private banks pretend to have money they don't have. Public banks, they're not pretending anything, because we are the public. We are pledging our full faith and credit of 100 dollars for you to pay it back."

(END/2009)

Hyundai Motor America Barters 1,300 Cars

According to Automotive News, Hyundai Motor America traded 1,300 brand-new Tiburon coupes to corporate barter company Active International. The deal included very little cash, with the bulk of the invoice price consisting of advertising credits that Hyundai will use in its media buying plan.

Hyundai made Active International promise (agree to) that the cars wouldn’t be resold to Hyundai dealers or to undercut Hyundai’s own marketing programs—for example, by reselling cars to a used-car superstore that could offer them for less than Hyundai dealers’ deeply discounted prices.

Active International did $1.4 billion in corporate trade business in 2008.

Barter News

From the desk of Bob Meyer...06/30/2009

Bartercard’s Incredible Sales Staff

The world’s largest trade exchange, with 65,000 members, is Bartercard. Launched 18 years ago by Australia’s entrepreneurial Wayne Sharpe, the company focused on setting up a superior barter training and operational system. The diligence has paid off.

In an industry that sees a turnover of sales people, Bartercard can boast of their top seven sales people. They have sold 8,000 new members between them, all paid. The record for a single month of personal sales is 43 members. And eleven other sales people have signed up 35 in a month.

Bartercard’s best are: Rod Bryan 1,259 sign-ups; Kevin Dienoff 1,165; Steve Mills 1,248; Paul Marcello 1,023; Michael Tynne 1,157; Mac Mackie 1,129; Rose Lawlar 1,022.

Value of World’s Millionaires Assets Slid 20%

The ranks of the world’s millionaires shrank at the fastest rate in 2008, with North America suffering the biggest wealth loss worldwide, according to a survey by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch & Co.

The global slump in property and equity markets last year cut the number of millionaires by 15% to 8.6 million, wiping out two years of increases, the firms said in their 13th annual World Wealth Report. (The value of the world’s millionaires’ assets slid 20% to $32.8 trillion, after a 9.4% increase the previous year, the survey said.)

Surprisingly, the U.S. wealthy fared better than many of their overseas counterparts. While the nation’s millionaire population fell 19%, the U.K. had a 26% drop, Russia fell 29%, India dropped 32%, and Australia and Canada both topped 23%. (Those least affected included Brazil with a 9% drop, and China with a 12% drop.)

Vancouver’s Commercial Real Estate Booming

Having had the good fortune to spend time in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, it’s good to see Vancouver (BC) is doing so well with its commercial real estate (office buildings, shopping centers and other properties). Because of the low vacancy rates (4.2%), prices are holding up in Vancouver, versus most cities in the U.S. where average prices are down 25% to 35% in most locations.

Companies Plan To Operate With Less Employees

Consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide conducted a new survey of 179 companies and reports that 52% of those surveyed expect to employ fewer people three to five years from now than they did before the recession began. And 73% expect employees to shoulder more of the cost of health care than prior to the recession.

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