It was an unprecedented visit designed to spur the euro zone into action. But Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's high-profile trip to Europe left some European officials more dumbstruck than starstruck.

Geithner's decision to travel to the small city of Wroclaw to discuss the sovereign debt problems of Greece, Ireland, Italy and the wider euro zone was the clearest indication yet of the severity of the near two-year-old crisis, which now threatens the global economy not just the single currency bloc.

Officials said Geithner was coming to propose how the region might try leveraging its emergency bailout fund -- the 440 billion euro European Financial Stability Facility -- to better tackle the crisis, much as the United States used leverage to handle the fallout from the subprime collapse.

One of the West Bank's largest illegal Israeli settlements, Ofra, is now going to be legitimized and upheld by the state of Israel regardless of the fact that much of it was built on privately owned Palestinian land.

Does this represent the state of Israel spitting in the face of the Palestinian people in preparation for their bid for UN statehood? Is this a warning of what is to come if the Palestinians will not back down and kowtow to their Israeli occupiers?

We can't be sure, but we do know that this is yet another instance of Israel flouting international law without hesitation.

The most popular national political figure in America today is one who was rejected by her own party three years ago: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans hold a favorable view of her and one-third are suffering a form of buyer's remorse, saying the U.S. would be better off now if she had become president in 2008 instead of Barack Obama.

The finding in the latest Bloomberg National Poll shows a higher level of wishful thinking about a Hillary Clinton presidency than when a similar question was asked in July 2010. Then, a quarter of Americans held such a view.

"Looking back, I wonder if she would have been a stronger leader, knowing the games and the politics and all that goes on," said Susan Dunlop, 50, a homemaker in New Port Richey, Florida. "I don't think she would have bent as much."

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday made light of the sex scandals surrounding Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, saying critics were simply jealous of his sexual prowess.

"However much they nag Signor Berlusconi for his special attitude to the beautiful sex, and by the way they nag him mainly because of jealousy, he has shown himself as a responsible statesman," Putin said at an international investment forum in Sochi, quoted by the state RIA Novosti news agency.

He was speaking in praise of Berlusconi's financial belt-tightening to battle Italy's economic woes.

Berlusconi is facing charges of paying for sex with a 17-year-old girl and eight people were charged Thursday with procuring prostitutes for his parties in an attempt to curry favour.

There are two mainstream market assumptions that, in my mind, prevail over all others. The continuing function of the Dow, the sustained flow of capital into and out of the banking sector, and the full force spending of the federal government are ALL entirely dependent on the lifespan of these dual illusions; one, that the U.S. Dollar is a legitimate safe haven investment and will remain so indefinitely, and two, that China, like many other developing nations, will continue to prop up the strength of the dollar indefinitely because it is "in their best interest". In the dimly lit bowels of Wall Street such ideas are so entrenched and pervasive, to question their validity is almost sacrilegious. Only after the recent S&P downgrade of America's AAA credit rating did the impossible become thinkable to some MSM analysts, though a considerable portion of the day-trading herd continue to roll onward, while the time bomb strapped to the ass end of their financial house is ticking away.

The debate over the health and longevity of the dollar comes down to one very simple and undeniable root pillar of economics; supply and demand. The supply of dollars throughout the financial systems of numerous countries is undoubtedly overwhelming. In fact, the private Federal Reserve has been quite careful in maintaining a veil of secrecy over the full extent of dollar saturation in foreign markets in order to hide the sheer volume of greenback devaluation and inflation they have created. If for some reason the reserves of dollars held overseas by investors and creditors were to come flooding back into the U.S., we would see a hyperinflationary spiral more destructive than any in recorded history. As the supply of dollars around the globe increases exponentially, so too must foreign demand, otherwise, the debt machine short-circuits, and newly impoverished Americans will be using Ben Franklins for sod in their adobe huts. As I will show, demand for dollars is not increasing to match supply, but is indeed stalled, ready to crumble.

The Washington Post today describes the failure of regimented programs in Afghanistan to reintegrate Taliban teenagers ("Taliban" (alt.: "Terrorist") means "any Afghan who fights against the presence of foreign military forces in their country" and "reintegrate" means "persuading or compelling them to passively acquiesce to those forces"):

The teenage insurgents spend their days learning to make shoes and bookshelves, listening to religious leaders denounce the radical interpretation of Islam they learned as children.

But when they return to their cells at Kabul's juvenile rehabilitation center, the boys with wispy beards and cracking voices talk only of the holy war from which they were plucked and their plans to resume fighting for the Taliban.

As the Taliban presses its efforts to recruit teenage fighters, Afghan officials and their international backers have crafted a program to reintegrate the country's youngest insurgents into mainstream society. But that ambition is coming up against the intransigence of the teens, who say they would rather be on the battlefield.

"We'll fight against America for a thousand years if we have to," said Ali Ahmad, 17, sitting at a desk that has hearts and Koran verses scratched in the wood . . .

"They bring us here to change us," said Nane Asha, in his late teens. "But this is our way. We cannot be changed." . . .

The Taliban visited Asha's school when he was about 13, preaching the evils of American interlopers and the value of violent jihad. Asha approached the speaker after the sermon ended. "How can I join you?" he asked. . . .

Within a few weeks, Asha was enrolled in a six-month training course, learning how to fire a Kalashnikov and to connect a nest of wires and explosives that could take out a U.S. tank. He studied the material obsessively. . . .

Reintegration is at the heart of U.S. and Afghan government strategies to wind down the war, with schooling and employment being offered to coax fighters away from the insurgency.

The state of California has just passed bill AB499, which will permit minor children as young as 12 years old to be vaccinated with sexually transmitted disease vaccines like Gardasil without parental knowledge or parental consent. This means that if you live in California, school or medical personnel would be allowed to vaccinate your child against an STD without your ever knowing it.


At issue, of course, is whether 12-year-olds are mature enough to fully analyze the benefits versus risks of vaccination (or any medical treatment for that matter), or recognize the alternatives to STD prevention, such as abstinence. Meanwhile, a child could suffer a vaccine reaction and the parent, not knowing the child had been vaccinated, could mistake it for the flu or another condition, delaying getting help until it is too late.

But, perhaps the greatest issue of all is whether this law violates your basic right to be involved in important decisions regarding your child's health.

The Israeli cabinet accepted plans to relocate Bedouin villages to government-approved towns.

Recently the Israeli cabinet approved a major plan for the Negev that seeks to "relocate" an estimated 30,000 Bedouin Palestinian citizens to government-approved townships.

The details that have emerged about the government's 'solution' for Bedouin Palestinians show a continuation of the colonial logic that has shaped Israeli policy in the Negev since 1948. Reports suggest that the state will reject half of the Bedouins' land claims. For the tens of thousands of Bedouin Palestinians in 'unrecognised villages', there is now uncertainty about exactly which communities will be 'legalised' - and which will be demolished, their residents forcibly transferred.

Unsurprisingly, you wouldn't know that from the Israeli Prime Minister's communiqué about the decision, which repeatedly used language like development and absorption. There was only a hint about the forced relocation, in the promise to "strengthen the [state's] enforcement mechanism".

Dick Cheney is back in the news this week, and for once, he kept his warmongering to a minimum. Cheney is, like most politicians, trying to cash in on his lifetime of destroying the country and enriching his friends by publishing a book. His version of the truth, titled In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir, is published by Simon & Schuster. I guess the original title, "How I Escaped From the Death Star" was rejected for copyright reasons. You can buy it at Amazon at 45% off (already?) or wait a few more weeks and pick it up at your average dollar store.

The book itself is a stunning display of psychological twisting, as Cheney tries in vain to defend the indefensible: The Bush Administration in general, and specifically, the War in Iraq. Cheney defends Guantanamo Bay, the massive military buildup, the torture of innocent Muslims, the loss of American freedom at home (in the name of security, of course), and the general fear-baiting, terror-hyping security state he built on the backs of an attack that I believe he knew was coming.

That's right. I think Dick Cheney knew an event LIKE 9/11 was going to happen on American soil, and he was fully prepared to enact his fascist agenda as soon as the crisis emerged. How do I know that? It's in his own words, if you read with a little insight.

Cheney was chatting with The American Enterprise Institute about 9/11, and moderator Stephen Hayes delved into what Cheney's immediate, emotional reaction to the events was. Hayes said that President Bush nearly cried in public, and that Condoleeza Rice wept at home. Cheney's reaction as the events unfolded? Not a single human emotion.

Nope. Cheney's first thoughts were all about war and who we got to kill, and which brown people we'd get to bomb, now that they were dumb enough to attack us. Cheney focused on "what the targets might be and how we might go after him."

As an economist I have never had much patience with Paul Krugman's economics, stuck as he is in 1940s-era Keynesian demand-side economics. I have sometimes concluded that Krugman had rather denounce Ronald Reagan that to acknowledge that supply-side economists have established that fiscal policy has supply-side, not just demand-side, effects.

However, Krugman does display at times a moral conscience. He did so on September 11 in his New York Times column, "The Years of Shame." Krugman wrote that 9/11 was hijacked by "fake heros" who used the event "to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight" and that "our professional pundits" lent their support to the misuse of the event.

The stuck pigs, of course, squealed loudly. The war criminal, Donald Rumsfeld, publicly cancelled his New York Times subscription, and the complicit presstitutes in Washington's wars of aggression jumped on Krugman with spikes and hatchets.