Scary Financial Views: Fed has given up on the dollar

Jim Rogers is not happy that the Fed is apparently now in the business of buying Mazeratis for Wall Street traders.

Sept. 26, 1983: The Man Who Saved the World

On Sept. 26, 1983, a Soviet ballistics officer drew the right conclusion -- that a satellite report indicating incoming U.S. nuclear missiles is, in fact, a false alarm -- thereby averting a potential nuclear holocaust.

US Government Mercenaries lose license

Iraq has cancelled the licence of the private security firm Blackwater USA after it was involved in a gunfight in which at least eight civilians died. The Blackwater workers, who were contracted by the US state department, apparently opened fire after coming under attack in Baghdad on Sunday.

There are over 40,000 security contractors employed in Iraq.

Iraqi officials have consistently complained about the conduct of Blackwater and other contractors - and the legal barriers to their attempts to investigate or prosecute alleged wrongdoing. Four years into the occupation, there is absolutely no effective system of oversight or accountability governing contractors and their operations. They have not been subjected to military justice, and only two cases have ever reached US civilian courts, under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which covers some contractors working abroad.

A senior US adviser to the Iraqi Interior Ministry's intelligence division told the Washington Post that the incident threatened to "undermine a lot of the cordial relationships that have been built up over the past four years. There's a lot of angry people up here right now."

Since the launch of the "war on terror", the Bush administration has funnelled billions of dollars in public funds to US war corporations such as Blackwater USA, DynCorp and Triple Canopy. These companies have used the money to build up private armies that rival or outgun many of the world's national militaries.

A decade ago, Blackwater barely existed; and yet its "diplomatic security" contracts since mid-2004, with the State Department alone, total more than $750m.

World Credit Crisis -- Northern Rock

People with accounts at the English mortgage lending firm Northern Rock have withdrawn almost £2bn since Friday. This represents about 8% of the £24bn deposits held by the firm.

And the firm is bracing itself for more withdrawals in the coming days.

The issue facing the firm is that although profitable, no one wants to lend into the mortgage market in the wake of the US sub-prime market collapse. "All banks are having greater difficulties than normal getting funding from the market but as a specialist mortgage lender, no-one really wants to lend to Northern Rock." In the first six months of the year, Northern Rock made pre-tax profits of just under £300m, barely changed from the previous year.

However it massively increased its share of the mortgage market, taking 18.9% of all net mortgage lending in the UK against its previous peak of 14.5%, seen in the second half of 2006.

The firm's shares have almost halved in value this year and talk that it may be in further trouble left it as the biggest loser on the FTSE 100 on Thursday, closing down 4.9%.