Max Keiser - European BItcoin Conference, Prague

Max will be speaking at the Bitcoin 2012 conference in London.
http://bitcoin2012.com/

Greek mourners: it was not suicide, it was financial murder – video

Athenians gather in the spot where a 77-year-old man shot himself dead over debts on Wednesday and a woman reads the man's suicide letter to the crowd. Later in the evening the vigil turns to chaos when riot police use teargas on protesters. Mourners say the police attacks were unprovoked. Watch video>>

I Want to Live in a Free Country and No More Mandates! - Ron Paul

Saif on home ground: Gaddafi son avoids Hague 'joke' trial

Muammar Gaddafi's most-influential son won't be heading to the War Crimes Court any time soon. Libya wants to try Saif al-Islam on home soil, over the killing of protesters in the revolt which deposed his father. The Hague's lawyers are saying he's allergedly been mistreated and beaten by militia in custody. Afshin Rattansi, author and journalist talks to RT. He says the crimes court is a sham to international judicial machine. Source

Assange show promo released: 'The World Tomorrow'

A drop creates ripples on the water. The bigger the drop - the greater the ripples. As it falls - the world awaits. To watch the world tomorrow... Coming soon on RT!

Angel Dust for Ponzi-Addicts - Max Keiser with Jim Rickards

Ben Bernanke's 'happy dust' and Angela Merkel's 'red lines' cause ire in BRICS trade partners. In the second half of the show Max talks to Jim Rickards about a BRICS currency, gold and the fog of currency war.  Source

OUR BAILED OUT BANKS ARE IN PROCESS OF GOING BUST AGAIN

Ernest Hemingway was once asked how did he go bankrupt. The great man thought for a second and then replied: “I went bankrupt in two ways, gradually and then suddenly.”

When we see the figures coming from the various banks, it is not difficult to see that something similar is happening in Ireland. Whether the banks end up bust again, the second time in three years, will depend on how the ECB reacts but it looks like the banks, having been bailed out and having received huge government capital injections, could now be in the process of going bust.

As Mr Hemingway observed, people and entities go bust gradually, at first — this is the phase we are in. Then they go bust overnight. History suggests that after that happens, the economy will recover because we have to start again.

Interestingly, the reason that the banks might be going bust gradually is because the ECB is giving them money at 1pc so that they can mask the inconsistencies in their business model for another year or two. But when that money runs out or the ECB’s policy reverses, which it must eventually, where will they get the cash to operate?

Crunch Time for Greece (Case for Bank Holiday and Eurozone Exit Now): Disbursements to Greece by the EFSF and IMF "Conditional on Compliance with Conditionality"

If the second half of the title to this post seems silly, it is because it is silly. However, "disbursements to Greece by the EFSF and the IMF will still be conditional on compliance with conditionality" is an exact quote from The Second Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece, March 2012 by the European Commission. I advise not attempting to read the document. It is a mere 195 PDF pages long. However, a tip of the hat to reader Brett who did manage to slog through the entire document to discover that gem on PDF page 55.Brett also discovered some rather interesting facts regarding Greece's inability to make needed bond rollovers.

Take cover! The housing market is heading for a bloody and protracted crash

Hometrack, a property analytics business, recently reported a 0.2% increase in British house prices, the first such rise in 20 months. The company’s peculiar response to that unimpressive piece of data is that prices will continue to hold firm in the coming months, though, in a brief spasm of honesty, the company goes far enough to admit that the market is not ‘yet firing on all cylinders’.

Indeed. As a matter of fact, the housing market is currently firing on just one cylinder – and one that will have to be withdrawn in due course, as unfit for further service.

More of that in a moment, but first, as ever, the facts. During the property boom of the late 80s, the average British house price passed through the £60,000 barrier for the first time. Because that level was unsustainable – justified by neither average incomes nor rent levels – it wasn’t sustained. Prices collapsed and didn’t recover that level until the end of the 1990s.

Property bubble: Since 2008, prices have fallen back - but only marginally

Thereafter – insanity. In the decade from 1997, house prices trebled. They didn’t treble because British houses had suddenly trebled in size, or because people had become three times richer, or even because inflation had skyrocketed. They trebled because banks made it easy to borrow, easy to bid up the prices. That was all.

The ratio of average house prices to average earnings went from around 3.5 to more like seven times average earnings – implying that prices at their peak were overvalued by almost 100%.

The Second Foreclosure Tsunami Is Coming, And Is About To Kill Any Hopes Of A "Housing Bottom"

Submitted by Tyler Durden:

In what appears to be surprising news for some, Reuters has an article titled "Americans brace for next foreclosure wave" whose key premise is that "a painful part two of the [housing] slump looks set to unfold: Many more U.S. homeowners face the prospect of losing their homes this year as banks pick up the pace of foreclosures." Thank the robosettlement, where in exchange for a few wrist slaps, contract law was thoroughly trampled by America's attorney general, but far more importantly to the country's crony capitalist system, the foreclosure pipeline was once again unclogged, and whether one does or does not have a legal title on a given house, the banks are now fully in their right to foreclose on it. What this means also is that America's record shadow housing inventory, which is far greater than any fabricated number the NAR reports on a monthly basis, is about to get unleashed on buyers, shifting the supply curve much further to the right, as up to 9 million new properties slowly but surely appear on the market. And while many will no longer be able to live mortgage free, forcing them to go out and rent (and no longer be able to afford incremental iGizmos), it also means that the prevalent price of homes is about to take another major tumble, making buffoons out of all those who, once again, called for a housing bottom in early 2012. Here's the simply math: there will be no housing bottom until the 9 million excess homes clear. Period. Until then it is a buyer's market, even if said buyer is unable to obtain bank financing, as ultimately it will be the seller who is forced to monetize (or vacate if underwater) their home in a world of ever diminishing cashflows. The fear of the supply onslaught will only make the dumpage that much faster.

Krugman "Knocked out of Neoclassical Orbit" by Steve Keen's Meteoric Rise!

The internet has been abuzz over the blogosphere boxing match between Nobel Laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and debunker of economic conventional wisdom and superhero economist, Steve Keen. Remember that game "Mike Tyson's Punch Out?" Well, let's just say that Steve Keen gave Paul Krugman one upper-cut too many for the establishment intellectual to handle. Krugman declared victory and walked away before he could be dealt any more blows to his economic ego

Freakonomics Obsession With Patents Strikes Again: Says If More Women Got Patents The Economy Would Grow

from the logical-leap dept

While the Freakonomics guys have shown a willingness in the past to be skeptical about the traditional claims concerning copyright, they often seem to have a blindness to similar criticisms of patents. In fact, in the Freakonomics book sequel Superfreakonomics, there's what's basically a puff piece about massive patent troll Intellectual Ventures. Thus it's disappointing, but not surprising, to hear that one of the Freakonomics duo, Stephen Dubner, is talking up some claims about how "closing the patent gap" between the number of patents that men get and women get (by basically convincing more women to patent stuff) could increase our GDP by a staggering 2.7%. 

That's a huge leap, and a rather astounding claim. And you would think that these guys, who are so focused on trying to sniff out interesting points from data, wouldn't leap so blindly past a whole variety of questionable assumptions, including the big one: the assumption that there's a causal relationship between more patents and economic growth. Similarly, Dubner, in his radio piece, goes so far as to claim that patents are a reasonable proxy for innovation -- directly asserting that the fact that fewer women get patents means that women have "the most room for improvement in the innovation field." 

To put it simply, that's ridiculous.