NYT Reports That Obama Has Engaged in Cyberwarfare against Iran

When Iran’s nuclear facilities were publicly crippled in 2011 by what then was considered a revolutionary computer virus which destroys physical equipment, many immediately assumed the virus originated in Israel for obvious reasons. They were wrong. In what can be described as the first presidentially-mandated and condoned act of cyberwarfare, one circumventing the War Powers Act of course,the NYT informs us that the order to physically impair Iranian sovereignty came from none other than the Nobel Peace prize winning president: Barack Obama.

From the NYT:

From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.

 

Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks – begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games – even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.

 

At a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room within days of the worm’s “escape,” Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether America’s most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Iran’s nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised.

“Should we shut this thing down?” Mr. Obama asked, according to members of the president’s national security team who were in the room.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/obama-ordered-code-stux

A STRUCTURAL SECULAR DEPRESSION

from ZeroHedge:

“Again, what’s happening in the US is NOT a garden-variety cyclical recession. It is a STRUCTURAL SECULAR DEPRESSION. And the reason is that we are currently witnessing the collapse of the greatest debt bubble of all time.”

100% Debt to GDP- Last Treasury Auction BEFORE This Happens

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/last-treasury-auction-us-breaches-100-debt-gdp-prices-quietly-and-without-surprises

 

“However, one massively notable thing about this auction is that it is the last one,probably ever, in which the US debt/GDP ratio is still under 100% following the auction. Adding today’s $35 billion to yesterday’s $35 billion in Two year bonds, brings total US debt to $15.010 trillion, with GDP still at $15.013 trillion (granted this number may be revised tomorrow),resulting in a debt to GDP ratio of 99.99%”

Gun Ownership Soars to 18 Year High

Americans may be fleeing from stocks in droves, but they sure aren’t shy about rotating the resulting meager liquidation proceeds into weaponry. According to Gallup, “Forty-seven percent of American adults currently report that they have a gun in their home or elsewhere on their property. This is up from 41% a year ago and is the highest Gallup has recorded since 1993, albeit marginally above the 44% and 45% highs seen during that period.” Considering the social situation “out there”, and the fact that the world is one badly phrased or translated headline away from a complete HFT-facilitated market collapse, this is hardly all that suprising.

for full article: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/gun-ownership-soars-18-year-high-47-americans-admit-owning-gun

$100$ DownPayments………… and your iPhone too !!

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/got-hundred-bucks-buy-home-or-virtually-anything-else-using-2000x-non-recourse-leverage

 

“ ”HUD’s $100 down payment incentive program can also be applied to an FHA 203k loan, which can be used to fund repairs and renovations on the home. The 203k program allows buyers to finance both the mortgage and additional money for rehabilitation needs with a single government-insured loan.” Said otherwise, a $100 downpayment gives one unlimited degrees of freedom how to spend non-recourse, massively levered capital, and courtesy of money’s fungibility, to even fund, shhh, the occasional iPhone.”

Bank of America on the Edge, or “Too Big to Fail”

Here Comes TARP 2: Bank Of America Implodes, At $6.87, BAC CDS Up 20% To 260 bps As Bankruptcy Contemplated

 

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/08/2011 11:30 -0400

With Bank of America investors finally realizing it is game over for the company as a going concern, at this point there are just two options for Brian Moynihan: the spin off of CFC as a bad bank, backstopped by the Fed, or, well, Chapter 11, which for a bank is essentially liquidation (and with CDS trading up 50 bps to 260 a bankruptcy seems increasingly inevitable). It also means that another TARP is on the way. And once America realizes that another several trillion have to be put into its insolvent banking sector, it will get quite violent. The biggest irony: it is AIG which takes down the financial system for the second time after its lawsuit against BAC filed last night kills Bank of America.

for full article, and link to AIG Lawsuit against Bank of America:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/here-comes-tarp-2-bank-america-implodes-687-bac-cds-20-260-bps-bankruptcy-contemplated

When the Time Comes, Who Will Step Up to be the Real Leaders

“Given the current state of things, I’m sure there are a lot of people deliberately deciding to adopt a low profile, politically or socially. A lot of this has to do not so much with politics but what your neighbors or your coworkers will say about you, right? If you tell them something that is actually happening in the world, you will be labeled a conspiracy theorist; they’ll look at you as if you’re crazy. But what about the activists? At a certain stage, the great mass of people will look around for leadership figures. When the economic crisis comes, they’re going to want someone to tell them how to get out of it. They’re not going to know the answers themselves. The question is, will there be activists, leadership figures, proposing the right solutions – and how soon will they come along?” Edwin Vieira

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-us-monetary-system-and-descent-fascism-interview-dr-edwin-vieira

America is Almost Beyond the Point of No Return

from ZeroHedge:

The United States is running out of time to get its budget and trade deficits under control.  Despite the urgency of the situation, 2010 has been wasted in hype about a non-existent recovery. As recently as August 2 Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner penned a New York Times column, “Welcome to the Recovery.”

As John Williams (shadowstats.com) has made clear on many occasions, an appearance of recovery was created by over-counting employment and undercounting inflation. Warnings by Williams, Gerald Celente, and myself have gone unheeded, but our warnings recently had echoes from Boston University professor Laurence Kotlikoff and from David Stockman, who excoriated the Republican Party for becoming big-spending Democrats.

It is encouraging to see some realization that, this time, Washington cannot spend the economy out of recession. The deficits are already too large for the dollar to survive as reserve currency, and deficit spending cannot put Americans back to work in jobs that have been moved offshore. 

However, the solutions offered by those who are beginning to recognize that there is a problem are discouraging. Kotlikoff thinks the solution is savage Social Security and Medicare cuts or equally savage tax increases or hyperinflation to destroy the vast debts. 

for full article: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/founder-reaganomics-says-without-revolution-americans-are-history

Video:

CNBC “Disagreement”

Santelli To Liesman: “You Don’t Say Anything I Find Interesting To Hear!”

Vince Veneziani|Dec. 15, 2009, 9:41 AM | 978 |5

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Tags: Money Media, CNBC, Video, Humor, Stock Market

Earlier this morning, a flurry of tweets about Rick Santelli emerged on Twitter. Something was up. Fast forward to 4:20 in the clip below to watch Santelli blow up at his guest Steve Liesman over markets.

The big quote: “You don’t say anything I find interesting to hear.”

Thanks to Zerohedge for finding the video.

For video: http://www.businessinsider.com/rick-santelli-loses-it-on-this-mornings-squawk-box-2009-12