The Kevin Trudeau Show: 3-17-10

Today, Kevin explains how far the FDA will go to protect the profits of the precious drug companies and why red bull is banned in France and Demark.

Daily Finance Claims Alternative Medicine is Ineffective… “or Worse”
Over a Million UK Patients Addicted to Pain Killers
Government Workers Feel No Economic Pain
March Madness Membership Drive

Plus, the modern day Nostradamus and founder of The Trends Research Institute, Gerald Celente, stopped by to tell you how he was able to get out of Chile unharmed after the 8.8 earthquake hit the country and to give you his predictions for the next few years.

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Cries for Wall Street Regulation

March 12, 2010

Reuters

By David Morgan

The findings suggest that 82 percent of Americans want the government to clamp down more strongly on Wall Street excesses, with a particular emphasis on bonus schemes that have rewarded employees at loss-making companies such as American International Group.

A Harris release on the February 16-21 telephone survey of 1,010 adults did not specify how financial regulation should be applied but said three-quarters of Americans believe Wall Street companies should pay bonuses only while in the black.

Harris said the U.S. public does see value in Wall Street itself: nearly 60 percent say the financial sector is an essential benefit to the United States.

But a slightly larger majority disagrees that what is good for Wall Street is good for the country, while about two-thirds harbor strong negative views about the people who work there.

By a margin of 66 percent to 29 percent, Americans agree that “most people on Wall Street would be willing to break the law if they believed they could make a lot of money and get away with it,” pollsters found.

Sixty-five percent say most successful people on Wall Street do not deserve the kind of money they make.

A similar majority said those in the financial sector are generally less honest and less moral than the general public.

“Those who manage large banks and other financial institutions can draw some comfort from the majorities who believe that Wall Street is essential and benefits the country, even if these numbers are much worse than they were before the 2008 crash,” Harris said in a statement.

“On the other hand, there is no evidence that the American people have begun to forgive the people in Wall Street or to forget the huge problems that they caused.”

Harris did not provide a margin of error for the poll.

Click here for the full report

Disease Cause Is Pinpointed With Genome

March 12, 2010

Reuters

By Julie Steenhuysen

The studies, which would not have been possible a year or two ago, are the first real delivery of the promised transformation of medical science from the Human Genome Project’s mapping of the human genetic code.

One was also made possible by some of the $5 billion that U.S. President Barack Obama directed to the National Institutes of Health in September from the $787 billion economic stimulus package.

And in that study, the genetic researcher was himself one of the patients.

Dr. James Lupski of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston has a recessive genetic disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome. It affects the nerves stretching from the spinal cord to the arms, legs and feet.

Lupski has been experimenting on himself and his own family for years.

“We tried every other method for 25 years to find out which mutation was important,” he said in a telephone interview.

“With this methodology we were able to do it. This is the first time whole genome sequencing has applied to actually find the cause of a disease.”

Lupski had been taking blood samples from his grandparents, parents and siblings for years. He got close but the research was considered too risky for funding by the National Institutes of Health.

“He was only able to complete this study because of the stimulus money that we got,” said Dr. Story Landis, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Her institute designated Lupski’s project for about half a million dollars of the money that Obama directed to the NIH.

RECESSIVE GENES

Lupski’s team used a gene sequencer from Carlsbad, California-based Life Technologies to read the entire DNA code in the samples from Lupski and three of his siblings who have the syndrome, his parents and four other siblings who do not.

“It is a recessive disease and neither of my parents have the disease. Each of us who has it got one mutant allele (gene) from my mom and one mutant allele from my dad,” he said.

Researchers know about 40 different genes that can cause Charcot-Marie-Tooth. But in each family, only one of these genes is involved.

The sequencing revealed a gene called SH3TC2, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. Other groups are already working on a drug that may affect that gene, Lupski said.

The researchers also found that family members who inherited just one faulty copy of the gene had a predisposition to carpal tunnel syndrome, in which a nerve in the wrist can get pinched.

As prices are coming down on the cost of sequencing a human genome, more such research will be possible.

“We estimate that the entire effort would currently cost less than $50,000,” the researchers wrote.

In a second study, Jared Roach of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and colleagues sequenced the entire genomes of a family of four affected by two recessive genetic diseases — Miller syndrome, which can cause facial disfigurement, and primary ciliary dyskinesia, a lung disorder that raises the risk of respiratory infections because the hairlike extension on cells called cilia fail to move properly.

“Our results demonstrate the unique value of complete genome sequencing in families,” they wrote in the journal Science.

They used a sequencer made by another one of the companies exploiting genomic sequencing, Complete Genomics based in Mountain View, California.

Click here for the full report

US Mulls Placing Black Boxes in All Cars

March 12, 2010

Reuters

By Kevin Krolicki and John Crawley

Unprecedented discounts after a series of damaging recalls boosted Toyota Motor Corp’s (7203.T: Quote, Profile, Research) (TM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) U.S. sales in early March, as U.S. regulators weighed new auto safety measures.

Toyota’s U.S. sales surged by nearly 50 percent in the first eight days of March compared with the year-ago period due to zero-percent financing offers and other incentives, industry tracking service Edmunds.com and dealers said on Thursday.

Edmunds, which analyzes U.S. auto sales trends, also estimated that Toyota’s U.S. retail market share in early March had jumped to 16.8 percent, up sharply from 12.8 percent a month earlier when safety problems had sent sales tumbling.

“What they’re doing right now is they are picking low-hanging fruit,” said Chester Schriesheim, professor at the University of Miami School of Business Administration.

“These are the people who are undecided about the brand but given the lower price, now that provides incentives to go ahead and purchase,” he said. “But they’re going to exhaust that pool of individuals and then they’ll find it harder in the longer term to raise the prices backward.”

The early sales estimate comes a week after Toyota launched the most aggressive discounts in its history to win over U.S. consumers and recover from an embarrassing slew of product safety problems that have tarnished its reputation and cut into sales and financial results.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief David Strickland told a congressional hearing on Thursday that the regulator is considering whether to make “black boxes” mandatory for all new vehicles. [ID:nN11246251]

The devices can capture data on speed, braking effort and other details which can be vital in reconstructing accidents.

Toyota has recalled more than 8 million vehicles globally to address the risk that accelerator pedals on a range of its vehicles could become stuck because of a loose floor mat or a glitch in the pedal assembly.

Unintended acceleration in the company’s Toyota and Lexus vehicles has been linked to at least five U.S. crash deaths since 2007. Authorities are investigating 47 other Toyota crash deaths over the past decade.

TOYOTA, GM BOOST MARCH INDUSTRY SALES

Edmunds.com said that industrywide U.S. auto sales are tracking to hit a rate of 12.5 million vehicles in March because of the steep discounts on Toyota vehicles and a competitive campaign launched by General Motors Co [GM.UL].

GM is offering car shoppers rebates of up to $3,000 on vehicles including the Malibu mid-size sedan, or zero-percent financing.

Toyota, which has traditionally spurned such discount programs in order to protect resale values, has offered up to $3,000 in rebates and dealer incentives on a range of vehicles, including its top-selling Camry, or cut-rate financing.

Both manufacturers are offering steeper discounts on their competing full-size pickup trucks, GM’s Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra and the Toyota Tundra.
Edmunds said GM’s sales incentives lifted Chevy’s retail market share to 12.9 percent, up from 11.4 percent a month earlier.

Several major Toyota dealers said their own sales were running slightly higher than the Edmunds estimate through Tuesday. That would mark a sharp reversal from sales declines in January and February tied to the automaker’s recall crisis.

Paul Atkinson, president of the Toyota national dealers’ council and a Toyota dealer in Texas, said he expected that the March sales boost from incentives would mirror what the automaker saw during the 2009 “cash for clunkers” program.

Toyota was the big winner from that U.S. government-funded scrappage program, which offered tax credits of up to $4,500 to swap out of older and less fuel-efficient vehicles.

Toyota had a 19.4 percent share of vehicles sold under the “clunkers” program which ran from late July through the third week of August 2009. Toyota’s share was the highest in the industry.

“I truly believe that March could rival cash for clunkers,” Atkinson said.

Sales at his own dealership in early March were running at three times the level of January and February, he said. Customers shopping for the bargains do not appear concerned by Toyota’s recalls, he said.

“Honestly, I think the public has had enough,” he said.

Just this week, as Toyota sought to shift attention away from the safety problems, at least three U.S. drivers reported new cases of driving Prius or Lexus vehicles that appeared to surge out of control.
Atkinson has encouraged Toyota dealers to protest GM’s incentives in March, saying they amounted to a taxpayer-funded program of discounts because the U.S. government funded GM’s restructuring in bankruptcy with $50 billion in aid.

“We just want a level playing field,” he told Reuters. “These GM incentives are kind of like using tax dollars to encourage my fellow citizens to not do business with me.”

GM has defended its use of incentives, saying such discounts are a well-established part of the way cars are sold in the U.S. market.

Click here for the full report

National ID Card Will Only Strengthen Big Brother

March 11, 2010

Fox News

By Alex Nowrasteh

The Senate is working toward a ghastly compromise on immigration reform that includes a biometric national identification card for all Americans. The stated purpose of this national ID, which an employee must present before getting a job, is to prevent undocumented workers from being employed. Back in December I warned that a national ID is the inevitable conclusion of the anti-immigration movement. The failure of E-Verify to catch 54% of undocumented workers is only accelerating the call for a national ID.

A national ID hurts American workers while pretending to help them.

First, every worker would have to ask permission from the federal government to get a job. American workers shouldn’t have to beg or plead to anybody to get permission to work. Being employed should be a private agreement between an employer and employee. Period. The government should get out of the way.

Second, carrying around government papers with biometric identification on it conjures up images of a more technologically savvy Oceania or East Germany. No thanks.

Third, the system will exclude millions of legal workers by accident and fail to catch the majority of undocumented immigrants. For instance, if E-Verify were instituted nation-wide 3.6 million Americans would be denied employment each year and have to visit the Social Security Administration to correct their records. The employer either fires them or delays training. Will a biometric ID card make this system better? How does that help American workers?

Fourth, it will cost businesses up to $800 to buy a scanner. Or as Senator Chuck Schumer says, employers can just go down to the DMV. Senator Schumer doesn’t know squat about running a business. The last thing an employer wants to do is spend time at the DMV when he could be spending it improving his business. And all this during an economic slump!

Fifth, it would treat every American like a criminal by requiring them to enter their most intimate and personal data into a government database. One of the benefits of not having committed any crimes is that my information is not in a government record office. I’d like to keep it that way.

Has the very notion of liberty been so diluted in this great nation that no-one is willing to decry this as the naked government power grab that it is? Must every American now ask government permission to get a job? Think what you will about undocumented immigration, is ending it so important that every single American must be entered into a massive government database and given an ID they must present when applying for a job?

It most emphatically is not.

Click here for the full report

Canadian Dollar Likely to Trump US

March 11, 2010

Yahoo News

The Canadian dollar, or loonie as it is affectionately called here, is likely to soar above parity with the US greenback this year, experts at a Canadian bank said Wednesday.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Canada (CIBC) chief economist Avery Shenfeld said the Canadian dollar had already gained several cents in recent weeks as the market firms up expectations of an interest rate hike in July.

If as expected, the central bank “is out in front of the US Federal Reserve by a couple of quarters” in raising interest rates, the Canadian dollar could reach 1.02 dollars versus the US dollar by September, before dipping back to 0.97 dollars by year end,” Shenfeld said.

The Bank of Canada has maintained its key lending rate at a historic low of 0.25 percent since April 2009 to help bolster a fragile economic recovery, but is widely expected to review its position mid-year.

CIBC said other factors were also aligning to push up the value of Canada’s currency such as increased demand for oil, minerals and fertilizers; resurgent capital markets; and global debt fears.

“If the capital markets finally get an appetite for M&A (mergers and acquisitions) then Canada could be one of the first places to see the benefit of foreign inflows,” said CIBC analyst Zafar Bhatti.

Or “if the investing world starts looking for a place to park capital in the wake of deteriorating sovereign credits then Canada would look very attractive,” Bhatti said in a report.

Since the beginning of the year, the Canadian dollar has appreciated 2.5 percent against the US dollar and more than seven percent against the euro.

The loonie last achieved parity with the US greenback in 2008, and previously hit a record 1.10 dollars in 2007.

Click here for the full report

Greenspan: Worst Financial Crisis Ever, Including Great Depression

February 26, 2010

Washington’s Blog

Greenspan just said that the current credit crunch is “by far the greatest financial crisis, globally, ever” — including the 1930s Great Depression.

Bloomberg notes:

Greenspan said that while the economy was in worse shape in the Great Depression, the recent financial crisis was potentially more harmful than that in the 1930s because “never had short-term credit literally withdrawn.”
Greenspan also said “fiscal affairs are threatening this outlook” for recovery.

As I pointed out last May:

The following experts have said that the economic crisis could be worse than the Great Depression:

•Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

•Economics professors Barry Eichengreen and and Kevin H. O’Rourke (updated here)

•Investment advisor, risk expert and “Black Swan” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb
•Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker •Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz
•Economics scholar and former Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin
•Well-known PhD economist Marc Faber
•Former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead
•Morgan Stanley’s UK equity strategist Graham Secker •Former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae Edward J. Pinto
•Billionaire investor George Sorors
•Senior British minister Ed Balls
Unfortunately, virtually everything the American government has done since the crisis started has been counterproductive. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

The same is true of most other governments.

In the understatement of the day, Greenspan also called the recovery “extremely unbalanced,” driven largely by high earners benefiting from recovering stock markets and large corporations.

Click here for the full report

U.S. Economy Is In Shambles

February 23, 2010

The Vancouver Sun

By Harvey Enchin

It has been one year since U.S. President Barack Obama signed the $787-billion stimulus bill, the Recovery Act, to lift the U.S. out of recession, and threw an additional $50-billion lifeline to American homeowners facing foreclosure. The package was subsequently enriched and is now estimated at $862 billion, while the pledge to stem foreclosures has risen to $275 billion.

“One year later, thanks to the Recovery Act, we can stand here again and say that a second depression is no longer a possibility,” Obama said in marking the anniversary last week.

Oh no? Take another look at the numbers.

After all that spending — actual and committed (Congress passed an additional $155 billion in aid in December) — claims of job creation and economic growth remain highly suspect. The U.S. economy has shed more than eight million jobs since the recession began, and losses continue with 20,000 fewer jobs in January alone. A White House advisory council forecast that the economy will create 95,000 jobs per month this year. For forecasters, the year is not off to a good start. Unless the job generator shifts into a higher gear, one analysis concluded, it will take more than seven years to replace the jobs lost since 2007.

The U.S. Labor Department recorded 473,000 new jobless claims last week, up from 442,000 a week earlier, while the number of people on extended benefits (those who have exhausted the regular 26 weeks of benefits) rose by 274,000 to six million. The official unemployment rate eased to 9.7 per cent in January from 10.1 per cent in October, but few believe the Obama administration’s boast that the stimulus has generated nearly two million jobs. According to a recent CBS News/ New York Times poll, only six per cent of Americans think the stimulus has created any jobs at all, and public support for the plan has dropped from 55 per cent in June to 38 per cent.

If the stimulus package has created jobs, they are in the public sector, displacing jobs that could have been created more efficiently in the private sector, costing taxpayers far more for each job than the sum of salary and benefits. That’s what happens when capital is diverted from productive endeavours that create wealth to government spending programs that dissipate it.

Beyond the jobs front, things are even worse. Loans in foreclosure now represent 4.6 per cent of all mortgages, and the number of mortgages more than 90 days overdue has climbed to 5.1 per cent.

A Congressional panel reported earlier this month that half of approximately $1.4 trillion in commercial loans coming due over the next four years are under water, and hundreds of small-and mid-sized banks face insolvency. It warned of an impending commercial real estate crisis with property values down 40 per cent since 2007 and 18 per cent of office space sitting vacant.

The move last week by the Federal Reserve to raise its emergency loan rate looked more like public relations than economic policy, an attempt to signal that GDP growth — seen at three per cent this year and four per cent in 2011 — is real and that inflation remains a threat. But strip out energy prices and consumer prices fell 0.1 per cent in January, the first month of deflation since 1982.

Underlying the economic gloom is a national debt of $12.4 trillion. Obama, apparently unfazed, signed a law this month that raised the limit on public debt to $14.3 trillion. Government debt now amounts to more than $40,000 for each American, $113,000 for each taxpayer. Given its ballooning budget deficit, which is seen at $1.6 trillion this year, or 10.6 per cent of GDP — a post-Second World War record — it’s difficult to see how the administration can put its fiscal house in order without massive spending cuts. But with soaring health care costs, an aging population, the environmental agenda, military commitments and more Obama-inspired social initiatives, spending cuts are unlikely.

China has indicated its lack of confidence in the crumbling U.S. economy by unloading $34.2 billion in U.S. bonds in December, relinquishing its status as the largest holder of U.S. foreign debt to Japan. As U.S. debt grows, so too does pressure on the interest rate on bills and bonds used to finance it. Rising debt service costs, perhaps accompanied by a downgrade from global ratings agencies, would help expose the phantom recovery for the charade it is.

Click here for the full report

America Just Declared The Recovery Over So You’d Better Get Ready For The Double Dip

February 23, 2010

Business Insider

By John Carney

Today’s bleak consumer confidence number is undoubtedly bad news for the economy. The bigger than expected drop suggests that consumers have lost confidence in the recovery, which will drive down home prices and consumer spending.

Consumer confidence is typically our “first look” at the state of the economy. While most government aggregated data come out with a two-month lag, or more, consumer confidence hits with just a one month lag. Studies have shown that consumer confidence is a good predictor of consumer spending numbers. Basically, people surveyed seem to be good at accurately reading their own economic situation, and those surveyed accurately reflect the broader economy. When consumer confidence drops to such deep unexpected levels–today’s were the worst in 27 years–then it is a flashing red-light about the economy.

There wasn’t anything good about today’s numbers. Every part of the survey was awful. On jobs, the optimistic folks who say jobs are plentiful fell to 3.6 percent from 4.4 percent. The pessimistic people who said jobs are hard to get increased to 47.7 percent from 46.5 percent. The gauge of expectations for the next six-months fell to 63.8, from 77.3 the prior month. The share of people who believe their incomes will increase over the next six months fell to 9.5 from 11 percent. The share of those expecting more jobs fell to 12.4 percent from 15.8 percent.

The message: the economy sucks.
The recovery we were supposed to have.
You’ll read a lot about how the consumer confidence numbers are a lagging indicator. Indeed, they are a lagging indicator when measured against the stock market. The real time data conveyed by the stock market is often a better indicator than any survey or government data. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention to the consumer confidence number, especially since stocks have declined for most of this year.

Let’s be clear here. The story-book recovery was dependent on a recovery of the consumer and a decline in the saving rate. If consumers lost some of their apprehension about future income prospects and future employment, they might begin to spend more on both retail goods and to purchase homes again. Anticipating this return of the consumer, businesses would increase capital spending and inventory. 

We got half of that equation. Business spending on new equipment and software reversed course from the sharp drop recorded during the recession. Exports began to grow, as well. The inventory swing–from liquidation of early 2009 to inventory accumulation at the end of the year–automatically boosted GDP.

The idea was that this would create positive feedback loop, with more production necessitating the hiring of new workers, adding to household income. Consumers would respond to increased household income with higher spending. That’s pretty much the textbook end of a recession.

The expectation that we would have a textbook end to the recession informed many of the expectations that were blown away by today’s drop in consumer confidence. We’ve have a historical record of 31 previous recessions in the United States, most of which indicate that the end of the inventory cycle boosts production and therefore employment and incomes. More importantly, the workers who kept their jobs become more confident about their future job and income prospects and begin to spend a larger fraction of their incomes. Deferred spending during a recession usually creates pent-up demand by consumers and businesses that then boosts spending once the recession ends.

The recovery we actually got.
But this cycle seems to be different. Workers who have kept their jobs are not gaining confidence. Boosted production seems to be being built on the backs of the current workers, driving up worker productivity, instead of increasing incomes or employment. The apprehension about future income prospects and employment is growing, not diminishing.

This could have some dire consequences. The inventory build was premised on the idea of the recovering consumer. Since that premise is wrong, businesses will find they have made a mistake. Inventory will have to be discounted and or scrapped. New equipment will remain under-utilized, and some of the new hires will have to be let go. In other words, the half of the recovery equation we got will simply have to be liquidated or put in cold-storage because of the half we didn’t get.

How did we screw up the recovery? Why did businesses get this so wrong that we’re headed back for the double dip instead of slowly climbing out of the recession?

What went wrong?
The answer will sound familiar to anyone acquainted with the work of Ludwig Von Mises or Friedrich Hayek. Cheap money created an illusion of wealth that businessmen interpreted as pent up demand. They invest money in inventory and equipment on the assumption that the consumer would recovery. And there assumption was based on very good evidence from past recoveries and the notion that loose monetary policy inevitably spurs a recovery.

Why was it different this time? The problem this time is that we’re in what the Keynesians would call a “liquidity trap.” Consumers, having been savaged by the housing bubble and its consequences, continue to be fearful of the future. Government regulation is making consumer spending more difficult by increasing capitalization requirement for banks and squeezing consumer access to credit. Huge debt overhangs from the boom still have many people trying to pay down debts instead of engaging in new spending. To put it briefly, the supply of funds to fuel economic growth is still very low because cautious Americans do not have faith in the recovery.

Economic planners will describe the situation as an “excess liquidity preference” and recommend more government spending to push the economy toward higher employment. Unfortunately, unless we’re really lucky, much of this government spending will likely be long-term destructive because it will direct funds in the wrong directions because it isn’t subject to market discipline. In any case, the current political atmosphere seems particularly unwelcoming to additional deficit spending. So we’d better hunker down and get ourselves adjusted to an economy with a higher than historical liquidity preference.

Click here for the full report

More Wages of Recession

February 23, 2010

MSNBC/New York Times

Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.

Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.

Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives – potentially for years to come.

Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department.

Here in Southern California, Jean Eisen has been without work since she lost her job selling beauty salon equipment more than two years ago. In the several months she has endured with neither a paycheck nor an unemployment check, she has relied on local food banks for her groceries.

She has learned to live without the prescription medications she is supposed to take for high blood pressure and cholesterol. She has become effusively religious – an unexpected turn for this onetime standup comic with X-rated material – finding in Christianity her only form of health insurance.

“I pray for healing,” says Ms. Eisen, 57. “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got to go with what you know.”

Warm, outgoing and prone to the positive, Ms. Eisen has worked much of her life. Now, she is one of 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.

To continue reading this report, click here.

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