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US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner shocked global markets by revealing that Washington is “quite open” to Chinese proposals for the gradual development of a global reserve currency run by the International Monetary Fund. The dollar plunged instantly against the euro, yen, and sterling as the comments flashed across trading screens. David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC, said the apparent policy shift amounts to an earthquake in geo-finance. “The mere fact that the US Treasury Secretary is even entertaining thoughts that the dollar may cease being the anchor of the global monetary system has caused consternation,” he said. Mr Geithner later...

Sen. Harry Reid has won reelection in a tightly contested battle with Sharron Angle. Angle, a strong supporter of the Constitution and small government, appears to have lost despite recent polling that had her up by as much as 3 points. Reports of fraud and intimidation have circulated for weeks, with early voters complaining of rigged voting machines throughout Clark County.Residents of Clark County Nevada have reported that upon attempting to vote for Angle they found that Reid’s name had already been checked. This is not surprising as widespread voting fraud has been reported since the inception of the fraudulent...

The U.S. Department of Justice has requested that a federal judge seal the courtroom of a trial involving computer code theft in order to protect trade secrets of Goldman Sachs. Sergey Aleynikov was arrested by the FBI on charges of stealing computer code that supports Goldman’s high frequency trading system, which allows the bank to buy and sell stocks in a fraction of a second. Goldman Sachs and others use “flash trading” to send out automated sell offers at higher and higher prices until one comes back with no buyer. The program then drops back to the highest acceptable price...

Former President Bill Clinton tried to persuade Florida Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek to drop out of his U.S. Senate race and support Gov. Charlie Crist's independent candidacy in hopes of thwarting a victory by Republican Marco Rubio. People familiar with the matter said the former president and other top national Democrats worry a win by the charismatic Mr. Rubio, a 39-year-old Cuban-American, would make him a political phenomenon capable of boosting the GOP's chances with Hispanic voters. These people said the conversation occurred during Mr. Clinton's Florida visit on Oct. 19. Mr. Meek wavered for several days—suggesting to some that...

article created on: 2010-10-15T00:00:00 JERUSALEM (JTA)—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would reinstate a West Bank construction freeze if the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Netanyahu made the offer Oct. 13 in a wide-ranging speech at the opening of the Knesset’s winter session. “If the Palestinian leadership will say unequivocally to its people that it recognizes Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, I will be ready to convene my government and request a further suspension,” Netanyahu said. “Just as the Palestinians expect us to recognize their state, we expect reciprocal treatment.”The Palestinian Authority issued a statement...

BOCA RATON, Fla. – Seniors prepared to cut back on everything from food to charitable donations to whiskey as word spread Monday that they will have to wait until at least 2012 to see their Social Security checks increase. The government is expected to announce this week that more than 58 million Social Security recipients will go through a second straight year without an increase in monthly benefits. This year was the first without an increase since automatic adjustments for inflation started in 1975. "I think it's disgusting," said Paul McNeil, 69, a retired state worker from Warwick, R.I., who...

If you work in the mortgage industry or for a title insurer, you might not want to make any plans for the next six months.  Foreclosuregate is about to explode.  It is being alleged that many prominent mortgage lenders have been using materially flawed paperwork to evict homeowners.  Apparently officials at quite a few of these firms have been signing thousands upon thousands of foreclosure documents without even looking at them.  In addition, it is being alleged that much of the documentation for these mortgages that are being foreclosed upon is either "improper" or is actually "missing".  As lawyers start to smell blood in the...

HONG KONG — Tensions between China and Japan over the arrest of a Chinese trawler captain took another turn for the worse Sunday as Prime Minister Naoto Kan of Japan rejected China’s repeated demand that Tokyo apologize and offer compensation for the incident. The Chinese authorities also flexed their muscles on a wider front, becoming more assertive on trade policy, even as they continued to hold four Japanese nationals whose detention two days ago was widely seen as a move by China to put pressure on Tokyo to release the captain, who was welcomed home to China early Saturday. The...

Pharmaceutical companies are once again interfering with your ability to access information about dietary supplements. The Senate is debating a bill that will enable the FDA to put vitamin supplement makers in jail for ten years if they cite findings from peer-reviewed published scientific studies on the label of their dietary supplements or their Web site. The pretext for these draconian proposals is a bill titled the Food Safety Accountability Act (S. 3767). The ostensible purpose of the bill is to punish anyone who knowingly contaminates food for sale. Since there are already strong laws to punish anyone who commits...

The Federal Reserve has been a nightmare for the American people. It inflates the money supply, thereby devaluing already-existing money and placing a massive hidden tax on the people via rising prices. It also uses its monopoly power to cause interest rates to go up or down, usurping the rightful place of the market and causing massive malinvestment and generally an improper and unproductive allocation of resources.The Fed also causes the boom-and-bust cycle through its manipulations of the currency and credit supply. It serves as the government’s partner in perpetually expanding the “welfare-warfare state,” allowing the state to spend far...

Washington (CNN) – A new poll indicates that only one in four Americans say they trust the government to do what is right always or most of the time, one explanation for the anti-incumbent sentiment in the country today. According to CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national survey released Tuesday, 25 percent of the public indicates that they trust the government in Washington to do what's is right most or all of the time, with 66 percent saying they trust the government to do what's right only some of the time and eight percent saying they never trust the government.Full results [pdf]"That...

Welcome to the newly designed AmericanMajority.org. Please take advantage of our free resources, including podcasts, guides, and presentations. We hope you will sign up for email alerts under our Join tab so that we can include you in upcoming trainings and announcements. Thank you for all you do.What if you owned a small business? What if you owned a small business and your customers came to your store or office? What if you owned a small business where your customers came to your store or office, and parked in your parking lot? What if you owned a small business where...

Barack Obama and his family are about to set off on a 10-day holiday in Martha's Vineyard, an island hideaway favoured by the rich and well-connected, before returning to a busy autumn election season. * * * * * * Leaving nothing to chance this time, Mr Obama is bringing along his anti-terrorism adviser John Brennan, Mr Burton said. Two other close aides, Valerie Jarrett and Pete Rouse, also will be on the trip. The Obamas were criticised last year for having chosen, in the middle of a severe recession, to vacation on a island where houses cost millions of...

CHICAGO — U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald says the government is getting ready for a retrial against ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (blah-GOY'-uh-vich). Fitzgerald spoke to reporters on Tuesday after a jury found Blagojevich guilty of one count of lying to federal agents. The judge declared a mistrial in the other 23 counts against him. Fitzgerald thanked the jury for their service and said he didn't have any other comment. Prosecutors had accused Blagojevich of trying to sell or trade President Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat among other allegations. Blagojevich had maintained that he did no wrongdoing. THIS IS A BREAKING...

Think the Portland Police have problems? Take a look next door. Keaton Otis. Jack Collins. Aaron Campbell. Kendra James. James Chasse. All died at the hands of Portland police in recent years. Each death raised fresh questions about the bureau’s training and its ability to discipline its officers. As a result, a casual consumer of local news might think the Portland Police Bureau is the most troubled law enforcement outfit in the metro area. Such an assumption would probably be wrong. An analysis of public records and interviews with law enforcement sources suggests that designation belongs to another agency. While...

Osama bin Laden is alive and playing a key role in directing the war in Afghanistan, leaked US military files suggest. Multiple intelligence reports on the whereabouts of the al-Qaeda leader are contained among the documents. They disclose publicly for the first time that bin Laden is thought to be personally overseeing the work of suicide bombers and the makers of Taliban roadside bombs which have had a devastating effect on British and US troops. They undermine rumours bin Laden had died and also appear to contradict comments by Leon Panetta, the CIA director, as recently as last month that...

The rules of money are getting a makeover, and it's about time. With the implosion of the housing market, the collapse of credit, the upheaval on Wall Street, and our brush with a second Great Depression, we've all paid a high price for the abuses at the center of our economic mess. The fallout has been painful: trillions of dollars in lost savings, 7.6 million people newly unemployed, and record-high home foreclosures and bankruptcies—a tidal wave that has yet to crest. Among those hurt most are Americans over 50, who had more to lose and have less time to recover.How...

WASHINGTON -- Economists generally agree that the largest spending package of all time -- the $787 billion stimulus law of 2009 -- worked as designed, stabilizing a heaving economy, possibly preventing a full-blown depression and freeing up money to pave rutted roads and keep many Americans at work. This would seem to be good news for Democrats in a difficult election year. After all, they muscled the bill into law with virtually no help from Republicans. Think again. According to a July 13 CBS News poll, only 23 percent of Americans think the stimulus helped the economy (down from 32...

Retraining can’t keep up with flood of jobs lost overseas?Those who preach the gospel of free trade say it will lift the whole world’s economy, from rich nations to poor. And, they say, if American workers lose jobs to workers overseas or cheap imports, they can get retraining — courtesy of the federal Trade Act — to learn higher-skilled jobs for the 21st Century. Forty-year-old Daryl Payne lost a production technician job at Daimler Trucks on Swan Island when the German company shifted manufacturing to Mexico. Uncle Sam is now paying him to learn how to be a water-treatment technician....

The median duration of unemployment is higher today than any time in the last 50 years. That's an understatement. It is more than twice as high today than any time in the last 50 years. OK, you're saying, but what does this mean? Does it mean we must increase the duration of unemployment benefits to protect this new class of unemployed, or does it mean we need to stop subsidizing joblessness? Does it mean we need to expand federal retraining programs, or does it mean federal retraining programs aren't working? Does it mean we need more stimulus, more state...