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Global Central Banks Announce Co-ordinated Intervention

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The European Central Bank has taken action with five other central banks to boost liquidity to the banking system.

The ECB announced today it was acting with the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the US Federal Reserve and the Swiss National Bank to lower the cost of US dollar swaps by 50 basis points.

The central banks also agreed to set up liquidity swap arrangements to provide liquidity in each jurisdiction in its national currency.

The ECB said in a statement: "The purpose of these actions is to ease strains in financial markets and thereby mitigate the effects of such strains on the supply of credit to households and businesess and so help foster economic activity."

The move is designed to head off a liquidity crunch in the banking sector as banks are increasingly wary of lending to each other.

Bad Guys

The European Central Bank Fiddles While Rome Burns

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"To some people, the European Central Bank seems like a fire department that is letting the house burn down to teach the children not to play with matches."
So wrote Jack Ewing in the New York Times last week. He went on:
"The E.C.B. has a fire hose - its ability to print money. But the bank is refusing to train it on the euro zone's debt crisis.

"The flames climbed higher Friday after the Italian Treasury had to pay an interest rate of 6.5 percent on a new issue of six-month bills . . . the highest interest rate Italy has had to pay to sell such debt since August 1997 . . . .

"But there is no sign the E.C.B. plans a major response, like buying large quantities of the country's bonds to bring down its borrowing costs."
Why not? According to the November 28th Wall Street Journal, "The ECB has long worried that buying government bonds in big enough amounts to bring down countries' borrowing costs would make it easier for national politicians to delay the budget austerity and economic overhauls that are needed."

Bad Guys

The Other One Percent: Corporate Psychopaths and the Global Financial Crisis

Wolf in Sheep Clothing
© Jesse's Café Américain

Anyone who has ever worked in a large corporation has seen the empty suits that seem to inexplicably rise to positions of power. They talk a great game, possessing extraordinary verbal acuity, and often with an amazing ability to rise quickly without significant accomplishments to positions of great personal power, and often using it ruthlessly once it is achieved.

Their ruthless obsession with power and its visible rewards rises above the general level of narcissism and sycophancy that often plagues large organizations, especially those with an established franchise where performance is not as much of an issue as collecting their rents.

And anyone who has been on the inside of the national political process knows this is certainly nothing exclusive to the corporate world.

Here is a paper recently published in the Journal of Business Ethics that hypothesizes along these lines. It is only a preliminary paper, lacking in full scholarship and a cycle of peer review.

But it raises a very important subject. Organizational theories such as the efficient markets hypothesis that assume rational behaviour on the part of market participants tends to fall apart in the presence of the irrational and selfish short term focus of a significant minority of people who seek power, much less the top one percent of the psychologically ruthless.

Pistol

US: New Evidence Shows Sirhan Sirhan May Be Innocent

Lawyers say new forensic evidence shows Sirhan Sirhan is innocent.


Comment: Readers might be interested in reading the following series on RFK's assassination by Allen Branson:

The Assassination of Robert Kennedy, Part 1

The Assassination of Robert Kennedy, Part 2 - Thane Eugene Cesar

The Assassination of Robert Kennedy, Part 3 - The woman in the polka dot dress

The Assassination of Robert Kennedy, Part 4 - Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole

The Assassination of Robert Kennedy, Part 5 - Sirhan Sirhan


Laptop

Could employers begin asking for Facebook passwords on applications?

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© SportzTawkJob seekers asked to throw their privacy out the window

For all the good it can do, social networking also has its share of downsides. Putting personal information of any kind on the internet raises plenty of privacy concerns on its own, and handing over your username and password can be like giving away the keys to your very identity. But if you're in the process of seeking new employment, that may be exactly what you'll have to do.

The image below is a snapshot of an application from North Carolina for a clerical position at a police department. One of the required pieces of information is a disclosure of any social networking accounts, along with the username and password to access them.

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© SportzTawkDoes this job application cross the line?

Cell Phone

Smartphones Vulnerable To Snooping

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© redOrbit

A smartphone security researcher said he has found hidden software in Android, Nokia and BlackBerry smartphones that secretly tracks their users' activities.

Trevor Eckhart said he has uncovered a piece of spyware that tracks the phone's location even if the user disables location services. The software also logs every keystroke, ignores the "Force stop" button, and Eckhart said it is impossible to remove.

The California company behind the software defended the software as a tool for mobile network operators.

"Our software is designed to help mobile network providers diagnose critical issues that lead to problems such as dropped calls and battery drain," Carrier IQ said in a press statement. It denied the software logged keystrokes or tracked smartphone users.

"While we look at many aspects of a device's performance, we are counting and summarizing performance, not recording keystrokes or providing tracking tools. The metrics and tools we derive are not designed to deliver such information, nor do we have any intention of developing such tools," it said.

"The information gathered by Carrier IQ is done so for the exclusive use of that customer, and Carrier IQ does not sell personal subscriber information to third parties. The information derived from devices is encrypted and secured within our customer's network or in our audited and customer-approved facilities," Carrier IQ explained in the statement.

However, Eckhart's 17-minute video showed that Control IQ, buried deep inside an Android-powered smartphone, recorded every button pressed, recorded his search queries, text messages, and even his locations.

Eye 2

Best of the Web: The Serpentine Stealth Of The Long Range Planners

Snake
© Before It's News

This overwhelming yet cleverly obscured phenomenon of extremely patient, devious long range planning by the changing guard of the "powers that be" is of paramount importance.

The 'patience of the planners' aspect eventually becomes evident to any sincere researcher, and literally haunts and even taunts with its seductive perfidy. Even putting your finger on this slippery subject is a chore, since we don't think like they do and have a hard time even conceiving of such inter-generational, pathological conniving, the complete fulfillment of which most would knowingly not see in their lifetimes. It's beyond us.

And that's the key. They're not normal. Something very powerful and sinister is driving them.

Fully developed conscious humans wouldn't plot and scheme for generations to take over the world at any cost to its inhabitants. Most humans inherently trust and positively contribute in conscious, natural ways, endeavoring to pass on to their progeny loving wisdom and a better world. We natural born citizens believe in the decency of humanity and that natural and spiritual laws are clearly delineated via the simplest observations of the world around us and the revelations of our awakened conscience.

Love and truth are not all that complicated. Naturally.

Star of David

US: Surprise! Ron Paul Only Candidate Not Invited to the Republican Jewish Coalition Forum

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Update: What's the deal with Ron Paul and the RJC? See below.

When seven of the top Republican presidential candidates gather next week at a forum hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition, they will "unequivocally put to bed the political smears" regarding aid to Israel that have been promulgated by the Democratic National Committee and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz (D-Fla), according to RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks.

In an interview earlier today, Brooks gave me a preview of what to expect at the RJC's 2012 Republican Presidential Candidates Forum, which is scheduled to take place on Wednesday of next week at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. The event will feature remarks and speeches by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Herman Cain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Amb. Jon Huntsman, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Gov. Mitt Romney and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). (Note that Texas Rep. Ron Paul, no good friend of Israel, will not be in the house.)

Each of the candidates, Brooks said, will make an effort to "put to bed the political smears by the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Shultz that the leading Republicans want to cut aid to Israel."

Dollar

US: Fed Grants $7.77 Trillion in Secret Bank Loans

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a longtime advocate for reform of the Federal Reserve, is sharply criticizing the Federal Reserve today after Bloomberg news reported that the Federal Reserve secretly committed nearly $8 trillion in support to American and international financial institutions during the 2008 bailout. Kucinich recorded a video for his website before going to the floor of the House of Representatives to call upon Congress to reclaim its Constitution primacy over monetary policy.


Now Do You Understand Occupy Wall Street?

Comment: Do you recall what happened yesterday? Central banks move to shore up financial system. "Joining in the move were: the Fed, The Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank, the Fed said."

More money, world wide, being printed out of thin air?


Stormtrooper

Sanctions are only a small part of the history that makes Iranians hate the UK

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© APProtesters storm the British embassy in Tehran yesterday
It's a weird irony that Iranians know the history of Anglo-Persian relations better than the Brits. When the newly installed Ministry of Islamic Guidance asked Harvey Morris, Reuters' man in post-revolutionary Iran, for a history of his news agency, he asked his London office to send him a biography of Baron von Reuter - and was appalled to discover the founder of the world's greatest news agency had built Persia's railways at an immense profit. "How can I show this to the ministry?" he shouted. "It turns out that the Baron was worse than the fucking Shah!" Of which, of course, the ministry was well aware.

Britain staged a joint invasion of Iran with Soviet forces when the Shah's predecessor got a bit too close to the Nazis in World War Two and then helped the Americans overthrow the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 after he nationalised Britain's oil possessions in the country.

This was not a myth but a real, down-to-earth conspiracy. The CIA called it Operation Ajax; the Brits wisely kept their ambitions in check by calling it Operation Boot. MI6's agent in Tehran was Colonel Monty Woodhouse, previously our Special Operations Executive man inside German-occupied Greece. I knew "Monty" well - we co-operated together when I investigated the grim wartime career of ex-UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim - and he was a ruthless man. Woodhouse brought weapons into Iran for a still non-existent "resistance" movement and he eagerly supported the CIA's project to fund the "bazaaris" of Tehran to stage demonstrations (in which, of course, hundreds, perhaps thousands, died) to overthrow Mossadegh.