Possible Swine Flu Deaths in Sweden
October 28, 2009
Digital Journal
By Stephaine Dearing
There are reports from Sweden of possible deaths linked to the H1N1 vaccine; unconfirmed and unwelcome news which will surely complicate the very busy flu season that has descended on most of the northern hemisphere.
While confirmation has yet to be made by health authorities in Sweden, Associated Content is reporting that four people have died after receiving the H1N1 vaccine. Three of those are alleged to have been seniors with serious underlying health conditions. Very little is known about the fourth. The Local has reported that the outbreak of H1N1 flu in Sweden has picked up speed in the past few weeks. About 1 million Swedes have been vaccinated for H1N1. Stockholm News (English) reports that the deaths are being investigated, saying
“… Yesterday the national agency received reports that two women had died a couple of days after having received the vaccine, a 90-year-old woman and a 74-year-old woman belonging to the risk group. There are two other cases investigated, one man with cardiac problems who died twelve hours after vaccination and a woman who was found dead two days after her vaccination.”
Pandemrix contains the booster adjuvant squalene, and many German physicians have recommended that young children not receive the adjuvanted vaccine. Germany’s inoculation program for H1N1 began Monday, and the German population is angry that there are two different immunizations shots for people, with the riskier one going to the general public. Cevlapan is made by Baxter, does not contain an adjuvant, and is believed to have less adverse side effects than Pandremix.
Hungary has reported one death associated with the H1N1 vaccine, although confirmation has not yet been made. Hungary is using a Hungarian-made vaccine.
In the United States, anger is rising over a lack of H1N1 vaccine. The sudden deaths of young people and children, confirmed to have been caused by the H1N1 virus in North America has sparked a demand for the vaccination on both sides of the border.
Research has found pregnant women who become ill with the flu can give birth to children with brain damage, which has been linked to emotional and developmental problems later in life. One of the scientists involved in the study recommended pregnant women get immunized against the flu saying
“There is more and more information that flu is very bad news during pregnancy.”
Glaxo-Smith-Kline has reported a surge in revenues due to demand for antiviral drugs to fight the flu, and expects to make one billion pounds from the H1N1 vaccine alone.
There have been at least 5,000 deaths worldwide caused by the H1N1 virus.
Japan to Tighten Electronic Surveillance of Foreigners
October 29, 2009
CorbettReport.com
By James Corbett
On top of being fingerprinted and photographed each time they enter the country and being forced to carry a government-issued ID card at all times, non-Japanese residing in Japan will soon have IC chips implanted in their ID cards, a move which human rights activists point out will allow police and government officials to remotely track and trace the movements of foreigners in the country.
In a recent interview with The Corbett Report, Arudou Debito—a naturalized Japanese citizen and campaigner for the rights of non-Japanese in Japan—warned of the dangers inherent in this technology. “Why is tracking of people necessary?[...]Whatever you enforce upon a segment of the population is going to be material to enforce upon the rest of the population,” he said.
As a country well-known for its technological innovation, perhaps it comes as no surprise that Japan is leading the western world in implementing an electronic grid for tracking and tracing its own foreign residents. But just as Japan is becoming a test case for the technology of this electronic control grid, so it also serves as a model for getting the public to accept this technology as part of their daily lives.
As with most repressive practices, the practice of electronically surveilling the citizenry is being introduced as a measure to protect the country from the perceived threat of foreign criminals and terrorists. This is a technique that has been used by repressive regimes throughout history, from the Nazi persecution of the Jews to Britain’s recent attempts to force foreigners onto the new national ID card first as a way of easing the measure in without fear of political backlash. Many Japanese are unaware that foreigners even carry an ID card, let alone that it will soon be IC-enabled. The idea of foreigners being forced to surrender their biometric data at the border was not debated at all in the Japanese media when it sailed through the Diet in 2006. Of those that are aware, many are placated by the idea that such technologies will protect them from dangerous foreigners, despite the fact that the only spectacular terror attacks to take place on Japanese soil have been perpetratedby Japanese.
Now the general public in Japan is being conditioned to accept the idea that they, too, will be subject to constant electronic surveillance. For years now, Japanese ATMs have incorporated palm print technology as an optional security measure. Although this option is neither mandatory nor popularly used, it serves to condition the public that the use of biometric devices is the future of identification technology…despite the fact the this technology is ridiculously error-prone and often wildly inappropriate.
What these trends indicate is that the technology now exists to keep electronic tabs on every citizen at all times and governments around the world are keen to use it. Even those who implicitly trust government officials to only use such technology for good must recognize the incredible danger that such a surveillance grid would present in the hands of a corrupt or tyrannical government.
Taxpayers Paid $24,000 Per Clunker
October 29, 2009
CNNMoney.com
By Peter Valdes-Dapena
A total of 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the Cash for Clunkers program last summer, but only 125,000 of those were vehicles that would not have been sold anyway, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the automotive Web site Edmunds.com.
Still, auto sales contributed heavily to the economy’s expansion in the third quarter, adding 1.7 percentage points to the nation’s gross domestic product growth.
Is the economy really getting better?
The Cash for Clunkers program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles that met certain fuel economy requirements. A total of $3 billion was allotted for those rebates.
The average rebate was $4,000. But the overwhelming majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com. That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales.
“It is unfortunate that Edmunds.com has had nothing but negative things to say about a wildly successful program that sold nearly 250,000 cars in its first four days alone,” said Bill Adams, spokesman for the Department of Transportation. “There can be no doubt that CARS drummed up more business for car dealers at a time when they needed help the most.”
In order to determine whether these sales would have happened anyway, Edmunds.com analysts looked at sales of luxury cars and other vehicles not included under the Clunkers program.
Using traditional relationships between sales volumes of those vehicles and the types of vehicles sold under Cash for Clunkers, Edmunds.com projected what sales would normally have been during the Cash for Clunkers period and in the weeks after.
Edmunds.com’s estimate of the ultimate sales increase generally matches what industry experts had thought, said George Pipas, a sales analyst with Ford Motor Co (F, Fortune 500). But that misses the point, he said.
“The whole purpose of the program was to provide some kind of catalyst to kick-start the economy,” he said, “and by all accounts the extra production that was added this year was a boost to the economy.”
Ford was one of the biggest proponents of the Cash for Clunkers program and several Ford models were among the top sellers under the program.
While auto sales in September were hurt because auto dealership inventories were drained of products by the program, sales this month are already back on track or better, Pipas said. “I think the October sales results will show Clunkers is behind us and there’s no more payback or inventories issues.”
Emunds.com’s projection indicates that, without Cash for Clunkers, October’s sales increase would be even higher.
Stimulus Jobs Overstated
October 29, 2009 by Andrew
Filed under Government
October 29 ,2009
MyWay.com
By Brett J. Blackledge and Matt Apuzzo
An early progress report on President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports.
The government’s first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.
The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.
For example:
- A company working with the Federal Communications Commission reported that stimulus money paid for 4,231 jobs, when about 1,000 were produced.
- A Georgia community college reported creating 280 jobs with recovery money, but none was created from stimulus spending.
- A Florida child care center said its stimulus money saved 129 jobs but used the money on raises for existing employees.
There’s no evidence the White House sought to inflate job numbers in the report. But administration officials seized on the 30,000 figure as evidence that the stimulus program was on its way toward fulfilling the president’s promise of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.
The reporting problem could be magnified Friday when a much larger round of reports is expected to show hundreds of thousands of jobs repairing public housing, building schools, repaving highways and keeping teachers on local payrolls.
The White House says it is aware there are problems. In an interview, Ed DeSeve, an Obama adviser helping to oversee the stimulus program, said agencies have been working with businesses that received the money to correct mistakes. Other errors discovered by the public also will be corrected, he said.
“If there’s an error that was made, let’s get it fixed,” DeSeve said.
Click here for the full report
China Will Lead New World Order
October 29, 2009 by Andrew
Filed under Government
October 29, 2009
Prison Planet.com
By Paul Joseph Watson
Billionaire globalist George Soros told the Financial Times during an interview that China will supplant the United States as the leader of the new world order and that America should not resist the country’s decline as the dollar weakens, living standards drop, and a new global currency is introduced.
Asked what Obama should discuss when he visits China next month, Soros stated, “This would be the time because I think you really need to bring China into the creation of a new world order, financial world order,” adding that China was a reluctant member of the IMF who didn’t make enough of a contribution.
“I think you need a new world order that China has to be part of the process of creating it and they have to buy in, they have to own it in the same way as the United States owns…the current order,” said Soros, adding that the G20 was a move in this direction.
Soros said that there was a flight from currencies across the board, and that this is why the price of commodities, notably gold and oil, were generally rising. He also stated that an orderly decline of the dollar was “desirable” and that the entire system needed to be reconstituted towards a global currency.
“You need a new currency system and actually the Special Drawing Rights do give you the makings of a system and I think it’s ill-considered on the part of the United States to resist the wider use of Special Drawing Rights, they could be very useful now when you have a global shortfall of demand, you could actually internationally create currency through Special Drawing Rights,” said Soros, explaining that this was already in process after the IMF injected an allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) equivalent to $250 billion into the global economy.
Soros also stated that richer countries were already transferring wealth to poorer countries via SDR’s, with the IMF paying for the half per cent transaction cost.
Soros said the world would have to go through a “painful adjustment” following the decline of the dollar and the introduction of a global currency. Reading between the lines, he essentially threatened to kill the dollar completely if the United States did not get on board with the global currency.
Soros predicted that China would become the new engine of the global economy, replacing the U.S., and that this would slow economic growth and reduce living standards. Soros characterized the United States as a drag on the global economy because of the declining dollar.
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 10-28-09
Today, Kevin gives you the reasoning behind the government’s control over what you see on television. Also, find out how to change your frequency and why you should avoid any vitamin or supplement that contains magnesium stearate.
Plus, get the headlines you aren’t hearing anywhere else:
Colonoscopies Linked to Kidney Problems
Anti-Depressants Linked to Birth Defects
Anti-Smoking Drug Causes Suicide
The New Vaccine Craze in America
Al Franken Working to Stop Big Pharma
FDA Hides Drug That Causes Breast Cancer
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to hear The Kevin Trudeau Show RIGHT NOW!!!
Geithner Sees Dollar’s Reign Lasting a Long Time
October 28, 2009
RawStory
By AFP
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Tuesday the dollar would keep its status as the world’s main reserve currency a “long time.”
Geithner, speaking to an investors conference in New York a day after the dollar hit a 14-month low against the euro, said: “The dollar will remain the principal reserve currency for a long time.”
The dollar has nosedived in recent months as investors turn away from the greenback, considered a safe haven amid economic uncertainty, amid a burgeoning recovery from a severe global slump.
The dollar’s status as the primary reserve currency has come under fire as it weakens, particularly from China, whose foreign exchange reserves surged to a global record of 2.27 trillion dollars at the end of September.
China has invested a large part of the reserves in US dollar assets, such as safe but low-yielding US Treasury bonds, but Beijing has tried to diversify its investments to improve its returns amid the global financial crisis.
Geithner said the US economy, which officially entered recession in December 2007, is in a “much stronger position than it was but it’s a mixed picture.”
He said that though businesses were finding it tough to get credit, “all broad measures of confidence are better” and the price of credit had dropped.
“We’ve achieved this initial sign of recovery much faster than expected and during past crises,” he added.
Click here for the full report.
Confidence Among Consumers Fall
October 28, 2009
Bloomberg.com
By Courtney Schlisserman and Shobhana Chandra
Confidence among U.S. consumers unexpectedly fell for a second month in October, reinforcing the views of Federal Reserve policy makers who say household spending will be restrained by rising unemployment.
The Conference Board’s confidence index dropped to 47.7, trailing the lowest economist forecast, from a revised 53.4 in September, a report from the New York-based private research group showed today. A measure of employment availability slid to a 26-year low.
The emerging recovery from the deepest recession since the 1930s may fall short of expectations without a sustained rebound in consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy. A separate report showed an index of home prices rose in August, indicating the housing market, while stabilizing, may be getting a boost from government aid.
“As long as you have increasing unemployment, consumer confidence will remain mired in the muck,” said Joseph Brusuelas, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania, who forecast a drop in sentiment. “We think we are going to have another rough patch in the housing market” after a government tax credit expires, he said.
The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index covering 20 metropolitan areas climbed 1 percent from the prior month, seasonally adjusted, after a 1.2 percent increase in July, the group said today in New York.
Smaller Decline
From a year earlier, the gauge fell 11.3 percent, less than the 11.9 percent decline forecast by the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 33 economists. The index fell 13.3 percent in July from a year earlier. Year-over-year records began in 2001.
Most stocks fell for a third straight day. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped 0.3 percent to close at 1,063.41.
Faltering consumer confidence is weighing on sales at retailers including Limited Brands Inc. The owner of the Victoria’s Secret chain yesterday said sales at stores open at least a year will decline by a percentage in the low- to mid- single digits. It had previously forecast sales would be little changed.
J.C. Penney Co. Chief Executive Officer Myron Ullman told analysts Oct. 23 that the company is “starting to see some stabilization and some modest improvement in traffic,” although consumers are “still under enormous pressure.”
Fewer Jobs
The share of consumers who said jobs are plentiful dropped to 3.4 percent from 3.6 percent, according to today’s report from the Conference Board. The proportion of people who said jobs are hard to get increased to 49.6 percent, the highest level since May 1983, from 47 percent.
The proportion of people who expect their incomes to rise over the next six months decreased to 10.3 percent from 11.2 percent. The share expecting more jobs fell to 16.3 percent from 18 percent.
Buying plans for automobiles, homes and major appliances within the next six months all decreased this month, today’s report showed.
Government reports have shown that while companies are slowing the pace of firing they are reluctant to hire. The U.S. has lost 7.2 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Unemployment will top 10 percent in the first quarter of next year, according to a Bloomberg survey this month.
‘Quite Pessimistic’
Consumers “remain quite pessimistic about their future earnings, a sentiment that will likely constrain spending during the holidays,” Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board Consumer Research Center, said in a statement.
Consumer spending probably increased at a 3.1 percent pace in the third quarter, according to the median projection of economists ahead of the gross domestic product report due in two days. Demand will ease to a 1 percent growth rate the final three months this year, according to median forecasts in Bloomberg’s monthly survey.
Regional Fed bank directors sought to leave borrowing costs unchanged last month, citing weak economic conditions and “strained” financial markets, according to minutes of their meetings on the discount rate released Oct. 20.
“Household spending remained damped, constrained in part by job losses and consumer caution,” the minutes said of the directors’ views.
Fed policy makers next meet Nov. 3-4. At their last meeting, in September, the Federal Open Market Committee repeated its vow to keep its benchmark rate low for an “extended period.”
Tax Credit
Home sales are getting a boost from an $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers and mortgage rates that have been held near historic lows by the Fed’s program to buy $1.2 trillion of mortgage-backed securities.
“The good news about this is it really looks like a bottom,” Karl Case, an economics professor at Wellesley College and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller index, said today in an interview on Bloomberg Radio. “The two risks are employment is terrible and the pipeline is still full of foreclosures. That has to be cleared out eventually for this to really turn up and produce a recovery.”
Sales may cool after the tax credit expires. Lawmakers are debating an extension of the credit, which is currently set to lapse on Nov. 30.
Click here for the full report.
Will Obama Extend Jobless Benefits?
October 28, 2009
New York Times
By Reuters
The Obama administration on Tuesday officially threw its weight behind legislation making its way through Congress to provide additional weeks of unemployment benefits to help Americans hit by rising joblessness.
A bill to extend jobless benefits to nearly 2 million people has been approved by the House but has stalled in the Senate amid Republican objections over how to fund it.
Click here for the full report.
Al Franken Working to Stop Big Pharma
October 28, 2009 by JP
Filed under Government
October 28, 2009
WalletPop
By Jami Bernard
New legislation introduced by, among others, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), would cut off the federal tax deduction for drug companies that make those “direct-to-consumer” ads, the ones on TV convincing you to pop prescription drugs like candy.
There’s plenty to hate about those ads. They’re ubiquitous, for one thing. They manage to be misleading without being downright untrue. They play into the “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” category, because you’ve got people self-diagnosing without understanding that, in some cases, the side effects can be worse than the underlying condition. (“Death” is one of those annoying side effects.)
The proposed legislation also runs the risk of a side effect that Franken and his cohorts may have not considered: By yanking the financial incentive to run these ads, what will become of TV’s nightly news shows?
The audience for the nightly news on CBS, ABC and NBC has been shrinking and graying, like laundry that has been through too many spin cycles. The shows cost millions of dollars to produce. A half-hour news program is paid for by eight minutes of advertising.
Regular news watchers already know that most of those eight minutes are taken up by men with erectile dysfunction getting lucky after taking Cialis, or women being gently lulled to sleep by the Lunesta moth.
Drug companies currently get a tax break to make and market that kind of stuff. They’re called “direct-to-consumer” (or DTC) ads, but the consumer is only a means to an end.
The ads routinely beg you to “ask your doctor” for a prescription. It’s the doctor those ads are after, not you. They’re speaking to those doctors through you, much the way supermarkets put chocolate-coated “breakfast cereal” on the lower shelves to be at eye level with the kiddies. “Ask your doctor” is the same as “throw a tantrum for your mother until she buys you what you want.”
I can understand Franken’s point — that Big Pharma shouldn’t be making money from using consumers as pawns to achieve their profit margins. But print and TV journalism is already in big trouble.
According to Consumer Reports, drug companies spent $5.375 billion on advertising in 2007. While every dollar spent advertising osteoporosis drug Reclast resulted in just six cents of sales, every dollar spent advertising cholesterol drug Lipitor brought in $59.78 in sales. Without the tax break, you can be sure they’ll reconsider how much airtime to buy on the nightly news.
Without those ads, the news shows will have to cut costs. Soon, they’ll be lucky to maintain a news bureau in midtown Manhattan, let alone Afghanistan.
On one hand, the death of print and TV journalism means a loss of some of the standards of reporting that have not yet become de rigueur on the Web (such as sourcing and fact checking).
On the other hand, the explosion of DTC advertising from drug companies has resulted in lot of people overmedicating — why, just the other day, my leg twitched and I just knew it had to be Restless Leg Syndrome, not the six-shot venti Americano I had at 5 p.m.
I’m not saying Franken should withdraw the proposed legislation. I’m asking a general question that so far has no answer: Why is it that the consumer always gets the shaft?
Click here for the full report.
