Dearest Friends: I know times are tough. This is precisely why I have written you. To make my transition safely only 400 people need contribute $30.00 US ONCE. Please help make the dream happen and the nightmare end. Smile. Already the response has been incredible - $500 in one day. But we are far from success. Hans L. and I have started a group called HelpWanted to ensure Care2 people with real dire needs and causes can be helped. Please visit the group and join. We would love to have you help us with our effort to ensure NO ONE ever experiences what I have over the past three years. Thank you again for your faith, joy, contributions and most importantly, compassionate LOVE! How will I ever find the words to thank you enough. Please do forward liberally the following letter. Time is of essence. Right now is the time frankly. RIGHT NOW. One week from now I will be in court with my former beau striving to prevent a harassing eviction borne of ugly mean-spiritedness. Counsel is necessary NOW. At www.bodybyblissmedia.com you can easily and safely contribute by simply inserting the amount you wish to contribute and following the basic prompts from there. THANK YOU!!!! Blissings, Ani ________________________________________________________________________________ Dearest Friends: Since I've joined Care2 you've brought me great light, love and inspiration. Thank you from the deepness of my loving heart. As you may know, I have struggled with breast cancer for more than three years now, treating it as naturally as possible, with very solid, rather remarkable results. No slash and burn for me! & my BC was quite extensive. Alternative or conventional treatment is expensive in America today. More $200,000.00 has been spent out-of-pocket on both. I am exhausted by the American healthScare system!!! You all have encountered its demise in one way or another I am certain. A beautiful book was born of this amazing experience, one my editor, who has worked with many of the best writers you have read over the years, believes will be a strong commercial success, once published. Already he recommends incredible people for the book's forward and for endorsements - people like Oprah. Smile. You may also know I've been offered a position-in-trade at the Ann Wigmore Natural Health Institute in Puerto Rico, a wondrous healing institute where I am more than certain the final pieces of breast cancer will simply melt away. A perfectly lovely ending to the book, I would say. I am scheduled to be at the Institute by month's end. I have waited for this opportunity for almost ten years now. You can imagine how excited and blessed I feel. My conundrum is simple. The last two years BodyByBliss (TM) has done well, but not well enough for me to recover what breast cancer has required. As you know personally, our economy on the brink, has been less than rewarding in many sectors. I ask that you forward this email discreetly so I may be assisted in my life's transition now. Cancer survivors particularly will understand this note and its necessity. BodyByBlissMedia.com, an educational website filled to the brim with important health and well-being information, has a contribution area, for people to show their appreciation of life-saving information. Anyone who feels inclined may contribute to the continued healing process my precious life has become, and know they too may face a moment like this, when their dream is so close, yet too far. I've done all I can, my very best. (I have no family and recently my former beau decided a more wealthy woman without breast cancer was a better partner for him.) Today I ask for you to help a bit. A bit from many friends, acquaintances and loved ones goes a very, very long way. The time is now, right now. I do trust you understand and respect this note and its intent. I truly pray you never encounter a serious illness and come to know the delicate, thin life-line allowed you from that moment on. Thank you in advance for your sweet compassion and kind understanding. Know I know you do your best. Blissings, Ani "You are the light of the world." - Yeshua

Financial Services Firms Facing Lawsuits

WASHINGTON — A group of state and municipal governments, including Mississippi, Chicago and Fairfax County, Va., said Friday they sued multiple financial-services firms, alleging price-fixing and bid-rigging in the municipal derivatives industry.

The suits were filed against 37 financial-services firms, including Merrill Lynch & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley.

JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch declined to comment. Morgan Stanley was not immediately available to comment.

In a statement, attorneys representing the government said the defendants conspired to deprive the group of extra money they would have received from their municipal bond investments. The suits, filed in federal court in Washington, allege the price-fixing and bid-rigging dates back to 1992.

Municipal derivatives are used to invest proceeds of municipal bonds.

UK tycoon Joe Lewis loses $800m on Wall Street

Bear Stearns on brink of break-up

JOE LEWIS, the secretive British billionaire, has lost an estimated $800m in the collapse of the American investment bank Bear Stearns.

The 71-year-old currency trading tycoon, who runs his empire from the Bahamas, holds almost 10% of the bank's shares. Bear’s shares fell 40% on Friday to $27, after it secured a 28-day credit lifeline to stave off collapse.

Lewis began building a stake in Bear last September, when the shares were changing hands for more than $100.

The huge paper losses could force Lewis to sell out of some of his other positions, according to traders, in order to meet margin calls from his lending banks.

Bear Stearns stands on the brink of collapse or break-up this weekend. The bank’s woes come as Wall Street braces itself for another week of pain.

Some of America’s biggest financial institutions are set to announce first-quarter figures showing fresh losses and write-downs of billions of dollars.

The disclosures come amid desperate attempts to bail out Bear Stearns, which secured a 28-day lifeline on Friday to stave off collapse. That would have caused a sale of Bear’s $42 billion (£21 billion) of loans and $176 billion of securities that could have triggered a meltdown in the financial markets.

On a Friday conference call, Bear’s chief executive Alan Schwartz said the bank was considering a full range of options - a statement many took to mean the bank is on the block. Lazards is advising Bear on its options.

JP Morgan Chase has stepped in alongside the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to provide emergency funding.

Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan chief executive, is interested in Bear’s prime brokerage business and parts of its mortgage operations, according to sources.

“Bear Stearns is over,” said one banker. “By the end of the month - if not this weekend - someone is going to come up with a plan to take it out or break it up.”

Wachovia, the giant American retail bank, is also said to be interested in parts of the business and so is JC Flowers, the private-equity group that attempted to buy Northern Rock.

A takeover is not expected to place a high value on Bear Stearns shares, which lost almost half their value on Friday.

Richard Bove, a banking analyst at the Punk Ziegel investment bank, said he thought a buyout was likely to fail, as it did with Britain’s Northern Rock. “I don’t think the Fed will approve a purchase,” he said. “Customers are leaving in droves, so what would they be buying?”

Bove said Bear was “a new Northern Rock” that would be propped up by the government as it dwindled away. He predicted the bank will limp on, losing clients, until it ends up being a regional broker.

Bear’s woes come as its blue-chip rivals prepare to announce first-quarter results. Analysts have cut their 2008 earnings outlook for Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley. Bove said the results were less important than the strategy the banks were now following. “We have a totally mismanaged economy in America and that has been allowed to happen because the rest of the world accepted our debt.

“Well that’s over and now, like a banana republic, we are going to have to prove we are sorting out our act.”

The Bear Stearns crisis has reinforced the view that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this week by 0.75 percentage points, rather than 0.5, which would take the Fed Funds rate down to 2.25% – three points below last year’s peak.

Some analysts even think that the Federal Reserve may try to calm the markets by cutting rates by a full percentage point at its Tuesday meeting.

“We now expect the Fed to cut by 75 basis points on March 18, 50 in April, 50 in June and by a final 25 in early 2009, bringing the Funds rate back down to 1%,” said Ethan Harris, an economist with Lehman Brothers. “Who says history does not repeat itself?”

In Britain, nerves could be set on edge if the February inflation figures – also due out on Tuesday – show a decisive rise above 2.5%, from 2.2% in January.

While Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor, has primed the markets to expect a significant rise in inflation in the coming months, any sign that it was moving higher at an unacceptable pace would be seen as limiting the Bank’s room for manoeuvre on interest rates.

BANK LOSSES KEEP RISING

GOLDMAN SACHS is this week expected to reveal write-downs of more than $3 billion, as Wall Street begins another turbulent quarterly reporting season.

Huge loans for private-equity deals, coupled with a loss on its holding in the Chinese bank ICBC, are behind the write-downs. Goldman is also expected to unveil a 60% drop in earnings.

Lehman Brothers, which secured a new $2 billion credit line on Friday, is expected to reveal write-downs of more than $1 billion.

Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, is poised to reveal a further $500m in write-downs.

Bear Stearns will now publish its results tomorrow.


The Government Economy Con-Game = "Derivatives" 
by Walter Burien - 03/15/08 - http://CAFR1.com

Truly yours,

Walter J. Burien, Jr.
P. O. Box 2112
Saint Johns, AZ 85936

Tel: 928-445-3532

Website: http://CAFR1.com


Blissed be, Ani 

About two-thirds of 211 officials surveyed by the National League of Cities reported an increase in foreclosures in their cities in the past year, according to the online and e-mail questionnaire. A third of them reported a drop in revenues and an increase in abandoned and vacant properties and urban blight.

"There's a reduction in revenues at the same time that more services are needed," says Cynthia McCollum, president of the National League of Cities and councilwoman in Madison, Ala., a suburb of Huntsville.

"Because of foreclosures, people are stealing, crime is on the rise and we don't have more money for cops on the street."

More than a fifth of city officials responding said homelessness and the need for temporary and emergency housing increased in the past year.

The ills of foreclosures are dominating the agenda of the league's meeting with congressional lawmakers in Washington, D.C., this week to secure federal funding for local initiatives.

"The American dream for individuals has now become the nightmare for cities," says James Mitchell, a Charlotte councilman and head of the group's National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials.

Foreclosed homes are the target of vandalism, he says, and there's been an increase in police calls.

In Peachtree Hills, one of the many neighborhoods of starter homes that sprouted around Charlotte this decade, 115 of the 123 homes are in foreclosure, Mitchell says.

"The 12 residents left there can't sell their homes and now their property values have decreased," Mitchell says. "It's starting to be a symbol of what we don't want to happen to Charlotte."

Many of the buyers were African-Americans who were enticed by zero-down mortgages on moderately priced homes. The survey shows that lower-income families, single parents, seniors and people of color are disproportionately affected by the housing crisis.

Foreclosures create ramifications even in cities that have been spared the worst of the crisis.

Riverside, Calif., is at the heart of the state's Inland Empire, an area that has attracted people in droves from costlier coastal areas but now ranks fourth nationally in foreclosures. Most of the housing boom, however, did not occur in the city but in communities to the east where foreclosures are mounting.

"It's having a ripple effect on our budget and city finances," says Riverside Mayor Ronald Loveridge. "Housing industry is not simply building homes. There's less money being spent for new cars. … That's had a powerful effect on the economy of our region."

California cities rely heavily on sales tax revenues since the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, which caps real estate taxes. Riverside faces a $12 million deficit this fiscal year.

"We handle that by essentially not filling positions," Loveridge says.

Riverside is adjusting the payment schedule of development fees to encourage construction and passed an ordinance requiring the upkeep of homes — even when in foreclosures.

Charlotte is working with the Department of Housing and Urban Development on a program that allows firefighters, police officers and teachers to purchase foreclosed homes at 50% of their listed price.

Check www.rense.com for more details about the collapsing world economy.

Blissed be, Ani 

Imported from external blog

World Financial Crisis

Russia To Switch Some Oil Trading To Rubles

Foreclosures Fail Because No Loan Ownership Proved!

FDIC To Add Staff As Bank Failures Loom

Bernanke Almost Says 'Devaluation' - Vid

US Foreclosures Jump 90% As ARMS Reset

Major US Banks - Fundamentals Rapidly Deteriorating

Once-Safe DC Taking It On The Real Estate Chin

$739B In Mortgages At 'Moderate To High Risk'

US Housing Prices Plummet To 9 Year Low

September 2008 Collapse Of US Real Economy

US Self-Employment Plummeting - Massive Downturn

US Faces Mother Of All Economic Meltdowns

Protocols For Economic Collapse In America

Usually I am fairly conservative about economic matters, but my intuition and the above-linked articles, along with others, convinced me, we indeed, have a very serious potential worldwide economic issue on our hands.

Please note all pertinant articles can be found on www.rense.com

Blissed be, Ani 

Imported from external blog