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Paint-on solar cells developed Paint-On Solar Cells DevelopedScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2011) — Imagine if the next coat of paint you put on the outside of your home generates electricity from light -- electricity that can be used to power the appliances and equipment on the inside.See Also: Matter & Energy Nanotechnology Solar Energy Energy Technology Earth & Climate Energy and the Environment Renewable Energy Environmental Science Reference Nanomedicine Solar cell Electric power Biomass A team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame has made a major advance toward this vision by creating an inexpensive "solar paint" that uses semiconducting nanoparticles to produce energy."We want to do something ..."This paste of cadmium sulfide-coated titanium dioxide nanoparticles could turn large surfaces into solar cells. (Credit: : ACS Nano)

by   Barry Ritholtz “Why there hasn’t been more robust prosecution is a mystery.” -Raymond Brescia, visiting professor, Yale Law School > Reuters has an  outrageous article  detailing the absurdity of the lack of prosecution of financial crimes in modern America. It is a shocking to watch the United States, a nation that once followed the Rule of Law, slip into a banana republic..."

by  Chris Puplava  Watch the TED Spread Portfolio Manager, Fundamental Analyst  at  PFS Group Like the Ted spread for the US, the euro equivalent also shows counter-party risk continues to rise in Europe as the spread is higher now than at any time except for the peak in the 2008 credit crisis. What is key to note is how quickly the credit spread jumped in 2008, rising from less than 1% to nearly 4% in a matter of days.... Summary It is my view that unless the ECB prints near the magnitude of trillions to support the European sovereign debt market and banks, then things are likely to get worse than better. Additionally, despite a US economic recovery, the message of my  technical monitor   and the general message from the credit markets suggests the US stock market is on shaky ground. If the ECB was going to come out with a massive quantitative easing program then spreads would contract and Europe would not pose the same threat to the curre...

By h.b. - Dec 18, 2011 - 11:15 AM The Sunday Times reports that the Foreign Office is preparing for the worst case scenario and a collapse of banks in the Eurozone   The Sunday Times has claimed that Whitehall has plans for a euro-evacuation. The paper claims that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is drawing up plans to ‘rescue’ thousands of British expats from Spain and Portugal in the event of a banking collapse. ... "The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is drawing up plans to evacuate thousands of British expatriates from Spain and Portugal in the event that their banking systems collapse. It comes as credit rating agencies warn that the deal struck by EU leaders this month may not save the single currency from further turbulence and possible collapse. Officials from the Foreign Office and the Treasury are preparing contingency plans to help thousands of Britons get home if banks in Spain and Portugal — two of the most vulnerable eurozone economies — fail and people are u...

A good article on what is happening with the Euro and how to prepare you assets and investment portfolio Beware of Europe’s Backdoor Bank Run Here are four troubling signs the news media isn't telling you about Dec 18, 2011, 8:00 am EST   |     By  Keith Fitz-Gerald On Wednesday,   Fitch Ratings   downgraded its credit ratings on five of Europe’s biggest banks, and while that decision made headlines, it’s not the most important story to come out of Europe this week. The real story, which the mainstream media is neglecting, is about signs of an underground run on Europe’s banks. Almost nobody’s talking about it, but there are indications money is already moving out of the EU faster than rats abandoning a sinking ship...."

by Jess's Cafe' Americain Dec. 17 The customer assets were stolen " The bottom line is that apparently some warehouses and bullion dealers are not a safe place to store your gold and silver, even if you hold a specific warehouse receipt.  In an oligarchy, private ownership is merely a concept, subject to interpretation and confiscation. ... How more plainly can it be said? The US financial system as it now stands cannot be trusted to observe even the most basic property rights as it continues to unravel from a long standing culture of fraud. Get your money as far away from Wall Street as is possible.  And if you want to own gold and silver, take delivery and store it in a secure private facility outside the fractional reserve system. ..."

MF Global and the great Wall St re-hypothecation scandal 12/7/2011 By Christopher Elias (UK) (Business Law Currents) A legal loophole in international brokerage regulations means that few, if any, clients of MF Global are likely to get their money back. Although details of the drama are still unfolding, it appears that MF Global and some of its Wall Street counterparts have been actively and aggressively circumventing U.S. securities rules at the expense (quite literally) of their clients. ... http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Securities/Insight/2011/12_-_December/MF_Global_and_the_great_Wall_St_re-hypothecation_scandal/

MERS: The Elephant in the Foreclosure Room If you are a  homeowner  , chances are that the current owner of your mortgage is an entity known as MERS (Mortgage Electronic Recording System). This is true even though you are making your payments to one of the major banks or a dedicated mortgage servicing company. Nobody borrows from MERS in the first instance but somewhere in the chain of title the likelihood is that MERS became (and continues to be) the owner despite a series of transfers to banks, trusts, and investment vehicles. In legal parlance, MERS will be identified in your mortgage documents as the "mortgagee of record," and will also be identified as the "nominee," or agent for the purpose of making future transfers to other entities.  http://www.bankruptcyforeclosureblog.com/2011/03/mers-the-elephant-in-the-forec.html

.. MERS electronic system is an end run around registry of Deeds The mortgage industry was kissed by a witch in the night. Looking for their own selfish gain they came up with a cunning system to transfer mortgages and shortcut the public recording system. Washed clean by the market crash, mortgage holders insisted their title claims were true, and the system is nursing its pain..."

ref; Wiki: Were the Walls Necessary? - The New Rules of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act The limitations of the GSA on the banking sector sparked a debate over how much restriction is healthy for the industry. Many argued that allowing banks to  diversify  in moderation offers the banking industry the potential to reduce risk, so the restrictions of the GSA could have actually had an adverse effect, making the banking industry riskier rather than safer. Furthermore, big banks of the post-Enron market are likely to be more transparent, lessening the  possibility  of assuming too much risk or masking unsound investment decisions. As such, reputation has come to mean everything in today's market, and that could be enough to motivate banks to regulate themselves. Consequently, to the delight of many in the banking industry (not everyone, however, was happy), in November of 1999 Congress repealed the GSA with the establishment of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which eliminated t...

It’s All Connected: An Overview of the Euro Crisis European leaders are dealing with growing debt problems that are rattling investors worldwide.  Here is a visual guide to the crisis ... ...more

And You Thought the Real Estate Bust Was Over   BY  JOHN RUBINO  from Financial Sense "This week all eyes are on Greece and Italy, which is reasonable since they’re likely to be pretty entertaining. But as incredible as it sounds, PIIGS country sovereign debt might not even be the biggest banking-system threat on the immediate horizon. It turns out that the largest European banks have held onto — and apparently failed to mark down — a mountain of crappy paper from the housing bubble Old Debts Dog Europe’s Banks European banks are sitting on heaps of exotic mortgage products and other risky assets that predate the financial crisis, adding to pressure on lenders that also are holding large quantities of euro-zone government debt. Four years after instruments like “collateralized debt obligations” and “leveraged loans” became dirty words because of the massive losses they inflicted on holders, European banks still own tens of billions of euros of s...

Career Education Shares Plunge, as CEO Resigns; Bellwether for Education Stocks? - Forbes : "Career Education Corp. and other for-profit colleges like it have been under the microscope lately, with the usual litany of for-profit education allegations: aggressive recruiting techniques, poor job placement rates, and overwhelming student debt.. " Norton's comment: This is how student loans get ballooned and student abilities to repay go down. Remember the national amount of outstanding student loans is MORE than the total of personal credit card debt! So, these student loan financial co.s and banks....yes our favorite banks are promoting loans which are beyond the clients ability to repay.

Mocking the Poor? Not a good idea! by Economic Collapse  http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com "...There is more economic frustration in this country today than there has been at any other time since the Great Depression.  We are watching pressure build to very dangerous levels. It is important to note that I certainly do not agree at all with the solutions being put forward by the organizers of the Occupy Wall Street protests.  As I have written about previously, collectivism  is one of our biggest problems , and more collectivism  is not going to solve anything . But it is definitely understandable that people are incredibly upset about this economy and that they want to protest.  Most Americans realize that something is fundamentally wrong with our economic system. Unfortunately, most of them do not understand how we have gotten to this point or what it is going to take to fix things.  That is one of the reasons why I write about  econo...

Extreme Poverty Is Now At Record Levels – 19 Statistics About The Poor That Will Absolutely Astound You According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty than they have ever measured before.  In 2010, we were told that the economy was recovering, but the truth is that the number of the "very poor" soared to heights never seen previously.  Back in 1993 and back in 2009, the rate of extreme poverty was just over 6 percent, and that represented the worst numbers on record.  But in 2010, the rate of extreme poverty hit a whopping 6.7 percent.  That means that one out of every 15 Americans is now considered to be "very poor".  For many people, this is all very confusing because their guts are telling them that things are getting worse and yet the mainstream media keeps telling them that everything is just fine.  Hopefully this article will help people realize that the plight of the poorest of the poor co...

Practical Steps for Creating a Self-Sustainable Home | James J Puplava CFP | FINANCIAL SENSE The following transcript comes from a recent interview with Nicole Foss covering a wide range of practical steps and considerations for maintaining a fully or partially-sustainable home. The full audio interview can be accessed here . Jim Puplava: Joining me on the program is Nicole Foss from the Automatic Earth and Nicole you recently did a video and it is called How I Prepared My Family for Peak Oil . I thought we would start our discussion today because I think one of the factors that we are starting to see right now, with oil prices at $90 in a weak recession along with high unemployment, is we are starting to see the effects of peak oil because you kind of wonder why we are at close to $90 given such weakness. Now some may say that is speculation but, putting that aside for now, I would like to talk about what you did to prepare your family. Now as I understand it Nicole, you sold your...

Liberty without Virtue by Arthur Cutten at Jesse's Americain Cafe "But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint." Edmund Burke GroupOn = LinkedIn?  La la la, whatever. La la la, doesn't matter. As cynical an IPO as seen since 1999 they said today. Where is the MF Global customer money? First it was missing, and then it was not. And then it was lost (or) missing again, and then found at JPM. And then that was denied, and now it seems to be lost at sea in a financial storm of venality. Maybe Judge Crater and Jimmy Hoffa took it with them.....

The Economics Of Private Prisons by  NPR by  David Shapiro "...says that promise of jobs and tax revenue is eerily similar to what some officials in Hardin said back in 2004. Shapiro, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, is the author of a  new ACLU report   that's critical of the private prison industry. Shapiro says it's possible a town could reap some small economic benefits from a private prison, but it may not bring the larger economic boost the county is hoping for..."

.... The Next Big Bailout has already started from Economic Sense People who leave their money with BoA already know (or should) that they're taking a fair-sized risk. In late September, Moody's dropped the credit rating of the bank's long-term holding company two levels, from A2 to Baa1, and cut its retail bank rating from A2 to Aa3. There are over $1 trillion in deposits still in an institution sitting on a status that is barely north of junk. "Bank of America is the only US lender that lacks a rating of A3 or higher among the five firms listed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as having the biggest derivatives books,"  Bloomberg  wrote in an  October 18 story . Behind the word "biggest" lies a reality that is truly mind boggling. Bank of America's holding company - the parent of both the retail bank and the  Merrill  Lynch  securities unit - held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June, according to data compil...

Warner: Senate could vote to reinstate Glass-Steagall - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room By Michael O'Brien - 05/01/10 12:00 PM ET Senators could approve an amendment to reestablish the separation between banks' commercial and investment operations, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) suggested. Warner, a member of the Senate Banking Committee who's been closely involved in negotiations over a Wall Street reform bill, said that while he opposed such a measure, the Senate could get the votes to reimpose the Depression-era Glass Steagall law. "It may have a chance," Warner said during an appearance on C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" of the chances for passage of an amendment to reimpose the law, which was repealed by Congress in 1999.... Norton's comment: This former law stopped banks from additionally acting as investment bankers. When this was repealed under pressure from the banking and investment lobbies, it opened the door to what is now the credit default swap ...

...And we thought moving our slave wages to our local credit union was going to save us! ...This means that the investment bank's European derivatives exposure is now backstopped by U.S. taxpayers. Bank of America didn't get regulatory approval to do this, they just did it at the request of frightened counterparties. Now the Fed and the FDIC are fighting as to whether this was sound. The Fed wants to "give relief" to the bank holding company, which is under heavy pressure. .. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/236509-Holy-Bailout-Federal-Reserve-Now-Backstopping-75-Trillion-Of-Bank-Of-America-s-Derivatives-Trades

How Six Layers of Deficits will Lead to a Retirement Disaster | Daniel R Amerman CFA | FINANCIAL SENSE

Treasury officials: Never saw a loan like Solyndra - BusinessWeek : "at private investors moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment on part of the loan in case of a default." 'via Blog this' Norton's comment: Now is there anyone out there who still doesn't get the the Fox is still in charge of the chicken coup? On Wallstreet, Main Street, Energy St......that is; those who are creating financial risk and calamity, are still being bailed out by their comrades with public funds without our votes... too big to fail is just another excuse to keep the free market from placing the results of risky financial behavior on those who created, promoted, lied about the transactions to the public; another excuse to bypass what makes democracy work with one vote one man.....and an educated public of voters.

Can Margin Debt Give Us A Clue On Market Direction? : "bottoms in the market occur when there are positive net credit balances" 'via Blog this' "...By the time the bottom of the decline was reached in March of 2009, positive net credit balances had ballooned to almost $200 Billion. Surprisingly, after investors had been wiped out twice in a single decade, they came storming back to the casino flush with cash as the Fed, due to the introduction of Quantitative Easing, which removed investment risk from the markets. Investors scrambled to lever up their portfolios for a third time. This time margin debt didn't quite achieve its previous peak but quickly surged to $330 Billion. ..."

by By Bud Conrad, Casey Research ...As to what speculators – what anyone – should do, it doesn’t really matter whether the fall of the dollar precipitates the level of crisis we expect. The steps we advocate are reasonable for anyone who doesn’t want to get hurt by a currency crisis: buying physical gold (and silver – both are still relatively cheap in inflation-adjusted dollars); getting a useful portion of one’s assets into a stable country outside of the US (preferably one with no involvement in the “War On Terror/Islam”); and investing a fraction of one’s portfolio in gold stocks....

Highlights From That Ultra-Gloomy Goldman Report That Everyone Is Talking About : "" 'via Blog this'

Jesse's Café Américain: Weekend Reading: Psychopaths Among Us, the Madness... : "A lot of white-collar criminals are psychopaths," says Bob Hare. "But they flourish because the characteristics that define the disorder ... Norton's comment: This is really an interesting angle on the collapse of our democracy and understanding why and how the Wall Street crooks and the Corporate banksters are still managing to comeup with more ways to rob the middle and poor blind even after being called to account for it. Ocuh!

Understanding the Second Great Contraction: Percent Off the Previous Peak James Ross, the University Architect at UNC Wilmington and an avid student of the economy, called my attention to Martin Wolfe's recent essay at the Financial Times explaining that we're not at risk of a double-dip recession because the one that began in late 2007 hasn't ended. Of course, the National Bureau of Economic Analysis (NBER) declared June 2009 as the end date for the last recession, a decision they announced in September of the following year. You can read their rationale here. According to the NBER's analytical method, which focuses on major peaks and troughs as boundaries, the June 2009 end for the last recession makes perfect sense. But if you expect the end of a recession to be a return to some semblance of economic normality, then, to paraphrase the immortal words of Yogi Berra, the last recession "ain't over 'til it's over." Bill McBride, the economic wiz...

US mutual fund outflows surge after downgrade -ICI | Reuters : "Wed Aug 17, 2011 1:12pm EDT NEW YORK, Aug 17 (Reuters) - U.S. mutual funds had the largest outflows in nearly three years in the wake of the downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor's, data from the Investment Company Institute showed on Wednesday. Investors pulled a net $40.3 billion out of those funds in the week ended Aug. 10, the largest weekly withdrawal since early October 2008, soon after the collapse of Lehman Brothers."

Phone-Hacking: The Smoking Gun - Crime, UK - The Independent : "News International executives were told four years ago that phone hacking was rife at the News of the World and subsequently paid a jailed employee a quarter of a million pounds after he claimed that Andy Coulson authorised and then tried to hide the extent of it at the newspaper when he was editor. Previously secret papers show that Rupert Murdoch's most senior lieutenants paid...."

Majority of corporations avoid federal income taxes - study - Aug. 12, 2008 : "NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Nearly two-thirds of U.S. companies and 68% of foreign corporations do not pay federal income taxes, according to a congressional report released Tuesday...." Norton's comment: If corps. were the engine that created the most jobs, then this might be worth it; however, it is SMALL BUSINESS that creates the jobs AND PAY TAXES AND SUFFER UNDER COMPLEX REPORTING REGULATIONS! Regulation is NOT a bed word. It is those designed to be complicated to provide escape holes for corporate interests and to sustain legal fees / business that I object to! Currently, our system does NOT function as a democracy, does NOT benefit the populace or the voters. It serves the corporate interests that are contrary to benefiting the middle class that has always driven economic growth. The Middle Class is DEAD. When do we have the funeral? Shall we wait until the whole economic system...

The Ideological Crisis of Western Capitalism - Joseph E. Stiglitz - Project Syndicate : "NEW YORK – Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology – the belief in free and unfettered markets – brought the world to the brink of ruin. Even in its hey-day, from the early 1980’s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest in the richest country of the world. Indeed, over the course of this ideology’s 30-year ascendance, most Americans saw their incomes decline or stagnate year after year... A decade ago, in the midst of an economic boom, the US faced a surplus so large that it threatened to eliminate the national debt. Unaffordable tax cuts and wars, a major recession, and soaring health-care costs – fueled in part by the commitment of George W. Bush’s administration to giving drug companies free rein in setting prices, even with government money at stake – quickly transformed a huge surplus into record peacetime deficits...

Tips on Storing Precious Metals Safely - Precious Metals - Resource Investor : "There are only two ways to buy physical gold – buy it and store it yourself, or buy it and have someone store it for you. So it is obvious that storing metal is an important part of the buying process. Consequently, I am often asked about storage. Storing gold at home has one important advantage; you have metal close at hand. However, there are numerous disadvantages, the most obvious one being the risk of theft. Unfortunately, insurance is expensive, if you can even get it. Also consider that your liquidity is impaired because you have to return your coins and/or bars to a dealer to exchange them for a national currency. That takes time and may even incur a refining cost to confirm the gold content before the dealer accepts your metal. When you store gold with a company,"

Global Currencies: The Euro, The Yen, and the Bitcoin? - CNBC : "The dollar, euro and yen might be the primary language of currency traders today, but online, all the talk is about bitcoins. The digital currency has been around for nearly two years now, but it burst onto the radar of the mainstream world in June, when Gawker published a story about an underground Website where you could trade the currency for illegal drugs. The chatter surrounding the story eventually faded, but a lot of people were left confused about bitcoins. What are they? How do they operate? And what, aside from illegal narcotics, can they be used for?"

How Big Is E-commerce Industry | The Invesp Blog : "The e-commerce sector has continued its double-digit growth year over year. And to make it easy for you to understand the growth of e-commerce industry in US and all across the world. We’ve created an infographic “How big is E-commerce” that will cover some interesting facts about the E-commerce industry, its growth and latest trends." Infographic by – Conversion Optimization Company Invesp

Boomer Bust 2011, Unprepared & Unaware : "This year, America’s baby boomers – 78 million people in all – begin turning 65 and this growing demographic wave threatens to cripple our financial and health care systems and significantly burden future generations. To better understand the implications of this looming crisis, Volunteers of America commissioned a nationwide survey with Lake Research and American Viewpoint into how the elderly and their caregivers are faring during the economic downturn. The survey found that the majority of Americans significantly underestimate the amount of savings they will need to finance their future long-term care needs, and that caregivers are sacrificing their own financial futures to help care for older loved ones."

Most Americans Are Without a Financial Back-up Plan : "WEBWIRE – Friday, July 22, 2011 New State Farm survey shows that while 81 percent of Americans believe it’s very important to have a financial “Plan B,” fewer than half have such plans in place Bloomington, Ill., - If the unexpected happens and a major life crisis occurs, most Americans today would be unprepared to handle the impact. These findings are detailed in the new State Farm® “Financial Plan B” survey. In the study, while 81 percent of all adults say having a back-up plan is very important, only 45 percent say they’ve actually planned ahead and are ready to weather a life crisis...."

Kitco - Commentaries - Jason Hamlin www.goldstockbull.com Hello QE3 – Bernanke Just Lit the Fuse on $1,800 Gold and $55 Silver by Year End! Federal Reserve Chairman “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke indicated that the U.S. economy is at a crossroads this morning, telling Congress the central bank is prepared to provide further stimulus. Investors reacted by dumping dollars, buying stocks and pushing gold to a new all-time high of $1,585. Silver, while still significantly below its 2011 high near $50, has advanced nearly 6% today...."

Data Spotlight: Independent Contractors On the Rise « EMSI | Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. >>For a complete discussion on covered vs. noncovered workers,  see this article . We produced the following chart to illustrate the steady increase of workers not covered by unemployment insurance among 10 of the broadest-level industry sectors using national county-level data. The ratio of noncovered workers to the rest of the workforce is derived by comparing EMSI’s  covered dataset  (which closely resembles state LMI data, but with suppressions removed) with our  complete dataset.  The time frame is from 2005 to 2010.

Hamish McRae: Working longer ought to be an opportunity, not a curse - Hamish McRae, Commentators - The Independent : "But to focus on pensions and retirement is to think about the mechanical consequences of ageing, the accounting side of things. But there are other consequences of ageing that are more interesting and even more important. For example, what happens to the nature of work? What will be the social attitudes of the 'new old'? How will people adapt to four-generation families? There is no road map to help us navigate through this new world, because..."

Stephen Roach: America is a Zombie Nation just like Japan « naked capitalism : "Stephen Roach: America is a Zombie Nation just like Japan Cross-posted from Credit Writedowns Stephen Roach has written an Op-Ed in today’s Financial Times that is worth reading. He outlines his version of Richard Koo’s Balance Sheet Recession theorem, opining that “the global economy is being hobbled by a new generation of zombies – the economic walking dead.” His main points are: American consumers are retrenching"