Last week, the House approved another increase in the national debt ceiling.This means the government can borrow $1.9 trillion more to stay afloat and avoid default.It has been little more than a year since the last debt limit increase, and graphs showing the debt limit over time show a steep, almost vertical trend.It is not likely to be very long before this new ceiling is met and the government is back on the brink between default and borrowing us further into oblivion.Congressional leaders and the administration acknowledge that the debt limit will need to be increased again next year.They are crossing their fingers that the forecasts are correct and they will not need another increase sooner, even before the 2010 midterm elections.Continually increasing the debt is one of the logical outcomes of Keynesianism, since more government spending is always their answer -Rep Ron Paul M.D.

"Mark to Market" is (or was?) an accounting standard that required financial institutions to value their assets at their current market value.Thus a stock portfolio would be valued at an amount determined by the stock market, if the stock holder sold all his assets in that market.Last Spring, when the government was contemplating its plan to rescue the big banks, it settled on the idea of using taxpayer money to purchase or guarantee the so-called toxic assets of the large "investment" banks and their insurers (e.g., collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps).The banks lobbied furiously against the mark to market rule, because the toxic assets could not be sold in a market that was frozen, and under the rule, they would be valued a fraction (somewhere between 0% and 60%) of their original purchase prices.Under mark to market, the banks would take a bath or even become insolvent.The latest scam in the Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex (MICC) is the so-called "Buy to Budget" formula for the hugely expensive and deeply troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter -Franklin C. Spinney/CounterPunch

Which organization is the greatest threat to the Second Amendment, the anti-gun Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence or Idaho’s pro-gun Sportsmen for Wildlife? This might seem like a stupid question until you learn that the Idaho organization recently held three “predator derbies” in which competitors vied to see who could slaughter the most wolves over a two-day period.Similar assaults on wildlife occur in other western states. In Alaska “sportsmen” gun down wolves from airplanes.The wanton slaughter of wildlife for the fun of killing creates hostility toward firearms among the general public.We need the Second Amendment for our own protection and for our constitutional rights.If one right can be taken away or marginalized with regulation, so can all other rights.Americans are going to have a difficult time holding on to the Second Amendment.An armed population is not compatible with the police state that President Bush and the Republicans created and that President Obama and the Democrats have ratified -Paul Craig Roberts/CounterPunch

A group of Americans accused of kidnapping 33 Haitian children had authorization from neighboring Dominican Republic to bring the kids across the border, a lawyer for the group said Monday.Jorge Puello, a Dominican attorney who said he was hired to represent the group, showed reporters a manila folder he said contained documents that prove the Americans had authorization to bring the children into the Dominican Republic.Dominican authorities previously said the Americans did not have permission to bring the children into the country, and Puello did not say whether the group had the authorization of Haitian officials.The Dominican consul general has said he spoke with the group's leader, Laura Silsby, before the group attempted to take the children to the Dominican Republic, and that he warned her that she didn't have the proper documents to cross the border. "This woman knew what she was trying to do was not legal," the consul general, Carlos Castillo, said last week -Karl Penhaul/CNN

After a month of wrangling, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner succeeded in sacking central bank President Martin Redrado last week.In his place she named Mercedes Marcó del Pont, a Yale-trained economist who has expressed the view that central bank autonomy ought to be limited.The opposition howled at the news.Felipe Sola, former governor of Provincia de Buenos Aires, warned that the new bank president "is going to do what the executive decides and they are going to modify the bank charter to justify her doing what the executive tells her." Of course that would seem to be the point.Mr. Redrado was fired because he refused to turn over $6.6 billion in bank reserves to Mrs. Kirchner, who wants to pay foreign creditors but doesn't want to use treasury revenues.Ms. Marcó del Pont, if she wants to keep her job, will follow the orders of the president.Mrs. Kirchner is not the first politician to covet the wealth available from the monetary authority.Closer to home, there is Barack Obama -Mary Anastasia O'Grady/Wall Street Journal

While the furor over cyber-attacks against Google has lapsed somewhat, the Sino-American confrontation over the larger issue of Internet security and global digital warfare is expected to intensify in the near future.Research and development in net-based combat, including cyber-espionage and counter-espionage, figure prominently in the 12th Five Year Plan (2011-2015) that is being drafted by both the central government and the People's Liberation Army (PLA).President and commander-in-chief Hu Jintao designated the expansion of electronic warfare capacity as a top priority of the defense and security forces in the coming decade.Preferential policies are also being extended to commercial computer and electronic enterprises for research and development in areas relating to information technology (IT) security.Since the 1980s, such enterprises have been sharing resources and data with relevant units in the PLA, the para-military People's Armed Police, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), and the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) -Willy Lam/Jamestown Foundation

The Middle East seemed to snowball into crisis last week, as war threats were fired back and forth between Syria and Israel.Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman triggered the conflict on Thursday by saying that if war were to break out, the Syrians would lose, prompting Foreign Minister Walid al-Mouallem to respond that Israeli cities would not be spared by Syria.He described the Israelis as "thugs" and said that a new regional war would kill whatever chances there were of returning to the peace process.Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Otari made similar statements, saying that Israel would live to regret a war with Syria, while Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told his troops to prepare for war with Damascus should peace efforts fail.Trying to defuse the crisis, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that war was not imminent.If a Syrian-Israeli war is on nobody's agenda, why have war drums been beating for the past week? -Sami Moubayed/Asia Times

Business in Karachi, Pakistan's commercial capital, ground to a halt at the weekend after at least 33 people were killed and over 100 injured in two explosions on Friday.The city of 18 million people houses the main stock exchange, central bank and offices of multinational corporations.Businessmen warn that Karachi, which contributes about 70% of the country's tax revenue, is fast becoming a "no-business and no-trade city", as there is no protection to life and property.Suicide bombings have surged across Pakistan since the army in October launched an offensive against Taliban insurgents in the northwestern tribal areas.Their impact and the cost of security is drawing funds away from other areas of spending.Higher than expected expenditure on security, power subsidies and cost overruns have already forced the government to slash by 30% the overall size of its Public Sector Development Program (PSDP) for the fiscal year that runs through to June 30 -Syed Fazl-e-Haider/Asia Times

The conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security comes not from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.The bizarre story surrounding Siddiqui, 37, who received an undergraduate degree from MIT and a doctorate in neuroscience from Brandeis University, often defies belief.Siddiqui, who could spend 50 years in prison on seven charges when she is sentenced in May, was by her own account abducted in 2003 from her hometown of Karachi, Pakistan, with her three children—two of whom remain missing—and spirited to a secret U.S. prison where she was allegedly tortured and mistreated for five years.The American government has no comment, either about the alleged clandestine detention or the missing children.No one, other than Siddiqui, has attempted to explain where she was for five years after she vanished in 2003 -Chris Hedges/Truthdig

The Fed is planning to detail its "exit plan" this week, the WSJ says.This exit plan is the means by which the Fed will gradually reverse the tremendous stimulus it is still pumping into the economy and financial system.As we've noted often over the past year, the Fed is in a bind.During the financial crisis, it bought hundreds of billions of dollars of real-estate loans and securities from banks to reduce mortgage rates and ease the pressure on bank balance sheets.This, in turn, pumped hundreds of billions of new dollars into the economy, which has helped the banks--and bankers--to make a killing over the past year.The question--the bind--is how the Fed can reverse this stimulus without killing the economy.And the initial answer seems to be...By giving the banks yet another gift at taxpayer expense.The combination of the Fed's desire to stimulate lending via cheap money and the government's desire to stimulate the economy by running a huge deficit has made it a great time to be a bank -Henry Blodget/Business Insider

President Obama is inviting Republicans to join him in a live-broadcast health care summit, but the GOP is offering little flexibility in terms of compromise. And while the administration is emphasizing its interest in bipartisanship, conservative commentators are skeptical the summit later this month will amount to much more than a dog and pony show.In an interview with CBS News' Katie Couric on Sunday, Mr. Obama said, "I want to ask them to put their ideas on the table, and then... I want to come back and have a large meeting, the Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward." The White House has said the president has no intention of scrapping the Democrats' current health care bills after meeting with Republicans on Feb. 25, but GOP leaders are suggesting that is the only way they would get on board with any reform effort. "If we are to reach a bipartisan consensus, the White House can start by shelving the current health spending bill," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said -Stephanie Condon/CBS

Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania powerhouse for 36 years in Congress and early ally for Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her rise to the top of the House, died Monday afternoon due to complications from recent surgery. An announcement from his office said Murtha died at 1:18 p.m. at the Virginia Hospital Center, where he had been admitted last week after having his gall bladder removed at Bethesda Naval Hospital.A Marine veteran of the Vietnam War, the 77-year-old Democrat won national fame for standing up against U.S. military involvement in Iraq.But in Congress itself, he also symbolized an old school generation going back to Tip O’Neill and the Democratic heyday of the '70s when the House was less divided by partisan ideology than by often regional interests -David Rogers/Politico

Scahill reports that three people killed in Pakistan last Wednesday were "special forces soldiers" training a paramilitary force run by Pakistan's Interior Ministry.By his account, this confirms "that the US military is more deeply engaged on the ground in Pakistan than previously acknowledged by the White House and Pentagon." But how does this assertion confirm that the military is more deeply involved in Pakistan than previously acknowledged (which certainly may be true) without first proving that the three people killed were, in fact, working for the military and not the CIA? Indeed, Special Forces soldiers detailed to the CIA have deniability, and there are several reasons to believe the three people killed were deniable assets working for the CIA, not the military.There is not much difference between disinformation and misinformation, and often the difference is subtle and stylistic.One intends to deceive; the other does so without trying.In both reporting, and covert actions, omission indicates an intention to deceive -Douglas Valentine/LewRockwell.com

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered work to begin on producing 20 per cent enriched uranium after facing harsh criticism from hardline allies for earlier agreeing to deliver Iran’s low-grade uranium abroad for further enrichment.The apparent change in stance immediately drew criticism from Western governments and the threat of further sanctions. Just last week, Mr Ahmadinejad indicated on state television that Iran was ready to send its LEU abroad for conversion into 20 per cent nuclear fuel.The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, called on the international community to rally together to pressure Iran into abandoning its nuclear programme. “If the international community will stand together and bring pressure on the Iranian government,I believe there is still time for sanctions and pressure to work,” he told reporters in Rome.Mr Ahmadinejad’s change in stance surprised many because as late as Tuesday he said he was convinced that some western countries wanted to “shift from encounter to interaction” and that sending the country’s low-grade uranium abroad for further enrichment did not pose “a real problem” -Maryam Sinaiee/The National AE

The Yemeni archipelago of Socotra in the Indian Ocean is located some 80 kilometres off the Horn of Africa and 380 kilometres South of the Yemeni coastline.The islands of Socotra are a wildlife reserve recognized by (UNESCO), as a World Natural Heritage Site.Socotra is at the crossroads of the strategic naval waterways of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. It is of crucial importance to the US military.Among Washington's strategic objectives is the militarization of major sea ways.This strategic waterway links the Mediterranean to South Asia and the Far East, through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.It is a major transit route for oil tankers.A large share of China's industrial exports to Western Europe transits through this strategic waterway.Maritime trade from East and Southern Africa to Western Europe also transits within proximity of Socotra (Suqutra), through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.A military base in Socotra could be used to oversee the movement of vessels including war ships in an out of the Gulf of Aden -Michel Chossudovsky/Global Research CA

The Yemeni government has presented a cease-fire plan to Houthi rebels in a bid to end five years of fighting with the fiercely anti-Western Shiite group.An end to that conflict, which has also drawn in the Saudi Arabian military, would allow Yemen to turn its focus toward the Al Qaeda affiliates operating within its borders.Reuters reports that a Yemeni presidential adviser announced the government's offer to the Houthis on Saturday.Al Jazeera reports that the problem now is ironing out the details of the cease-fire.Last week the Houthis accepted the terms of a cease-fire offer that the Yemeni government made in September.But the government refused to recognize the offer and said it would only cease military operations against the Houthis "under a certain framework," including an end to Houthi operations against Saudi Arabia -Arthur Bright/Christian Science Monitor

It does not look like much: a jumble of pipes, containers and drilling equipment sitting on a windswept jetty at Port Stanley.The hardware, however, signals an imminent search for oil and gas that could turn the Falkland Islanders into south Atlantic oil barons, a prospect that has already triggered a dispute between Britain and Argentina.A rig, the Ocean Guardian, is due to arrive by mid-February and will almost immediately begin drilling for hydrocarbon deposits 100 miles north of the archipelago.Geological surveys suggest there could be up to 60bn barrels beneath the seabed around the British territory, a bonanza that would transform islands famed for sheep, fish and remoteness.Argentina is not waiting that long to voice its anger. It lost the 1982 war with Britain over the islands, which it calls the Islas Malvinas, but still claims sovereignty and terms British control an occupation -Rory Carroll & Annie Kelly/Guardian UK

Ukraine's prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, was today under pressure to concede defeat in the country's presidential election after international observers this afternoon hailed yesterday's poll as fair and "truly competitive".Observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said there were no indications of serious fraud and described the vote as an "impressive display" of democracy. "For everyone in Ukraine this election was a victory," João Soares, president of the OSCE's parliamentary assembly, said.With almost all votes counted, the Russian-leaning opposition leader, Viktor Yanukovych, had a clear 2.65% lead over Tymoshenko.So far, however, Tymoshenko has refused to recognise her opponent's victory, cancelling a press conference scheduled for this afternoon.The emphatically positive verdict is in stark contrast to five years ago when Yanukovych's bungled attempts to fix the vote provoked the Orange revolution.Tymoshenko faces the unenviable choice of resigning as prime minister over the next few days or watching her fragile parliamentary coalition collapse -Luke Harding/Guardian UK

The retired general who challenged his one-time ally in Sri Lanka’s presidential election last month was arrested late Monday night by military police, officials said.The arrested man, Gen. Sarath Fonseka, who lost the election to Mahinda Rajapaksa by 17 points, was taken by dozens of military police from his office, where he was meeting with several parliamentarians from the opposition alliance that had backed him to discuss upcoming legislative elections, said Mano Ganesan, a member of parliament who was present at the meeting.Lucien Rajakarunanayake, a government spokesman, said that General Fonseka had been arrested under military law for actions during his tenure as the chief of army staff.The arrest was not wholly unexpected.The day after the election soldiers surrounded a hotel where General Fonseka has been staying, and his campaign headquarters was searched not long after.General Fonseka led the successful assault against the Tamil Tiger insurgency that ended 26-years of war last May -Lydia Polgreen/NY Times

Laura Chinchilla, a protege of Nobel peace laureate President Oscar Arias, won a landslide election victory in Costa Rica on Sunday to become the country's first woman elected president.Chinchilla, formerly Arias' vice president, has vowed to continue his pro-business policies in the Central American nation, expanding free trade pacts and courting investment.The center-leftist won 47 percent of the vote, around double the scores of her two closest rivals, who quickly conceded defeat.She will join a small camp of women leaders in typically male-dominated Latin America that currently includes Chile's Michelle Bachelet and Argentina's Cristina Fernandez.Married with a teenage son, Chinchilla is a social conservative who opposes gay marriage and abortion but is also seen as a flagbearer for women in her country.Chinchilla was aided by Costa Rica's relatively smooth passage through the global economic crisis

A Haitian attorney representing 10 Americans charged with kidnapping for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti told CNN Sunday he has resigned.Edwin Coq said he had quit as a lawyer for the Americans. It wasn't immediately clear who would replace him. "I know that they have been looking at other lawyers," said Phyllis Allison, mother of one of those detained, Jim Allen. "They don't know what to do." The 10 missionaries, including group leader Laura Silsby, were charged Thursday with kidnapping children and criminal association.Coq had said that court hearings would be held Monday and Tuesday for his clients, who have been split up at two prisons.He has tried to get the Americans released, though he has also blamed Silsby for the missionaries' legal troubles.Conviction on the kidnapping charge would carry a maximum penalty of life in prison; the criminal association charge would carry a penalty of three to nine years, according to a former justice minister -CNN

President Obama's senior counterterrorism adviser on Sunday criticized politicians for using terrorism situations such as the Detroit bombing case as a "political football." But leaders of the Republican Party, among the harshest critics of the handling of the Detroit incident, on Sunday disputed John O. Brennan's remarks.Without citing individuals, Brennan, a longtime CIA official and now White House deputy national security adviser, said on NBC's "Meet the Press": "Quite frankly, I am tiring of politicians using national security issues such as terrorism as a political football.They are going out there, they are unknowing of the facts, and they are making charges and allegations that are not anchored in reality." Brennan said that on Christmas night he had briefed four senior House and Senate Republicans about Abdulmutallab, who was "in FBI custody" and at that point "talking" and "cooperating." He said that at no point did any of the four raise concerns about Abdulmutallab being placed in military custody or being Mirandized -Washington Post

What happens when those charged with protecting us from attack, actually aid and abet those who would kill us, and then handsomely profit from our slaughter in the process? During a January 27 hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Under Secretary of State for Management, Patrick F. Kennedy, testified that the visa of accused bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, wasn't revoked at the specific request of secret state agencies.Weeks after the incident, it is now clear that intelligence agencies did far more than simply "watch" a potential terrorist.That they gave Abdulmutallab a leg up, bypassing airline security systems put in place after 9/11 that would have prevented him from boarding that plane, is also crystal clear.And as we enter the "political high season," what might come next is anyone's guess -Tom Burqhardt/Antifascist Calling

Barack Obama's Bush-like "surge" in Afghanistan has not even reached its full strength yet, but it is already driving tens of thousands of Afghan civilians from their homes, as they flee an upcoming massive attack in Helmand province.The attack -- which the Americans have been trumpeting far in advance -- is designed, we're told, to "protect" the people of the key town of Marjah from the twin scourges of Taliban nogoodniks and drug traffickers.Yet the primary effect of the much-publicized preparations has been to send the residents of the town running for their lives to escape becoming part of the "collateral damage" that always attends these protective, humanitarian endeavors.Indeed, the real aim of the advance publicity for the attack seems to be forcing mass numbers of civilians to hit the road -- which will then allow the American and British attackers to claim that anyone left behind is an enemy. This in turn will free up the attackers to use heavy weaponry in a "free-fire" zone to clear out the "diehards." This is, of course, the same strategy used in the savage destruction of Fallujah in Iraq -Chris Floyd

The Obama administration is killing a national livestock tracking program that never got off the ground amid widespread complaints by farmers and ranchers.Instead, all cattle, hogs and poultry that cross state lines sometime during their life - which includes much of Iowa's hog production and more than a million beef cattle yearly - would be required to participate in some type of state tracking program.Livestock that spend their entire lives in a single state, even if their meat is distributed elsewhere, would be exempt, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Friday that after holding a series of public hearings on the issue, it was "apparent that a new strategy for animal disease traceability is needed." The Bush administration proposed the federally run ID system (NAIS) after the discovery of the nation's first case of mad cow disease in 2003.The USDA repeatedly shifted its plans, and most farmers failed to take even the first step toward participation: registering their farms with the USDA -Philip Brasher/Des Moines Register

The world's leading industrialised nations have pledged to write off the debts that Haiti owes them, following a devastating earthquake last month.Canada's finance minister announced at a summit in Iqaluit, northern Canada, that Group of Seven countries planned to cancel Haiti's bilateral debts.Jim Flaherty said he would encourage international lenders to do the same.Some $1.2bn (£800m) of Haiti's debts to countries and international lending bodies has already been cancelled.The G7 group - which includes Canada, the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Japan - has been under pressure to help Haiti recover since the 12 January quake by cancelling the money owed by Haiti.Haiti was rated as the poorest nation in the western hemisphere even before the earthquake struck.Though exact figures are difficult to obtain, the exact amount owed bilaterally to G7 countries is believed to be quite small. Venezuela and Taiwan are Haiti's other biggest bilateral creditors -BBC

A former convict and Kremlin-friendly bureaucrat is on course to win Ukraine's presidential election, ending the country's brief flirtation with the West.Initial exit polls put Viktor Yanukovych, a Soviet-style politician, three to five percentage points ahead of Yulia Tymoshenko, his bitter rival and the current prime minister.A fuller picture is expected to emerge on Monday, at which point 80 per cent of the votes are likely to have been counted.If confirmed, Mr Yanukovych's victory sounds a death knell for the country's 2004 Orange Revolution that set it firmly on a pro-Western course but failed to deliver meaningful changes.His victory could also usher in a fresh period of instability as Mrs Tymoshenko has hinted she may refuse to accept the results if she deems there was large-scale fraud.She has also threatened street protests.The head of her campaign was quick to allege dirty tricks this evening -Andrew Osborn/Telegraph UK

Germany's government has unleashed a legal, political and diplomatic storm by paying an estimated €2.5m (£2.2m) for a CD of German depositors' data illegally taken from Credit Suisse's Zurich offices.The CD's files indicate tax evasion by some 1,500 individuals amounting to €400m, the largest single case in modern German history.Estimates suggest 100,000 Germans have untaxed deposits of over €30bn in Swiss banks.Andres Luther, a spokesman for Credit Suisse, insisted: "We have as yet no concrete indication that this data is sourced from us." Credit Suisse documents quoted by the Süddeutsche Zeitung show that the bank, from 2004, wished to find more legal German clients because Germany had "made it more difficult to produce untaxed funds".Aggressive tax authorities and tough anti-terrorist laws, plus clients' willingness to spend rather than save, led to the changed strategy and the search for taxed deposits.However, the CD – called by the newspaper "the top-earning CD ever" – contains a mass of historic and recent transaction data, and a picture emerges of rich Germans hiding untaxed fortunes in Switzerland over decades -David Brierley/Independent UK

For the third time in 18 months the global financial system risks spinning out of control unless political leaders take immediate and radical action.Flow data shows an abrupt withdrawal of German and Asian capital from Club Med debt markets.The EU's refusal to offer Greece anything beyond stern words and a one-month deadline for harsher austerity – while admirable in one sense – is to misjudge how fast confidence is ebbing.Greece's drama has already metastasised into a wider systemic crisis.The world risks a replay of the Lehman collapse if this runs unchecked, this time involving sovereign dominoes.The scale matches America's sub-prime/Alt-A adventure and assorted CDOs and SIVS of the Greenspan fling.The parallels are closer than Europe cares to admit.The risk is the EMU version of Mexico's Tequila crisis or Asia's crisis in 1998 -Ambrose Evans-Pritchard/Telegraph UK

Should the woes of a country with fewer people than metropolitan Los Angeles really roil the massive U.S. financial markets? This is a hotly debated question after worries about Greece's debt woes sparked wild swings in the U.S. stock market last week.Signs that the trouble in the Greek bond market was infecting others in Europe helped send the Dow Jones Industrial Average into a spiral Thursday and most of Friday before a late-day rebound turned the market back to positive territory.For some, the bond-market woes afflicting Greece and other European countries provide real reason for worry.They argue that while the debt problems seem contained now, they can easily spread. Greece is just one of many economies today—including the U.S.—carrying hefty debt loads as a legacy of the financial crisis.Even if sovereign-debt issues among southern European countries, Ireland and the U.K. don't flare up to a full-fledged global contagion, the wary say the result is still likely to be higher borrowing costs in Europe that would slow the economic rebound both on the continent and elsewhere around the world -Tom Lauricella/Wall Street Journal

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Sunday that the U.S. wasn't in danger of losing its triple-A bond rating, in the wake of a warning from Moody's Investors Services about the U.S.'s treasury-bond rating. "Absolutely not," Mr. Geithner said in an interview with ABC News's "This Week" when asked about the prospect of the U.S. losing its top rating. "That will never happen to this country." Bond rating agency Moody's on Wednesday warned that the triple-A rating of U.S. treasury bonds could be in peril unless the U.S. reduces its federal budget deficit or the economy rebounds.Mr. Geithner noted that when investors were nervous about a global financial crisis, they sought safety in U.S. Treasury securities and the U.S. dollar. "That is a very, very important sign of basic confidence in our capacity as a country to work together to fix these problems," he said.He said the Obama administration was "deeply serious" about deficit reduction.Mr. Geithner has endorsed the creation of a bipartisan commission that would be charged with recommending ways to reduce the federal deficit over the long haul.The Treasury secretary sounded an upbeat note on the U.S. economic outlook, saying "we're seeing some encouraging signs of healing," with the economy expanding at an annualized rate of nearly 6% and the jobless rate falling modestly in the most-recent unemployment report -Judith Burns/Wall Street Journal

The U.S. government has a nasty surprise for tens of millions of retirees: a now-empty piggy bank.Two of them, actually: Social Security and Medicare.Congress will soon have a nasty surprise for voters: a larger deficit than announced to fill these now-empty piggy banks.The Federal Reserve System will also have a nasty surprise for investors: newly created digital money to fill up the empty piggy banks when the Treasury cannot sell any more debt at low interest rates.The free market will have a nasty surprise for everyone: rising prices in response to the Federal Reserve's digital money.Medicare will have a nasty surprise for physicians who treat Medicare-funded patients: limits on payments per service that are set below urban costs (price controls).Physicians will have a nasty surprise to patients: longer waiting periods (rationing by sitting in an office). The days of wine and roses are over.The era of nasty surprises has begun.Social Security will go bankrupt in 2010 -Gary North/LewRockwell.com

PBS Newshour has posted a brief but fascinating interview with David Stockman, Director of the Office of Management & Budget during the Reagan era.Despite -- or, perhaps, because of -- his political and financial industry background, he pulls few punches in his remarks about the financial crisis and its aftermath. "It was the single most, you know, drastic error in policy in modern history, going back to the 1930s.This was exactly the wrong thing to do.It's destroyed any basis for fiscal discipline in the United States.I was a member of Congress, and I know how they think.And they think by analogy.If you did it for John, you have got to do it for Bob.There is no way that any congressman is ever going to vote against farm subsidies or ethanol subsidies or housing subsidies or anything else, refrigerator subsidies, once we have made this tremendous bailout for Wall Street, and we stepped into AIG." -Michael Panzner

The second wave of mortgage defaults and foreclosures will hit the economy this year.Not only will we have failure in prime loans and option-arm loans, but we are faced with a new crop of subprime and ALT-A loans put into motion by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and FHA.In addition, we find it of great interest that the FHA is changing the rules to purchase homes.That, of course, means less homes will be purchased.The incidence of unemployment may be lessening, but it isn’t going away.Those of you who keep your ear to the ground know that real unemployment is 22.5% and in cities like Detroit it is somewhere near 45 to 50 percent.The $25 billion that our federal government is about to loan to the states will help keep unemployment paying out and save some 40 states from going into bankruptcy.That will keep some Americans going but not for long.The public is howling for blood, particularly from banking and Wall Street, and rightly so -Bob Chapman/International Forecaster

Costa Ricans could elect their first female president Sunday as Central America's most politically and economically stable country chooses between a career politician from the ruling party and an anti-taxation Libertarian.Pre-election polls gave a nearly 20-point lead to Laura Chinchilla, who served as vice president under current President Oscar Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and free market enthusiast.Otto Guevara, of the Libertarian Movement Party, emerged as Chinchilla's biggest challenger. He promised to lower taxes, dismantle monopolies and adopt the U.S. dollar as the country's currency.Otton Solis, who barely lost the presidential election to Arias in 2006, came in third in the opinion polls.Sunday's winner needs at least 40 percent of the vote to avoid an April run-off.If victorious, Chinchilla has pledged to continue Aria's moderate free-market policies that brought Costa Rica into the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and initiated trade relations with China after a 63-year association with Taiwan

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday told Iran's Atomic Energy Organization to start work on producing nuclear fuel for a Tehran research reactor, casting renewed doubt on the prospects for an international swap deal.Ahmadinejad's announcement is likely to irritate Western powers who want Iran to send most of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) abroad in return for higher-refined fuel for the Tehran reactor. Iranian officials have repeatedly said the Islamic Republic can make fuel enriched to 20 percent itself if there is no agreement on obtaining the material from abroad. "We had told them (the West) to come and have a swap, although we could produce the 20 percent enriched fuel ourselves," Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech. "We gave them two-to-three months' time for such a deal.They started a new game and now I (ask) Dr Salehi to start work on the production of 20 percent fuel using centrifuges," he said, referring to Ali Akbar Salehi, who heads the atomic energy body.But he added: "The doors for interaction are still open."

An Iraqi Shiite group with close ties to Iran claimed in a video posted Saturday that it was holding an American hostage who is believed to be an El Cajon man reported missing in Baghdad by the Pentagon.A brief Defense Department statement Friday said that Issa T. Salomi, 60, who works as a civilian contractor, had been unaccounted for since Jan. 23.The undated video posted on an Islamist website shows a gray-haired man wearing U.S. military combat fatigues seated beneath a black banner bearing the name Asaib al Haq, or League of the Righteous.U.S. officials say the group, which has been linked to abductions of British and U.S. contractors, is armed, trained and funded by Iran.In a brief statement accompanying the video, Asaib al Haq claims it is holding the man as a result of a "kidnapping operation" carried out in Baghdad.It gives no further details, but the Associated Press quoted an unnamed Iraqi defense official identifying the man as Salomi and saying that he was abducted after being lured to the Karada district in central Baghdad -Liz Sly/LA Times

Sinking into irrelevance as rival politicians scrapped to take his place, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko lobbed a grenade into the final days of the campaign: He named a controversial anti-Soviet nationalist assassinated by the KGB half a century ago a "Hero of Ukraine." Here in Ukraine's most avidly Western-leaning, anti-Russian city, news that the rare honor had been bestowed on Stepan Bandera was met with jubilation.Disgust and dismay swept the Russian-speaking provinces, where Bandera is remembered as a Nazi collaborator.As Ukrainians head to the polls Sunday for a presidential runoff, the country's deep and problematic divides are on display.On one side is Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Orange revolutionary who pledges to orient Ukraine toward Europe and the West.On the other is Viktor Yanukovich, seen as a staunch ally to Moscow, who is popular in the eastern industrial provinces.Like all politics in Ukraine, the final choice is freighted with intractable questions of history, identity and language in a fragmented country -Megan K. Stack/LA Times

When Romanian President Traian Basescu disclosed on February 4 that his nation’s Supreme Defense Council had “approved a U.S. proposal that Romania takes part in the anti-rocket shield system” and that “Terrestrial interceptors will be located inside the national territory,” many readers may have been taken by surprise.They need not have been, though, as the expansion of the U.S. global, layered, integrated interceptor missile system into the Black Sea was as foreseeable as it is inevitable.The White House and the Pentagon had not retreated an inch on plans to establish an impenetrable missile shield along Russia’s western borders, one that could potentially threaten the nation’s strategic forces and disable its ability to retaliate and so credibly maintain a deterrence capability.Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Ellen Tauscher's project for a more sophisticated, diversified, mobile interceptor system in Europe and its expansion into the Middle East, integrated with all 28 NATO member states and doubtlessly with several key partners, is well on the way to realization -Rick Rozoff/Stop NATO

NATO said on Saturday a new Russian military doctrine identifying NATO expansion as a threat did not reflect the real world and undermined efforts to improve ties between the Western military alliance and Moscow.Russia was angered by NATO expansion to include former Warsaw Pact states after the collapse of the Soviet Union and was particularly incensed by the alliance's promise of eventual membership to Georgia and Ukraine, former Soviet republics Moscow still considers part of its sphere of influence. "I have to say that this new doctrine does not reflect the real world ... NATO is not an enemy of Russia," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich.Rasmussen said NATO was keen to develop a strategic partnership with Russia and to expand cooperation in Afghanistan, where the two sides share security concerns.Medvedev published a draft post-Cold War security pact on Nov. 29, saying it could replace NATO and other institutions and restrict the ability of any country to use force unilaterally.NATO countries have reacted sceptically

In subtle warning against China and NATO, Russia has unveiled its new nuclear doctrine, under which the nation has the right to retaliate with nuclear weapons. "Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction against it and its allies, as well as an aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons jeopardizing the very existence of the state," a military doctrine signed by President Dmitry Medvedev said.Sources said that the lowering the thresh hold for the use of nuke weapons, can be seen as a veiled theat to China.In a news agency report, a retired three-star Soviet general, who cited anonymity said that the concept of a conventional war with its 'great Asian neighbour' was virtually given up by Russia after the 1968 border conflict, which was also publicly declared in the new doctrine.The nation has also identified, expansion of NATO near its boundaries, deployment of missile shield elements on the perimeter of its land and maritime borders, international terrorism, proliferation of WMD and growing number of nuclear powers as a threat to internal security -One India IN