International Forecaster Weekly

Paxil Pushers Popped

Paxil Pushers Popped... Saddam's Lawyer... Michael Chertoff loves to use torture... 9 billion missing in Iraq... gifts to the rich and disgraces to the poor... and more

Bob Chapman | March 13, 2005

It took the FDA two years to finally send US Marshals to seize millions of tablets of the antidepressant Paxil CR, which had $725 million in sales last year and is used by 450,000 patients in the US each month; and Avandamet, a diabetes medicine, at facilities in Tennessee and Puerto Rico operated by Glaxo Smith Kline. The problems previously detected revealed that Paxil CR tablets tended to split, leaving patients with half a table with no medicine and another half with no buffering substance. We want to talk about last week’s BLS report on non-farm payrolls, which supposedly increased in February 262,000. Starting off, the 3/04 estimates have been revised upward by about 203,000 or 0.2%. Revisions have ranged from plus 0.2% to 0.5% over the past ten years. The BLS has factored in an 11/12ths increase into Fed numbers or 186,000. These new jobs were not 262,000 but 76,000. Then we must add in the hedonic adjustment of the BLS, so called birth/death model, which added 100,000 jobs. Consequently, we actually lost 24,000. This is pure accounting and pure manipulation of statistics and lies. A factoid for you to ponder, America spends $4 trillion on government. Russia spends about $40 billion. George Bush has the audacity and hypocrisy to criticize Russian President Putin for consolidating Russian federal power. Incidentally, Russia has no equivalent legislation such as the USA Patriot Acts. Furthermore, our neocons act more like communists than the Russians do. Last election Russia had 20 political parties on the ballot, we really had only two. We have a political, financial and economic mafia running our country, which we call elitists. They collectively are no better than common criminals. Russians of every possible political opinion have representation in the Duma, which is their Congress, while tens of millions of Americans have no voice at all in government for their political opinions.

Pat Buchanan asked recently why are McCain and Lieberman bully ragging Russia but not China? After all, Putin was elected, but Hu Jintao was not. Could it be that Chinese exports hold-down US inflation and that China holds hundreds of billions of dollars of our Treasury paper? Russia has an elected legislature with opposition parties. China has never held a free election. The Russian people have freedom of religion, China persecutes Christians. Russia threatens no US ally or the US. China threatens Taiwan. Hu Jintao is one of the world’s worst dictators. Why would our elitist perpetually want to consort to dictators? It is because they want to be world dictators via world government? We do not see George Bush upbraiding the Chinese, but he took a special trip to see President Putin to warn him against selling arms and getting involved in the Middle East and to instruct him to stop putting oligarchs out of business to the detriment of European banking interests, particularly the Rothschilds. As you can see, Mr. Bush’s priorities are that European banking interests control Russia - not how many Christians the Chinese liquidate. As it turns out Mr. Putin is defending his country against the elitists and in defending Russia’s interests in defending the interests of the American people. Presently the two biggest roadblocks to the elitist’s new world order are Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez. Things have sure changed in 15 short years.

We are not here to judge the 65-year old Ernst Zundel. We are here to speak about the rule of law or lack of it in both US and Canada. Mr. Zundel was detained in the US, jailed, sent to Canada and again detained for a total period of two years, In Canada, as in the US, if you commit an offense you are arrested. If you are not a flight risk, you receive bail. You can be held in custody until trail. In Zundel’s case, only secret trials were held. That is the path usually taken when pursuing terrorists. Mr. Zundel was stripped of his constitutional rights and deported. It was probably a relief for Mr. Zundel because two years of solitary confinement was enough. We now have judges who are a threat to our civil liberties, not only Mr. Zundel’s. This is to put us all on notice that if we disagree with any elitist opinion we will be thrown in jail until we recant, even though we have committed no crime. This is thought control at its worst and Orwellianism at its best. Remember, you may be next. We continue to hear how a revaluation of the yuan of 15% or 40% is going to solve America’s financial woes. Not on your life. We can never hope to compete with wages of $0.10 an hour even if they rise to $0.50 an hour. A strong yuan means goods exported to the US will be 15 to 40% more expensive and that means higher interest rates to try to counteract the higher inflation. The bottom line is a revaluation of the yuan will be very detrimental to our economy contrary to what those charlatans in Washington and on Wall Street tell us. You have nearly 10% inflation now; with a stronger yuan you might have 20%. A rise in interest rates will collapse the bond, stock and real estate markets. America needs saving badly. Presently, we have almost none. Those who believe higher interest rates will encourage saving are mistaken. Americans are buried in debt. Instead of saving in a crisis, they will be struggling to pay off debt and keep from going into bankruptcy. A 35% further drop in the dollar will not do the job. It has to be accompanied by 15-20% interest rates. The system has to be purged if it is to survive and the chance survival is 10-20%.

The following is an example of how the elitists control both sides of an argument. Saddam Hussein may have former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark on his defense team. Clark is the son of a former Supreme Court Justice. While serving under Lyndon Johnson in 1967 to 1969, he supervised the drafting and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. He is founder and chairman of the International Action Center, the largest antiwar movement in the country. You might ask why Clark is an elitist. We will prove it to you. Clark just returned to Iraq to open a law office with a former law partner of US Defense Undersecretary Douglas J. Feith, an elitist neocon, who had urged the US to overthrow Iraq and was a principal architect of US post war planning. What Clark represents is the loyal opposition. We have neocons prosecuting Saddam and we have an elitist representing him. Either Saddam gets a deliberate sleigh ride or they bury him. We will find out when it is all over.

Irrespective of how you feel about Saddam Hussein, he is a prisoner of war totally within the rules of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949. Thus far, all we have seen is blatant massive breaches of his basic rights under that convention by George Bush and his neocons who control the US government, which in and of themselves are war crimes against Saddam. This trial will be conducted in a manner, which probably can only bring about the death of Saddam. This will be a show trial and a kangaroo court with supposedly strong representation for Saddam by Clark. The conspiracy has to make it look good. Saddam Hussein was George H.W. Bush’s partner. They want to shut him up. We can assure you, he will either be executed or spend the rest of his life in solitary just as Rudolph Hess did.

We get the very worst. First it was Ashcroft, then Gonzales and now Michael Chertoff, who makes Gonzales look like a choirboy. Chertoff has been implicated in advising the CIA on the legality of various means of torturing detainees; not prisoners of war just anyone they choose. Needless to say, the White House lies and said he did nothing. We would not expect otherwise. According to the NY Times, Chertoff told the CIA that certain forms of torture were entirely permissible under the currently existing US anti-torture statute. That means the White House and the Justice Department approve unconditionally of torture. What this means fellow Americans is that very harsh interrogation techniques qualified as torture only if they were enough to cause organ failure or imminent death. These are the kind of monsters we have running our country. This is based on the Gonzales memo that approved the legal justification for the CIA and DOD to use brutal inhuman methods on suspects as documented by the FBI, CIA, the DIA, and the Justice Department. Aren’t you proud to be an American?

We find it very unusual that Michael Chertoff was confirmed by the Senate 98-0 and no one questioned the fact he is a dual citizen. We have someone who is Homeland Security Czar and among many agencies, he oversees the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Nowhere in the established media have we seen any reference to his being an Israeli. Even more interesting is that his mother played an important part in the creation of the Zionist state of Israel. If he were a dual citizen of any other country, we would raise the same question. Michael Chertoff is a "de jure" Israeli national by birth. How can we know where his sympathy’s lie?

As a political payoff to England and Italy, the new Navy helicopters will be manufactured by an international consortium headed by Lockheed Martin.

Before the National Governor’s Conference, Bill Gates tells us that he was ashamed and appalled to describe his reaction to the failure rates of students. He said only one-third of our students graduate from high school ready for college, work and citizenship. India in 2001, graduated almost a million more students form college than the US did; China graduates twice as many students with bachelor’s degrees as the US and they have six times as many graduates majoring in engineering. Someone should clue this elitist into teaching to the lowest common denominator and the perpetual dumbing-down process.

According to current and former government officials the Bush neocon secret program to transfer suspected terrorists to foreign countries for interrogation has been carried out by the CIA, under broad authority that has allowed it to act without case-by-case approval from the White House or the State or Justice Departments. This is known as rendition and that authority was put in place within days of 9/11. These detainees were subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and brutal treatment during months spent in detention under torture in Egypt and other countries. The neocons refuse to confirm that a rendition program exists and will not admit how many prisoners have been transferred as part of the program. Thus far, about 150 detainees have been from or sent to Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan. In addition, they hold large numbers of prisoners from al Qaida at secret sites and, of course, the hundreds of suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay.

Fifty percent of working America has only their house and Social Security at age 65. Of the other half, only half have a 401(k) plan and for those age 55-64 the average balance is $42,000, as an annuity that would pay $300 a month. That means people have to work as long as possible. The under-funding of private defined-benefit pension plans exploded between 1999-2004 from $300 billion to $450 billion on a termination bases, or in bankruptcy. You have seen the steel companies, other companies and now airlines go under. We believe the auto industry is next. GM is so under-funded that if it went under, the liability to PBGC, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. would be $9 billion; GM’s bonds are soon to be rated as junk. In order to cover ongoing under-funded corporate failures the PBGC would need a 58% increase in premiums or an increase from $19 to $30 a worker.

If you want the government to know less about you use cash. Every time you use your credit card, ATM, use your library card, rent a movie or log on to the Internet you increase the size of your surveillance portfolio held by private intelligence companies that are compiling personal information about you. Due to your activities, they are also able to profile you. They have all your tax information and they often, for a fee, provide our government with files on you. What this amounts to is you have no privacy. In order to deprive these data collectors use cash whenever possible. Cash checks mailed to you for cash. Only use credit cards, ATM or debt cards when absolutely necessary. Write as few checks as possible. Live in a cash existence.

The elitist Bush and the neocons want free trade and globalization, but only on their terms. Venezuela supplies the US with about 3/4’s of the oil the Saudi Arabia supplies the US. Venezuela wants to diversify its client base. This is the result of two-foiled assassination attempts and a terribly botched coup. As we explained in the Latin American section, presently the US is attempting to destabilize and throw into chaos all of South America and they are sending major armaments and personnel to Aruba, 46 miles from Venezuela. Due to the arrival of new military equipment from Russia and MIG-29 fighters, a direct assault will be difficult. Thus, we can expect attempts at internal subversion and invasions from Colombia. A blockade of Venezuela would be easy, but it could bring Russian and Chinese vessels into play. The key to US success would be assassinate another duly elected president to effect regime change and put elitists into office and again loot the country. For the elitists anyway is fine just get rid of Chavez. It is incredible to us that these criminals have gotten away with these tactics over the past 60 years.

Transcripts of Federal Reserve meetings prove Sir Alan Greenspan and those others at the Fed knew as early as 1996 they had created a bubble. That means they lied about the bubble and they continue to lie about the real estate bubble. As an example, the volume of new commercial mortgage-backed securities continues to head inexorably higher. There will probably be $18 billion in new deals in March alone, which brings the first quarter total to close to $30 billion, way ahead of the $21 billion in the first quarter of 2003. As of 2/28/05, loan-to-value is now an unbelievable 96%, an all-time high and up from 95% in the fourth quarter. More than 32% of the loans had a loan-to-value in excess of 100%, up from 30% in the fourth quarter. Additionally, interest-only loans are also setting new records with some 52% of the loans issued thus far in 2005, having no amortization for part or all of the term, up from 45% in the fourth quarter. Interest-only loans have been climbing steadily and were in single digits just two years ago as well.

The Bush neocons lost $9 billion in Iraq and they still can’t find it. We do not hear one word from the White House. This is another tribute to bribery, corruption, graft, greed and incompetence. One helicopter with $1.4 billion simply disappeared.

The new bankruptcy bill has cleared the Senate and is ready for passage. The measure is a thinly disguised gift to banks, who should not have been making the loans and credit lines in the first place to people they know could not pay the funds back. This measure will financially wipe out at least one-third of middle class families and start the beginning of the end of consumerism. Massive credit bills have been symptomatic of broader economic problems caused by booming health care costs and educational costs. Fifty percent of bankruptcies are caused by medical costs. This is a bonanza for credit card companies who made $30 billion in profits last year. It is a nightmare for the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak. The bill does nothing to curb abusive bankruptcy practices by wealthy families, who can create special trusts to shelter their assets, and by corrupt companies like Enron and WorldCom, who were able to find favorable bankruptcy courts and deprive many of their employees and retired employees of benefits. This bill is the result of lobbying by Visa, MasterCard, the American Bankers Association, NBNA America, Capitol One, Citicorp, Ford Motor Credit and GMAC. They spent $40 million on the issue. This is how government is run in America today, by political payoffs and cold hard cash. This bill will create the biggest black economy in history and another 30% of American will stop filing income tax. That will be followed by a staggering economy and complete revolt against the system.

The Federal government is forcing states to pick up $30 billion in expenses in fiscal 2006, mostly for education programs that Congress passed without providing money to find them. That is $300 billion in ten-years, which is overwhelming. Eighteen billion comes from the No Child Left Behind Act, and $45 billion in budget cuts to Medicaid, effecting 53 million poor and disabled Americans so we can have our wars against terrorism. Nearly two-thirds of the costs will come from funding for K-12 education. Another $60 billion bill for the states will be federal requirements to develop new standards for driver’s licenses, birth certificates and a national ID card. Our Federal government is a disgrace to us all. It is time for all good men to contemplate action.