The Fall of America
Chapter 13
Evil Spreading Far, Wide
1 Never since the creation of Adam and Eve have there been such chaotic times as we are witnessing today - with the worst yet to come! There is no peace among the nations of the earth.
2 The only people who enjoy peace of mind and contentment in this day and time are the elect of God, thought they are persecuted from city to city and falsely accused and denied the credit due them because of their righteousness in the midst of the wicked who have ruled the world.
3 By no means can the righteous be represented for their righteous sake by the evil - doers of the world.
4 "God is despised and rejected; evil is accepted and honored; justice stands afar off, and equity cannot come in," says the prophet Isaiah in the Bible.
5 The Holy Qur’an warns us to fear a day when evil is spread far and wide in the days of God’s presence at the end of the satanic world to bring it to naught.
6 Allah (God) causes the evil world to be upset since they have been the enemies of peace and the haters and destroyers of the righteous who would have brought them peace if they had accepted those worthy (the Prophets).
7 But they rejected all; Jesus charged them with being the murderers of the righteous from Abel to Zachariah - we can very well add more, and say from Abel to Muhammad.
8 Today, America professes to be the most Christianized country on our planet. But actually she is not; for Christian means to be crystallized into one. Spiritually, that One refers to the Christ.
9 Christ means the "One Who is coming at the end of the world of the wicked as a crusher." His name actually means "One who is anointed to crush the wicked." The real satanic people are the white race who have disguised themselves to deceive the Black people to follow them. They just use the name, Christian, which means to be Christ-like.
10 They have set up a head for their religion in Rome, Italy, with the pope or father who represents himself as being the intercessor or viceregent; meaning one who is second only to Christ or God and intercedes for the people’s sins and recognition of God. But he has no Divine backing.
11 This false regime should be destroyed by the Christ, the Crusher of the wicked, the Great Mahdi of Islam (Allah ‘God’ in person).
12 These are the days of God’s or Christ’s presence to destroy this evil world with all the deceptions that the people should again labor under a wicked and merciless ruler, the devil. The presence of Allah has upset the devils who have had and exercise total control over the world under falsehood and have made evil to appear fair-seeming.
13 The so-called Christian world has never before displayed such madness as they do today. Since they cannot hide their real wickedness and deceitful ways, they are angry.
14 According to the preaching and teaching of Christianity, they prophesy that they alone would be the happy group that would welcome the coming of the Messiah, the Christ, or the Mahdi. But the Bible condemns them; that they were angry and sought to hide their faces from Him (God).
15 It should be clear to you today that Christian America does not want such preaching as entire submission to the will of Allah (Islam). The Christians hate the very names of God: such as Muhammad, Omar, Karriem, Ali, Hassan, which are attributes of God.
16 The Jesus prophesied that they would hate you for His (God’s) name sake, for having one of His names. Because the names of God are to live forever. No other people on earth have the names of God but the Muslims.
17 So the coming of the Just One makes manifest to you this evil race of sinners. And they will be against His (God’s) presence; be angered because of Him and will seek to destroy Him and His messenger as it is prophesied (2nd Psalms).
Friday, November 28, 2008
Chapter From The Fall of America by The Honorable Elijah Muhammad
The Fall of America
Chapter 15
America
The American white people are more concerned about mistreating the Black once-slave of America than America is concerned with any nation on earth that is attacking her out-lying posts. Her enemies are intensifying their attacks on her. America is right out of the frying pan into the fire all over the earth, due to her evil intentions against her loyal Black once-slaves. Her talk of evil-doing against the Black once-slave in America is worse than it is against independent nations that are trying to attack and destroy her country. White America has more hatred for the Black once-slaves in her midst who are faithfully fighting on the firing- line to help her against her enemy than she is against the enemy that they are shooting down.
White America talks of building concentration camps (prison houses) for the Black once-slave (the Black man in America). I am told that America already has concentration camps built for this purpose. Concentration camps are jail houses - prison houses. This is why I cry day and night to my Black brothers to seek refuge in Allah (God) in such a time as this.
The Muslims do not have to worry about any such imprisonment, for the Muslim is already a citizen of the Nation of Islam, and we have our own people (Muslims) to deliver us by the order of God. This is why it is so necessary that the Black man in America accept Allah (God) and His name and get out of the name of the enemy white slave-master, who does not seek to bring peace for us; but the enemy seeks to bring about our death.
White America wants her Black once-slave to suffer that which is not due to the Black once-slave. The Black once-slave has not sinned nor has the Black once-slave attacked other nations except under the order of his white slave-master.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Citigroup collapses! Banking Shutdown Possible
Dr. Martin D. Weiss
Global Research
November 25, 2008
It pains me deeply to announce that, despite the massive government rescue, yesterday’s collapse of Citigroup could ultimately lead to a shutdown of the global banking system.
For many years, I hoped this would never happen, and I thought we might be able to avoid it.
Indeed, that’s why, my firm, Weiss Research, first began rating the safety of the nation’s banks in the early 1980s, and why I later founded Weiss Ratings, a separate subsidiary dedicated exclusively to safety ratings — on thousands of banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms, mutual funds and stocks.
I subsequently sold the Weiss Ratings subsidiary to Jim Cramer’s organization, TheStreet.com; and today, my former company is called TheStreet.com Ratings. I continue to own and run Weiss Research, Inc., the publisher of Money and Markets. Moreover, Weiss Research continues to review all financial institutions for their safety; and to support that effort, we acquire TheStreet.com’s ratings and data for our analysts.
For you, the benefit is that you can now get these independent and accurate ratings for free on the Internet. Plus, you can check our free updated lists of the strongest and weakest bank and insurance companies on our Money and Markets website.
My philosophy was that, to find safety, your primary task was to identify the weak institutions, move your money to the strong ones, and then monitor them periodically to make sure your money was still safe. If all of us — savers, investors, bankers and banking regulators — used this kind of objective data to make rational, informed decisions, we would reward the safest institutions and help prevent the growth of the riskiest. Not only would we be safer individually, but our banking system as a whole would be more solid.
Unfortunately, however, that’s not how history has unfolded.
Few people were interested in bank ratings; they blindly assumed all banks were safe. And over the years, regulators have followed a parallel path. Rather than proactively restrict or shut down the weakest, large institutions, they have encouraged their massive growth, making it very difficult for the smaller, safer institutions to compete.
More recently, in the wake of the biggest financial failures in history — Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, Wachovia and others — rather than liquidate the failed firms’ bad assets, the authorities have been engineering shotgun mergers. The end result is that they have been sweeping most of the bad assets under the carpet of larger banks like Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase, each of which already had abundant bad assets of its own. Adding insult to injury, Treasury Secretary Paulson’s decision this month — not to buy up the bad assets from many of these banks — has only heightened this concern. Rather than dispose of the toxic waste, the regulators have been rolling up the garbage to the larger banks.
And now, here we are, nearing the end of the road with the largest banks of all endangered and with no larger bank that can swallow them up. It’s a day of reckoning that leaves me no choice but to issue this three-part warning:
* Despite the U.S. government’s massive Citigroup bailout, it is going to be difficult for the global banking system to survive the shock to confidence for very long.
* Even if insured depositors do not pull out their funds, uninsured institutional investors are likely to run with their money, threatening to bring the system down.
* And alas, even if you have your money in a safe bank with full FDIC coverage, you could be adversely impacted.
How will the events unfold? That’s a massively complex question that demands an extremely cautious and thoughtful answer. That’s why, this past August, we devoted a full hour to this question in our “X” List video, naming the most likely candidates for bankruptcy. So let me review its primary conclusions and then take this discussion to the next level.
Most prominent on our August “X” List was Citigroup, America’s second largest banking conglomerate with over $2 trillion in total assets. The bank was already suffering crushing losses in mortgages. But at mid-year, it still had close to $200 billion in other mortgages on its books, denoting the strong possibility of many more to come.
In addition, Citigroup had a massive portfolio of credit cards — 185 million accounts worldwide — that we felt could be the final nail in its coffin. Even before the most recent episode of the global financial crisis, Citigroup’s losses on bad credit cards had surged by 67% from a year earlier. Worse, the number of credit cards 90 days past due was going through the roof, foreshadowing more large losses on the way. All of these weaknesses were detailed in Citigroup’s financial statements. Not detailed, however, was …
The Highly Dangerous Derivatives
Derivatives are bets made mostly with borrowed money. They are bets on interest rates, bets on foreign currencies, bets on stocks, bets on corporate failures, even bets on bets. The bets are placed by banks with each other, banks with brokerage firms, brokers with hedge funds, hedge funds with banks, and more.
They are often high risk. And they are huge. According to the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), on June 30, 2008, U.S. commercial banks held $182.1 trillion in notional value (face value) derivatives.1 And, according to the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), which produced a tally six months earlier for the entire world, the global pile-up of derivatives, including institutions in the U.S., Europe and Asia, was more than three times larger — $596 trillion.2
That was ten times the gross domestic product of the entire planet … more than 40 times the total amount of mortgages outstanding in the United States … nearly 60 times greater than the already-huge U.S. national debt.
Defenders of derivatives claim that these giant numbers overstate the risk. They argue that most players hedge their bets and don’t have nearly that much money at stake. True. But that isn’t the primary risk these players are taking.
To better understand how all this works, consider a gambler who goes to Las Vegas. He wants to try his luck on the roulette wheel, but he also wants to play it safe. So instead of betting on a few random numbers, he places some bets on the red, some on the black; or some on the even and some on the odd. He rarely wins more than a fraction of what he’s betting, but he rarely loses more than a fraction either. That’s similar to what banks like Citigroup do with derivatives, except for a couple of key differences:
Difference #1. They don’t bet against the house. In fact, there is no house to bet against. Instead, they bet against the equivalent of other players around the table.
Difference #2. Although they do balance their bets, they do not necessarily do so with the same player. So back to the roulette metaphor, if Citigroup bets on the red against one player, it may bet on the black against another player. Overall, its bets are balanced and hedged. But with each individual player, they’re not balanced at all.
Difference #3. As I said, the amounts are huge — millions of times larger than all of the casinos of the world put together.
Now, here are the urgent questions that, as of today, remain largely unanswered:
Question #1. What happens if there is an unexpected collapse?
Question #2. What happens if that collapse is so severe it drives some of the key players into bankruptcy?
Question #3. Most important, what happens if these players can’t pay up on their gambling debts?
This is the question I have asked here in Money and Markets month after month. Almost everyone said it was far-fetched, that I was overstating the risk. Yet, each of the hypothetical events I cited in the above three questions have now taken place in 2008.
First, we witnessed the unexpected collapse of the largest credit market in the world’s largest economy — the U.S. mortgage market.
Second, we witnessed the bankruptcy or near-bankruptcy of three key players in the derivatives market — Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Wachovia Bank.
Third, we also got the first answers to the last question: We saw the threat of a major, systemic meltdown in the entire global banking system.
What Is a Banking Meltdown
And Why Is it Possible?
On October 11, 2008, a single statement hit the international wire services that provides more specific clues:
“Intensifying solvency concerns about a number of the largest U.S.-based and European financial institutions have pushed the global financial system to the brink of systemic meltdown.”
This statement was not the random rant of a gloom-and-doomer on the fringe of society. Nor was it excerpted from a twentieth century history book about the Great Depression. It was the serious, objective assessment announced at a Washington, D.C. press conference by the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The unmistakable implication: So many of the world’s largest banks were so close to bankruptcy, the entire banking system was vulnerable to a massive collapse. The primary underlying cause: Derivatives.
The Mafia knows all about systemic meltdowns of gambling networks. In the numbers racket, for example, players place their bets through a bookie, who, in turn is part of an intricate network of bookies. Most of the time, the system works. But if just one big player fails to pay bookie A, that bookie might be forced to renege on bookie B, who, in turn stiffs bookie C, causing a chain reaction of payment failures.
The bookies go bankrupt. The losers lose. And even the winners get nothing. Worst of all, players counting on winnings from one side of their bets to cover losses in offsetting bets are also wiped out. The whole network crumbles — a systemic meltdown.
To avert this kind of a disaster, the Mafia henchmen know exactly what they have to do, and they do it swiftly: If a gambler fails to pay once, he could find himself with broken bones in a dark alley; twice, and he could wind up in cement boots at the bottom of the East River.
Unlike the Mafia, established stock and commodity exchanges, like the NYSE and the Chicago Board of Trade, are entirely legal. But like the Mafia, they understand these dangers and have strict enforcement procedures to prevent them. When you want to purchase 100 shares of Microsoft, for example, you never buy directly from the seller. You must always go through a brokerage firm, which, in turn is a member in good standing of the exchange. The brokerage firm must keep close tabs on all its customers, and the exchange keeps close track of all its member firms. If you can’t come up with the money to pay for your shares, the broker is required to promptly liquidate your securities, literally kicking you out of the game. And if the brokerage firm as a whole runs into financial trouble, it meets a similar fate with the exchange. Very, very swiftly!
Here’s the key: For the most part, the global derivatives market has no brokerage, no exchange, and no equivalent enforcement mechanism. In fact, among the $181.2 trillion in derivative bets held by U.S. banks at mid-year 2008, only $8.2 trillion, or 4.5%, was regulated by an exchange. The balance — $173.9 trillion, or 95.5% — was bets placed directly between buyer and seller (called “over the counter”). And among the $596 trillion in global derivatives tracked by the BIS at year-end 2007, 100% were over the counter. No exchanges. No overarching enforcement mechanism.
This is not just a matter of weak or non-existent regulation. It’s far worse. It’s the equivalent of an undisciplined conglomeration of players gambling on the streets without even a casino to maintain order. Moreover, the data compiled by the OCC and BIS showed that the bets were so large and the gambling so far beyond the reach of regulators, all it would take was the bankruptcy of one of the lesser derivatives players — such as Lehman Brothers — to throw the world’s credit markets into paralysis.
That’s why the world’s highest banking officials were so panicked when Lehman Brothers failed in the fall of 2008. As the IMF managing director himself admitted, the threat was not stemming from just one bank in trouble; it was from many; and those banks weren’t lesser players; they were among the largest in the world. Which U.S. banks placed the biggest bets? Based on mid-year 2008 data, the OCC provided some answers:
Citibank N.A., the primary banking unit of Citigroup, held $37.1 trillion in derivative bets. Moreover, only 1.7% of those bets were under the purview of any exchange. The balance — 98.3% — was direct, one-on-one bets with their trading partners outside of any exchange.
Bank of America was a somewhat bigger player, holding $39.7 trillion in derivative bets, with 93.4% traded outside of any exchange.
But JPMorgan Chase was, by far, the biggest of them all, towering over the U.S. derivatives market with more than double BofA’s book of bets — $91.3 trillion worth. This meant that JPMorgan Chase controlled half of all derivatives in the U.S. banking system — a virtual monopoly that tied the firm’s finances with the fate of the U.S. economy far beyond anything ever witnessed in modern history. Meanwhile, $87.3 trillion, or 95.7% of Morgan’s derivatives, were outside the purview of any exchange.
One bank! Making bets of unknown nature and risk! Involving a dollar amount equivalent to six years of the total production of the entire U.S. economy! In contrast, Lehman Brothers, whose failure caused such a large earthquake in the global financial system, was actually small by comparison — with “only” $7.1 trillion in derivatives.
The potential havoc that might be caused by a Citigroup failure, with bets that involve five times more money than Lehman’s — and the financial holocaust that might be caused by a JPMorgan failure with close to 13 times more than Lehman — boggles the imagination. How bad could it actually be? No one knows, and therein lies one of the primary dangers. In the absence of oversight, the regulators simply do not collect the needed who-when-what information on these bets.
In an attempt to throw some light on this dark-but-explosive scene, the OCC uses a formula for estimating how much risk each major bank is exposed to in just the one particular aspect I cited a moment ago — the risk that some of its trading partners might default and fail to pay up on their gambling debts. Bear in mind: We still don’t now how much they are risking on market moves against them. All the OCC is estimating is how much they’re risking by making bets with potentially shaky betting partners, regardless of the outcome on each bet — win, lose or draw.
At Bank of America, the OCC calculated that, at mid-year, the bank was exposed to the tune of 194.3% of its capital. In other words, for every $1 of capital in the kitty, BofA was risking $1.94 cents strictly on the promises made by its betting partners. If about half of its betting partners defaulted, the bank’s capital would be wiped out and it would be bankrupt. And remember: This was in addition to the risk that the market might go the wrong way, and on top of the risk it was taking with its other investments and loans,
At Citibank, the risk was even greater: $2.58 cents in exposure per dollar of capital.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
And if you think that’s risky, consider JPMorgan Chase. Not only was it the largest player, but, among the big three U.S. derivatives players, it also had the largest default exposure: For every dollar of capital, the bank was risking $4.30 on the credit of its betting partners.
This is why JPMorgan was so anxious to step in and grab up outstanding trades left hanging after the fall of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers: It could not afford to let those trades turn to dust. If it did, it would be the first and biggest victim of a chain reaction of failures that could explode all over the world.
This is why super-investor Warren Buffett once called derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction.” This is why the top leaders of the world’s richest countries panicked after Lehman Brothers failed, dumping their time-honored, hands-off policy like a hot potato, jumping in to buy up shares in the world’s largest banks, and transforming the world of banking literally overnight.
This is also why you must now do more than just find a strong bank.
You also must find a safe place that has the highest probability of being immune to these risks. The reason: As I warned at the outset, at some point in the not-too-distant future, governments around the world may have no other choice but to declare a global banking holiday — a shutdown of nearly every bank in the world, regardless of size, country, or financial condition.
What could happen in the banking holiday? In the past, we’ve seen some financial shutdowns that eventually helped resolve the crisis. And we’ve seen others that only made it worse. Often, savers are forced to leave their money on deposit, giving up a substantial portion of their interest income for many years. And, in other cases, the only way they can get their money back sooner is by accepting an immediate loss of principal. But no matter how it’s resolved, when banks have made big blunders and suffered large losses, it’s the multitude of savers that are invariably asked to make the biggest sacrifices and pay the biggest price. No one else has the money.
Are Bank Runs and National Shutdowns
Really Possible in Today’s Modern Era?
Most observers think not. “If deposits are insured,” they ask, “why would anyone want to pull them out?” The reason: Most bank runs are not caused by insured depositors. They’re caused by the exodus of large, uninsured institutions who are usually the first to run for cover at the earliest hint of trouble. That’s the main reason Washington Mutual, America’s largest savings and loan, lost over $16 billion in deposits in its final eight days in 2008. That’s also a major reason Wachovia Bank was forced to agree to a shotgun merger soon thereafter.
During the many banking failures of the 1980s and 1990s, the story was similar: We rarely saw a run on the bank by individuals. Rather, it was uninsured institutional investors — banks, pension funds and others — that jumped ship long before most people even realized the ship was sinking. They’re the ones who hammered the last nail in the coffin of big savings and loans, banks and insurance companies that failed.
How Long Would a Global Banking Shutdown Last?
How Would It All Be Sorted Out?
No one can say with certainty. But based on other banking holidays in modern history, it’s safe to conclude that it could last for quite some time and cause severe hardship for hundreds of millions of savers around the world.
The first and most obvious hardship is that you could be denied immediate access to most or all of your money for an indefinite period. What about government agency guarantees like FDIC insurance? A large proportion of those guarantees, unfortunately, would have to be suspended in order to give banking regulators the time they need to sort out the mess.
It is simply not reasonable to expect that governments will have the resources to immediately meet the demands of thousands of institutions and millions of individuals if they all want their money back at roughly the same time.
“Your money is still safely guaranteed,” banking officials will declare. “You just can’t have it now.”
The second and more long-lasting hardship is the possibility that, by the time you do regain access to your money, you will suffer losses. In this scenario, the government would likely create a rehabilitation program for the nation’s weakest banks, giving depositors two choices:
* Opt in to the program by leaving your funds on deposit at your bank for an extended period of time, earning below-market interest rates. The bank is then allowed to use the extra interest to recoup its losses over time — income that, by rights, should have been yours.
* Opt out of the program and withdraw your funds immediately, accepting a loss that approximately corresponds to the actual losses in the bank’s investment and loan portfolio.
Needless to say, neither the opt in nor the opt out choice is a good one:
If you opt in, you take the chance that the government’s rehab program may not work on the first attempt and that it will be replaced by another, even tougher program in the future. Moreover, even if it works out as planned, you will suffer a continuing loss of income and access to your cash over an extended period of time.
If you opt out, instead of lost income, you suffer an immediate loss of principal. Moreover, in order to discourage savers from opting out, the government would typically structure the program so that everyone demanding immediate reimbursement suffers an additional penalty.
Again you ask, “What about government guarantees?” By rights, in a fair plan, insured depositors would suffer less severely than uninsured depositors. And if the plan is structured properly, those in strong banks should come out whole, or almost whole, while those in weaker banks should suffer the larger losses. That’s how it should be handled. But there’s no guarantee that’s how it will be handled.
To avoid all of these risks, I recommend seriously considering moving (a) nearly all of your bank deposits and accounts, plus (b) a modest portion of the money you currently have invested in securities to the safest and most liquid place for your money in the modern world:
Short-Term U.S. Treasury Securities
True safety has two elements. The first is capital conservation — no losses, no reduction in your principal. But it’s the second element that most people miss: Liquidity — the ability to get a hold of your money and actually use it whenever you want to, without waiting, penalties, bottlenecks, shutdowns or disasters of any kind standing in your way.
Absolute perfection is not possible. But on both of those aspects — capital conservation and liquidity — the single investment in the world that’s at the top of the charts is short-term U.S. Treasury securities. These enjoy the best, most direct, and most reliable guarantee of the U.S. government, over and above any other guarantees or promises they may have made in the past, or will make in the future.
I know you have questions. So let me do my best to anticipate them and answer them right here.
Question #1. You might ask: “The FDIC is also backed by the U.S. government. So if I have money in an FDIC-guaranteed account at my bank, what’s the difference? Why should I accept a lower yield on a government-guaranteed 3-month Treasury bill when I can get a higher yield on a government-guaranteed 3-month CD?”
Without realizing it, you’ve answered your own question. If the yield is higher on the bank CDs, that can mean only one thing — that, according to the collective wisdom of millions of investors and thousands of institutions in the market, the risk is also higher. Otherwise, why would the bank have to pay so much more to attract your money? Likewise, how can the U.S. Treasury get away with paying so much less and still have interested buyers for its securities?
It’s because the risk is higher for CDs, but much lower for Treasury securities. It’s because even within the realm of government guarantees, there’s a pecking order.
* The first-priority guarantee: Maturing securities that were issued by the U.S. Treasury department itself.
* The second-priority guarantee: Maturing securities that were issued by other government agencies, such as Ginnie Mae.
* Third: The Treasury’s backing of the FDIC.
This is not to say the Treasury is not standing fully behind the FDIC. Rather my point is that, in the event of serious financial pressures on the government, the FDIC and FDIC guaranteed deposits will not be the first in line.
Question #2. You might also ask: “Isn’t the United States government also having its own share of financial difficulties with huge budget deficits? If those difficulties could get a lot worse, why should I trust the government any more than I trust other investments? Why should I loan my money to Uncle Sam?”
The United States is the world’s largest economy, with the most active financial markets and the strongest military in the world. Despite Uncle Sam’s financial difficulties, this has never been in doubt; and even in a financial crisis, that’s unlikely to change because the crisis is global. So its immediate impact on the finances of other governments is likely to be at least as severe.
More importantly, the United States government’s borrowing power — its ability to continue tapping the open market for cash — is, by far, it’s most precious asset, more valuable than the White House and all public properties; even more valuable than all the gold in Fort Knox. Those assets are like Uncle Sam’s home, land and pocket change. His borrowing power, in contrast, is like the air he breathes to stay alive.
Remember: The U.S. Treasury Department is directly responsible for feeding money to the utmost, mission-critical operations of this country, including defense, homeland security, and emergency response. The Treasury will do whatever it takes to continue providing that funding, and that means making sure they never default on their maturing Treasury securities.
Even in the 1930s, when a record number of Americans were unemployed, and when we had a head-spinning wave of bank failures, owners of Treasury bills never lost a penny.
Even in the Civil War, Treasuries were safe. Investors financed 65 percent of the Union’s war costs by buying Treasury securities. But the war was far worse than those investors had anticipated, leaving over half of the entire economy in shambles, raising serious concerns among those investors. However, the U.S. government made the repayment of its maturing Treasuries it’s number one priority over all other wartime obligations. Investors got back every single penny, and more.
My main point is this: The crisis ahead will not be nearly as severe as the war that tore our nation apart. If Treasury securities were safe then, we have no reason to doubt they will be safe today. Unfortunately, however, I cannot say the same for all of the money you’ve entrusted to a bank.
Question #3. “Suppose there’s a bank holiday and I need to cash in my Treasury bills. Since the Treasury Department and the Treasury-only money market funds use banks for transfers, won’t I be locked out of my money too?”
We actually have a real precedent for a similar situation. In Rhode Island in 1991, when the governor declared a state-wide bank holiday, all the state-chartered savings banks were closed down. Every single citizen with money in one of those banks was locked out.
At the time, one of our Safe Money Report subscribers happened to have a checking account in one of the closed Rhode Island banks. Thankfully, he had almost all of his money at the Treasury Department in Treasury bills, so his money was safe. But he called and asked: “The Treasury is set to wire the money straight into my bank account, which is frozen. Will the money the Treasury wires me get frozen too?”
In response, I told him to check his post office mailbox. Instead of wiring his funds, the Treasury had taken the extraordinary measure of cutting hard checks and mailing them out immediately. They wanted to make absolutely sure he got his money without any delay.
The moral of this story is that, even in a worst-case banking scenario, the Treasury will do whatever is necessary to get your money. We can’t forecast exactly how. But they will probably send you hard Treasury checks. And they’ll probably designate special bank offices in every city in every state where you can cash them in. Ditto for Treasury-only money market funds.
Question #4. “Throughout history, many governments have defaulted on their debts in a more subtle way — by devaluing their currency. Why are you recommending Treasury bills, which are denominated purely in dollars, if one of the consequences of this disaster could be a decline in the dollar?”
The trend today is toward deflation, which means a stronger dollar. But even if that changes, the solution will not be to abandon the safety and liquidity of Treasury bills. It will be to separately set some money aside and buy hedges against inflation, like gold or strong foreign currencies that tend to go up in value when the dollar falls.
How to Buy Treasuries
For funds that you do not need immediate access to on a daily basis, consider the U.S. Government’s Treasury Direct program. They offer a variety of choices, but I recommend you use strictly the 13-week (3-month) Treasury bills.
Meanwhile, for most of your personal or business, savings or checking, you don’t need a bank, an S&L or any other financial institution. All you need is a money market fund that invests in short-term U.S. Treasury bills or equivalent. The Treasuries it buys enjoy the same U.S. government guarantee as Treasuries bought through any other venue. So deposit insurance is simply not an issue.
Moreover, the Treasury-only money fund gives you the additional advantage of immediate availability of your money. You can have your funds wired to your local bank overnight. Or you can even write checks against it, much as you’d write checks against any bank checking account.
For my family and business money, we use the Weiss Treasury Only Money Market Fund. Plus we also use the fund that was founded by James Benham, a good friend of my father’s. That’s Capital Preservation Fund, which Jim sold to the American Century family of funds. Use either of these or your choice of the fund in the list below.
Good luck and God bless!
Global Research
November 25, 2008
It pains me deeply to announce that, despite the massive government rescue, yesterday’s collapse of Citigroup could ultimately lead to a shutdown of the global banking system.
For many years, I hoped this would never happen, and I thought we might be able to avoid it.
Indeed, that’s why, my firm, Weiss Research, first began rating the safety of the nation’s banks in the early 1980s, and why I later founded Weiss Ratings, a separate subsidiary dedicated exclusively to safety ratings — on thousands of banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms, mutual funds and stocks.
I subsequently sold the Weiss Ratings subsidiary to Jim Cramer’s organization, TheStreet.com; and today, my former company is called TheStreet.com Ratings. I continue to own and run Weiss Research, Inc., the publisher of Money and Markets. Moreover, Weiss Research continues to review all financial institutions for their safety; and to support that effort, we acquire TheStreet.com’s ratings and data for our analysts.
For you, the benefit is that you can now get these independent and accurate ratings for free on the Internet. Plus, you can check our free updated lists of the strongest and weakest bank and insurance companies on our Money and Markets website.
My philosophy was that, to find safety, your primary task was to identify the weak institutions, move your money to the strong ones, and then monitor them periodically to make sure your money was still safe. If all of us — savers, investors, bankers and banking regulators — used this kind of objective data to make rational, informed decisions, we would reward the safest institutions and help prevent the growth of the riskiest. Not only would we be safer individually, but our banking system as a whole would be more solid.
Unfortunately, however, that’s not how history has unfolded.
Few people were interested in bank ratings; they blindly assumed all banks were safe. And over the years, regulators have followed a parallel path. Rather than proactively restrict or shut down the weakest, large institutions, they have encouraged their massive growth, making it very difficult for the smaller, safer institutions to compete.
More recently, in the wake of the biggest financial failures in history — Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, Wachovia and others — rather than liquidate the failed firms’ bad assets, the authorities have been engineering shotgun mergers. The end result is that they have been sweeping most of the bad assets under the carpet of larger banks like Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase, each of which already had abundant bad assets of its own. Adding insult to injury, Treasury Secretary Paulson’s decision this month — not to buy up the bad assets from many of these banks — has only heightened this concern. Rather than dispose of the toxic waste, the regulators have been rolling up the garbage to the larger banks.
And now, here we are, nearing the end of the road with the largest banks of all endangered and with no larger bank that can swallow them up. It’s a day of reckoning that leaves me no choice but to issue this three-part warning:
* Despite the U.S. government’s massive Citigroup bailout, it is going to be difficult for the global banking system to survive the shock to confidence for very long.
* Even if insured depositors do not pull out their funds, uninsured institutional investors are likely to run with their money, threatening to bring the system down.
* And alas, even if you have your money in a safe bank with full FDIC coverage, you could be adversely impacted.
How will the events unfold? That’s a massively complex question that demands an extremely cautious and thoughtful answer. That’s why, this past August, we devoted a full hour to this question in our “X” List video, naming the most likely candidates for bankruptcy. So let me review its primary conclusions and then take this discussion to the next level.
Most prominent on our August “X” List was Citigroup, America’s second largest banking conglomerate with over $2 trillion in total assets. The bank was already suffering crushing losses in mortgages. But at mid-year, it still had close to $200 billion in other mortgages on its books, denoting the strong possibility of many more to come.
In addition, Citigroup had a massive portfolio of credit cards — 185 million accounts worldwide — that we felt could be the final nail in its coffin. Even before the most recent episode of the global financial crisis, Citigroup’s losses on bad credit cards had surged by 67% from a year earlier. Worse, the number of credit cards 90 days past due was going through the roof, foreshadowing more large losses on the way. All of these weaknesses were detailed in Citigroup’s financial statements. Not detailed, however, was …
The Highly Dangerous Derivatives
Derivatives are bets made mostly with borrowed money. They are bets on interest rates, bets on foreign currencies, bets on stocks, bets on corporate failures, even bets on bets. The bets are placed by banks with each other, banks with brokerage firms, brokers with hedge funds, hedge funds with banks, and more.
They are often high risk. And they are huge. According to the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), on June 30, 2008, U.S. commercial banks held $182.1 trillion in notional value (face value) derivatives.1 And, according to the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), which produced a tally six months earlier for the entire world, the global pile-up of derivatives, including institutions in the U.S., Europe and Asia, was more than three times larger — $596 trillion.2
That was ten times the gross domestic product of the entire planet … more than 40 times the total amount of mortgages outstanding in the United States … nearly 60 times greater than the already-huge U.S. national debt.
Defenders of derivatives claim that these giant numbers overstate the risk. They argue that most players hedge their bets and don’t have nearly that much money at stake. True. But that isn’t the primary risk these players are taking.
To better understand how all this works, consider a gambler who goes to Las Vegas. He wants to try his luck on the roulette wheel, but he also wants to play it safe. So instead of betting on a few random numbers, he places some bets on the red, some on the black; or some on the even and some on the odd. He rarely wins more than a fraction of what he’s betting, but he rarely loses more than a fraction either. That’s similar to what banks like Citigroup do with derivatives, except for a couple of key differences:
Difference #1. They don’t bet against the house. In fact, there is no house to bet against. Instead, they bet against the equivalent of other players around the table.
Difference #2. Although they do balance their bets, they do not necessarily do so with the same player. So back to the roulette metaphor, if Citigroup bets on the red against one player, it may bet on the black against another player. Overall, its bets are balanced and hedged. But with each individual player, they’re not balanced at all.
Difference #3. As I said, the amounts are huge — millions of times larger than all of the casinos of the world put together.
Now, here are the urgent questions that, as of today, remain largely unanswered:
Question #1. What happens if there is an unexpected collapse?
Question #2. What happens if that collapse is so severe it drives some of the key players into bankruptcy?
Question #3. Most important, what happens if these players can’t pay up on their gambling debts?
This is the question I have asked here in Money and Markets month after month. Almost everyone said it was far-fetched, that I was overstating the risk. Yet, each of the hypothetical events I cited in the above three questions have now taken place in 2008.
First, we witnessed the unexpected collapse of the largest credit market in the world’s largest economy — the U.S. mortgage market.
Second, we witnessed the bankruptcy or near-bankruptcy of three key players in the derivatives market — Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Wachovia Bank.
Third, we also got the first answers to the last question: We saw the threat of a major, systemic meltdown in the entire global banking system.
What Is a Banking Meltdown
And Why Is it Possible?
On October 11, 2008, a single statement hit the international wire services that provides more specific clues:
“Intensifying solvency concerns about a number of the largest U.S.-based and European financial institutions have pushed the global financial system to the brink of systemic meltdown.”
This statement was not the random rant of a gloom-and-doomer on the fringe of society. Nor was it excerpted from a twentieth century history book about the Great Depression. It was the serious, objective assessment announced at a Washington, D.C. press conference by the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The unmistakable implication: So many of the world’s largest banks were so close to bankruptcy, the entire banking system was vulnerable to a massive collapse. The primary underlying cause: Derivatives.
The Mafia knows all about systemic meltdowns of gambling networks. In the numbers racket, for example, players place their bets through a bookie, who, in turn is part of an intricate network of bookies. Most of the time, the system works. But if just one big player fails to pay bookie A, that bookie might be forced to renege on bookie B, who, in turn stiffs bookie C, causing a chain reaction of payment failures.
The bookies go bankrupt. The losers lose. And even the winners get nothing. Worst of all, players counting on winnings from one side of their bets to cover losses in offsetting bets are also wiped out. The whole network crumbles — a systemic meltdown.
To avert this kind of a disaster, the Mafia henchmen know exactly what they have to do, and they do it swiftly: If a gambler fails to pay once, he could find himself with broken bones in a dark alley; twice, and he could wind up in cement boots at the bottom of the East River.
Unlike the Mafia, established stock and commodity exchanges, like the NYSE and the Chicago Board of Trade, are entirely legal. But like the Mafia, they understand these dangers and have strict enforcement procedures to prevent them. When you want to purchase 100 shares of Microsoft, for example, you never buy directly from the seller. You must always go through a brokerage firm, which, in turn is a member in good standing of the exchange. The brokerage firm must keep close tabs on all its customers, and the exchange keeps close track of all its member firms. If you can’t come up with the money to pay for your shares, the broker is required to promptly liquidate your securities, literally kicking you out of the game. And if the brokerage firm as a whole runs into financial trouble, it meets a similar fate with the exchange. Very, very swiftly!
Here’s the key: For the most part, the global derivatives market has no brokerage, no exchange, and no equivalent enforcement mechanism. In fact, among the $181.2 trillion in derivative bets held by U.S. banks at mid-year 2008, only $8.2 trillion, or 4.5%, was regulated by an exchange. The balance — $173.9 trillion, or 95.5% — was bets placed directly between buyer and seller (called “over the counter”). And among the $596 trillion in global derivatives tracked by the BIS at year-end 2007, 100% were over the counter. No exchanges. No overarching enforcement mechanism.
This is not just a matter of weak or non-existent regulation. It’s far worse. It’s the equivalent of an undisciplined conglomeration of players gambling on the streets without even a casino to maintain order. Moreover, the data compiled by the OCC and BIS showed that the bets were so large and the gambling so far beyond the reach of regulators, all it would take was the bankruptcy of one of the lesser derivatives players — such as Lehman Brothers — to throw the world’s credit markets into paralysis.
That’s why the world’s highest banking officials were so panicked when Lehman Brothers failed in the fall of 2008. As the IMF managing director himself admitted, the threat was not stemming from just one bank in trouble; it was from many; and those banks weren’t lesser players; they were among the largest in the world. Which U.S. banks placed the biggest bets? Based on mid-year 2008 data, the OCC provided some answers:
Citibank N.A., the primary banking unit of Citigroup, held $37.1 trillion in derivative bets. Moreover, only 1.7% of those bets were under the purview of any exchange. The balance — 98.3% — was direct, one-on-one bets with their trading partners outside of any exchange.
Bank of America was a somewhat bigger player, holding $39.7 trillion in derivative bets, with 93.4% traded outside of any exchange.
But JPMorgan Chase was, by far, the biggest of them all, towering over the U.S. derivatives market with more than double BofA’s book of bets — $91.3 trillion worth. This meant that JPMorgan Chase controlled half of all derivatives in the U.S. banking system — a virtual monopoly that tied the firm’s finances with the fate of the U.S. economy far beyond anything ever witnessed in modern history. Meanwhile, $87.3 trillion, or 95.7% of Morgan’s derivatives, were outside the purview of any exchange.
One bank! Making bets of unknown nature and risk! Involving a dollar amount equivalent to six years of the total production of the entire U.S. economy! In contrast, Lehman Brothers, whose failure caused such a large earthquake in the global financial system, was actually small by comparison — with “only” $7.1 trillion in derivatives.
The potential havoc that might be caused by a Citigroup failure, with bets that involve five times more money than Lehman’s — and the financial holocaust that might be caused by a JPMorgan failure with close to 13 times more than Lehman — boggles the imagination. How bad could it actually be? No one knows, and therein lies one of the primary dangers. In the absence of oversight, the regulators simply do not collect the needed who-when-what information on these bets.
In an attempt to throw some light on this dark-but-explosive scene, the OCC uses a formula for estimating how much risk each major bank is exposed to in just the one particular aspect I cited a moment ago — the risk that some of its trading partners might default and fail to pay up on their gambling debts. Bear in mind: We still don’t now how much they are risking on market moves against them. All the OCC is estimating is how much they’re risking by making bets with potentially shaky betting partners, regardless of the outcome on each bet — win, lose or draw.
At Bank of America, the OCC calculated that, at mid-year, the bank was exposed to the tune of 194.3% of its capital. In other words, for every $1 of capital in the kitty, BofA was risking $1.94 cents strictly on the promises made by its betting partners. If about half of its betting partners defaulted, the bank’s capital would be wiped out and it would be bankrupt. And remember: This was in addition to the risk that the market might go the wrong way, and on top of the risk it was taking with its other investments and loans,
At Citibank, the risk was even greater: $2.58 cents in exposure per dollar of capital.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
And if you think that’s risky, consider JPMorgan Chase. Not only was it the largest player, but, among the big three U.S. derivatives players, it also had the largest default exposure: For every dollar of capital, the bank was risking $4.30 on the credit of its betting partners.
This is why JPMorgan was so anxious to step in and grab up outstanding trades left hanging after the fall of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers: It could not afford to let those trades turn to dust. If it did, it would be the first and biggest victim of a chain reaction of failures that could explode all over the world.
This is why super-investor Warren Buffett once called derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction.” This is why the top leaders of the world’s richest countries panicked after Lehman Brothers failed, dumping their time-honored, hands-off policy like a hot potato, jumping in to buy up shares in the world’s largest banks, and transforming the world of banking literally overnight.
This is also why you must now do more than just find a strong bank.
You also must find a safe place that has the highest probability of being immune to these risks. The reason: As I warned at the outset, at some point in the not-too-distant future, governments around the world may have no other choice but to declare a global banking holiday — a shutdown of nearly every bank in the world, regardless of size, country, or financial condition.
What could happen in the banking holiday? In the past, we’ve seen some financial shutdowns that eventually helped resolve the crisis. And we’ve seen others that only made it worse. Often, savers are forced to leave their money on deposit, giving up a substantial portion of their interest income for many years. And, in other cases, the only way they can get their money back sooner is by accepting an immediate loss of principal. But no matter how it’s resolved, when banks have made big blunders and suffered large losses, it’s the multitude of savers that are invariably asked to make the biggest sacrifices and pay the biggest price. No one else has the money.
Are Bank Runs and National Shutdowns
Really Possible in Today’s Modern Era?
Most observers think not. “If deposits are insured,” they ask, “why would anyone want to pull them out?” The reason: Most bank runs are not caused by insured depositors. They’re caused by the exodus of large, uninsured institutions who are usually the first to run for cover at the earliest hint of trouble. That’s the main reason Washington Mutual, America’s largest savings and loan, lost over $16 billion in deposits in its final eight days in 2008. That’s also a major reason Wachovia Bank was forced to agree to a shotgun merger soon thereafter.
During the many banking failures of the 1980s and 1990s, the story was similar: We rarely saw a run on the bank by individuals. Rather, it was uninsured institutional investors — banks, pension funds and others — that jumped ship long before most people even realized the ship was sinking. They’re the ones who hammered the last nail in the coffin of big savings and loans, banks and insurance companies that failed.
How Long Would a Global Banking Shutdown Last?
How Would It All Be Sorted Out?
No one can say with certainty. But based on other banking holidays in modern history, it’s safe to conclude that it could last for quite some time and cause severe hardship for hundreds of millions of savers around the world.
The first and most obvious hardship is that you could be denied immediate access to most or all of your money for an indefinite period. What about government agency guarantees like FDIC insurance? A large proportion of those guarantees, unfortunately, would have to be suspended in order to give banking regulators the time they need to sort out the mess.
It is simply not reasonable to expect that governments will have the resources to immediately meet the demands of thousands of institutions and millions of individuals if they all want their money back at roughly the same time.
“Your money is still safely guaranteed,” banking officials will declare. “You just can’t have it now.”
The second and more long-lasting hardship is the possibility that, by the time you do regain access to your money, you will suffer losses. In this scenario, the government would likely create a rehabilitation program for the nation’s weakest banks, giving depositors two choices:
* Opt in to the program by leaving your funds on deposit at your bank for an extended period of time, earning below-market interest rates. The bank is then allowed to use the extra interest to recoup its losses over time — income that, by rights, should have been yours.
* Opt out of the program and withdraw your funds immediately, accepting a loss that approximately corresponds to the actual losses in the bank’s investment and loan portfolio.
Needless to say, neither the opt in nor the opt out choice is a good one:
If you opt in, you take the chance that the government’s rehab program may not work on the first attempt and that it will be replaced by another, even tougher program in the future. Moreover, even if it works out as planned, you will suffer a continuing loss of income and access to your cash over an extended period of time.
If you opt out, instead of lost income, you suffer an immediate loss of principal. Moreover, in order to discourage savers from opting out, the government would typically structure the program so that everyone demanding immediate reimbursement suffers an additional penalty.
Again you ask, “What about government guarantees?” By rights, in a fair plan, insured depositors would suffer less severely than uninsured depositors. And if the plan is structured properly, those in strong banks should come out whole, or almost whole, while those in weaker banks should suffer the larger losses. That’s how it should be handled. But there’s no guarantee that’s how it will be handled.
To avoid all of these risks, I recommend seriously considering moving (a) nearly all of your bank deposits and accounts, plus (b) a modest portion of the money you currently have invested in securities to the safest and most liquid place for your money in the modern world:
Short-Term U.S. Treasury Securities
True safety has two elements. The first is capital conservation — no losses, no reduction in your principal. But it’s the second element that most people miss: Liquidity — the ability to get a hold of your money and actually use it whenever you want to, without waiting, penalties, bottlenecks, shutdowns or disasters of any kind standing in your way.
Absolute perfection is not possible. But on both of those aspects — capital conservation and liquidity — the single investment in the world that’s at the top of the charts is short-term U.S. Treasury securities. These enjoy the best, most direct, and most reliable guarantee of the U.S. government, over and above any other guarantees or promises they may have made in the past, or will make in the future.
I know you have questions. So let me do my best to anticipate them and answer them right here.
Question #1. You might ask: “The FDIC is also backed by the U.S. government. So if I have money in an FDIC-guaranteed account at my bank, what’s the difference? Why should I accept a lower yield on a government-guaranteed 3-month Treasury bill when I can get a higher yield on a government-guaranteed 3-month CD?”
Without realizing it, you’ve answered your own question. If the yield is higher on the bank CDs, that can mean only one thing — that, according to the collective wisdom of millions of investors and thousands of institutions in the market, the risk is also higher. Otherwise, why would the bank have to pay so much more to attract your money? Likewise, how can the U.S. Treasury get away with paying so much less and still have interested buyers for its securities?
It’s because the risk is higher for CDs, but much lower for Treasury securities. It’s because even within the realm of government guarantees, there’s a pecking order.
* The first-priority guarantee: Maturing securities that were issued by the U.S. Treasury department itself.
* The second-priority guarantee: Maturing securities that were issued by other government agencies, such as Ginnie Mae.
* Third: The Treasury’s backing of the FDIC.
This is not to say the Treasury is not standing fully behind the FDIC. Rather my point is that, in the event of serious financial pressures on the government, the FDIC and FDIC guaranteed deposits will not be the first in line.
Question #2. You might also ask: “Isn’t the United States government also having its own share of financial difficulties with huge budget deficits? If those difficulties could get a lot worse, why should I trust the government any more than I trust other investments? Why should I loan my money to Uncle Sam?”
The United States is the world’s largest economy, with the most active financial markets and the strongest military in the world. Despite Uncle Sam’s financial difficulties, this has never been in doubt; and even in a financial crisis, that’s unlikely to change because the crisis is global. So its immediate impact on the finances of other governments is likely to be at least as severe.
More importantly, the United States government’s borrowing power — its ability to continue tapping the open market for cash — is, by far, it’s most precious asset, more valuable than the White House and all public properties; even more valuable than all the gold in Fort Knox. Those assets are like Uncle Sam’s home, land and pocket change. His borrowing power, in contrast, is like the air he breathes to stay alive.
Remember: The U.S. Treasury Department is directly responsible for feeding money to the utmost, mission-critical operations of this country, including defense, homeland security, and emergency response. The Treasury will do whatever it takes to continue providing that funding, and that means making sure they never default on their maturing Treasury securities.
Even in the 1930s, when a record number of Americans were unemployed, and when we had a head-spinning wave of bank failures, owners of Treasury bills never lost a penny.
Even in the Civil War, Treasuries were safe. Investors financed 65 percent of the Union’s war costs by buying Treasury securities. But the war was far worse than those investors had anticipated, leaving over half of the entire economy in shambles, raising serious concerns among those investors. However, the U.S. government made the repayment of its maturing Treasuries it’s number one priority over all other wartime obligations. Investors got back every single penny, and more.
My main point is this: The crisis ahead will not be nearly as severe as the war that tore our nation apart. If Treasury securities were safe then, we have no reason to doubt they will be safe today. Unfortunately, however, I cannot say the same for all of the money you’ve entrusted to a bank.
Question #3. “Suppose there’s a bank holiday and I need to cash in my Treasury bills. Since the Treasury Department and the Treasury-only money market funds use banks for transfers, won’t I be locked out of my money too?”
We actually have a real precedent for a similar situation. In Rhode Island in 1991, when the governor declared a state-wide bank holiday, all the state-chartered savings banks were closed down. Every single citizen with money in one of those banks was locked out.
At the time, one of our Safe Money Report subscribers happened to have a checking account in one of the closed Rhode Island banks. Thankfully, he had almost all of his money at the Treasury Department in Treasury bills, so his money was safe. But he called and asked: “The Treasury is set to wire the money straight into my bank account, which is frozen. Will the money the Treasury wires me get frozen too?”
In response, I told him to check his post office mailbox. Instead of wiring his funds, the Treasury had taken the extraordinary measure of cutting hard checks and mailing them out immediately. They wanted to make absolutely sure he got his money without any delay.
The moral of this story is that, even in a worst-case banking scenario, the Treasury will do whatever is necessary to get your money. We can’t forecast exactly how. But they will probably send you hard Treasury checks. And they’ll probably designate special bank offices in every city in every state where you can cash them in. Ditto for Treasury-only money market funds.
Question #4. “Throughout history, many governments have defaulted on their debts in a more subtle way — by devaluing their currency. Why are you recommending Treasury bills, which are denominated purely in dollars, if one of the consequences of this disaster could be a decline in the dollar?”
The trend today is toward deflation, which means a stronger dollar. But even if that changes, the solution will not be to abandon the safety and liquidity of Treasury bills. It will be to separately set some money aside and buy hedges against inflation, like gold or strong foreign currencies that tend to go up in value when the dollar falls.
How to Buy Treasuries
For funds that you do not need immediate access to on a daily basis, consider the U.S. Government’s Treasury Direct program. They offer a variety of choices, but I recommend you use strictly the 13-week (3-month) Treasury bills.
Meanwhile, for most of your personal or business, savings or checking, you don’t need a bank, an S&L or any other financial institution. All you need is a money market fund that invests in short-term U.S. Treasury bills or equivalent. The Treasuries it buys enjoy the same U.S. government guarantee as Treasuries bought through any other venue. So deposit insurance is simply not an issue.
Moreover, the Treasury-only money fund gives you the additional advantage of immediate availability of your money. You can have your funds wired to your local bank overnight. Or you can even write checks against it, much as you’d write checks against any bank checking account.
For my family and business money, we use the Weiss Treasury Only Money Market Fund. Plus we also use the fund that was founded by James Benham, a good friend of my father’s. That’s Capital Preservation Fund, which Jim sold to the American Century family of funds. Use either of these or your choice of the fund in the list below.
Good luck and God bless!
Court Backs Warrantless Searches Abroad
By BENJAMIN WEISER
The authorities may lawfully conduct searches and electronic surveillance against United States citizens in foreign countries without a warrant, a federal appeals court panel said on Monday, bolstering the government’s power to investigate terrorism by ruling that a key constitutional protection afforded to Americans does not apply overseas.
The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, came in the case of three Al Qaeda terrorists convicted a few months before 9/11 in a conspiracy that involved the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa.
The court did not address the question of whether the government could conduct warrantless wiretaps of international calls involving people in the United States, an issue that drove a wedge between the Bush administration and Congress. But the ruling did give footing to those who say that terrorism suspects can be successfully and effectively prosecuted in civilian courts.
The warrantless searches must still be reasonable, as the Constitution requires, Judge José A. Cabranes wrote for the panel, adding that the government had met that standard in the case of one defendant, Wadih el-Hage, a close aide to Osama bin Laden and a naturalized American citizen who was living in Nairobi, Kenya. The government searched his home and monitored his phone conversations.
“The Fourth Amendment’s requirement of reasonableness — but not the Warrant Clause — applies to extraterritorial searches and seizures of U.S. citizens,” the judge wrote.
Mr. el-Hage and two other defendants had appealed their convictions for conspiring with Mr. bin Laden in a plot to kill Americans around the world.
The conspiracy included the 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 224 people and wounded thousands.
While noting that Mr. el-Hage “suffered, while abroad, a significant invasion of privacy by virtue of the government’s yearlong surveillance of his telephonic communications,” the panel offered a detailed analysis of why the search was reasonable under the Constitution, given the “self-evident need to investigate threats to national security” that foreign terrorist organizations presented.
The panel said the electronic surveillance was justified — and reasonable — for a number of reasons, including that “sustained and intense monitoring” was necessary to understand a “complex, wide-ranging and decentralized” organization like Al Qaeda; and that members of covert terrorist organizations often communicated in code.
“While the intrusion on el-Hage’s privacy was great, the need for the government to so intrude was even greater,” Judge Cabranes wrote.
“This is going to be a very important precedent that intelligence agencies are going to look at, that the new Obama administration is going to look at,” Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University, said on Monday. “These issues are critical, and the courts rarely rule on them.”
The panel also made it easier for prosecutors to protect sensitive information in terrorism cases by holding that judges may bar defendants from having access to classified materials that their lawyers may otherwise examine, if there is concern that unauthorized disclosures of information could jeopardize lives or investigations.
The panel declined to declare, as a lower court judge had, that Miranda warnings were required in overseas interrogations of foreign suspects, but it said that a modified version of the warnings, adapted to local circumstances, could be acceptable.
“It is only through the cooperation of local authorities that U.S. agents obtain access to foreign detainees,” Judge Cabranes wrote. “We have no desire to strain that spirit of cooperation by compelling U.S. agents to press foreign governments for the provision of legal rights not recognized by their criminal justice systems.”
Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan and one of the prosecutors who participated in the embassy case, called the decision “one further measure of justice for the victims of those attacks.”
Defense lawyers said that they were disappointed in the ruling, and would appeal. “We believe these issues are important enough to deserve Supreme Court review,” said Frederick H. Cohn, whose client, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-’Owhali, was convicted in the Nairobi attack.
Joshua L. Dratel, a lawyer for Mr. el-Hage, said that the appellate decision “would seem to say that the government’s invocation of national security can trump a United States citizen’s constitutional rights across the board.”
The embassy case was the last of the large terrorism trials held in the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Since then, there has been a national debate over whether people accused of terrorism should be treated as criminals and tried in the federal courts, or held as enemy combatants to be tried, if at all, before military tribunals, where defendants have fewer rights and there is less public disclosure.
David D. Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, said the ruling underscored “that we don’t need a specialized national security court; that we don’t need to depart from the traditional criminal justice system approach for prosecuting terrorists.”
The decision, which was joined by Judges Jon O. Newman and Wilfred Feinberg, was divided into three separate opinions, which totaled 178 pages.
“This criminal case presents issues of great importance, many of which are complex and novel,” Judge Cabranes wrote, observing that the case had been in the courts for a decade.
The panel also praised Judge Leonard B. Sand, who handled the trial, and Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy, who handled later proceedings, for their care, patience and fairness.
The third defendant whose conviction was affirmed was Mohammed Saddiq Odeh. A fourth defendant, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, did not appeal his conviction. All four men are serving life sentences in the so-called Super Max prison in Florence, Colo.
The authorities may lawfully conduct searches and electronic surveillance against United States citizens in foreign countries without a warrant, a federal appeals court panel said on Monday, bolstering the government’s power to investigate terrorism by ruling that a key constitutional protection afforded to Americans does not apply overseas.
The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, came in the case of three Al Qaeda terrorists convicted a few months before 9/11 in a conspiracy that involved the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa.
The court did not address the question of whether the government could conduct warrantless wiretaps of international calls involving people in the United States, an issue that drove a wedge between the Bush administration and Congress. But the ruling did give footing to those who say that terrorism suspects can be successfully and effectively prosecuted in civilian courts.
The warrantless searches must still be reasonable, as the Constitution requires, Judge José A. Cabranes wrote for the panel, adding that the government had met that standard in the case of one defendant, Wadih el-Hage, a close aide to Osama bin Laden and a naturalized American citizen who was living in Nairobi, Kenya. The government searched his home and monitored his phone conversations.
“The Fourth Amendment’s requirement of reasonableness — but not the Warrant Clause — applies to extraterritorial searches and seizures of U.S. citizens,” the judge wrote.
Mr. el-Hage and two other defendants had appealed their convictions for conspiring with Mr. bin Laden in a plot to kill Americans around the world.
The conspiracy included the 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 224 people and wounded thousands.
While noting that Mr. el-Hage “suffered, while abroad, a significant invasion of privacy by virtue of the government’s yearlong surveillance of his telephonic communications,” the panel offered a detailed analysis of why the search was reasonable under the Constitution, given the “self-evident need to investigate threats to national security” that foreign terrorist organizations presented.
The panel said the electronic surveillance was justified — and reasonable — for a number of reasons, including that “sustained and intense monitoring” was necessary to understand a “complex, wide-ranging and decentralized” organization like Al Qaeda; and that members of covert terrorist organizations often communicated in code.
“While the intrusion on el-Hage’s privacy was great, the need for the government to so intrude was even greater,” Judge Cabranes wrote.
“This is going to be a very important precedent that intelligence agencies are going to look at, that the new Obama administration is going to look at,” Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University, said on Monday. “These issues are critical, and the courts rarely rule on them.”
The panel also made it easier for prosecutors to protect sensitive information in terrorism cases by holding that judges may bar defendants from having access to classified materials that their lawyers may otherwise examine, if there is concern that unauthorized disclosures of information could jeopardize lives or investigations.
The panel declined to declare, as a lower court judge had, that Miranda warnings were required in overseas interrogations of foreign suspects, but it said that a modified version of the warnings, adapted to local circumstances, could be acceptable.
“It is only through the cooperation of local authorities that U.S. agents obtain access to foreign detainees,” Judge Cabranes wrote. “We have no desire to strain that spirit of cooperation by compelling U.S. agents to press foreign governments for the provision of legal rights not recognized by their criminal justice systems.”
Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan and one of the prosecutors who participated in the embassy case, called the decision “one further measure of justice for the victims of those attacks.”
Defense lawyers said that they were disappointed in the ruling, and would appeal. “We believe these issues are important enough to deserve Supreme Court review,” said Frederick H. Cohn, whose client, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-’Owhali, was convicted in the Nairobi attack.
Joshua L. Dratel, a lawyer for Mr. el-Hage, said that the appellate decision “would seem to say that the government’s invocation of national security can trump a United States citizen’s constitutional rights across the board.”
The embassy case was the last of the large terrorism trials held in the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Since then, there has been a national debate over whether people accused of terrorism should be treated as criminals and tried in the federal courts, or held as enemy combatants to be tried, if at all, before military tribunals, where defendants have fewer rights and there is less public disclosure.
David D. Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, said the ruling underscored “that we don’t need a specialized national security court; that we don’t need to depart from the traditional criminal justice system approach for prosecuting terrorists.”
The decision, which was joined by Judges Jon O. Newman and Wilfred Feinberg, was divided into three separate opinions, which totaled 178 pages.
“This criminal case presents issues of great importance, many of which are complex and novel,” Judge Cabranes wrote, observing that the case had been in the courts for a decade.
The panel also praised Judge Leonard B. Sand, who handled the trial, and Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy, who handled later proceedings, for their care, patience and fairness.
The third defendant whose conviction was affirmed was Mohammed Saddiq Odeh. A fourth defendant, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, did not appeal his conviction. All four men are serving life sentences in the so-called Super Max prison in Florence, Colo.
U.S. officials find melamine in baby formula
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. health officials have uncovered trace amounts of the chemical melamine in one sample of infant formula sold in the United States, a Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman said on Tuesday.
The amount found in the sample was no cause for concern, said FDA spokeswoman Judy Leon said. "There's no basis for concern because we're talking about trace levels that are so low ... that there's absolutely no risk," she told Reuters.
Melamine-tainted formula was found earlier this year in China, where thousands of children fell ill and several died.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey, editing by Chris Wilson)
The amount found in the sample was no cause for concern, said FDA spokeswoman Judy Leon said. "There's no basis for concern because we're talking about trace levels that are so low ... that there's absolutely no risk," she told Reuters.
Melamine-tainted formula was found earlier this year in China, where thousands of children fell ill and several died.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey, editing by Chris Wilson)
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Americans Know ‘American Idol’ Star Better than American History
CNSNews.com
Friday, November 21, 2008
By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor
(CNSNews.com) - More than twice as many Americans – 56 percent -- know that Paula Abdul is a judge on “American Idol” as know that the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people” comes from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (21 percent) -- a phrase President-elect Barack Obama used in his election-night victory speech.
The average American is nearly illiterate when it comes to basic principles of American history, government and economics, according to a new report from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute – and politicians are even worse.
More than 2,000 people were administered a 33-question test this Spring on American history and our political and economic institutions. Of them, 71 percent -- college and non-college educated alike – got a failing mark, ISI’s Josiah Bunting III said, presenting the study at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Thursday.
“It can truly be said that we are suffering from an epidemic of civic ignorance,” Bunting said. “The extent of failure is pervasive, cutting across every segment of the American population.
“Young Americans failed, but so did the elderly,” said Bunting. “Men and women, rich and poor, liberals and conservatives, Republican and Democratic, white, black, yellow and brown – all were united in their inability to master the basic features of America’s constitutional form of government.”
The overall average score was 49 percent – an “F” on any grading scale, he said. Liberals scored 49 percent, conservatives scored 48 percent. Independents and Republicans scored slightly better than Democrats (52 to 45 percent).
What Americans don’t know about civics – a subject that used to be required for high school graduation -- is shocking:
-- Less than half of Americans can name all three branches of government.
-- Only 27 percent of Americans know that the Bill of Rights prohibits the government from establishing an official religion in the U.S.
-- 54 percent do not know that the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, not the president.
Politicians, however, scored five points lower than the Average Joe, a performance that former Deputy Secretary of Education Eugene W. Hickok labeled “abysmal and alarming.”
-- Seventy-nine (79) percent of elected officeholders did not know that the Bill of Rights expressly forbids the government establishment of an official religion.
-- A large number (43 percent) of politicians did not know what the Electoral College does.
Only 32 percent of politicians can actually define what the free-enterprise system is – even though many of them may have campaigned for office pledging to defend it.
College graduates (whose average score was 57 percent), didn’t fare much better than those who didn’t get a college degree (whose average score was 44 percent).
“For each year of college attained, college graduates answered only one more question correctly than their high school counterparts,” Bunting said. “If you can get as much civic education from a library card and newspaper subscription as you can from an expensive college education, then something is terribly wrong with the activities on our campuses.”
Only college-educated Baby Boomers (those aged 45 to 60) did better than an “F,” scoring 61 percent – still a “D-minus.”
Befitting these financially troubled times, 79 percent of college grads correctly knew what President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs were about – but only 17 percent could properly define free-market capitalism.
“People may be listening to television experts talk about economic bailouts and the platforms of political candidates, but they apparently have little idea what our basic economic and political institutions are,” said Dr. Richard Brake, ISI’s director of university stewardship.
One of the reasons why there is such appalling civic ignorance is political correctness and multi-culturalism on college campuses, according to New York Times columnist David Brooks, who spoke after the press conference.
“It’s partly political correctness – which is that there are no great men and no great women, it’s all 'social movements,' its all people, and its all oppressed people, is who you focus on -- and that’s how you show your sympathy. It’s (considered) sort of elitist to look at the great and not the equal,” Brooks told CNSNews.com.
Darryl DeMarzio, an assistant professor in the education department at the University of Scranton, told CNSNews.com that many politically correct college campuses no longer teach “history” classes, as most people remember.
“One of the purposes of a history course now is not the acquisition of historical knowledge, but it’s a vague skill like ‘thinking historically,’ or something like that,” DeMarzio said.
The culprit is that teachers are steeped in a philosophy called “constructivism.”
“That’s the idea that knowledge is not something that teachers possess and give to students or teach students,” DeMarzio tolld CNSNews.com. “Rather, knowledge is a process in which students construct meaning for themselves.
“So a historical question in a history class today is not, ‘Who were the major political participants of World War II?’ But it’s ‘What do you think of World War II?’ or ‘What might we learn from World War II?’ Think for yourself. Construct your own knowledge, your own meaning out of this.”
Political correctness is pervasive even when civics is required. Steve Bowen of the Maine Heritage Policy Center said his group looked at how the University of Maine system meets a legislative mandate to teach about society and culture.
“You have to take ‘Human Population in the Global Environment,’or ‘Humans and Global Change: Environmental Policy’-- you have to take one of those courses – but you don’t have to take civics, history, or economics at the University of Maine,” he said.
Bowen said students at the University of Maine can meet their requirement by taking the “Anthropology of Sex and Gender,” or “Victims of Progress: Indigenous Peoples in the Modern World.”
The ISI test, which is summarized in the report “Our Fading Heritage,” was created and administered by researchers at the University of Connecticut.
CNSNews.com Editor-in-Chief Terence Jeffrey is a visiting fellow at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and was involved in the preparation of the report.
Friday, November 21, 2008
By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor
(CNSNews.com) - More than twice as many Americans – 56 percent -- know that Paula Abdul is a judge on “American Idol” as know that the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people” comes from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (21 percent) -- a phrase President-elect Barack Obama used in his election-night victory speech.
The average American is nearly illiterate when it comes to basic principles of American history, government and economics, according to a new report from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute – and politicians are even worse.
More than 2,000 people were administered a 33-question test this Spring on American history and our political and economic institutions. Of them, 71 percent -- college and non-college educated alike – got a failing mark, ISI’s Josiah Bunting III said, presenting the study at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Thursday.
“It can truly be said that we are suffering from an epidemic of civic ignorance,” Bunting said. “The extent of failure is pervasive, cutting across every segment of the American population.
“Young Americans failed, but so did the elderly,” said Bunting. “Men and women, rich and poor, liberals and conservatives, Republican and Democratic, white, black, yellow and brown – all were united in their inability to master the basic features of America’s constitutional form of government.”
The overall average score was 49 percent – an “F” on any grading scale, he said. Liberals scored 49 percent, conservatives scored 48 percent. Independents and Republicans scored slightly better than Democrats (52 to 45 percent).
What Americans don’t know about civics – a subject that used to be required for high school graduation -- is shocking:
-- Less than half of Americans can name all three branches of government.
-- Only 27 percent of Americans know that the Bill of Rights prohibits the government from establishing an official religion in the U.S.
-- 54 percent do not know that the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, not the president.
Politicians, however, scored five points lower than the Average Joe, a performance that former Deputy Secretary of Education Eugene W. Hickok labeled “abysmal and alarming.”
-- Seventy-nine (79) percent of elected officeholders did not know that the Bill of Rights expressly forbids the government establishment of an official religion.
-- A large number (43 percent) of politicians did not know what the Electoral College does.
Only 32 percent of politicians can actually define what the free-enterprise system is – even though many of them may have campaigned for office pledging to defend it.
College graduates (whose average score was 57 percent), didn’t fare much better than those who didn’t get a college degree (whose average score was 44 percent).
“For each year of college attained, college graduates answered only one more question correctly than their high school counterparts,” Bunting said. “If you can get as much civic education from a library card and newspaper subscription as you can from an expensive college education, then something is terribly wrong with the activities on our campuses.”
Only college-educated Baby Boomers (those aged 45 to 60) did better than an “F,” scoring 61 percent – still a “D-minus.”
Befitting these financially troubled times, 79 percent of college grads correctly knew what President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs were about – but only 17 percent could properly define free-market capitalism.
“People may be listening to television experts talk about economic bailouts and the platforms of political candidates, but they apparently have little idea what our basic economic and political institutions are,” said Dr. Richard Brake, ISI’s director of university stewardship.
One of the reasons why there is such appalling civic ignorance is political correctness and multi-culturalism on college campuses, according to New York Times columnist David Brooks, who spoke after the press conference.
“It’s partly political correctness – which is that there are no great men and no great women, it’s all 'social movements,' its all people, and its all oppressed people, is who you focus on -- and that’s how you show your sympathy. It’s (considered) sort of elitist to look at the great and not the equal,” Brooks told CNSNews.com.
Darryl DeMarzio, an assistant professor in the education department at the University of Scranton, told CNSNews.com that many politically correct college campuses no longer teach “history” classes, as most people remember.
“One of the purposes of a history course now is not the acquisition of historical knowledge, but it’s a vague skill like ‘thinking historically,’ or something like that,” DeMarzio said.
The culprit is that teachers are steeped in a philosophy called “constructivism.”
“That’s the idea that knowledge is not something that teachers possess and give to students or teach students,” DeMarzio tolld CNSNews.com. “Rather, knowledge is a process in which students construct meaning for themselves.
“So a historical question in a history class today is not, ‘Who were the major political participants of World War II?’ But it’s ‘What do you think of World War II?’ or ‘What might we learn from World War II?’ Think for yourself. Construct your own knowledge, your own meaning out of this.”
Political correctness is pervasive even when civics is required. Steve Bowen of the Maine Heritage Policy Center said his group looked at how the University of Maine system meets a legislative mandate to teach about society and culture.
“You have to take ‘Human Population in the Global Environment,’or ‘Humans and Global Change: Environmental Policy’-- you have to take one of those courses – but you don’t have to take civics, history, or economics at the University of Maine,” he said.
Bowen said students at the University of Maine can meet their requirement by taking the “Anthropology of Sex and Gender,” or “Victims of Progress: Indigenous Peoples in the Modern World.”
The ISI test, which is summarized in the report “Our Fading Heritage,” was created and administered by researchers at the University of Connecticut.
CNSNews.com Editor-in-Chief Terence Jeffrey is a visiting fellow at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and was involved in the preparation of the report.
Al-Qaida No. 2 insults Obama with racial epithet
Nov 19 11:12 AM US/Eastern
By MAAMOUN YOUSSEF and LEE KEATH
Associated Press Writers
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, describing the president-elect in demeaning terms that imply he does the bidding of whites.
The message appeared chiefly aimed at persuading Muslims and Arabs that Obama does not represent a change in U.S. policies. Ayman al-Zawahri said in the message, which appeared on militant Web sites, that Obama is "the direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X, the 1960s African-American rights leader.
In al-Qaida's first response to Obama's victory, al-Zawahri also called the president-elect—along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice—"house negroes."
Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri uses the term "abeed al-beit," which literally translates as "house slaves." But al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of his speech that included the translation as "house negroes."
The message also includes old footage of speeches by Malcolm X in which he explains the term, saying black slaves who worked in their white masters' house were more servile than those who worked in the fields. Malcolm X used the term to criticize black leaders he accused of not standing up to whites.
The 11-minute 23-second video features the audio message by al-Zawahri, who appears only in a still image, along with other images, including one of Obama wearing a Jewish skullcap as he meets with Jewish leaders. In his speech, al-Zawahri refers to a Nov. 5 U.S. airstrike attack in Afghanistan, meaning the video was made after that date.
Al-Zawahri said Obama's election has not changed American policies he said are aimed at oppressing Muslims and others.
"America has put on a new face, but its heart full of hate, mind drowning in greed, and spirit which spreads evil, murder, repression and despotism continue to be the same as always," the deputy of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden said.
He said Obama's plan to shift troops to Afghanistan is doomed to failure, because Afghans will resist.
"Be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them," he said.
Al-Zawahri did not threaten specific attacks, but warned Obama that he was "facing a Jihadi (holy war) awakening and renaissance which is shaking the pillars of the entire Islamic world; and this is the fact which you and your government and country refuse to recognize and pretend not to see."
He said Obama's victory showed Americans acknowledged that President George W. Bush's policies were a failure and that the result was an "admission of defeat in Iraq."
But Obama's professions of support for Israel during the election campaign "confirmed to the Ummah (Islamic world) that you have chosen a stance of hostility to Islam and Muslims," al-Zawahri said.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
By MAAMOUN YOUSSEF and LEE KEATH
Associated Press Writers
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, describing the president-elect in demeaning terms that imply he does the bidding of whites.
The message appeared chiefly aimed at persuading Muslims and Arabs that Obama does not represent a change in U.S. policies. Ayman al-Zawahri said in the message, which appeared on militant Web sites, that Obama is "the direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X, the 1960s African-American rights leader.
In al-Qaida's first response to Obama's victory, al-Zawahri also called the president-elect—along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice—"house negroes."
Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri uses the term "abeed al-beit," which literally translates as "house slaves." But al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of his speech that included the translation as "house negroes."
The message also includes old footage of speeches by Malcolm X in which he explains the term, saying black slaves who worked in their white masters' house were more servile than those who worked in the fields. Malcolm X used the term to criticize black leaders he accused of not standing up to whites.
The 11-minute 23-second video features the audio message by al-Zawahri, who appears only in a still image, along with other images, including one of Obama wearing a Jewish skullcap as he meets with Jewish leaders. In his speech, al-Zawahri refers to a Nov. 5 U.S. airstrike attack in Afghanistan, meaning the video was made after that date.
Al-Zawahri said Obama's election has not changed American policies he said are aimed at oppressing Muslims and others.
"America has put on a new face, but its heart full of hate, mind drowning in greed, and spirit which spreads evil, murder, repression and despotism continue to be the same as always," the deputy of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden said.
He said Obama's plan to shift troops to Afghanistan is doomed to failure, because Afghans will resist.
"Be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them," he said.
Al-Zawahri did not threaten specific attacks, but warned Obama that he was "facing a Jihadi (holy war) awakening and renaissance which is shaking the pillars of the entire Islamic world; and this is the fact which you and your government and country refuse to recognize and pretend not to see."
He said Obama's victory showed Americans acknowledged that President George W. Bush's policies were a failure and that the result was an "admission of defeat in Iraq."
But Obama's professions of support for Israel during the election campaign "confirmed to the Ummah (Islamic world) that you have chosen a stance of hostility to Islam and Muslims," al-Zawahri said.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
US officials flunk test of Amerian history, economics, civics
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.
Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).
"It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI's civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of elected officials, you have to be concerned," said Josiah Bunting, chairman of the National Civic Literacy Board at ISI.
"How can political leaders make informed decisions if they don't understand the American experience?" he added.
The exam questions covered American history, the workings of the US government and economics.
Among the questions asked of some 2,500 people who were randomly selected to take the test, including "self-identified elected officials," was one which asked respondents to "name two countries that were our enemies during World War II."
Sixty-nine percent of respondents correctly identified Germany and Japan. Among the incorrect answers were Britain, China, Russia, Canada, Mexico and Spain.
Forty percent of respondents, meanwhile, incorrectly believed that the US president has the power to declare war, while 54 percent correctly answered that that power rests with Congress.
Asked about the electoral college, 20 percent of elected officials incorrectly said it was established to "supervise the first televised presidential debates."
In fact, the system of choosing the US president via an indirect electoral college vote dates back some 220 years, to the US Constitution.
The question that received the fewest correct responses, just 16 percent, tested respondents' basic understanding of economic principles, asking why "free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning?"
Activities that dull Americans' civic knowledge include talking on the phone and watching movies or television -- even news shows and documentaries, ISI said.
Meanwhile, civic knowledge is enhanced by discussing public affairs, taking part in civic activities and reading about current events and history, the group said.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Friday, November 07, 2008
The Truth Comes Out About Sarah Palin
This woman is dumber than George W. Bush. But that is what happens when you vet your running mate for 15 minutes, much less find her on Wikipedia. That was a disaster waiting to happen. Yet, there's already a buzz for her to run in 2012.
No Doubt, We Haven't Seen The Last of Sarah Palin
At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said. {I knew she was a freak, a straight up MILF. I am sure her ass is being tapped by more than her husband. She and Todd looked distant toward one another. I noticed that when he was with her on the campaign trail.}
She raised William Ayers before the campaign signed off on it:
Palin launched her attack on Obama's association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain's advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting.
And she spent far more on clothes than was reported:
NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family--clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards.
The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.
Finally, Steve Schmidt (who reportedly picked Palin as VP) would not let her speak on election night.
McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.
She raised William Ayers before the campaign signed off on it:
Palin launched her attack on Obama's association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain's advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting.
And she spent far more on clothes than was reported:
NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family--clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards.
The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.
Finally, Steve Schmidt (who reportedly picked Palin as VP) would not let her speak on election night.
McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.
Obama win does not end racism, activists say
By Matthew Bigg Matthew Bigg – Wed Nov 5, 10:34 pm ET
ATLANTA (Reuters) – The election of Barack Obama as the first black U.S. president should help revive America's image abroad as a land of opportunity for all.
But some analysts fear Obama's win could actually undermine efforts to tackle inequality between blacks and whites in a country where racial segregation in the south prevented blacks from voting as recently as the 1960s.
More than 55 million people voted for Obama, a U.S. senator whose father was Kenyan and whose white mother was from Kansas, and he won a majority in a slew of groups and demographic categories to deal a big defeat to Republican John McCain.
Obama's strength among young voters of all races in a country in which the proportion of young and nonwhite voters is increasing appeared to suggest that race as a factor in U.S. politics could gradually evaporate.
"His (Obama's) election demonstrates America's extraordinary capacity to renew itself and adapt to a changing world," said former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
But several commentators said the election result will do nothing to challenge racial inequity.
"There is an acceptance among wide segments of the population that a qualified African American (Obama) can be accepted in the highest office," said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author of a recent book on race and presidential politics.
"But that does not magically make the problems go away for the average person of color.
Nothing has changed and for many the negative stereotypes are still very much there," Hutchinson said.
Chuck D, regarded by many as the godfather of politically-conscious rap music, said Obama's election could radically change the debate about race in the United States but in some ways could be unhealthy.
"People will say: 'You guys have got a black president so it's cool. It's straight.' But it does not erase the discussion (about race) that you need to have," said Chuck D, the main force behind the rap group Public Enemy.
In an interview, he warned against the election of Obama being "a weapon of mass distraction" from an attempt to tackle problems facing African Americans.
DISPARITIES
Experts differ over the cause of disparities between the majority whites and black Americans, who represent around 13 percent of the country's population of 300 million.
On average African Americans earn less, are more likely to be unemployed and have higher rates of infant mortality and a lower life expectancy. They are more likely to be arrested and jailed and serve longer sentences than other racial groups.
A black middle class has flourished in the United States since the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s ended a brutal system of racial segregation in the south and led to the passage of laws that enabled all African Americans to vote.
But many middle class blacks say that, despite professional and financial success, race remains a significant fact of life, still woven into social and professional interactions.
The election itself does not eliminate those disparities but it would alter how they are viewed and that could make a difference, said Pulitzer prize-winning columnist Cynthia Tucker.
"An Obama presidency does not herald the end of racism in America. Obama isn't 'post-racial.'
He isn't the messiah whose coming ends bigotry and inequality for all time," said Tucker, who writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper.
"He'll just be the president," she said.
At the same time, Obama's election could alter the way African Americans view themselves.
"I don't know that this election changes any (social problems) right away," said Wendell Roberts, an attorney based in Virginia.
"But one thing it does change is a state of mind .... African Americans have been citizens for ... (generations ) but there is a real sense now that all things are possible," said Roberts.
(Editing by Jim Loney and David Storey)
ATLANTA (Reuters) – The election of Barack Obama as the first black U.S. president should help revive America's image abroad as a land of opportunity for all.
But some analysts fear Obama's win could actually undermine efforts to tackle inequality between blacks and whites in a country where racial segregation in the south prevented blacks from voting as recently as the 1960s.
More than 55 million people voted for Obama, a U.S. senator whose father was Kenyan and whose white mother was from Kansas, and he won a majority in a slew of groups and demographic categories to deal a big defeat to Republican John McCain.
Obama's strength among young voters of all races in a country in which the proportion of young and nonwhite voters is increasing appeared to suggest that race as a factor in U.S. politics could gradually evaporate.
"His (Obama's) election demonstrates America's extraordinary capacity to renew itself and adapt to a changing world," said former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
But several commentators said the election result will do nothing to challenge racial inequity.
"There is an acceptance among wide segments of the population that a qualified African American (Obama) can be accepted in the highest office," said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author of a recent book on race and presidential politics.
"But that does not magically make the problems go away for the average person of color.
Nothing has changed and for many the negative stereotypes are still very much there," Hutchinson said.
Chuck D, regarded by many as the godfather of politically-conscious rap music, said Obama's election could radically change the debate about race in the United States but in some ways could be unhealthy.
"People will say: 'You guys have got a black president so it's cool. It's straight.' But it does not erase the discussion (about race) that you need to have," said Chuck D, the main force behind the rap group Public Enemy.
In an interview, he warned against the election of Obama being "a weapon of mass distraction" from an attempt to tackle problems facing African Americans.
DISPARITIES
Experts differ over the cause of disparities between the majority whites and black Americans, who represent around 13 percent of the country's population of 300 million.
On average African Americans earn less, are more likely to be unemployed and have higher rates of infant mortality and a lower life expectancy. They are more likely to be arrested and jailed and serve longer sentences than other racial groups.
A black middle class has flourished in the United States since the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s ended a brutal system of racial segregation in the south and led to the passage of laws that enabled all African Americans to vote.
But many middle class blacks say that, despite professional and financial success, race remains a significant fact of life, still woven into social and professional interactions.
The election itself does not eliminate those disparities but it would alter how they are viewed and that could make a difference, said Pulitzer prize-winning columnist Cynthia Tucker.
"An Obama presidency does not herald the end of racism in America. Obama isn't 'post-racial.'
He isn't the messiah whose coming ends bigotry and inequality for all time," said Tucker, who writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper.
"He'll just be the president," she said.
At the same time, Obama's election could alter the way African Americans view themselves.
"I don't know that this election changes any (social problems) right away," said Wendell Roberts, an attorney based in Virginia.
"But one thing it does change is a state of mind .... African Americans have been citizens for ... (generations ) but there is a real sense now that all things are possible," said Roberts.
(Editing by Jim Loney and David Storey)
White Racism Post-Election Racism
Post-Election Backlash
In Lancaster, Ohio, on Monday before the election at 9pm two men dressed in camouflage pants and camouflage hats walk up to the local Obama headquarters and slow down to a stroll. One of the volunteers asks “How are ya tonight.”
“Doin alright,” one of the men answers. “What are you doing here?”
“Getting out the vote for Obama,” she responds.
“Obama? Hell no, I’d never vote for a n——-.” He looks to his right where a Nigerian American woman sits inside a van waiting to head out to put up some signs. She came to Lancaster three nights earlier with a group of other Columbia University graduate students to volunteer for Obama. I get in the car with her and lock the doors. We all wonder what would have happened if he had been a little more drunk or had it been a night later after Obama had won the election.
The Bush administration has all but gutted the Department of Justice civil rights division, which is responsible for the enforcement of civil rights laws that protect people against hate crimes. With about two more months of Bush Administration rule, the likelihood that these crimes will go unprosecuted is high. This retreat from civil rights enforcement has stood as a sort of green light to will-be-haters to do what they will.
Lancaster, Ohio is a deeply conservative place. It is a poor place where many of the storefronts in the town’s center are empty. The hospital is the town’s biggest employer. It used to be the glass factory.
A 44 year old man with a beard, shoulder length thinning hair and an arm full of fading tattoos of eagles and a boat opened the door to the knocks of an Obama volunteer. He asked which side the knocker was on and when he heard the reply he stepped out onto the porch, lit a cigarette and said “Obama better win. We can’t take it any more. The only reason some of these people aren’t going to vote for him is cause he’s black. I hear it all the time with the guys at work. Thing is that when they lose their jobs and get sick, they’ll wish they had.”
The claim that racism is now without embodied racists is a tenuous one everywhere but in Lancaster, like in many places in the country, there is no doubt about it. Now that Obama has been elected, there is a rising anxiety among many that these kinds of explicit personal racial biases will translate into violent randomized hate crimes.
On Staten Island, a young Black Muslim man says he was attacked yesterday by a group of white men who made comments about Obama as they beat him with bats. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime.
The feared rise in anti-Black and Islamophobic hate crimes requires preemptive work; a continuation of the important things that many are already doing to prevent and respond to hate crimes and to change the cultural currents that make them possible. The possibility of a rash of hate crimes is a clear indication that racism in this country is built into the rules, laws, and in this case the neglect of the laws. People are racist and say terrible, violent things but it is the responsibility of government to make sure that violence based on race is curtailed.
In Lancaster, Ohio, on Monday before the election at 9pm two men dressed in camouflage pants and camouflage hats walk up to the local Obama headquarters and slow down to a stroll. One of the volunteers asks “How are ya tonight.”
“Doin alright,” one of the men answers. “What are you doing here?”
“Getting out the vote for Obama,” she responds.
“Obama? Hell no, I’d never vote for a n——-.” He looks to his right where a Nigerian American woman sits inside a van waiting to head out to put up some signs. She came to Lancaster three nights earlier with a group of other Columbia University graduate students to volunteer for Obama. I get in the car with her and lock the doors. We all wonder what would have happened if he had been a little more drunk or had it been a night later after Obama had won the election.
The Bush administration has all but gutted the Department of Justice civil rights division, which is responsible for the enforcement of civil rights laws that protect people against hate crimes. With about two more months of Bush Administration rule, the likelihood that these crimes will go unprosecuted is high. This retreat from civil rights enforcement has stood as a sort of green light to will-be-haters to do what they will.
Lancaster, Ohio is a deeply conservative place. It is a poor place where many of the storefronts in the town’s center are empty. The hospital is the town’s biggest employer. It used to be the glass factory.
A 44 year old man with a beard, shoulder length thinning hair and an arm full of fading tattoos of eagles and a boat opened the door to the knocks of an Obama volunteer. He asked which side the knocker was on and when he heard the reply he stepped out onto the porch, lit a cigarette and said “Obama better win. We can’t take it any more. The only reason some of these people aren’t going to vote for him is cause he’s black. I hear it all the time with the guys at work. Thing is that when they lose their jobs and get sick, they’ll wish they had.”
The claim that racism is now without embodied racists is a tenuous one everywhere but in Lancaster, like in many places in the country, there is no doubt about it. Now that Obama has been elected, there is a rising anxiety among many that these kinds of explicit personal racial biases will translate into violent randomized hate crimes.
On Staten Island, a young Black Muslim man says he was attacked yesterday by a group of white men who made comments about Obama as they beat him with bats. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime.
The feared rise in anti-Black and Islamophobic hate crimes requires preemptive work; a continuation of the important things that many are already doing to prevent and respond to hate crimes and to change the cultural currents that make them possible. The possibility of a rash of hate crimes is a clear indication that racism in this country is built into the rules, laws, and in this case the neglect of the laws. People are racist and say terrible, violent things but it is the responsibility of government to make sure that violence based on race is curtailed.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Post Election Questions
Now that Senator Obama is going to be the 44th president of the United States, the lingering question is what now? What does this mean for Black people? What does this mean for everyone else?
President-elect Barack Obama has great difficulty ahead. Black America got what they wanted and that’s a Black President. Obama says that he’s going to bring “change,” but with the unprecedented powers that the Bush administration is going to leave behind, what is there to make us think that the Democrats will surrender that power?
As was outgoing President Bush, so is President-elect Obama: they’re puppets for the new world order.
As I conclude, I will leave you with the following to ponder:
1. Will there be change? I’m not kidding.
2. Will there be gun confiscation under an Obama administration?
3. Will the election of President Obama be an end to racism and a healing of the racial divide that still exists in the United States today?
4. Will there be food riots and a possible race war?
5. Will there be more military adventures overseas?
6. Will Obama pull the troops out of Iraq within 16 months?
7. Will Black people continue to sleep under the illusion that we’ve made it to the promised land?
President-elect Barack Obama has great difficulty ahead. Black America got what they wanted and that’s a Black President. Obama says that he’s going to bring “change,” but with the unprecedented powers that the Bush administration is going to leave behind, what is there to make us think that the Democrats will surrender that power?
As was outgoing President Bush, so is President-elect Obama: they’re puppets for the new world order.
As I conclude, I will leave you with the following to ponder:
1. Will there be change? I’m not kidding.
2. Will there be gun confiscation under an Obama administration?
3. Will the election of President Obama be an end to racism and a healing of the racial divide that still exists in the United States today?
4. Will there be food riots and a possible race war?
5. Will there be more military adventures overseas?
6. Will Obama pull the troops out of Iraq within 16 months?
7. Will Black people continue to sleep under the illusion that we’ve made it to the promised land?
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
More Coming Later On Tonight
Of course, I'll be throwing my two cents into the mix about this election. I believe Obama will defeat McCain tonight. I cannot see him losing. And I will find out if I am wrong. I was wrong during the primaries. I thought it was going to be Hillary Clinton versus John McCain, but Barack Obama ruined her night at the ball. We thought it was bad for Black folks now, wait until Obama takes over. Ahhh yeah, we're in for it now. I wonder how long will it be before Black people who overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama will realize that they've been duped?
In addition, will there be a false flag terror attack taking place on January 22, 2009?
In addition, will there be a false flag terror attack taking place on January 22, 2009?
Today Is Election Day - WOW!
For the last few weeks I’ve been it has been made clear that Senator Barack Obama is going to win the election. I cannot see him losing this race today. Senator John McCain’s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin did electrify his campaign for a few weeks however, the wind in that sail has gone. Last night I was watching television and I saw a commercial where the Republicans National Committee finally used Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a negative attack ad. They said that Senator Obama is radical.
At this point it really doesn’t matter because Senator Obama has this election on lock. The only way McCain can win is by stealing the election. However, an overwhelming voter turnout for Obama can make stealing the election very difficult. There’s only one way this presidential election can be stolen by the Republicans and that is to take the votes from Obama and distribute them among the third party candidates. That way, the blame can be cast upon the third parties who’ll be looked at as the bad guys just as Ralph Nader was blamed for the 2000 election.
But I don’t see that happening either. Obama is going to win. If I am wrong, then we’ll find out tonight when the results are announced.
It won’t be long before we find out if we’re going to see this “change” that was preached so much during the campaign.
This is how I am going to measure this “change” that Obama talked about and I hope you readers take note:
1. Will President Obama stop the torture?
2. Will President Obama repeal the Military Commissions Act?
3. Will President Obama repeal Patriot Acts I and II?
4. Will President Obama stop the warrantless wiretaps?
5. Will President Obama repeal the John Warner Defense Authorization Act?
6. Will President Obama put an end to racial profiling?
7. Will President Obama put an end to imperial wars for empire?
This is just a few of the items on my list that will be used to measure on the gauge of change. Change is coming in America; but it’s coming for the worst. There will be even more torture and corruption under the Democrats. Yes, the Democratic majorities will increase in the House and the Senate.
Yes, there will be partying and dancing throughout the night and on into 2009. The economy may look like it’s on the way to recovery. But I digress, all we’re going to see is a Black face placed on white imperialism.
The most dangerous of the presidential candidates will ascend into power tonight. Get ready to lose more civil liberties and constitutional rights. This is going to be very interesting when he takes the oval office. Watch and stay vigilant. I too am watching.
Black America will get its Black president, but what will that mean for us?
-Aquil Aziz Copyright © 2009
At this point it really doesn’t matter because Senator Obama has this election on lock. The only way McCain can win is by stealing the election. However, an overwhelming voter turnout for Obama can make stealing the election very difficult. There’s only one way this presidential election can be stolen by the Republicans and that is to take the votes from Obama and distribute them among the third party candidates. That way, the blame can be cast upon the third parties who’ll be looked at as the bad guys just as Ralph Nader was blamed for the 2000 election.
But I don’t see that happening either. Obama is going to win. If I am wrong, then we’ll find out tonight when the results are announced.
It won’t be long before we find out if we’re going to see this “change” that was preached so much during the campaign.
This is how I am going to measure this “change” that Obama talked about and I hope you readers take note:
1. Will President Obama stop the torture?
2. Will President Obama repeal the Military Commissions Act?
3. Will President Obama repeal Patriot Acts I and II?
4. Will President Obama stop the warrantless wiretaps?
5. Will President Obama repeal the John Warner Defense Authorization Act?
6. Will President Obama put an end to racial profiling?
7. Will President Obama put an end to imperial wars for empire?
This is just a few of the items on my list that will be used to measure on the gauge of change. Change is coming in America; but it’s coming for the worst. There will be even more torture and corruption under the Democrats. Yes, the Democratic majorities will increase in the House and the Senate.
Yes, there will be partying and dancing throughout the night and on into 2009. The economy may look like it’s on the way to recovery. But I digress, all we’re going to see is a Black face placed on white imperialism.
The most dangerous of the presidential candidates will ascend into power tonight. Get ready to lose more civil liberties and constitutional rights. This is going to be very interesting when he takes the oval office. Watch and stay vigilant. I too am watching.
Black America will get its Black president, but what will that mean for us?
-Aquil Aziz Copyright © 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)