By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com    
Gold hit another all time high this week.  I do not pretend to be a gold expert, but I do know a good story when I see one.  The yellow metal hitting one all time high after another is not just a fluke that makes a few gold bugs happy.    Gold is rising as the dollar is falling.  According to expert money manager Monty Guild, dollar weakness is part of the Obama administration’s plan.  On Tuesday, Guild wrote, “Does the Obama Administration want the U.S. dollar to …

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com  
Whatever happened to the “Audit the Fed” Bill?  (HR 1207)   You know, where “We the people” find out what the Fed did with trillions of dollars.  I for one would just like to know why the Fed gave a half trillion bucks to foreign  banks?  That’s a fact!   Some in Congress are trying to gut the legislation so we find out nothing.  What a surprise.  The Federal Reserve is like a vampire; it is sucking the country dry and it cannot live in the light of day.  Below is a …

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com  
Last week, John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics predicted on USAWatchdog that the unemployment number would be worse than expected.  He said in an interview, “The risk is on the upside because the economy is weaker than consensus.”    Williams went on to tell me that, “Unemployment has a fair shot at hitting 10%.” On the phone interview he offhandedly said,”It might go as high as 10.2 percent.”   I did not print that number in the story because I didn’t want to seem alarmist.  My bad!!    Williams was right!  It came in at 10.2 percent on Friday!!  Most …

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com  
The following video was on the Friday MSNBC  “Morning Joe” program.  It features the Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, Elizabeth Warren.  This group is supposed to monitor the bank bailout.  Warren is a Harvard Law professor that specializes in bankruptcy and contract law.  Something that came out in the interview: U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for more than 4 trillion in guarantees for financial assets!  This little fact is just glossed over in the interview!!  I cannot believe how candid and critical Warren was on the bailout of the big …

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com  
Mixed in with all the happy talk about better than expected jobless claims and high productivity numbers was this story.  (CNNMoney.com) – “The Federal Reserve kept its key interest rate near zero once again Wednesday.”   I think this was the biggest story of the week and here’s why.  The Fed gave a signal to Wall Street that free money was going to be available for many months to come.  In a statement, the Fed said the current economic conditions are “… likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the …

 By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com   
The latest unemployment number will be released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday.  The consensus is it will be slightly higher than last month.   I interviewed John Williams, an economist at shadowstats.com.  He predicts, “The risk is on the upside because the economy is weaker than consensus.”    Williams went on to tell me that, “Unemployment has a fair shot at hitting 10%.”   Keep in mind that is according to the “official”  government numbers.  Williams contends if you caculate the unemployment number the way BLS did …

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com  
The headline today will probably be something like “Big Republican Wins on Election Day!“   Bob McDonnell won the Virginia Governor’s job and Chris Christie (left) unseated Democrat Jon Corzine for Governor in New Jersey.   I am sure there are going to be many stories about the revived party of Lincoln.  Some will proclaim the health care plan is dead or the Democrats will lose control of at least the House or the Senate in 2010.  Fact of the matter is, it’s not going to make much difference whether Democrats or Republicans …

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com  
It is official, CIT filed for bankruptcy protection Sunday night (11/01/09).  This was not a surprise because the lender had been having financial trouble for months.  The government tried to save CIT with a 2.3 billion dollar bailout last fall.  Now that money will be written off by the taxpayer.    I was listening to CNBC, last week, talk about the prepackaged bankruptcy of CIT.  You would have thought it was some small bank with 1,000 depositors.  The CNBC commentator brought up the term “prepak” referring to a prepackaged Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.   That’s when a company tries to reorganize debt to …

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com   
It is said at the end of an empire, the Treasury is always looted.  In the case of America, it is the value of the dollar and the credit rating of the United States that is being robbed from the American people.  
NYU Professor of Economics, Nouriel Roubini, said in August of last year, “Recent economic, financial and geopolitical events suggest that the decline of the American Empire has started. After the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a brief period where the world switched from a …

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com  
The information below is provided complements of shadowstats.com.  I do not get paid in any way for posting this information.  Shadowstats.com is a paid subscription site and well worth the money.   Here is the link for the full report.  (shadowstats.com)
Shadow Government Statististics  
-Recession Is Not Over
  
- Quarterly GDP Growth Is Not Sustainable, with 92% of Growth in Nonrecurring Factors
  
- Annual GDP Down 2.3% (5.7% SGS)
 
- 4th-Quarter GDP Should Resume Quarter-to-Quarter Decline 
 
 
- Durables Goods Orders at 1997 Level
- Help-Wanted Adverting at New 58-Year Low

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com  
Peter Schiff is a legitimate candidate for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut for the 2010 election.  He runs a big time fund called Euro Pacific Capital.  He has made some big calls that have proven to be correct.  For one, he predicted the current financial meltdown at least 2 years before it happened.  He has written three books on finance and investing.  All are best sellers.  According to him, this downturn is not over by a long shot.  Schiff was out recently with a You Tube video warning about the collapse of the dollar.  That’s …

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com  
There is an old saying in the markets, “nothing goes straight up or straight down.”  If the economy has a lot more to fall, as I think it does, then it will not fall straight down.  I think we are on a proverbial plateau in this downturn.   Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said, “The financial sector story is in a much stronger position than it was but it’s a mixed picture,”  and “The price of credit has come down dramatically.”  The economic picture has improved because of massive amounts of …

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com  
A good friend of mine sent me and article from Politico with the headline “Bernanke’s trillion-dollar decision.”   I read the article.  It talks about how Fed Chief Ben Bernanke has to decide whether or not he will continue to support the banking system with 1 trillion dollars in funding that is “propping the system up.”   The writer laments the fact that decision will be Bernanke’s alone and Obama  ”will have almost nothing to do with it.”
I wrote my buddy back and told him, “ So what do you think they are going …

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com  
This week the Federal Reserve hit thousands of banks with wide ranging pay controls.  The so called ”Pay Czar” Kenneth Feinberg said that salaries paid to the top earning executives at some of the biggest bailedout companies would be slashed by 50% and capped at 500 grand a year.  The companies taking the cuts are American International Group Inc, Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc, General Motors Co, Chrysler, GMAC and Chrysler Financial.  The reason why Feinberg singled out these companies is because, according to him, they received “exceptional federal aid.“  What about …

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com  
Pakistan is in a real struggle for control of the country with the Taliban.  This is an actual war, not the threat of war as we see with Israel and Iran.  I wrote about Pakistan as being one of 2 big problem areas in the world today in “The 2 Biggest Geopolitical Wild Cards in the World” post.  Take a good look at the map on this post and see how close the Taliban stronghold in the northern part of the country is to the capitol which is Islamabad.  …