BIGGER, AND BIGGER AND BIGGER STILL MAY NOT BE THAT GOOD AFTER ALL: BAILOUTS BY THE FED PROVIDED FUNDS TO EVERY "TOO BIG TO FAIL" ENTITY" WORLDWIDE!

The big question of "can we trust whet the government tells us?" Was answered for us this week with the release ( although slyly and begrudgingly) by the FED of the extent of loans, temporary and otherwise to a whopping 21,000 individual institutions ranging from the world's biggest banks to the largest corporations including GE, HARLEY DAVIDSON and others. SURPRISE!!!!!

If it were not for specific previously passed legislation that mandated the disclosure of these unbelievable intervention loans which at its height reached a staggering $8 TRILLION, we would just be all treated as too dumb to be told about the extent of the intervention.

Literally, everybody who asked got money from the FED ( not us citizens of course, our collateral-homes, are just repossessed with no fanfare). Keep in mind the FED has no money, it just writes checks that never bounce though internal bookkeeping that can best be described as "don't ask don't tell" accounting. That is not according to GAAP, accounting standards the rest of the world needs to abide by.

The FED took collateral of every type ( not really, it was just told that it would have such collateral pleaded for its benefit) to extend the loans. It bought commercial paper of GE, of HARLEY DAVIDSON and took "securities of indeterminable value" of some $800 BILLION while extending loans.

Based on what we know about literally every department of the government, do you actually think that someone there knows anything about the 21,000 "loans" that were extended? Does the purported collateral actually exist?

So, forget Congress AND ITS "OVERSIGHT", forget common sense, the FED can do as it pleases with no oversight, and can "lend" TRILLIONS" if it wants to on its own. IT'S IRRESPONSIBLE LENDING CAN DESTROY THE DOLLAR!

Time to rein it in, don't you think!? THEY NEED DAILY oversight and supervision.

he Federal Reserve withheld details on individual securities pledged as collateral by recipients of $885 billion in central bank loans, denying taxpayers a measure of the risks they faced from its emergency aid.

The central bank yesterday released data on 21,000 transactions from $3.3 trillion in emergency lending to stem the financial crisis. July’s Dodd-Frank law required the Fed to disclose the names of borrowers, the size and interest rates of loans, and “information identifying the types and amounts of collateral pledged or assets transferred.”

For three of the Fed’s six emergency facilities, the central bank released information on groups of collateral it accepted by asset type and rating, without specifying individual securities. Among them was the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, created in March 2008 to provide loans to brokers as Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed.

“This is a half-step,” said former Atlanta Fed research director Robert Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors Inc. in Sarasota, Florida. “If you were going to audit the facilities, then would this enable you to do an audit? The answer is ‘No,’ you would have to go in and look at the individual amounts of collateral and how it was broken down to do that. And that is the spirit of what the requirements were in Dodd-Frank.”

Fed spokesmen in Washington declined to comment.

Public Disclosure

The public disclosure of the lending data should have been prevented because it could spur runs on the banks listed, said Darrell Duffie, a finance professor at Stanford University ( yeah, let's just lie instead, genius!).

“That’s a very destructive process,” he said. Still, with the data released, “if you’re justified in getting the information, then you’re justified to get enough information to judge the risk the Fed took,” he said.

Under its definition of the “ratings unavailable” category for collateral posted under the PDCF, the Fed said that “in some limited cases, ineligible collateral was pledged, but it was reviewed with the clearing banks for exclusion from future pledges.” The central bank didn’t elaborate.

The secrecy surrounding Fed bailouts led lawmakers to demand disclosure after the central bank approved aid dwarfing the federal government’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Think about it $ 8 TRILLION...that is more than the Gross National Product of all countries in the largest 7 together excluding the USA.

Collateral Pledged

The loans extended to primary dealers under the PDCF by the New York Fed were recourse loans, meaning the potential liability of borrowers who defaulted was greater than the value of the collateral pledged, according to the Fed. Primary dealers are the firms authorized to deal in government securities directly with the Fed. At its peak, borrowing under the facility came to about $156 billion.

It is “specifically impossible” to know how much risk taxpayers were taking by looking at pools of collateral grouped by asset class and rating, said Sylvain Raynes, a principal at R&R Consulting in New York and co-author of “Elements of Structured Finance,” published in May by Oxford University Press.

“I need to know the individual composition because a $2 billion pool can be one asset of $2 billion, which would be very risky, or 2,000 assets of $1 million each, and that’s not risky at all,” Raynes said. “The spirit of Dodd-Frank was not respected, and they used the vagueness in the wording of the law to weasel out of fulfilling their duty to the American people.”

Corporate Debt

Over the life of the PDCF, $1.5 trillion of collateral with “ratings unavailable” was pledged, according to the Fed data. That’s larger than the $1.39 trillion of municipal debt pledged. Corporate debt posted totaled $2.35 trillion.

A total of $8.95 trillion was lent over the life of the PDCF, backed by $9.67 trillion in collateral.

The Fed released details identifying thousands of transactions including bonds bought under its mortgage purchase program and asset-backed commercial paper pledged under its Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money-Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility.

The central bank also omitted details on individual securities pledged as collateral under its Term Auction Facility and its Term Securities Lending Facility, which was announced on March 11, 2008, as the first program under which the Fed planned to lend to non-bank dealers.

The Fed authorized its New York branch to establish the PDCF on March 16, 2008, the same day it made commitments to convince JPMorgan Chase & Co. to buy troubled dealer Bear Stearns. A run on New York-based Bear Stearns was seen as threatening the stability of global markets, and the PDCF for the first time allowed dealers to borrow on a collateralized basis from the New York Fed.

Lehman Collapse

In September that year, as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was on the brink of filing for bankruptcy, the PDCF was expanded to accept all types of collateral pledged in tri-party repo deals, including high-yield, high-risk securities and equities. The previous program only accepted investment-grade debt securities.

The first peak of PDCF lending occurred in April 2008 at nearly $40 billion, according to the New York Fed. As financial markets improved, banks reduced their balance-sheet risk and the PDCF pricing became less attractive, usage of the facility fell off and stopped in mid-July that year.

Borrowing then leapt to over $140 billion in mid-September 2008 from no activity the previous week, according to the New York Fed. The program ended Feb. 1 this year.

Under the TSLF, dealers could swap investment-grade securities, including mortgage bonds, for U.S. Treasuries for 28 days. Usage peaked at $235.5 billion in October 2008, and the program was also closed in February.

The financial crisis stretched even farther across the economy than many had realized, as new disclosures show the Federal Reserve rushed trillions of dollars in emergency aid not just to Wall Street but also to motorcycle makers, telecom firms and foreign-owned banks in 2008 and 2009.

The Fed's efforts to prop up the financial sector reached across a broad spectrum of the economy, benefiting stalwarts of American industry including General Electric and Caterpillar and household-name companies such as Verizon, Harley-Davidson and Toyota. The central bank's aid programs also supported U.S. subsidiaries of banks based in East Asia, Europe and Canada while rescuing money-market mutual funds held by millions of Americans.

The biggest users of the Fed lending programs were some of the world's largest banks, including Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Swiss-based UBS and Britain's Barclays, according to more than 21,000 loan records released Wednesday under new financial regulatory legislation.

The data reveal banks turning to the Fed for help almost daily in the fall of 2008 as the central bank lowered lending standards and extended relief to all kinds of institutions it had never assisted before.

Fed officials emphasize that their actions were meant to stabilize a financial system that was on the verge of collapse in late 2008. They note that the actions worked to prevent a complete financial meltdown and that none of the special lending programs has lost money. (Some have recorded healthy profits for taxpayers.)

But the extent of the lending to major banks - and the generous terms of some of those deals - heighten the political peril for a central bank that is already under the gun for a wide range of actions, including a recent decision to try to stimulate the economy by buying $600 billion in U.S. bonds.

"The American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America," said Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime Fed critic whose provision in the Wall Street regulatory overhaul required the new disclosures. "Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations. As a result of this disclosure, other members of Congress and I will be taking a very extensive look at all aspects of how the Federal Reserve functions."
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The Fed launched emergency programs totaling $3.3 trillion in aid, a figure reached by adding up the peak amount of lending in each program.

Companies that few people would associate with Wall Street benefited through the Fed's program to ease the market for commercial paper, a form of short-term debt used by major corporations to fund their daily activities.

By the fall of 2008, credit had frozen across the financial system, including the commercial paper market. The Fed then purchased commercial paper issued by GE 12 times for a total of $16 billion. It bought paper from Harley-Davidson 33 times, for a total of $2.3 billion. It picked up debt issued by Verizon twice, totaling $1.5 billion.

"It is hard to say what would have happened without the facility, and how its absence might have affected GE, but overall the program was extremely effective in helping stabilize the market," GE spokesman Russell Wilkerson said by e-mail.

Verizon spokesman Robert A. Varettoni said that it was "an extraordinary time," adding that there was no credit available otherwise at the time.

The data revealed that the Fed continued making purchases into the summer of 2009 - after the official end of the recession - showing that it was still concerned about a fundamental part of the financial system even as economic growth was returning.

The disclosure shows "how really profound the financial crisis was in the fall of 2008 and the firepower the Fed mustered in response," said analyst Karen Shaw Petrou of Federal Financial Analytics.

Foreign-owned banks also benefited from the Fed's commercial-paper facility. The Korean Development Bank, owned by the South Korean government, used the program to the tune of billions of dollars, including a $407 million short-term loan on a single day. Many foreign banks, including the French BNP Paribas, the Swiss UBS and the German Deutsche Bank, took extensive advantage of various programs. Even a major bank in Bavaria benefited, as well as another one headquartered in Bahrain, a tiny island country in the Middle East.

Another Fed program allowed investment banks for the first time to borrow directly from the Fed as officials sought to stem the panic that had taken down Wall Street titan Bear Stearns. The central bank assisted 18 companies through this program. Among the biggest beneficiaries was Citigroup, which in a single day in November 2008 borrowed $18.6 billion from the Fed.

The data also demonstrate how the Fed, in its scramble to keep the financial system afloat, eventually lowered its standards for the kind of collateral it allowed participating banks to post. From Citigroup, for instance, it accepted $156 million in triple-C collateral or lower - grades that indicate that the assets carried the greatest risk of default.

Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher defended the Fed's actions during the financial crisis, saying the central bank "stepped into the breach" in its role as a lender of last resort.

"That's what we are paid to do," he said. "We took an enormous amount of risk with the people's money," he acknowledged. But the crisis lending programs are now all closed, he said, "and we didn't lose a dime, and in fact we made money on every one of them."
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The banks universally hailed the Fed on Wednesday ( what a surprise?).

"In late 2008, many of the US funding markets were clearly broken," Goldman Sachs said in a statement, echoing similar comments made by Bank of America and Citigroup. "The Federal Reserve took essential steps to fix these markets and its actions were very successful."

By 2009, Goldman and other Wall Street firms were reporting their best profits ever. That allowed these banks to pay out huge salaries again, but it also drew the ire of lawmakers and ordinary Americans.

Sanders, for one, said these banks got off easy while receiving extraordinary aid. In rescuing these firms, the Fed never required them to lend to small businesses, modify the mortgages of homeowners or invest in a way that would create jobs.

"We bailed these guys out, but the requirements placed upon them had very little positive impact on the needs of ordinary Americans," Sanders said.

RIGHT ON, MR. SANDERS!!!!!!

CREDIT CARD USE BY AMERICANS DECLINED BY 7 MILLION USERS, USERS CUT OFF OR STOPPED USING THE CARDS DUE TO FEARS OF ECONOMY

Credit card use is on the decline, as millions of Americans cut up their plastic or get cut off by their credit card companies.

In the past year, more than eight million consumers have stopped using credit cards, according to TransUnion, a Chicago-based credit researcher. That means 78 million U.S. consumers do not have credit cards, compared to 70 million last year.

The company said the decline is partly due to "charge-offs in the higher risk segments" and partly because of "more conservative spending in the low-risk segments."

Gerri Detweiler of Credit.com said it is "unprecedented" for consumers to "abandon" their credit cards. "I've been covering this since 1987 and I don't recall numbers like that ever going down," she said. "They've always gone up."

Detweiler said the recession is a major factor. "When people are confident about their financial situation and the economy, they feel more confident about using credit," she said. "When they're scared or nervous about their own economic situation, or the economy in general, then they're more likely to buckle down and avoid debt altogether."

In other signs that consumers are casting off credit, TransUnion said the average U.S. credit card debt fell more than 11% over the past year to $4,964 in the third quarter. In that same time, delinquencies declined by nearly 25%.

It's not just the consumers, said Ben Woolsey, director of marketing and consumer research for Creditcards.com, but also "the knee jerk reaction of the credit card industry to the recession and the credit card act."

He was referring to the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act, which went into effect earlier this year and put a serious cramp on the industry's ability to raise rates and impose fees. As a result, the industry cut off the consumers that it saw as dead weight.

"The recession really drove high credit card losses over the last couple years and the credit card industry reaction was to choke off new credit," said Woolsey. "They were also closing down dormant accounts and accounts that appeared risky."

These new obstacles to the credit card industry are seen as opportunities for other aspects of the economy, such as prepaid debit cards, which have their own host of problems.

For example, on Monday, the reality-show Kardashian sisters canceled their prepaid Kardashian Kard after Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal questioned the legality of its "pernicious and predatory fees."

Ezra Becker, vice president of research and consulting in TransUnion's financial services business unit, said this growing distaste for credit cards created "one of the fastest growing consumer segments. Consumers who do not have or use bank-issued, general purpose credit cards still have a need for other payment vehicles, a fact which is beginning to attract significant attention from credit and debit providers alike."

The American "credit" availability model was the driving force in the growth of the "American Dream" of owing things that could be bought with credit or on credit.

In the fifties, the "buy here pay here" models involved everything from furniture to cars and it spread as credit agencies were able to develop models of identifying credit worthy consumers who could then be granted credit by sellers of all types of products and eventually unsecured credit through the ubiquitous VISA, MASTERCARD and American Express, etc., and other unsecured cards.

The growth in the American economy can be almost directly traced to the ability to buy on credit, as can be easily seen in other countries which lack availability of credit.

Without credit, the direct spending of only the available cash on hand will have long term implications to the economy.

No credit means no purchases, especially among the low end consumers who tend to need to use credit to allow themselves the availability of products that are beyond their cash availability.

I was surprised to get among the 4-5 catalogs I now get daily to get one from the FINGERHUT catalog folks. Remember them?, they offer a variety of products "on their CREDIT" at inflated prices so that they can absorb the potential credit losses. However, one was able to get an electronic gadget, or TV or other expensive product with new or weak credit ( BUY HERE {PAY HERE MODEL). They still offer the same products on the same business model, and a spokesman said that they are doing just great as more people turn to them to get the things they otherwise may not qualify to buy elsewhere!

Local flea markets report robust business, barter sites are operating more and more sites, and a lot of sellers are just looking to trade for something they need without the need to exchange real money!

It is amazing how the free markets allow the development of such creative ideas.

Recently there was a feature story on how a CRAIGSLIST user, traded and bartered his way from a cell phone to a Porsche! each way along the way he traded with someone who wanted the product he had and was willing to trade!

This will be the way soon, as the government in its infinite wisdom has spent like drunken sailors while forcing banks to reign in the credit of consumers.

DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA'S INDUSTRY IS IN FULL SWING BY "REFORMS" AND STUPID GOVERNMENT MANDATES AND GOVERMENT DESTRUCTION OF THE VALUE OF THE US DOLLAR

There is an old saying, "I'm from the government and I am here to help you."

That is the oxymoron that we have all learned to be true over and over again in every aspect of whatever the government sticks its nose into. Just try to name a single program initiated by or mandated by the government that works, that is not way out of control or is not spending the country into financial ruin, go ahead, name one.

There is no such program, every single federal program is not working as intended financially or for that matter operationally either.

The States need to step in, cut off the head of that juggernaut federal government constantly interfering in their affairs. All the powers not granted to the federal government were to be reserved to the states...what happened to that???

Every day and in every way the Federal bureaucrats interfere or elbow their way into every aspect of our life, with the latest being the first lady herself, telling us what to fee our children!

The feds mandate how much water is in our toilet bowl, what to do with our water from washing the car in the driveway, how much shampoo we can take in a plastic bad in our luggage, even the size of the plastic bag is mandated as well!!!!

Now the worst of all possible mandates are the various anti-manufacturing and anti- business proposals by the current group of naive non business academics running every federal agency and in all levels of the federal agency tentacles.

As the true unemployment hovers at 17.5%, the bureaucrats want to mandate that all business agree to having their employees become union members just by a "card check", adding to the business cost burden. Every aspect of a new business starting a manufacturing plant is regulated to slow down the process of getting started and going, in hiring employees and expanding the business.

Existing businesses are hassled and inspected and fined and mandated to the point where they simply close up. I just experienced seeing a 80 year old foundry finally closing up since they could not possible spend $4 million on additional cleaning processes for an already clean emission plant. Goodbye to the 250 jobs in the town.

I recall looking at the inspection reports by the OSHA inspector at a manufacturing plant, which for instance stated that the garbage disposal receptacles needed to be moved, and that a fan in the washroom needed cleaning or fines would be imposed, and that the inspector could come back and if not repaired they would be "written up".

I know of several instances of established USA based businesses, in manufacturing that simply were forced out of doing business in the USA due to mandates, regulation, etc., and simply contracted the manufacturing offshore....making more money and having less to worry about in running the business. At present they have a sales and order taking office only, with no OSHA mandates to worry about and be hassled by, also with 100 less employees, as they only needed 7 to run the same business, having all the manufacturing off-shored!

Any manufacturer would be crazy not to first consider off-shoring the manufacturing process due to the obvious cost savings, but also the ease of operating a business, getting tax credits to start elsewhere, getting income tax holidays etc.

So far only Puerto Rico has been smart enough to grant a total tax holiday for businesses starting there..and it is working. They just elected a Republican governor! He was a former Director of Economic Development on the island.

Imagine that, a pro-business Republican who is expanding business growth due to a tax holiday! Business is starting to boom there.

The last resort of stupid politicians is to deny the fact that the world is now one gigantic market place for goods, manufactured goods that the USA used to be the leader of. Well, no more.

Think about it; the USA has 5% of the world's population, so in theory 95% of the world still wants what we have, EVERYTHING! Cars, refrigerators, trucks, homes, building materials, baby carriages, diapers, furniture, TV's, stereos, gadgets, shoes, clothes, etc., etc...!

How many of these products can we competitively manufacture in the USA????

Look at that list...now look in your own home, garage or closet...what from that list is manufactured in the USA????? I have a dining room set that was so beautiful, and so inexpensive, we just had to get it, guess what; it was made in China!

The rest of the world thus can not even buy a USA manufactured product, because now it would simply be too expensive to be sold competitively.

So all that talk about predicting improved employment numbers, getting people "back to work" is really just a bunch of talk. It can not happen, since there are less and less places to work, and even less to work at a "decent" wage.

Manufacturing wages were generally contributing to some of the best wages available, but with less and less manufacturing going on there can be no such jobs. The biggest growth will be in retail industries which are marketing more and more of the low priced products made offshore someplace.

Lastly, the final nail in the consumer's coffin is best demonstrated by just my Saturday trip to the WALMART store to pick up my "usual" weekly staples ranging from edibles to disposables.

The government has decided to destroy the value of the US Dollar by printing up about a trillion ( yes trillion) of them thus decreasing their value.

Just in the last two weeks, at my local WALMART, literally every item that was manufactured offshore was priced higher. The items that required longer distance trucking were priced higher, the items that were heavier were priced higher, and the prescriptions or over the counter medications that would be routinely purchased out of my pocket were each and every one priced higher.

Thus my disposable income met my budget amount, something had to be cut thus less employment for somebody in the USA, indirectly impacting a whole slew of domino effect service providers such as warehouse people, trucking and packaging, ships and shipping etc., etc.

Inflation in the sense that products cost more for no particular reason is actually being created by the government who is publicly saying that they are trying to stop it. This is the worst inflation as it is due to the lower valuation of the dollars we have to spend, and that is directly the result of again, you guessed it...GOVERNMENT ACTIONS AND MANDATES.

NUTTY IDEAS CAN BE THE NEXT MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS FOR GUTSY ENTREPRENEURS

Read this before you toss your nutty business idea aside. THIS WAS FROM forbes.com

While visiting Las Vegas in 2004, auto-dealership fleet manager Rico Elmore decided he needed some stylish sunglasses for his honeymoon. Elmore is six-foot-three, weighs 300-pounds and has a head to match, so finding shades that fit proved a struggle.

"I must have tried on 300 pairs and literally found nothing that fit," recalls Elmore, 36. "I walked out and said, 'This is ridiculous.' I decided to make sunglasses for people like me with fat heads." Elmore's company, Fatheadz, now sells "full-figure" glasses, for $28 to $54 a pair, and is on track to hit $2 million in sales this year--up from $700,000 in 2009.

Have a nutty business idea and need some inspiration to pull it off? We went looking for small companies that generate at least $1 million in annual revenue in unexpected ways. Look hard enough and they are legion.

Like many entrepreneurs, Elmore had a good idea but needed a little luck, too. Back in Brownsburg, Ind., after his honeymoon, he worked up a basic design for his super-wide specs. He hired a product-engineering company to make the molds and a contract manufacturer to crank out the frames and temple arms; he assembled the glasses at home during the evenings after work. Elmore tried patenting his discovery, but lawyers told him he could only patent the design of the glasses, not their size. Sales were a trickle.

Luck struck about a year later when an Indianapolis Star reporter called to interview Elmore about his friend, Rupert Boneham, the gentle-giant star of CBS' Survivor series. She mentioned Fatheadz in the article.

The ripples eventually reached a top Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT - News) executive, who ordered 300 pairs in three styles as a trial run. By 2008 Elmore's glasses were in 3,000 Wal-Marts and Sam's Club stores. Elmore also happened to know an equipment manager with the Indianapolis Colts; soon the players were sporting Fatheadz rims. (Elmore has no promotional deal with the NFL, but he says it's on his to-do list.) Now with a full-time staff of 10, Elmore plans to launch a new line for women--under a different name, of course.

Here are a few more highlights from our search for million-dollar businesses you've never heard of:

Geese Police

Howell, N.J.
Entrepreneur: Dave Marcks
Product/Service: Geese abatement using collies
Start Date: 1987
Startup Costs: About $3,000
Revenue: Estimated $2.5 million in 2010
Every Roadrunner has his Wile E. Coyote, and for golf-course superintendent Marcks, geese were the mortal enemy. Their incessant droppings vexed golfers and "fowled" water hazards, and he couldn't get rid of them. Then he discovered that border collies--an intelligent and persistent dog breed--are great at banishing the big birds for good. His elite force now includes 33 animals.

Texas Driving Experience

Ft. Worth, Texas
Entrepreneur: Dawn Stokes
Product/Service: High-performance driving lessons and retreats
Start Date: 2004
Startup Costs: About $500,000
Revenue: Estimated $1.8 million in 2010
Stokes never outgrew the driving thrills she got from her first car--a '63 Chevrolet Monza Corvair convertible--and she knew she had plenty of suppressed company. So the medical-products saleswoman cashed in her 401(k) to buy 10 Corvettes and start a racing school, hosted at local tracks. Stokes found a mother lode in the corporate-team-building market. "It fits well with sales vernacular," she says--as in, "racing toward the end of the year."

Mabel's Labels

Hamilton, Ontario
Entrepreneur: Julie Cole
Product/Service: Personalized, permanent labels for kids' stuff.
Start Date: 2002
Startup Costs: About $10,000
Revenue: $4 million in 2009
Moms hate it when their kids lose jackets at school or mix up sippy cups at play dates. Four Canadian career Moms hit upon a solution: durable, kid-proof labels. It took years to certify that their products were dishwasher- and microwave-safe. Now the line includes shoe labels, metal bag tags, ID wristbands and Allergy Alerts labels.

Stave Puzzles

Norwich, Vt.
Entrepreneur: Steve Richardson
Product/Service: Hand-made wooden jigsaw puzzles.
Start Date: 1974
Startup Costs: About $5,000.
Revenue: $2.5 million in 2009
Ranging in price from $125 to $5,000, these puzzles are made of cherry wood, covered with a dry-mounted image drawn by one of 100 licensed artists, and individually hand-cut into as many as 2,500 pieces. Bill Gates has one, and Barbara Bush gave another as a gift to Queen Elizabeth. "We try to make them hard to put together," said Richardson, 71, who calls himself the company's chief tormentor.

PetRelocation.com

Austin, Texas
Entrepreneur: Kevin O'Brien and Angie O'Brien
Product/Service: Pet travel
Start Date: 2004
Startup Costs: $97,000
Revenue: Estimated $4 million in 2010
This husband-and-wife team sold a doggy day-care business to get into the pet-moving game. Initial investments included a new van, Google ads, a website and a $300 membership to IPATA, an international trade association of animal handlers. The couple claims it can move any live animal, anywhere around the world--say, a dog from Seattle to Shanghai, mole rats from South Africa to San Antonio and dart frogs from Switzerland to the U.S. It's a turn-key service, covering airline bookings, blood tests, vet check-ups, logistics, customs and quarantine.

BlackSocks

Zürich, Switzerland
Entrepreneur: Samuel Liechti
Product/Service: Sock subscriptions
Start Date: 1999
Startup Costs: $30,000
Revenue: $5 million in 2009
BlackSocks will ship you a batch of Italian-made, knee-high or calf-length cotton or cashmere/silk dress socks, automatically, several times a year, starting at $89 for nine pairs. Each new "sockscriber" receives a calculation of how much time he will save by not making sock purchases: about 12 hours every year, or three weeks in the lifetime of an average Swiss male, expected to reach age 82. Liechti brought his "sock-scription" service to the U.S. in 2005. Two years later, BlackSocks began selling subscriptions for underwear. Liechti now boasts 60,000 active customers in 74 countries. BlackSocks opened a New York office last year.

Sky Zone

Las Vegas
Entrepreneur: Rick Platt
Product/Service: Arenas covered with trampolines
Start Date: 2009
Startup Costs: About $2 million
Revenue: $3 million-plus in 2009
Cover five of the six sides of a gymnasium-size room with seamless trampolines and what do you get? People bouncing off the walls with excitement. Platt's three Sky Zones are hives of birthday parties, corporate events, three-dimensional dodge ball tournaments and rabid trampoliners willing to pay up to $12 an hour. He aims to begin franchising in 2011. "It was a wild bet," admits Platt, 60, a former scrap-metal broker. "Some people thought the idea was ridiculous. I thought if I could pull it off, I would have something unique."

DNA 11

Ottawa, Ontario
Entrepreneurs: Adrian Salamunovic and Nazim Ahmed
Product/Service: DNA artwork
Start Date: 2005
Start-up Costs: $2,000
Revenue: $1.4 million in 2009
Best friends Salamunovic and Ahmed blend science and medicine with modern art. With a simple cheek swab, they collect enough organic matter to create an image of human DNA using equipment similar to the machines Ahmed used to sell for a Canadian biotech firm. After selling a few prints to family and friends, the twosome was invited to showcase their work at an Absolut Vodka-sponsored party in Ottawa's SOHO neighborhood. An 8"x10" mini-DNA portrait goes for $200, while a 36"x54" wall canvas garners $1,300. The Museum of Modern Art features DNA 11 art in its museum stores in New York and Tokyo.

Murray Associates

Oldwick, N.J.
Entrepreneur: Kevin D. Murray
Product/Service: Eavesdropping detection and counterespionage
Start Date: 1978
Startup Costs: $5,000
Revenue in 2009: $760,000
Ever since taking a part-time job manning surveillance equipment for the Dennis Port, Mass., police department, Kevin Murray has been a spy buster. Businesses and governments hire him to find hidden bugs and such, which he does using sensitive thermal-imaging equipment (which picks up the heat given off by hidden sensors) to lots of plain old looking around. Murray handles about 125 cases per year, typically charging between $7,000 and $8,000 per day of inspection. Revenue dipped below $1 million in 2009 as Wall Street cut back on its anti-snooping efforts, but things are looking up this year.

The Fiero Store

Stafford Springs, Conn.
Entrepreneur: Matthew Hartzog.
Product/Service: Parts and accessories for the Pontiac Fiero
Start Date: 1991
Start-up Costs: $5,000
Revenue: $2 million in 2009
Hartzog spent his teenage summers and school breaks working for his stepfather selling parts and accessories for GM Opels. But the long-defunct, two-seat, mid-engine Fiero was where his heart lay. Approximately 370,000 Fieros rolled off the lines between 1984 and 1988 before Pontiac stopped producing the car; less than 75,000 are currently registered in the U.S. Fanatics make great customers.

AMERICANS WHO WANT FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT ARE NOW THE "ENEMY" OF THE PRESIDENT-FREE SPEECH IS OUT, ENEMIES LIST IS ON

The final stroke in any remaining support that the President had with any reasonable thinking people, was finally shattered when last week. when he referred to those who oppose his irresponsible policies as "enemies".

That's it, it is over for this arrogant,under-educated,over-hyped, false uniter of Americans.Too bad we can not sue to get our country back and recall him from office. His statements about working together, etc....was never valid, and simply a lie. His fiscal naivete is now legendary, we are all going broke while he "writes" books and gets million in cash advances that now total $6 million in his bank account.

The president's trip to India will cost taxpayers $200 million a day as he takes 3,000 people with him as well as helicopters, cars, and who knows what on such a needless trip.

Fiscally, Nancy Pelosi, the capo de capo of the president in the House of representatives stated that there will be NO DEFICIT SPENDING...while adding $5 TRILLION to the national debt with absolutely nothing to show for it, other than just increased debt.

Most of the Americans now graduating from our woeful public school system does not have any idea as to what this staggering deficit means to them, so it is irrelevant to them and will mean nothing the rest of their lives. The rest of us, know that this is the total destruction of the America as it was, the bastion of fiscal responsibility, the financial standard of the world.

The election today will hopefully change that in a major way...as it needs to be changed. Future plans for this president included a bevy of fiscally irresponsible actions such as forced union membership, union pension bailouts, crony cap and trade legislation, onerous fuel standards, higher electric bills, and staggering increases in health care costs.

How can anyone support such policies, other than those who are uninformed?

The end is one day away....HELP...just in the nick of time...but still we are burdened with the fiscal disaster awaiting the future generations.

There is no reason that we have to give everyone who can not afford it, FREE STUFF: housing, health care, food, utility payments, etc....let's get them to WORK instead.

A growing economy " floats all boats".

Let's start floating,,,,,today's election will be a start.

GOVERNMENT SOFT PEDALING ON UNEMPLOYMENT DATA, CONINUES TO MISLEAD THE ACTUAL NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED AMERICANS

Gallup Finds U.S. Unemployment at 10.1% in September
Underemployment, at 18.8%, is up from 18.6% at the end of August
by Dennis Jacobe, Chief Economist

PRINCETON, NJ -- Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, increased to 10.1% in September -- up sharply from 9.3% in August and 8.9% in July. Much of this increase came during the second half of the month -- the unemployment rate was 9.4% in mid-September -- and therefore is unlikely to be picked up in the government's unemployment report on Friday.

Certain groups continue to fare worse than the national average. For example, 15.8% of Americans aged 18 to 29 and 13.9% of those with no college education were unemployed in September.

The increase in the unemployment rate component of Gallup's underemployment measure is partially offset by fewer part-time workers, 8.7%, now wanting full-time work, down from 9.3% in August and 9.5% at the end of July.

As a result, underemployment shows a more modest increase to 18.8% in September from 18.6% in August, though it is up from 18.4% in July. Underemployment peaked at 20.4% in April and has yet to fall below 18.3% this year.

Friday's Unemployment Rate Report Likely to Understate

The government's final unemployment report before the midterm elections is based on job market conditions around mid-September. Gallup's modeling of the unemployment rate is consistent with Tuesday's ADP report of a decline of 39,000 private-sector jobs, and indicates that the government's national unemployment rate in September will be in the 9.6% to 9.8% range. This is based on Gallup's mid-September measurements and the continuing decline Gallup is seeing in the U.S. workforce during 2010.

However, Gallup's monitoring of job market conditions suggests that there was a sharp increase in the unemployment rate during the last couple of weeks of September. It could be that the anticipated slowdown of the overall economy has potential employers even more cautious about hiring. Some of the increase could also be seasonal or temporary.

Further, Gallup's underemployment measure suggests that the percentage of workers employed part time but looking for full-time work is declining as the unemployment rate increases. To some degree, this may reflect a reduced company demand for new part-time employees. For example, employers may be converting some existing part-time workers to full time when they are needed as replacements, but may not in turn be hiring replacement part-time workers. Another explanation may relate to the shrinkage of the workforce, as some employees who have taken part-time work in hopes of getting full-time jobs get discouraged and drop out of the workforce completely -- going back to school to enhance their education, for example, instead of doing part-time work. It is even possible that some workers may find unemployment insurance a better alternative than part-time work with little prospect of going full time.

Regardless, the sharp increase in the unemployment rate during late September does not bode well for the economy during the fourth quarter, or for holiday sales. In this regard, it is essential that the Federal Reserve and other policymakers not be misled by Friday's jobs numbers. The jobs picture could be deteriorating more rapidly than the government's job release suggests.

Survey Methods

Gallup classifies American workers as underemployed if they are either unemployed or working part time but wanting full-time work. The findings reflect more than 18,000 phone interviews with U.S. adults aged 18 and older in the workforce, collected over a 30-day period. Gallup's results are not seasonally adjusted and tend to be a precursor of government reports by approximately two weeks.

Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking Sept. 1-30, 2010, with a random sample of 18,146 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, selected using random-digit-dial sampling.

For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each daily sample includes a minimum quota of 150 cell phone respondents and 850 landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents for gender within region. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.

Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, adults in the household, cell phone-only status, cell phone-mostly status, and phone lines. Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2009 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older non-institutionalized population living in U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting and sample design.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

For more details on Gallup's polling methodology, visit www.gallup.com.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE PRESIDENT IS AGAINST THE COUNTRY AND ITS GREATNESS, ACCUSES IT OF GREED AND TOO MUCH SUCCESS?

Lately the President has started again demonizing industry, demonizing banks, insurance companies, and businessmen in general as somehow being against the "people". Divide and conquer is the name of the game and not UNITY>

Has he forgotten that most people actually work for a living in a "business" that provides their livelihood? Why is the administration of a "uniter" consistently dividing the country by race, class, ethnic origin and finances and success. Success is put down, and hate of the successful people is emphasized.

Fiery speeches comparing constantly to slavery the current apparent condition of the population, is getting the county no-place. Demonizing employers, adding to the cost burden of employers though unnecessary mandates ranging from how to dispose of the waste water after washing your service truck to how many gallons are maximum per flush, is not making America or Americans more successful or happy.

The worst fears and forecasts relating to the onerous OBAMACARE mandates are starting to creep in. Employers are already warning of sharp cost increases for health care premiums, and many have announced that they will be canceling coverage altogether with the employees having to be covered on "government" plans of which realistically there are none at present.

On further analysis, there is absolutely nothing that this new "historic" president had done or said that has improved America's standing in the world, improved the life of any American, employed more people or made the population happier and more content-NOTHING.

Furthermore, through ill advised draconian measures, we are the ONLY country that is NOT drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, while all the others there are sucking up the oil for their own use. The entire group of well paid employees working the rigs for US companies are out of work for no good reason.

It is hard to imagine, that a President would work to actually destroy the economic base of America though his policies and through class envy.

Here are some comments from readers of the WASHINGTON POST, a truly liberal paper, and there was not one comment favoring the president's actions to date...the comments are very interesting, as an insight into the distortions and outright lies put out by the administration in recent speeches.

Here are some of the comments:

In November 2008, more than half of American voters were hypnotized by this mysterious, messianic figure on whom they pinned all their hopes and dreams. But since then, many have gradually realized their shining savior was really an incompetent, deceptive, pathologically narcissistic man entranced by an evil ideology that has left a trail of unprecedented misery and death for 100 years.
"Change" has indeed come to America, but not the kind most people had "hoped" for.

uconnors wrote:
The headline should be...Obama takes his "offensiveness" to GOP country. 32 days.....Nov. 2, 2010

JW13 wrote:
Yeah, I'd say it's offensive alright. The only question is "Does he know he sounds like a nut? Or does he really believe this crap?" Unfortunately, the poor that he and his party have worked overtime to keep that way will buy his bs. Fortunately, those who started watching politics for the first time in a long time are seeing what a bankrupt ideology the left has developed. How pathetic.

gobnait06 wrote:
Still the left tries to convince you that the RIGHT is crazy and dangerous, that the RIGHT is responsible for our crises, that the RIGHT is the one with the problem. It would be hilarious if it weren't so sad.

bucksaw wrote:
Barry has made us his slaves!

larry22 wrote:
Obama planned to use his cap-and-trade legislation to "de-industrialize" America, thereby shrinking our national economy and job market for the middle-class in order to "re-distribute" our nation's wealth creation ability to China, South America, and other parts of Asia to finally create true social and economic justice on a global scale. But, when Obamaonomics produced a middle-class unemployment rate of 30% who was Obama going blame? Greedy capitalist corporations and their Republican stooges?

When America no longer has the national wealth creation abilities through our free market capitalist system to pay the bill for Obamacare and other progressive, social justice, welfare programs was Obama going to blame Bush for this, too!?!?

Obama said he wanted to see a day when the greedy US economy no longer drives the global economy. To achieve this day Obama has to create a nightmare for the middle-class by damaging our economy's ability to grow and create "greedy" wealth. Obama believes growth of the US economy damages the global economy. However, growth of our economy drives the growth of the global economy!!! It is not a zero-sum gain where our nation has to lose in order for other nations to gain.

When America grows others grow as well to the benefit of everyone, not the chosen elite, radical, leftwing, progressive few as is the case in all socialist, totalitarian societies.

Obama, the smartest president in our nation's history, doesn't seem to have even a basic grasp of Economics 101.

bahmi wrote:
Keep giving me candy, stupid people. I will cut your guts out, you stupid people. You haven't seen anything yet. I will make this country just another third world nation, you won't know what hit you, stupid people. Listen to me, idiots. I am the Messiah. You are the losers, now pay up.

uconnors wrote:
5000 characters? Not necessary ! Obama is a "joke"...albeit a dangerous one. It is obvious he is triggering and ginning up his African-American base. His tactic is disgusting. We begin the long process of making inroads into this National nightmare on November 2, 2010. 32 days

herzik wrote:
This country wants to be united again, like we were right after 9/11. But this president continues to divide us, the country does not have a problem with his race, we just have a problem that he continues to ignore what "We the people" want. The democrats have shoved everything down our throats and they and the president continue to move farther and farther left. Until they wake up and realize acting like the Republicans are poison they will never find favor again. I am a independent and will not vote for another democrat until I see them start to listen to the people again. I am fired up more and more when I see statements like this from the president and Pelosi. I hope things are turned upside down in November, and they all have to remember who is really in charge and that is us, "We the People". Wake up America!!!! Take a stand or watch this country continue to crumble!

gobnait06 wrote:
Why is anyone surprised by the state of this country and the impending implosion of this so-called leader? If you had only listened when the few of us who weren't taken in by his unctuous, disingenuous manner and blatant lies, we wouldn't be in this mess. When the MSM dismissed or tried to explain away his unsavory associations, when liberal pundits mocked and debased the right for questioning his motives, you believed them and looked the other way. When Michelle Obama told you that 'Barack wasn't going to let you go back to your old ways', you should have paid attention. The ominous remarks that Obama made before his inauguration, "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming this country"terrified some of us; did you think he was kidding? The signs were there, screaming in your faces. You chose to ignore them and not DEMAND answers and now. we are ALL paying dearly. NOW you're angry. NOW you're worried. You're about three years too late.

rjhasko wrote:
Slaves? Really? We are witnessing the beginning of the inevitable obama meltdown. And do we need any more proof of obama's racist motivations?

songsmithdan wrote:
"hoodwink a whole bunch of folks all across the country" Does that include the democrats that have gone AWOL from his policies? Have they left him for a reason? It it's possible for Bush to be wrong, while Obama does the same things Bush did (while saying "bush policies failed), just who's doing the "hoodwinking". Obama really thinks the people he speaks to are not capable of common sense.

OrnleyGumfudgen wrote:
It's a shame our liar and moron in chief is so intellectually and historically challenged. He utterly fails to comprehend the reason slavery didn't end instantly was largely due to the fact we didn't have instantaneous global communications technologies that cover the earth in a matter of seconds rather than a communications system that took days, weeks, months and even years to discriminate information.

JohnLeeHooker1 wrote:
It was said by other posters: Odumbo, our Erkel president, is a pathetic little man who never misses an opportunity to inject race into the discussion.

acalmingeffect wrote:
This ObombaClown has been EXPOSED as a Fraud, The Hope & Change Magic Pixie Dust has lost its Mystical Powers.It Now only works on the Stupid Gullible Weak and Lazy who are still waiting by the Mailbox for the Unicorn & Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory . Trusting ObombaClown with the Safety & Security of this country is like letting your 9yr old son do a sleep over @ Micheal Jackson's Neverland Ranch

Rightly wrote:
Why does the media persist in the "Bush Era tax cuts for the rich" fallacy. Check the facts. A great many of the tax cuts (capital gains rates, dividend rates) affect people earning well under $200,000. The media support of this tax cuts for the rich line is one of the great Democratic triumphs in this campaign.

SamIam9 wrote:
What a disgrace this president is. What an embarrassment. What a mistake some people made in electing him. The man deceived the nation and lied about who and what he was but evidence of the truth about him was out prior to the election so there is no excuse.

If you helped inflict this catastrophe on our country you must begin to make amends next election by voting for divided government that can at least slow down his destructive agenda and policies.

fbanta wrote:
Is there anything that the president hasn't lied about? How can anyone listen to him when he has lied to us about every policy he has promoted?

He told us that if we gave him $1 Trillion that unemployment wouldn't exceed 8%: he lied.

He told us that he was suspending drilling in the Gulf (sending the only high paying jobs left in the Gulf to Brazil) because his 'expert panel' told him to: he lied!

He told us that healthcare reform would reduce costs for everyone: He Lied! He said we could keep our existing plans: He Lied! He told us we could keep our doctors: He lied! He told us there wouldn't be rationing: He Lied!

He told us that the surge in Iraq wouldn't work: he lied! He told us he had a plan for Afghanistan: he lied!

He told us he would post all legislation on the Internet for 5 days before signing it: he lied!

He told us he'd bring new transparency to government: he lied-with backroom deals with Big Pharma and Big Healthcare; Big Unions: all done in secret.

He told us he would build bridges and bring Americans together: he Lied! He's the most divisive president in our history, intentionally driving wedges between large segments of our population for his own purposes.

He told us that he would go through the Budget line by line to eliminate ineffective programs: he lied! Instead he added a layer of czars (un-vetted by Congress) over the existing Cabinet infrastructure. And, we still don't have a Budget!

He blames the opposition for failure to pass legislation although he has a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and an overwhelming majoriy in the House: he lies!

He said he would "fundamentally transform the USA": and he is doing his best to do so: but he has no Constitutional authority to do so and must be impeached for usurping powers not delegated.

gneubeck wrote:
Barack is fond of complaining of late that his opponents: "treat me like I'm a dawg". Well Barack, has it ever occurred to you that it just might be the Marxist dawg food that you've become fond of trying to force down the throats of a Center-Right America? Quite a difference from the $100/lb Kobe beef, lobster thermidore, and caviar that you and Michelle have become accustomed to as your standard WH fare. When is your next AF #1 sojourn to New York for a 5-star dinner and a Broadway show? It's become obvious to most by both your incendiary remarks and your conduct, particularly in the presence of foreigners, that you are the most anti-American President in our history. Your haven't said what kind of Dawg you envision yourself as; but for certain, the American electorate will neuter you this coming November. Greg Neubeck

BigLouie wrote:
Taking the words from John Kerry 'The electorate is uniformed' and as a result in 2008 they elected this liar who was supposed to rise above racism. However, much to the dismay of many, he and his AG - Holder have done nothing but exhibit and promote RACIST behavior. He is setting back many gains made by the blacks. MLK would take this guy to the wood shed.

IT IS HARD TO BELIEVE THAT ALL THESE COMMENTS FROM FROM A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER, THE WRITING IN ON THE WALL, THE POPULATION WHICH HAS BEEN TAKEN FOR GRANTED as dumb votes, is waking up and wants its country back?

The USA, ostensibly the most successful country in the history of the world, a country that has advanced the working class status to being able to live comfortably, own homes, several cars, and have plenty of food to be purchased on every corner, is now being ridiculed for its success by its own president!

The President who has personally profited from his status as a "black-man" though universities which gave passing grades, through no real jobs all on the public dole, and he now has reported over $5 million of cash in the bank though book deals and the like is now demonizing other who worked to achieve financial success...go figure!

LIES AND LIES ABOUT OBAMACARE HAS COME HOME TO ROOST AND THE VOTERS ARE ANGRY ABOUT ALL THE LIES THAT ARE NOW BEING EXPOSED

Six months ago, President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rammed Obamacare down the throats of an unwilling American public. Half a year removed from the unprecedented legislative chicanery and backroom dealing that characterized the bill's passage, we know much more about the bill than we did then. A few of the revelations:

» Obamacare won't decrease health care costs for the government. According to Medicare's actuary, it will increase costs. The same is likely to happen for privately funded health care.

» As written, Obamacare covers elective abortions, contrary to Obama's promise that it wouldn't. This means that tax dollars will be used to pay for a procedure millions of Americans across the political spectrum view as immoral. Supposedly, the Department of Health and Human Services will bar abortion coverage with new regulations but these will likely be tied up for years in litigation, and in the end may not survive the court challenge.

» Obamacare won't allow employees or most small businesses to keep the coverage they have and like. By Obama's estimates, as many as 69 percent of employees, 80 percent of small businesses, and 64 percent of large businesses will be forced to change coverage, probably to more expensive plans.

» Obamacare will increase insurance premiums -- in some places, it already has. Insurers, suddenly forced to cover clients' children until age 26, have little choice but to raise premiums, and they attribute to Obamacare's mandates a 1 to 9 percent increase. Obama's only method of preventing massive rate increases so far has been to threaten insurers.

» Obamacare will force seasonal employers -- especially the ski and amusement park industries -- to pay huge fines, cut hours, or lay off employees.

» Obamacare forces states to guarantee not only payment but also treatment for indigent Medicaid patients. With many doctors now refusing to take Medicaid (because they lose money doing so), cash-strapped states could be sued and ordered to increase reimbursement rates beyond their means.

» Obamacare imposes a huge nonmedical tax compliance burden on small business. It will require them to mail IRS 1099 tax forms to every vendor from whom they make purchases of more than $600 in a year, with duplicate forms going to the Internal Revenue Service. Like so much else in the 2,500-page bill, our senators and representatives were apparently unaware of this when they passed the measure.

» Obamacare allows the IRS to confiscate part or all of your tax refund if you do not purchase a qualified insurance plan. The bill funds 16,000 new IRS agents to make sure Americans stay in line.

If you wonder why so many American voters are angry, and no longer give Obama the benefit of the doubt on a variety of issues, you need look no further than Obamacare, whose birthday gift to America might just be a GOP congressional majority.

ABOVE IS FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion

GOVERNMENT "SURPRISED" BY INCREASE IN JOBLESS CLAIMS, IT EXPECTED LESS AND LESS, AFTER ALL THE RECESSION WAS OVER A YEAR AGO!

Is it any surprise that the government is surprised about their predictions not being on target?

It seems that the government is surprised about everything it is predicting, or has predicted, and that somehow all the magical things that should have happened, have not in fact happened at all!

The simple fact is that the government honchos, most of whom have never lived in the real world, or were elites looking only at theory rather than reality through their university positions or the like,do not have a "connection" with the daily realities we all face. These include creeping increases in the cost of daily necessities such as gasoline,electricity, heating and cooking gas, and just about everything else.

Most importantly, the businesses that employ the majority of Americans, are carefully watching their dwindling profits collapsing and thus are forced to consider layoffs, just to remain viable. The thinking that they will keep a long time employee "just in case" business picks up is no longer the case, as realities take hold.

There is no surprise in the jobless claims, the increase in only the beginning of what will be a continuing trend as long as the nasty new mandates are in place and more are schduled to start in the future.

There is a little ray of hope in that some of the future mandates can be killed, or defunded after the November elections which foretell a backlash by voters, and may sweep in a new majority opposed to the continued destruction of jobs and finances of working people.

When the jobless start to have no jobs to replace those they lost, it becomes a strange circle of lower paying future jobs that will be replacing the ones that were lost, and this will cause a lower living standard for this entire group of people.

Thus, it will be no surprise when the jobless claims continue for a while to rise and the unemployed will stay that way or will finally accept lower paying jobs...which will inevitably cause a domino effect on the entire economy.

The result will be the continuation of loss of value in homes, in less demand from consumers for hard goods, clothing and automobiles most of which will be beyond the cost afforded by the average worker.

Government needs to get out of the way, and follow the advice of a former famous CEO, Lee Iaccoca, who said, " lead, follow or get out of the way". Right now it is only standing in the way, leading the country on the wrong path, and refusing adamantley to follow the will of the people.

GOVERNMENT PROPOSES THAT ALL EMPLOYEE PAYCHECKS FIRST GO THE THE GOVERNMENT, AND THEN BE SENT TO EMPLOYEES-INSANITY IS STARTING

AS UNBELIEVABLE AS IT SOUNDS. the UK's tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer.

This is also something that the administration supports!

The proposal by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) stresses the need for employers to provide real-time information to the government so that it can monitor all payments and make a better assessment of whether the correct tax is being paid.

This is one of the craziest schemes yet proposed by the government which now needs to be removed, and sane people elected.

Currently employers withhold tax and pay the government, providing information at the end of the year, a system know as Pay as You Earn (PAYE). There is no option for those employees to refuse withholding and individually file a tax return at the end of the year.

If the real-time information plan works, it further proposes that employers hand over employee salaries to the government first.

"The next step could be to use (real-time) information as the basis for centralizing the calculation and deduction of tax," HMRC said in a July discussion paper.

HMRC described the plan as "radical" as it would be a huge change from the current system that has been largely unchanged for 66 years.

Even though the centralized deductions proposal would provide much-needed oversight, there are some major concerns, George Bull, head of Tax at Baker Tilly, told CNBC.com.

"If HMRC has direct access to employees' bank accounts and makes a mistake, people are going to feel very exposed and vulnerable," Bull said.

And the chance of widespread mistakes could be high, according to Bull. HMRC does not have a good track record of handling large computer systems and has suffered high-profile errors with data, he said.

The system would be massive in terms of data management, larger than a recent attempt to centralize the National Health Service's data, which was later scrapped, Bull said.

If there's a mistake and the HMRC collects too much money, the difficulty of getting it back could be high with repayments of tax taking weeks or months, he said.

"There has to be some very clear understanding of how quickly repayments were made if there was a mistake," Bull said.

HMRC estimated the potential savings to employers from the introduction of the concept would be about £500 million ($780 million).

But the cost of implementing the new system would be "phenomenal," Bull pointed out.

"It's very clear that the system does need to be modernized… It's outdated, it's outmoded," Emma Boon, campaigner manager at the Tax Payers' Alliance, told CNBC.com.

Boon said that the Tax Payers' Alliance was in favor of simplifying tax collection, but stressed that a new complex computer system would add infrastructure and administration costs at a time when the government is trying to reduce spending.

There is a further concern, according to Bull. The centralized storage of so much data poises a security risk as the system may be open to cyber crime.

As well as security issues, there's a huge issue of transparency, according to Boon.

Boon also questioned HMCR's ability to handle to the role effectively.

The Institute of Directors (IoD), a UK organization created to promote the business agenda of directors and entreprenuers, said in a press release it had major concerns about the proposal to allow employees' pay to be paid directly to HMRC.

Are you kidding, "major concerns?" is that all they can say. The government does not have any idea of handling some of the simplest tasks, now it wants this?

WHO IS WATCHING THE $800 BILLION OF STIMULUS SPENDING...APPARENTLY NOBODY AS $823,000 SPENT ON "PENIS WASHING" STUDY OF AFRICAN MEN ( STIMULUS??)

Feds Spent $800,000 of Economic Stimulus on African Genital-Washing Program
We discivered another necessary use of STIMULUS MONEY.

AS YOU MAY RECALL THIS stimulus WAS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY TO SAVE THE UNITED STATES. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent $823,200 of economic stimulus funds in 2009 on a study by a UCLA research team to teach uncircumcised African men how to wash their genitals after having sex.

The genitalia-washing program is part of a larger $12-million UCLA study examining how to better encourage Africans to undergo voluntary HIV testing and counseling – however, only the penis-washing study received money from the 2009 economic stimulus law. The washing portion of the study is set to end in 2011.

“NIH Announces the Availability of Recovery Act Funds for Competitive Revision Applications,” the grant abstract states. “We propose to evaluate the feasibility of a post-coital genital hygiene study among men unwilling to be circumcised in Orange Farm, South Africa.”

Because AIDS researchers have been unsuccessful in convincing most adult African men to undergo circumcision, the UCLA study proposes to determine whether researchers can develop an after-sex genitalia-washing regimen that they can then convince uncircumcised African men to follow.

“The aim of the proposed feasibility study is to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a post-coital male genital hygiene procedure, which participants will be asked to practice immediately post-coitus or at least 12 hours after,” reads the abstract.

Entitled “Community-Based HIV VCT: South Africa,” the name of the broader umbrella project, the program plans to test how well received the penis-washing regimen is among South African men.

If most of the men in the study wash their genitals after sex, are willing to do so after the study ends, and report that their partners accept the regimen, the researchers will develop another study to see if the “penile cleansing procedure” actually works to prevent HIV infections.

“If we find that men are able to practice consistent washing practices after sex, we will plan to test whether this might protect men from becoming HIV infected in a later study,” the grant says.

The study’s lead investigator Dr. Thomas J. Coates was the fourth highest-funded researcher in the country in 2002 and is currently conducting HIV research on three continents.

CNSNews.com asked both Coates and NIMH the following question: “The Census Bureau says the median household income in the United States is $52,000. How would you explain to the average American mom and dad -- who make $52,000 per year -- that taxing them to pay for this grant was justified?”

Coates, who was unavailable for comment, directed CNSNews.com to ask grant-related questions of his assistant, Darya Freedman, who did not respond.

The NIMH also declined to respond to CNSNews.com’s question.

NATION'S DEFICIT HAS GROWN MORE IN THE LAST TWO YEARS THAN IN THE FIRST 200 YEARS DUE TO FISCAL MISMANAGEMENT

During the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan.

The U.S. Treasury Department divides the federal debt into two categories. One is “debt held by the public,” which includes U.S. government securities owned by individuals, corporations, state or local governments, foreign governments and other entities outside the federal government itself. The other is “intragovernmental” debt, which includes I.O.U.s the federal government gives to itself when, for example, the Treasury borrows money out of the Social Security “trust fund” to pay for expenses other than Social Security.

At the end of fiscal year 1989, which ended eight months after President Reagan left office, the total federal debt held by the public was $2.1907 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That means all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan had accumulated only that much publicly held debt on behalf of American taxpayers. That is $335.3 billion less than the $2.5260 trillion that was added to the federal debt held by the public just between Jan. 20, 2009, when President Obama was inaugurated, and Aug. 20, 2010, the 19-month anniversary of Obama's inauguration.

By contrast, President Reagan was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 1981 and left office eight years later on Jan. 20, 1989. At the end of fiscal 1980, four months before Reagan was inaugurated, the federal debt held by the public was $711.9 billion, according to CBO. At the end of fiscal 1989, eight months after Reagan left office, the federal debt held by the public was $2.1907 trillion. That means that in the nine-fiscal-year period of 1980-89--which included all of Reagan’s eight years in office--the federal debt held by the public increased $1.4788 trillion. That is in excess of a trillion dollars less than the $2.5260 increase in the debt held by the public during Obama’s first 19 months.

When President Barack Obama took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, the total federal debt held by the public stood at 6.3073 trillion, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department. As of Aug. 20, 2010, after the first nineteen months of President Obama’s 48-month term, the total federal debt held by the public had grown to a total of $8.8333 trillion, an increase of $2.5260 trillion.

In just the last four months (May through August), according to the CBO, the Obama administration has run cumulative deficits of $464 billion, more than the $458 billion deficit the Bush administration ran through the entirety of fiscal 2008.

The CBO predicted this week that the annual budget deficit for fiscal 2010, which ends on the last day of this month, will exceed $1.3 trillion.

The first two fiscal years in which Obama has served will see the two biggest federal deficits as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product since the end of World War II.

“CBO currently estimates that the deficit for 2010 will be about $70 billion below last year’s total but will still exceed $1.3 trillion,” said the CBO’s monthly budget review for September, which was released yesterday. “Relative to the size of the economy, this year’s deficit is expected to be the second-largest shortfall in the past 65 years: At 9.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), that deficit will be exceeded only by last year’s deficit of 9.9 percent of GDP.”

USA SLIPPING AS A COMPETITIVE ECONOMY DUE TO HUGE DEFICITS AND PESSIMISM ABOUT GOVERNMENT

The U.S. has slipped down the ranks of competitive economies, falling behind Sweden and Singapore due to huge deficits and pessimism about government, a global economic group said Thursday.

Switzerland retained the top spot for the second year in the annual ranking by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum. It combines economic data and a survey of more than 13,500 business executives.

Sweden moved up to second place while Singapore stayed at No. 3. The United States was in second place last year after falling from No. 1 in 2008.

The WEF praised the United States for its innovative companies, excellent universities and flexible labor market. But it also cited huge deficits, rising government debt and declining public faith in politicians and corporate ethics.

"There has been a weakening of the United States' public and private institutions, as well as lingering concerns about the state of its financial markets," the group said.

Mapping a clear strategy for exiting the huge U.S. stimulus "will be an important step in reinforcing the country's competitiveness," it said.

The report was released in Beijing ahead of a WEF-organized gathering of global business executives next week in neighboring Tianjin. The group is best known for its annual Davos meeting of corporate leaders.

The report ranks 139 countries by assessing business efficiency, innovation, financial markets, health, education, institutions, infrastructure and other factors.

The United States was followed by Germany, Japan, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Canada.

Switzerland held its top rank due to its strong innovation, evenhanded regulation and one of the world's most stable economic environments.

The WEF cited education and regulation as key areas for improvement in a number of economies and warned leaders not to lose sight of long-term needs as they struggle with the global crisis.

"For economies to remain competitive, they must ensure that they have in place those factors driving the productivity enhancements on which their present and future prosperity is built," one of the report's co-authors, Columbia University economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin, said in a statement.

China performed best among major developing economies, rising two places from last year to 27th based on its large and growing market, economic stability and increasing sophistication of its businesses.

Japan gained two places, helped by strong innovative abilities, though its status was hurt by the country's two-decade-old financial malaise.

Greece plunged 12 places to 83rd, plagued by a debt crisis and mounting public concern about corruption and government inefficiency, according to the WEF.

GENERAL MOTORS RISES FROM THE DEAD AS "NOSFERATU" THE UNDEAD ONLY TO SHAFT INVESTORS AGAIN SOON; PROSPECTUS DISCLOSES SCARY INFORMATION

GM, as the undead creature formed by a government committee, having shafted its previous stockholders is attempting to shaft some new ones once again though its new IPO stock offering. The purpose of the IPO is to generate funds to pay off old loans and to give a value to the unions and other constituencies created in that financial debacle orchestrated by the Obama administration which circumvented all bankruptcy laws.

General Motors Co. will have to persuade investors to look past declining market share, less than a year of profitability and management new to the auto industry to buy shares in its initial public offering.

GM, 61 percent owned by the U.S., said yesterday its North America market share may fall by 2014, while the company has forecast earnings growth will slow in the second half of the year after a two-quarter return to profitability. The automaker must have a market capitalization of $69.4 billion after the IPO for the government to be able to break even on its investment, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

GM’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday laid out the challenges the Detroit-based company will face generating enough investor demand to complete an offering that people familiar with the plan have said may be as large as $16 billion.

“It will be a tough sell because the company has only posted two quarterly profits and the CEO is stepping down,” said Peter Jankovskis, who oversees $2.3 billion as co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments in Lisle, Illinois. “Those aren’t the normal types of things associated with an IPO that’s going to be highly subscribed.”

The company must be worth even more than the $69.4 billion for the U.S. to fully recover its investment if the bondholders and the United Auto Workers union exercise warrants and dilute the government’s stake, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That’s more than three times the value of GM’s equity at the end of the last bull market in U.S. stocks and 65 percent higher than Ford Motor Co.’s market capitalization of $42 billion.

Profit Forecast

GM posted profit of $865 million in the first quarter and $1.54 billion in the second quarter. Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said last week he expected earnings to moderate in the second half, without giving a specific target.

Recent economic reports have signaled the U.S.’s recovery from the longest recession since the Great Depression is deteriorating. Unemployment claims unexpectedly rose in the first week of August and sales at retailers increased less than forecast last month, reports showed last week. The Federal Reserve said Aug. 10 that the pace of recovery will probably be “more modest” than forecast.

“This is going to be harder than it would have been if the economy and the auto market were in better shape,” said Joe Phillippi, principal of AutoTrends Inc., a consulting firm in Short Hills, New Jersey. “Every week, people are ratcheting down their outlook for the economy and that will affect the price of this deal.”

Fleet Sales

GM and other automakers have sold more vehicles this year to rental and government fleets, which tend to be less profitable than retail sales. GM said yesterday that fleet sales were 32.3 percent of its volume in the first half of this year, up from 24.7 percent last year. Ford got 31 percent of its sales from fleets this year, according to Automotive News.

Such purchases will account for 25 percent to 27 percent of sales for the year, Liddell said last week.

Retaining its share of the North American auto sales also will be a challenge, GM said. The company now has 17.8 percent of the market and forecasts that will slip to 17.6 percent by 2014.

GM’s past dominance of U.S. auto sales has shrunk steadily since its market share peaked at 51 percent in 1962. Since 2002, when the company’s share of new vehicle sales in the U.S. was 28.4 percent, it’s fallen every year to just 19.2 percent this year through July.

The last time GM accounted for a smaller share of new U.S. vehicle sales on an annual basis was in 1925, according to data from trade publication Automotive News.

‘Public Perception’

GM said competitors have succeeded in poaching its customers because of a “negative public perception” of its products.

“It’s something they have been working on for a few years, said Rebecca Lindland, director of IHS Automotive, in Lexington, Massachusetts. ‘‘They’re starting to see some results, but it’s an ongoing battle for them.”

GM also may face a decline in the Chinese market, where the company is a top performer and highly profitable, AutoTrends’ Phillippi said.

GM’s second-quarter sales for the Chinese market fell to 586,000 from 624,000 in the first quarter. GM’s share in China fell to 13.1 percent in the second quarter from 13.3 percent in the first quarter, the company said last week.

New Management

GM flagged its new management team as a potential risk yesterday. Chief Executive Officer Ed Whitacre, 68, said last week that he would step down as CEO Sept. 1 and as chairman at the end of the year, ceding both titles to Dan Akerson, a managing director of the Carlyle Group. Akerson, 61, has been on GM’s board since July 2009 and previously served as chairman and CEO of XO Communications, Nextel Communications and General Instrument Corp.

In its prospectus, GM said the lack of automotive industry experience for Akerson, the company’s fourth CEO since April 2009, and Liddell, who previously CFO for Microsoft Corp. and International Paper Co., was a risk.

Steve Rattner, who led the Obama Administration’s Auto Task Force, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television that Whitacre should have stayed longer.

“It is not optimal for a company to have four CEOs in a year and a half,” Rattner said. “That is not best management practice.”

Some investors will be willing to shoulder the risk because GM has potential for greater profits and growth, said Michael Yoshikami, who oversees about $1 billion as chief investment strategist at YCMNet Advisors in Walnut Creek, California.

“It’s going to well-received by investors,” Yoshikami said. “People believe GM is coming back.”

He said he doesn’t plan to buy the shares for his firm because it’s not a conservative enough investment. Ha ha, better than saying its very stupid as a buy.

Wait till you see how many people do not buy the products it is being forced to sell like its 40 mile electric power car..??

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- For those who are interested in buying General Motors once it goes public again, you won't be able to say you weren't warned.

The GM prospectus has plenty of scary material in it. Admittedly, every company does -- that's their lawyers' job. But there are plenty of factors worth giving pause to snapping up the company when it re-lists, above and beyond the larger concerns about the state of the automotive markets.

The first version of course doesn't list the price of the 500 million common shares it plans to sell. But in any event, those shares would be buying a company that earned $2.2 billion in the first half of this year on revenue of $64.7 billion -- a profit margin of 3.4%. Ford /quotes/comstock/13*!f/quotes/nls/f (F 11.93, +0.13, +1.10%) earned $4.5 billion on revenue of $59.4 billion, so it's more than twice as profitable.

Now it's no shock that Ford is in better shape than GM -- that's how Ford avoided bankruptcy in the first place. A Wall Street analyst could well say that GM has more upside, and that's undeniably true.

But look at all the balls GM is going to juggle. It's getting rid of 700 U.S. dealers and has axed four brands -- which, given other companies' experiences has led GM to conclude that "our market share could decline because of these reductions" from its current top position of 19% in North America.

GM is also worried that four years down the road, it may have to make "significant contributions" to its U.S. defined pension plan that was underfunded by $17 billion at the end of 2009 -- when the interest rates of corporate bonds were higher.

The old GMAC, now called Ally Financial, doesn't have the financing power of old; the vaunted Chevy Volt relies on battery power "that has not yet proven to be commercially viable"; the top two executives don't have previous automotive experience; and, not to be ignored, its controls over financial reporting "are currently not effective."

Just as with Ford, there are no dividends on offer, and while it's dumped previous healthcare obligations, new ones are coming on stream.

Now granted, GM's strong in China, has virtually no short-term debt obligations and has $31.5 billion of cash. But as GM has shown, cash can get burned up rather quickly.

Plus, there's the small matter of the economy on shaky footing.

Until the price is set, it's obviously impossible to say whether GM is a buy or sell. But investors may want to pause before joining the United States and Canadian governments and the United Auto Workers as co-owners.

GOVERNMENT IS CLUELESS ABOUT HOW TO STIMULATE JOBS; TAX CREDITS ARE OF NO USE WHEN THERE IS NO DEMAND FOR THE PRODUCTS MADE BY "NEW" EMPLOYEES!!!!

When the nation elected the new President who had touted HOPE AND CHANGE, they expected a positive change and hoped for it to happen.

The new President, being a totally inexperienced and naive community organizer, really has no idea about how any business really operates. He had chosen then to attempt to demonize every "big" business as somehow bad for the country, and oil companies, health care companies and the auto companies were the first recipients of the "change" announced previously.

Furthermore, the new President then decided to make executive level appointments of even more politically driven, agenda driven equally inexperienced people to run this country. So they proceeded to demonize more industries, more entrepreneurs and business in general.

Where do these guys think all the USA population will work? The answer is in a business!

After noticing that their rhetoric is not adding to business, the administration then concocted a variety of "business friendly" incentives to stimulate the hiring of employees. However, none of these stimulants are related to the "real world" of business, but are rather academic mumbo-jumbo concocted by inexperienced and agenda driven politico operatives that do not understand anything, (emphasis added anything) about what motivates a business to hire new employees.

For instance the center piece of their strategy was a TAX CREDIT, for every employee hired, but as usual there were so many restrictions and conditions, that no business has really even bothered to be incentivised to use such a credit.

There is absolutely no reason for a business to hire a new employee until there is a NEED FOR THE EMPLOYEE! Hello, does anyone out there understand this?

A tax credit also means that there has to be a taxable income to offset, and for many businesses, that is a very small amount, so there is no incentive per-se to add an employee. Why would I hire a new employee, if I got now stuck paying for health care, the added taxes at all levels for such an employee, and then receive a one time credit that I may not be able to use?

Clueleess is not the name of a movie, it is reality coming from our elected officials who are just adding to the problems of a business which is already burdened with needless regulations, taxes, tax forms, reports, compliances, mandates and threats of fines for every little thing.

The new OBAMACARE plans would force the providing of health care to employees, and that cost will become astronomical with all the conditions put on those plans.

So, the bottom line is that there will not be any job growth, when businesses do not see a pick up in business, since business adds employees wisely, unlike the government, and adds them when necessary not due to a tax credit.

HELP save us from our incompetent government...what have they done well, ever?

Every single government program, which was touted as the end all be all, is a disaster, every one: Social Security is broke; New Orleans rebuilding is broke; stimulus is broke; banking guarantee funds are broke; the budget is impossible and the country is only borrowing but is technically broke; welfare handouts, housing vouchers and medicaid is broke, AND SO ON AND SO ON.

Now, the government wants to make all business broke....what will then be left?

As a famous movie hero said, " stupid is as stupid does!".

ARIZONA BEING TAKEN OVER BY MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS WHILE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DOES NOTHING OTHER THAN PUT UP SIGNS WARNING OF DANGERS; YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN

Barack Obama ordered the federal government to post signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state of Arizona.

The signs were put up by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.

The signs warn travelers that they are entering an "active drug and human smuggling area" and they may encounter "armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed." Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to "use public lands north of Interstate 8" and to call 911 if they "see suspicious activity."

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, attests to the violence. He said his deputies are outmanned and outgunned by drug traffickers in the rough-hewn desert stretches of his own county.

"Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona," he said. "They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.

"This is going on here in Arizona," he said. "This is 70 to 80 miles from the border - 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States."

He said he asked the Obama administration for 3,000 National Guard soldiers to patrol the border, but what he got were 15 signs.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer condemned what she called the federal government's "continued failure to secure our international border," saying the lack of security has resulted in important natural recreational areas in her state being declared too dangerous to visit.

In a recent campaign video posted to YouTube, Mrs. Brewer - standing in front of one of the BLM signs - attacked the administration over the signs, calling them "an outrage" and telling President Obama to "Do your job. Secure our borders."

BLM spokesman Dennis Godfrey in Arizona said agency officials were surprised by the reaction the signs generated when they were put up this summer.

"We were perhaps naive in setting the signs up," he said. "The intention of the signs was to make the public aware that there is potential illegal activity here. But it was interpreted in a different light, and that was not the intent at all."

He said there should be "no sense that we have ceded the land," adding that no BLM lands in Arizona are closed to the public.

"I kind of liken it to if I were visiting a city I were not familiar with and asked a policeman if it were safe to go in a particular area," Mr. Godfrey said.

Rising violence along the border has coincided with a crackdown in Mexico on warring drug gangs, who are seeking control of smuggling routes into the United States.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has waged a bloody campaign against powerful cartels, yesterday announcing the arrest of Texas-born Edgar "La Barbie" Valdez - a powerful cartel leader captured outside of Mexico City on Monday evening.

More than 28,000 people have died since Mr. Calderon launched his crackdown in late 2006, and the bloodshed shows no sign of ending. Law enforcement authorities have been warning for more than two years that the dramatic rise in border violence eventually would spread into the U.S.

T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents all 17,500 of the Border Patrol's front-line agents, said areas well north of the border are so overrun by armed criminals that U.S. citizens are being warned to keep out of those locations.

"The federal government's lack of will to secure our borders is painfully evident when signs are posted well north of the border warning citizens that armed and dangerous criminals are roaming through those areas with impunity," he said. "Instead of taking the steps necessary to secure our borders, politicians are attempting to convince the public that our borders are more secure now than ever before.

"Fortunately, some responsible civil servants are candidly warning the public about the dangers that exist not just along the border but, in some cases, well beyond," he said. "This situation should alarm all sensible people, and should spur endless demands that our legislators take whatever actions are necessary to restore law and order to these areas."

Rep. Ted Poe, Texas Republican and a member of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees, said the federal government's new border security plan apparently is to "erect some signs telling you it's not safe to travel in our own country."

This process of non-action by the federal government has exposed this country and its citizens to dangers that can only result in the Destruction of America.