View from The Ships Crow's Nest >>>>>

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...