h.hoffman's Articles

Bank of England warns no more rate cuts before 2010 as credit crisis deepens

SAM FLEMING and BECKY BARROW
Daily Mail
Thursday, May 15, 2008

There may be no cuts in interest rates until 2010, the Bank of England has indicated.

However, inflation is predicted to rise far above previous forecasts and stay well above the Government's target of two per cent for up to two years.

Mervyn King, the Bank governor, said price increases would cause "a squeeze on real take-home pay, which will slow consumer spending and output growth, perhaps sharply".

Saying that "the nice decade is behind us", he added that it was "quite possible we may get the odd quarter or two of negative growth".

(Article continues below)

Presenting the UK quarterly forecasts, the Bank said inflation could reach 3.7 per cent by the end of the year.

According to the Financial Times, inflation projections will not return to the two per cent target until early 2010, suggesting that the Bank has no room for rate cuts until then - even though the UK economy will slow sharply.

Families face a five-pronged assault on their finances, Mr King said in his bleakest assessment yet of the state of the country.

And the governor predicted:

We begin with two seemingly unrelated stories breaking in May, 2008:

Privatized Prisons Global Drug Trade
http://www.hermes-press.com/prisons_drugs.htm

A once ailing private-prison
sector is now a revenue maker
Marines ignore Taliban cash
crop to not upset Afghan locals
What's the connection between privatized prisons and the global drug syndicate?
The Demonic Cabal, through its Bush junta,
operates a global drug syndicate.

Over 40 percent of America's 2.3 million prison
inmates are jailed on nonviolent drug related crimes!

America As a Prison Society

According to the Justice Department, 7 million people--or one in every 32 adults--are either incarcerated, on parole or probation or under some other form of state or local supervision. One out of every 100 Americans is now in prison!

In 1970 Congress created the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse to carry out a study and then propose a new drug law. Its official report favored discouraging the use of marijuana, but recommended de-criminalizing it. The recommendation was denounced in 1973 by President Nixon who proclaimed a national War on Drugs. Congress passed legislation giving the same severe jail time for the milder cannabis as for the sale or possession of cocaine and heroin. This remains the foundation of current drug law.

MONDAY, MAY 12, 2008
Stanley Ann Dunham:Barack's Momma*
(Stanley??)

http://gollygeeez.blogspot.com/2008/05/this-apple-didnt-fall-too-far-fro...

Stanley Ann Dunham, Mercer Island High School
Stanley Ann Dunham Obana Soetoro
(November 29, 1942 - November 7, 1995),
known as Ann Dunham and Stanley Ann Dunham, was an American anthropologist,
left-wing social activist, and the mother of Senator Barack Obama. She was born in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to Stanleyand Madelyn Dunham. Her father (who gave his only child
his name) was a furniture salesman in downtown Seattle, Washington, and her mother worked
for a bank. After a year living in Seattle, her family moved to Mercer Island, Washington, in
1956 so that 13-year old Ann could attend theMercer Island High School that had just opened. At the school she was on the debate team and graduated in 1960. Her family moved to Hawaii and Ann attended the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she studied anthropology.
When Ann Dunham arrived in Hawaii, she was a full fledged radical leftist and practitioner
of “critical theory. She also began to engage in miscegenation (inter-racial relationships)
as part of her attack on society. Susan Blake, one of her friends has stated she never dated
crew-cut white boys. She had a world view, even as a young girl. It was embracing the

What Hedge-Fund Managers are Reading this Morning
By Rob Fannon, editor, Phase 1 Investor
Last May, shares of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN), a billion-dollar biotech, slid 35% in just 30 days. The company had no press releases, no earnings reports, nothing.

Main Street investors watched helplessly as Regeneron lost nearly $500 million from its market cap in roughly three weeks. Should we just chalk it up to typical biotech volatility?

Actually, scores of hedge funds had anticipated Regeneron's downward spiral weeks in advance. As I'll explain, the group took advantage of another biotech "glitch," sold Regeneron's shares short, and pocketed a cool 30% return... while naïve investors were blindsided.

Last week, I described the "ivory tower glitch," which occurs when academic studies shove around biotech stocks. Well, before those studies go public, scientists and researchers often present the data at academic conferences. This unpublished data can sometimes move entire sectors of the industry.

The most famous (or infamous) of medical conferences is ASCO, the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. This is the "Super Bowl" of cancer meetings.
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The gathering storm, and beyond

Irwin Cotler , THE JERUSALEM POST May. 14, 2008

The incendiary hate language emanating from Ahmadinejad's Iran - in which Israel is referred to as "filthy bacteria" and a "cancerous tumor" and Jews are characterized as "a bunch of bloodthirsty barbarians" - is only the head wind of the gathering storm confronting Israel on its 60th anniversary.
Indeed, we are witnessing, and have been for some time, a series of mega-events, political earthquakes that have been impacting not only upon Israel and world Jewry but upon the human condition as a whole.
These include:
• state-sanctioned incitement to genocide in Ahmadinejad's Iran (and I use that term to distinguish it from the many publics and peoples in Iran who are themselves the object of massive state repression) dramatized by the parading of a Shihab-3 missile in the streets of Teheran draped with the emblem "Wipe Israel off the map";

OUTSIDE THE BOX:
Sixty Years On, Israel Emerges As An Economic Force

May 11, 2008: 10:40 PM EST

TEL AVIV (Dow Jones) -- Israel was born not only into war, carnage and controversy but also into shortage. Shorn of cash and goods, it had to ration meat, eggs and cooking oil through a coupon system that soon generated undernourishment, bread lines and a thriving black market.
Worse, lacking allies, trade partners and natural resources while swamped by poor immigrants, the Israeli economy was also burdened by its leaders' rigorous socialism. Central planning initially generated growth, but Israel's protectionist duties, sclerotic financial system, high labor costs, bloated public sector and exorbitant defense spending soon proved untenable. By the 1980s the stock market had collapsed, the major banks were nationalized, inflation hit 440% and foreign-currency reserves all but vanished.
As Israel celebrates its 60th birthday memories of this economic desolation seem exotic.
The shekel is now one of the strongest currencies in the world, inflation is 2.5%, last year's 5% growth was the developed world's highest for the fifth consecutive year, while unemployment slid to a 15-year low of 6.5%. While analogous in some ways to other economic miracles, Israel's is still politically, socially and culturally unique.

+++ Speaker Loses High Court Expenses Cover-Up Bid +++

The High Court has ruled that a detailed breakdown of MPs' additional costs allowances must be provided under the Freedom of Information Act.

So that was £100,000 of public money wasted on stopping the public finding out what happened to their money.

So now we will find out what all the party leaders fiddled claimed...

Tags: Snouts in the Trough

Britain and Europe At loggerheads
May 15th 2008
From The Economist

THE tale of Britain and Europe is like an unhappy marriage. Britain was late to the altar, joining the European Economic Community only in 1973, by when the terms of the relationship had been fixed. All governments since have complained, so that Britain is now the bad boy of Europe. Yet, as in many unhappy marriages, nobody has the guts to call it a day.

For 20 years Sir Stephen Wall had an insider's feel for this relationship, in the Foreign Office, in Brussels and as Tony Blair's European Union adviser in Number Ten Downing Street. His book is not a memoir, but it relates in gory detail the European experience of three prime ministers—Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Mr Blair—with their rows about the European budget, mad-cow disease, the single currency and new European treaties.