And adding this to the absolutely wonderful practice of free speech catalog. You can read the story at World Net Daily

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=70344


following up on an already posted topic

Growers tally loss to salmonella scare
Tomato damage $100 million
The tomatoes grown on 6,000 acres in Virginia's sea-swept Eastern Shore were never implicated in the national salmonella outbreak — they were still on the vine weeks after people starting getting sick.
Still, that hasn't made much difference to tomato broker Batista Madonia III, who has seen sales and prices plummet in the wake of a salmonella outbreak that sickened people in 42 states and left the nation's tomato industry feeling woozy as well.
Since the government announced it was investigating whether contaminated tomatoes caused the outbreak that began in April, the nation's tomato industry estimates it has lost more than $100 million. Health investigators have not been able to find the tomatoes that contained the salmonella strain that sickened 1,220 people, and the government on Thursday lifted its salmonella warning involving tomatoes.
The move hasn't brightened the outlook for the $1.3 billion industry, and the stigma and uncertainty of the salmonella's origin are likely to add to its losses. (rest of the story go to link) http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/20/growers-tally-loss-to-salmonella-scare/


Here are a few economic articles, you need to start paying attention to some of this stuff, if your smart and what to protect your family, and the little bit of money that the Government lets you keep.



The Formula For Hyperstagflation


Inflation predicted over the next year, expect rate hikes over the next 12 - 18 months, failures pile up, failed measures to save the economy to have a cumulative effect, orgy of Wall Street fraud causes credit crunch, a worldwide disaster in the making, commodities rigging has a golden lining.
The acceleration of inflation is baked into the economic cake for, at minimum, the next 12 to 18 months worldwide. Fed jawboning won't change that. Phony PPT dollar rallies won't change that. Fed rate hikes won't change that. The reduction of money and credit won't change that. Falling oil prices won't change that. Lies about economic statistics, and especially about inflation data, won't change that. So, why can't the rate of inflation be changed for the next 12 to 18 months, you might ask? The reason is because inflation is not determined by smoke and mirrors, or by gimmicks and false data. It is determined by the rate at which the total supply of money and credit is being expanded or contracted (what economists call M3), which is measured by determining how much money and credit is being fed into, or subtracted from, each nation's financial system by its central bank over the course of a given month, as compared with the amount determined for the previous month. That figure is then annualized. Basically, the annualized rate of M3 that is determined for any nation becomes that nation's rate of inflation (expansion) or deflation (contraction), with a delay that usually runs about 6 to 18 months.
Contrary to what the fane-stream media, pusillanimous pundits and Wall Street shills might tell you, inflation is caused by too much money and credit chasing after too few goods, and today's oil and food crisis is now providing everyone with a textbook example of how profligate expansion of money and credit can ruin an economy in a frighteningly short period of time. The baked-in inflation rate for the US will run from its current 12.625% to as high as 18% over the next 12 to 18 months, even if the Fed totally cuts off all money and credit tomorrow and then throws rate hikes in for good measure! Our current actual (as opposed to official) rate of inflation of 12.625% is running at a lag of about one year from the time M3 had reached the 12.625% level, and that is why we see 12 to 18 more months of 12.625% to 18% inflation. We have extended our projection out to 18 months because we do not see M3 going below 12% any time soon.
If the Fed and the traitors in the White House and Congress want to see stagflation gone wild, just go ahead and let the Fed raise rates and/or contract the supply of money and credit. The baked-in inflation will then continue even as the economy goes into a thermonuclear meltdown! The Dow will lose 500 to 1000 points on each .25% rate hike as de-leveraging accelerates, margins are tightened and liquidity is drained from the system. Bond markets will be destroyed as principal plummets. The situation is now so bad that even a substantially weaker yen cannot bring enough carry trade liquidity into the system to hold up the general stock markets. It now takes 3.5 more yen to buy a dollar or a euro than it did with the Dow was just over 13,000, yet the Dow is now at just over 12,300. Part of the current stock market weakness is due to the lack of support from the PPT, which is trying to minimize the liquidity and profits available to large specs that could be used to rally metals. Hence, the need for protective derivatives.
Further, any dollar strength achieved by any such Fed rate hikes will have little impact on gold and silver because the resulting destruction of the economy will send everyone to gold and silver as the safe-haven of choice. Treasuries and money markets will still be yielding negative rates of return while the banks are getting hammered by the next round of the ongoing real estate debacle. As attention moves from the hundreds of billions of toxic waste held by banks in off-balance sheet SIV's to the hundreds of billions in toxic waste held by banks in off-balance sheet VIE's (Variable Interest Entities), any dollar-denominated treasuries and money markets aren't going to cut it any more as the real estate market drops into an even deeper, darker pit, sending the various real estate derivatives, and bank balance sheets, further down into the depths of the abyss. You will then watch precious metals go up with the dollar instead of running contrary to one another, and food and energy commodities might keep going up as stocks, bonds and other paper assets continue to be shunned by traders despite the stronger dollar. Throw in bank failures, heavy toxic waste write-downs, earnings disappointments, a consumer spending crisis, a credit default swap crisis, a new false-flag attack and/or a new theatre of conflict, and only precious metals will be going up with oil as the dollar gets taken out by the ensuing recession.
Rate hikes, coupled with weaker real estate values, and thus huge declines in both bond principal value and bond collateral value, could set off a bear market in bonds that could take the whole system down even more quickly than the credit-crunch and subprime debacles combined.
Note that when the Fed was on its rate hike campaign that terminated at 5.25%, inflation continued to grow because M3 was wildly expanded during the entire rate hike campaign. That is what separates the current inflationary debacle from all other periods of inflation. During all other periods of high inflation, the cure for an overheated economy was applied by either an increase in interest rates or by a contraction in M3, or by both. The current inflationary cycle is the first period of high inflation where interest rate hikes were totally offset, and overwhelmed by, the expansion of money and credit which totally negated any slowing of the economy that might have been achieved by the rate hikes. The Fed, Wall Street and our bought-off and compromised government officials conspired to keep up the speculation that was used to power the ongoing derivatives fraud by pumping out prodigious amounts of money and credit while lying to us about inflation, which was skyrocketing as a result. That is the precise reason why the Fed's rate hikes failed to cool the economy and to slow inflation. Instead, the derivatives fraud led to the credit-crunch, which then cooled our economy. Then, in order to attempt to save our economy, rates had to be cut back by the Fed while money and credit were expanded even further, the perfect formula for hyperinflation which you are now witnessing as we write this issue of the IF. In addition, the economy was not saved, and now inflation is getting worse as the direct outcome of the failed measures to save our economy, thus causing further and additional damage to our economy as food and energy costs skyrocket and US consumers are tapped out. That, in turn, is the perfect formula for hyperstagflation.
Note that our economy was destroyed already before the credit-crunch by free trade, globalization, off-shoring, outsourcing and both legal and illegal immigration, and now we have rampant inflation to boot. Precious metals and their related shares, professionally managed Forex accounts and Swiss franc-denominated government bonds are your only options at this point to avoid being beggared and impoverished by the Illuminati.
As mentioned above, an orgy of Wall Street fraud has brought us an economy-killing credit-crunch. That credit-crunch has forced the Fed to initiate a maniacal expansion of money and credit to keep Illuminist insider financial institutions from imploding. Much of the money and credit from that maniacal expansion is not being re-loaned because all confidence in the system has been lost due to rampant, rampaging fraud, much of which was committed by Illuminist insiders against other Illuminist insiders, proving once again that there is no honor among thieves. So where is this huge portion of all that money and credit going if it is not being re-loaned? A very large portion is being used to make substantial, speculative profits from a whole bevy of commodities, especially from crude oil and agricultural products, by virtue of a loophole provided by the depraved group of village idiots who run our country (Congress), a loophole that allows big banks to operate in the commodities markets without position limits, allowing them to run amok in those markets with privileges that are not extended to other, non-elitist players. Our government regulators always provide us with such a level playing field, don't they? What an absolute disgrace.
Inflation is destroying the world economy as central banks around the globe pump out money and credit until it inundates everything, and the leading creator of inflation and destroyer of the world economy is the Federal Reserve, a private banking concern, a majority of which is owned by two shareholders, namely, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup, the main fraudsters of Wall Street. Wherever you see financial chicanery, these two malfeasants are usually somewhere in the mix. Ask Enron and Bear Stearns shareholders. And now the Fed's machinations, in cahoots with elitist banks around the world, have caused a worldwide stock market crash and have sent the world financial system into an inflationary quagmire, perhaps to pave the way for world government. You have already seen us drop from a high last year of about 14,200 on the Dow to today's roughly 12,300, a 13%+ loss. That would have been triple or quadruple were it not for the PPT. Then there is China, whose stock market has shed 50% from its peak, India, whose markets have shed 27% from their peak, Japan, whose stock markets have been in a state of implosion for two decades and Brazil, which is about to watch its currency implode for the second time in a decade. China uses 5 times more oil per unit of GDP produced than does the US. What do you think oil prices are doing to them? So much for free trade and globalism, and so much for the hypothesis that emerging markets can carry the world financial markets while the US and other western economies in Canada and Europe go under. What you have is a worldwide disaster in the making, with food shortages, starvation, social upheaval and revolution on their way. The would-be lords of the universe have really done it this time. We expect that very few of them will survive when people find out what they have done.
Robert the Bruce stopped the British Black Nobility from imposing their draconian feudal system on Scotland in 1314 at the Battle of Bannockburn. Our Founding Fathers fought and won two wars against the perfidious British Black Nobility to keep them from imposing their mercantilism and European-style, debt-based, private fractional reserve banking system on America with victories in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Now we can add Ireland, whose citizens have stopped the European Union and its free trade, globalist agenda, both supported by the British Black Nobility and the other Black Nobility of Europe, dead in their tracks with a vote against the Lisbon Treaty, which was the EU's attempt to short circuit the common folk of Europe to establish their regional dictatorship and regional currency in preparation for a diabolical one-world government and one-world currency. Let's hope that the citizens of the US do the same with the clandestine North American Union and the Amero. This adds to the EU's woes as a one-interest-rate-fits-all policy continues to alienate the weaker EU members from the EU's economic powerhouse, Germany, the vast majority of whose citizens want their old Deutsche Marks back. While that group of weaker members may include Ireland, and while Ireland has shown considerable weakness from an economic point of view lately, that weakness does not appear to extend to their political wisdom. Let's hear it for the Irish! ERIN GO BRAGH!!!
Retail sales rose 1.0% for the month of May. Big whoop! That figure is not adjusted for the actual rate of inflation, which also just happens to be approximately 1.0% per month here in the US. That means retail sales were actually flat, with all growth attributed to price increases and not a smidgeon to an increase in the amount of goods which consumers purchased. Thus, our 160 billion-stimulus package netted a big fat goose egg. Perfect.
It is clear that oil and food are being driven up while gold and silver are being suppressed, so that when it comes time for the next precious metals rally, everything else will be hit and the dollar will be talked up. Apparently the cartel has not yet figured out that all the money from the sell-off of oil and other commodities will have to find a home somewhere, and precious metals are a very likely resting place. No one believes anything emanating from Bernanke, the Fed or our Treasury anymore. They have been dead wrong about every prediction they have made, and have lied pathologically. We will likely see rate cuts before we ever see rate hikes. The next debacle is on its way, and as soon as Ben the Bear Killer gets wind of it, he'll drop rates faster than JP Morgan Chase took over Bear Stearns with a big, juicy taxpayer gift courtesy of the Fed. Meanwhile, we must endure the poppycock drivel that the Fed and our Treasury support a strong dollar, with M3 still over 16% and ongoing, unbridled speculation by banks in the commodities markets with easy cash and credit from the Fed, received in exchange for toxic waste collateral. Again, perfect.
Not only does the nominal price of gold and silver tell you how desperate we are financially, but the degree of manipulation should also be considered. If gold and silver are used as hedges, especially gold, then why do they go down when everything else is going up? Oil was only at 112 when gold was over 1000. Now we have 870 gold with oil at 135 and many food commodities doubling, tripling and quadrupling. Does that make any sense to anyone? If it does, then they are either a cartel insider, or they are just plain dumb. Three cheers for ETF's and mint certificates, backed by the gold and silver of the proletariat which is now being used by the elitists to suppress precious metals by selling and leasing the very gold and silver which the duped proletariat think they own, while resource shares are ignored or naked-shorted. This transpires as bullion banks are paid to take out short-term silver leases and as specs continue to gamble in rigged casinos owned by the elitists while refusing to purchase and take possession of their gold and silver for cash. Welcome to corporatist, fascist America, where the sheople continue to confirm P. T. Barnum's famous quote. Detach yourself from the Matrix, or get reamed.
If you think employment is bad now, wait until thousands of municipalities go bankrupt. They are the only ones making any significant contributions of good-paying jobs at this point. Their tax receipts are dropping into the tank as their bond insurers go belly up, as their ratings drop off a cliff, as their lending rates double, triple or more, and as the auction rate municipal bond market goes the way of the dodo bird, while the 330 billion owned by auction rate municipal bondholders goes up in flames since there exists no market where they can be sold, and bank's do not intend to revive the old one. The state and local governments are about to join consumers in the big "Sorry-We're-All-Tapped-Out" final binge party as they make appointments to have consultations with their bankruptcy attorneys. This transpires as they are forced to take over houses that have been abandoned by people who should never have owned them in the first place and as they make accommodations for the tent cities that are growing in size and number by the hour. (for complete article go to link)
http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekly/The_Formula_For_Hyperstagflation



Paulson Warns Of More Tough Times
Treasury Chief Says Number Of Troubled Banks Will Increase As They Struggle To Cope With Losses WASHINGTON, July 20, 2008

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson sought to reassure an anxious public Sunday that the banking system is sound, while also bracing people for more troubled times ahead. "I think it's going to be months that we're working our way through this period - clearly months," he said. Paulson said the number of troubled banks will increase as they struggle to cope with big losses on bad mortgages. The government this month took over IndyMac after a run led it to become the largest regulated thrift to fail. "Of course the list is going to grow longer given the stresses we have in the marketplace, given the housing correction. But again, it's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation," he said on Face The Nation. Paulson used appearances on the Sunday talk shows to tell people that deposits up to $100,000 are fully insured. He said no one has lost a single penny on an insured deposit in the 75 years that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has operated. "We're going through a challenging time with our economy. This is a tough time. The three big issues we're facing right now are, first, the housing correction which is at the heart of the slowdown; secondly, turmoil of the capital markets; and thirdly, the high oil prices, which are going to prolong the slowdown," he said. "But remember, our economy has got very strong long-term fundamentals, solid fundamentals. And you know, your policy-makers here, regulators, we're being very vigilant." Paulson said he hoped Congress soon would approve his plan to help shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage companies "I'm very optimistic that we're going to get what we need from Congress here, because Congress understands how important these institutions are," Paulson said. The House plans to vote Wednesday on a housing bill that is expected to include a rescue for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The companies' shares have plummeted because of fears about their financial stability. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are private, but they were created by Congress to encourage homeownership by buying mortgages from banks. The two hold or guarantee more than $5 trillion in home loans - almost half of the nation's total. "Our first priority today is the stability of the capital markets, the stability of the system. And these institutions have investors all around the world ... and those investors need to know that we in the United States of America understand the importance of these institutions to our capital markets and to our economy and to our housing market," he added.

(If you go to link you can download the whole interview and a video)

www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/20/ftn/main4276028.shtml



On a totally different tack, here is some saftey issues.

A good site for some lightening safety info http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/