Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

Much as it pains me to do so I fear that I must praise a left leaning economist. Dean Baker, please stand up and take your bow. He’s told the truth, always a bad career move in the political arena, about the current financial crisis and recession.

We’re not deep in the economic doo doo because Wall Streeters are greedy, not because they’re incompetent and not because they’re evil. They may be all of these things but the ordure piled up around our ears is not because of their actions or existence, but because we’ve just had a huge housing bubble. Dean’s right about how we can prove this too, we can prove it in one word: Spain.

Gerald Celente is on the record for accurately forecasting and naming the current "Great Recession"; for forecasting the 1987 Stock Market Crash, the Dot-com bust, Gold Bull Run to Begin, 2001 Recession, the Real Estate bubble, the "Panic of '08", Tax Revolts, the coming "Greatest Depression" and many more social, economic, business, consumer and geopolitical trends.

Bob Chapman, publisher of The International Forecaster, gives the latest on the Greece banking meltdown, and tells us not if, but when the banksters will take down america in the same fashion.

Iceland’s voters expressed their outrage on Saturday against bankers, the government and what they saw as foreign bullying, overwhelmingly rejecting a plan to pay $5.3 billion to Britain and the Netherlands to reimburse customers of a failed Icelandic bank, Sarah Lyall reported in The New York Times.

Lynn is director of the Markets, Enterprise, and Resiliency Initiative, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and author of "Too Big to Fail" about the dangers of monopoly capitalism.

He expands on the threat in his newest book titled, "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction," explaining today's peril given the power of predatory giants.

http://img.youtube.com/vi/x_2wdWB-9_w/default.jpgGeorge Soros is one of the worlds top investors and he believes the euro may lose value. Is he responsible for its demise? Soros fund management is being accused of short selling the euro.

The Greek government has announced new austerity measures aimed at slashing its huge budget deficit. It comes a day after the Prime Minister said that the country was fighting for survival. The new measures -- which will reduce annual pay and increase taxes -- were ordered by the EU in an bid to prevent a collapse of the Euro. But street protests have been raging in Athens against the plans. Meanwhile, the US Justice Department is reported to have launched a probe into leading American hedge funds. They're suspected of helping Greece cover up its debts to weaken the European currency. Journalist Webster Tarpley believes that was a plot hatched to prop up the dollar's supremacy.

Happy news! The government has come up with a 5.9 percent GDP growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2009. The recession is over.

Or is it? Statistician John Williams has informed us that 69 percent of this growth, or 4.1 percentage points, is the result of inventory accumulation. That leaves a 1.8 percent growth rate, and the 1.8 percent is likely due to the underestimate of inflation and other statistical problems.

Greece is a country that thrives on rumor. Hearsay has been a part of the Greek DNA since time immemorial. Even Plato remarked on it. Demagogues used rumor and gossip to silence their opponents, demagogism being a Greek word, after all. Greeks also thrive on the spoken word. As was the case of their ancestors, the power of the spoken word sometime drives out reason. As I write, I hear a lot of my fellow Greeks say some very unreasonable things. Such as, the Germans and the French conspired to embarrass us and take over our businesses and natural resources. Or, the EU was a plot against Greece from day one. The one I like the best is that Europe without Greece will cease to exist.

On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America’s pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman’s role in precipitating the global financial crisis.