Eeyore's Important News and Views

You think about how much of this country is own by forigen investment it is scary, if you are worried about stuff like that. But now with the Government making inroads into the mortagage companies and security companys. Which poses the more serious threat?

Morgan Stanley Said to Be in Talks With China's CIC By Christine Harper Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest independent U.S. securities firm, may sell a larger stake to China Investment Corp. and is in talks about a possible merger with Wachovia Corp., a person familiar with the matter said. China's state-controlled fund may buy as much as 49 percent of the New York-based investment bank, said the person, who declined to be identified because the talks aren't public and may end in no agreement. Morgan Stanley resumed its decline on the New York Stock Exchange, falling as much as 22 percent. Morgan Stanley, led by Chief Executive Officer John Mack, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the biggest U.S. securities firm, tumbled the most ever yesterday as the deepening credit crunch fueled concern their funding sources are drying up. Morgan Stanley shares plunged 42 percent this week through yesterday after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch & Co. sold itself to Bank of America Corp. ``Morgan Stanley must be talking to any suitor,'' said Roger Lister, a credit analyst at the DBRS Inc. rating firm in New York. ``But I'm not sure whether a merger with a bank will solve the problems. It's not a deposit-base issue but a crisis of confidence. And getting a capital infusion from the Chinese or somebody else brings huge dilution due to the depressed stock price, which scares investors even more.'' Morgan Stanley fell $4.32, or 20 percent, to $17.43 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading at 11:57 a.m. Wachovia rose 11.3 percent to $10.15. Gao Xiqing in U.S. China Investment Corp. bought a 9.9 percent stake in Morgan Stanley in December after the firm reported a quarterly loss. CIC's president, Gao Xiqing, is in the U.S. with Wei Christianson, who runs Morgan Stanley's business in China, the Financial Times reported today. If Morgan Stanley ``could come out and say we're raising this slug of capital to stabilize our balance sheet and operate at a lower level of leverage going forward, that would help,'' said Ben Wallace, a securities analyst at Grimes & Co. in Westborough, Massachusetts, which manages $850 million. ``They're so levered that they need to have the confidence of the market, and they don't have that right now.'' Mack, 63, addressed employees this morning in a crowded meeting in New York, saying the firm's earnings and balance sheet were sound, according to people who attended or watched the firm- wide video broadcast. He said Morgan Stanley was in stronger shape than Lehman or Bear Stearns Co., which was forced to sell itself to JPMorgan Chase & Cos. earlier this year. Talk With Pandit Two of the attendees, who declined to be named because they weren't authorized to speak to the press, said Mack sounded upbeat and confident. Mark Lake, a spokesman at Morgan Stanley in New York, declined to comment. Mack tried unsuccessfully earlier this week to persuade Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup Inc., to combine their two companies, the New York Times reported today, citing people briefed on the talks. A Citigroup spokeswoman, Christina Pretto, said comments the Times attributed to Mack were ``never stated.'' Mack got a call from Wachovia yesterday indicating interest, said a person with knowledge of the matter. Talks about a deal with Wachovia have ``advanced,'' CNBC reported today. A merger with Wachovia could involve dividing the assets of both companies into two separate entities, a ``good bank'' and a ``bad bank,'' the Wall Street Journal reported, citing an unidentified person familiar with the matter. Wachovia Costs ``The smartest people at this firm are focused on solutions,'' Lake, the Morgan Stanley spokesman, said yesterday. Wachovia spokeswoman Christy Phillips-Brown said it was bank policy not to comment on ``market rumors or merger speculation.'' Wachovia, the fourth-largest U.S. bank, plunged 21 percent yesterday after saying it would support $494 million of Lehman credits held by its Evergreen Investments money market funds. The lender, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, had a market value of $19.7 billion yesterday, 18 percent less than Morgan Stanley's $24.1 billion. Wachovia Chief Executive Officer Robert Steel, hired in July to replace Kennedy Thompson, is cutting $1.5 billion of expenses and reducing risk to cope with mounting losses from Wachovia's $122 billion of option adjustable-rate mortgages. Merrill analyst Guy Moszkowski called a deal with Wachovia ``unlikely'' and said in a note today that a combination with Wachovia would ``saddle Morgan Stanley with considerable credit risk.'' ``It is difficult for us to perceive a strategic benefit for Morgan Stanley, which would be merging with the weakest of the five major U.S. banks,'' Moszkowski wrote. Short Sellers Morgan Stanley and Goldman have defended their business model, saying they have adequate capital and don't need the deposit funding that banks have. Mack lambasted short sellers for pushing his firm's shares lower. In a memo to employees yesterday, Mack said the management committee is ``taking every step possible to stop this irresponsible action in the market,'' and he urged employees to contact clients to reassure them that the firm is performing strongly and has plenty of capital. ``There is no rational basis for the movements in our stock or credit-default spreads,'' Mack wrote in the memo. ``We're in the midst of a market controlled by fear and rumors, and short sellers are driving our stock down.'' The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission may require hedge funds to disclose their short-sale positions and plans to subpoena the funds for their communication records, Chairman Christopher Cox said in a statement late yesterday. Default Swaps Short sellers try to profit by betting stock prices will fall. In a short sale, traders borrow shares from their broker that they then sell. If the price drops, they buy back the stock, return it to their broker and pocket the difference. Credit-default swaps on Morgan Stanley rose to 900 basis points after falling earlier to 870 basis points, according to broker Phoenix Partners Group. Contracts on Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia, the fourth-largest U.S. bank, rose to 695 basis points after falling to as low as 685 basis points. They are down from 747 basis points yesterday, CMA data show. Credit-default swaps are financial instruments based on bonds and loans used to speculate on a company's ability to repay debt or to hedge against losses. The value of the contracts increases when investor sentiment deteriorates and the cost of protection rises. Morgan Stanley's plunge may add impetus to calls from Democrats in Congress for a broader effort by policy makers to address the financial crisis, including setting up a government agency to take on devalued assets. `Unscrew It' ``The private market screwed itself up and they need the government to come and help them unscrew it,'' House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, told reporters late yesterday after top lawmakers met with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. Frank this week proposed considering an agency to ``deal with all the bad paper out there'' and get financial markets ``out of the box'' they are in. To contact the reporter on this story: Christine Harper in New York at charper@bloomberg.net.

Mortgage Failures has Spurred Gold and Silver Buying
Freddie and Fannie are now nationalized, mortgage issuance will continue as usual, details of the mortgage bank failure, new threats for fiat currencies and new reasons to buy precious metals We, the taxpayers, through the advice of our peerless leaders in Washington, have just nationalized Fannie and Freddie. In doing so, we have created the perfect fraud machine, thereby extending the life of one of the biggest Ponzi-schemes of all time, and giving it a lifetime warranty to boot, courtesy of the sheople. No longer will we see even the slightest trace of private sector accountability for poor business judgment, or of private sector efficiency in the operation of business, although certainly both of these concepts were little more than a joke in the way that Fannie and Freddie were being run as agencies, which are considered as being quasi-governmental in nature. Now, even the illusion of private sector, quasi-governmental agencies has been cast aside in order to reveal what was really the plan all along, the intentional destruction of the old government sponsored enterprise (GSE) programs through fraud and mismanagement, and the use of insane leverage and risk, in order to pave the way for the creation of a fascist system of mortgage finance which permanently partners our corrupt government with the equally corrupt fraudsters on Wall Street. This bailout staves off, for the moment, the fire-sale of GSE paper by its big holders, and provides a renewed source of agency paper, and of agency-insured paper, for purposes of absorbing all the excess dollars being produced by massive trade deficits, which are growing by the minute as the dollar continues yet another bogus, PPT-orchestrated rally. But this time, the agency paper and guarantees get an express warranty instead an implied warranty, as was the case with the former Fannie and Freddie business models. A fire-sale of GSE paper would have resulted in the repatriation of dollars to the US via the purchase of US assets, which would be highly inflationary. Much of the fire-sale proceeds would have been rolled into treasuries, reducing their yields to unacceptable levels and pushing investors toward tangible assets like precious metals and commodities. Also, some of the fire-sale proceeds would have found their way directly into precious metals, because investors are shunning the increasingly negative real rate of return of treasuries, and that is a big Illuminist no-no. Hence the shortage of physical gold and silver. The new, fascist Ponzi-Powerhouse will now continue to provide the sheople with fraudulently underwritten mortgages, thus perpetuating the issuance of mortgage loans to those who cannot afford to buy a house in the first place. That way, Wall Street can continue to earn their big fees, commissions and spreads, and never mind the resulting defaults and losses, since the sheople taxpayers will now take care of that for them. This will enable the dreamers among the sheople to continue to overpay for outrageously bubble-priced real estate, thus extending the decline of the real estate market, and hopelessly flooding it with more inventory than it already has. Prices must come down so people can afford to buy houses again and so they can once again qualify for fixed rate mortgage payments that won't send them careening into default. Trying to stop the jingle mail by preventing people from getting into negative equity situations caused by falling prices is not going to work. People can now see that any attempt to cushion the fall in prices is like trying to catch a falling knife. Keeping prices artificially high is just another bogus manipulation that will backfire, and further, it will exacerbate an already dire situation by keeping otherwise qualified buyers on the sidelines as inventories continue to mount from ever-accelerating foreclosures. Until prices come down dramatically, the number of foreclosures will continue to outpace the number of purchases, and we now predict that because of the Fannie and Freddie bailouts, the 30% estimate for the overall decline in prices may have been far too conservative. We can now see value losses of 35% to 40% across the board, with 50% to 60% losses in the ten former hot areas. Congratulations idiots! Over the next four to five years, we could see as much as an entire year's worth of US GDP blown out of our back-ends by real estate losses and by the loss of purchasing power that will be suffered by what little real estate value remains on account of hyperinflation. All these ludicrous bailouts are going to greatly exacerbate the rate of inflation as the printing presses start flying at mach speed. The private dealers will be doing overtime trying to unload all the fresh new treasury bonds being created to absorb the trillions in losses that will be suffered and eaten by taxpayers. Already, both Fannie and Freddie have been authorized to underwrite another $100 billion a piece in mortgage loans to be held by them in their own portfolios. But that does take into account the toxic mortgage paper that they will guaranty instead of owning it outright, which will be much higher than a measly hundred billion a piece, and without which the mortgage markets would totally shut down. Of course, the press forgot to mention that, because that is the paper being produced by the fraudsters and their toxic waste fascist-fraud-factory. That factory pumped out paper products that were going to produce little more than defaults and losses for their sucker-dupe client-investors, who used to have to face the possibility that they were going to have to eat the toxic mortgage securitizations before that privilege was passed on to the taxpayer sheople in the latest scheme to impoverish the US middle class. Now, the sheople get to eat all the losses emanating from this bogus mortgage paper that will continue to be produced by means of deceitful underwriting, over-appraisals and bogus AAA credit ratings. Wall street is now singing: "Ah, fraud without end, amen." Incidentally, the press forgot something else. What did they forget? A zero, that's what. The Treasury will purchase a billion worth of senior preferred stock in each of Fannie and Freddie, with authorization to acquire up to $100 billion a piece of such senior preferred stock, to ensure that a positive net worth is maintained. Is this some sort of a joke, because it is certainly laughable? You might wish to note that one out of every four new foreclosures is a prime ARM loan. Fannie and Freddie now own, or have guaranteed, over five trillion dollars worth of mortgage loans, and a good chunk of that is not only toxic waste, but prime loans waiting to go bad as people lose their jobs, as borrowers get upside down in their homes, as ARM's reset and as the largest and deadliest of all mortgage loans, known as Option ARM loans, go into thermonuclear meltdown. And then there are all the many hundreds of billions in toxic waste that will be added over the next couple of years, either by direct ownership or by guarantees. HELLO!!! We could be looking at losses from Fannie and Freddie of one trillion - EACH!!! Put that in your pipe and smoke it! Do you suppose the bonds we have to create out of nothing for the Fed to monetize in order to pay for the upcoming Fannie-Freddie-Fiasco is going to stoke inflation? Ya think! The big losers in the Fannie/Freddie bailout, besides the taxpayers, are the various common and preferred shareholders, who have all just been vaporized. There will not be any profits for anyone, including the senior preferred shareholders who are now the US taxpayers. Only stupendous losses are on the way for all but the GSE bondholders as Wall Street continues to buy time so they can continue their rampant system of real estate derivative fraud and keep rates from going up for a little while longer. Next come the bank failures and the resulting under-funded pensions which were foolish enough to get involved with these investments. Those losses will go to the under-funded FDIC and PBGC, who the taxpayers will also get to bail out. As you may recall, the bail pumps on the Titanic did not quite cut it. And so it will be with the Fannie and Freddie bailouts. We have to wonder if the fired CEO's will be given, severance pay and bonuses for their outstanding management of Scylla and Charybdis? As usual, we saw the PPT's manipulative hand, spinning the government's decision to nationalize Fannie and Freddie by boosting markets to make it look like everyone thought it was a great idea, when no one in their right mind, especially the pros, could possibly think that this is some sort of a magic bullet. Many did not notice it, but the yen had weakened substantially on Monday against the euro, with the yen going from about 151 yen per euro this past Friday to almost 157 in the early hours on Monday, and then strengthening again back down to about 151 gradually near midday before weakening again to almost 154 in the later afternoon. The yen also weakened against the dollar, moving from about 107 to 108 yen per dollar. This was done to support the PPT intervention in the markets to put a good face on the gargantuan bailouts. We have seen them do this over and over again, especially when the Fed makes a decision concerning its funds rates at an FOMC meeting. The Dow gained about 290 points on Monday, only to lose virtually all of it the next day, showing you that the rally on Monday was bogus. Everyone knows we are headed for big trouble and the de-leveraging is relentless. The fane-stream media used Lehman for the excuse on Tuesday's big drop, but little more changed for Lehman other than the fact that someone let slip that the South Koreans were no longer interested in bailing them out, a wise move on their part if that is what they decided. We all know Lehman is toast, and no one but our corrupt government, through its ever-more-screwed taxpayers, are going to end up bailing them out. Lehman's situation was hardly a big market-mover, although there is some fear that they could take the whole system down due to the many entanglements they have with many of the big players. But let's face it, our corrupt government will give them a free meal ticket in the end, because they are an Illuminist company, so what's all the fuss about. Yellow fever also accounted for some of Tuesday's big drop in the stock markets, as the yen was strengthened once again to keep pressure on gold and silver. Based on the estimated losses projected thus far for troubled bank failures, that being 78 billion in losses for 117 troubled banks, and based on the fact that there will be some 700 or so total failures, not just the 117 banks our lying government officials have discussed, we project total losses for bank failures at one half of one trillion dollars, which is on par with the subprime derivative losses that have been recognized thus far. So much for an economic recovery in the financial sector. Hail, hyper-inflation and treasury monetization. Well, gold and silver are under pressure from falling oil prices, and by the perception of support that the Fannie/Freddie bailout will give to the dollar by preventing a GSE bond sell-off and by improving certain aspects of the real estate markets. And never mind the trillions in sheople bailout money, the monetizations of Treasuries to keep the trillions in deficits and bailouts funded, the hyper-stagflation, the double-digit interest rates that will soon follow, the real estate markets which will continue to tank despite Paulson's bazooka, the negative rates of return on treasuries, the rapidly declining corporate earnings on account of a tapped-out US consumer, the frozen worldwide financial and credit system, rampant worldwide inflation, nations disgusted with dollar pegs, the high likelihood of wars and conflicts, shortages of physical gold and silver, heavy jewelry and investment demand for gold and silver and the likelihood of a lower Fed funds rate that will be implemented to push up bond values and increase bank spreads in a vain attempt to prevent the insolvency of the fraudsters. Heck, other than such unimportant issues, why buy gold and silver? Also powering the dollar rally is the manipulation of the USDX futures market. Open interest on Tuesday exploded to a new all-time high of 67,239 contracts, shattering the previous record by over 8,000 contracts. As this transpired, oil hit a low of 101.74 while the USDX moved to a high of just under 80. The manipulation is almost complete now, as we predicted that a push below 100 on oil and a rise above 80 on the USDX would signal a reversal in gold and silver in a matter of days, or perhaps in a week or two. With this kind of open interest on the USDX, you can expect to see some dollar support in the coming days. The dollar shorts are being papered to death just like the gold and silver longs. We believe that the dollar is being pushed up, and that the precious metals are being pushed down, to raise and to lower the bar, respectively, in preparation for a big Fed cut. The fraudsters are on the ropes, despite profligate Fed money and credit, and we see the Fed moving M3 up to well over 20% soon. If they don't, the system will collapse. The losses are mounting faster than the fraudsters can recover them, and they still aren't lending to one another, so the fractional reserve leverage is not working. This is a big reason for the Fannie/Freddie bailout also, to stop the bleeding in the real estate markets, and therefore on fraudster balance sheets, not to mention the credit default swaps on Fannie and Freddie that might have imploded as a result. We wonder what may have happened to the counterparties on swaps written on the Fannie/Freddie stock that just got vaporized. And all that mark-to-model stuff is about to implode. Wait until you see what will eventually happen to JP Morgan Chase and their almost $100 trillion in mostly marked-to-model derivative notional value. It will rock your world! Meanwhile, the blue light specials are still on for gold, silver and their related shares - SO LOAD UP!! In order to understand what is transpiring in today’s financial world you have to understand financial history. What you are seeing and experiencing has happened many times in the last thousand years. The upheaval we are in today could well be as bad if not worse than those of the collapse of the Lombard System in 1348 and the fall of the Hanseatic League in the 1600s. Few want to know what is going on because human nature is opposed to change. Unfortunately those who do not listen will pay in a way they never imagined possible. The failure of a fiat money system is accompanied by extreme social upheaval and eventual economic collapse. What is unique is that this event we are facing is going to be worse than anything experienced in the past. What is interesting is that economic and financial writers and academics threat these problems in isolation, just studying the corpus. They fail to connect the people and events and why such events occur. They cannot believe people act in concert to bring about such events in order to continue in power and wealth. They so often do not understand the real reason for events. Historically the only safe haven for assets during these times of economic trouble has been gold and silver. In the last 40 years silver has been considered more to be an industrial rather than a monetary metal. Thus, gold has been considered more the asset of safety. When we broke over $850 gold we pierced the old 1980 high of $850 an ounce, we began stage 2 of a 3 or perhaps 4 stage bull market. Gold attained $1,033 in March and due to government intervention we have tested the $775-$800 range three times putting in what we see as a trading bottom. At these levels it is probably the best time to invest because you should be able to buy cheaper than in this current zone. This could be the last inexpensive train out of the station. The current debt-based, fiat-money global economy is in the process of collapse. This monetary abomination and its accompanying manipulation will soon come to an end. No fiat currency has ever survived and when it does it will be catastrophic.http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekly/Mortgage_Failures_Will_Drive_Gold_And_Silver_Buying



'Delicate' situation politically in Latin America
A senior policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation says the U.S. is facing one of the worst crises between Latin American nations in ten years.
The political situation in Bolivia is deteriorating as conflicts arise and Bolivians protest against their government. In response, Bolivia has kicked out the U.S. ambassador, and in a show of solidarity Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has done the same. All this as Russia is sending ships and bombers to Venezuela in preparation for joint military exercises. Ray Walser is the senior policy analyst for Latin America with the Heritage Foundation. He believes Russia's presence is in retaliation for the U.S. presence in the Black Sea. "It's a show that they can stir the pot, that they can distract us," says Walser. "[C]learly, the military assets they are talking about sending are not directly threatening to U.S. security, but they indicate a difficult trend and could lead to further provocations." Another factor Walser notes is oil. Chavez has threatened to cut off oil shipments if the U.S. retaliates. Walser says the U.S. gets about 10 to 12 percent of its oil supply from Venezuela, which owns the CITGO Petroleum Corporation. "It's a very delicate [situation]," he cautions. "We are totally moving in different directions ideologically, but we still remain economically interdependent. So it's one of those complexities of modern economies, of the moderns of globalized worlds." Walser thinks the situation warrants a response from both presidential candidates.
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Security/

A great opportunity to stock up on over the counter meds: This week's sale at CVS is buy 20 count of Excedrin Extra Strength gelcaps for $3.99 and receive $3.99 of Extra bucks coupon back on your receipt. No tax uinvolved. You do need a CVS card though (which is free to get for the asking). So part with $3.99 cash and walk out with a 20 count of Excedrin gelcaps and a coupon for $3.99 of your next CVS purchase. Walk back in and spend the coupon if you like. But they don't give change on the extra bucks coupons.

Why the Fed Didn't Cut the Funds Rate
Surprise: Bernanke & Co. are still worried about inflation, not just the Wall Street credit crunch
by Peter Coy
Scratch that rate cut. Despite a severe credit crunch, Chairman Ben Bernanke and other members of the Federal Reserve's interest-rate-setting committee voted unanimously on Sept. 16 to leave the federal funds rate at 2%, disappointing bankers who had expected a cut of a quarter or even half a percentage point to stimulate the U.S. economy and lower their borrowing costs. The Federal Open Market Committee acknowledged growing troubles in the financial and labor markets but said: "The downside risks to growth and the upside risks to inflation are both of significant concern."
Wall Street took the Fed's brush-off in stride, possibly reading the Fed's refusal to cut rates as a signal that the financial situation is less dire than feared. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, after falling about 1.5% immediately after the Fed's 2:15 p.m. EDT announcement, bounced upward about 2.5% and was trading near its daily highs toward the end of the session.
The Fed's continued "significant concern" with inflation was the biggest surprise in its announcement, because headline inflation numbers have turned extremely mild. Earlier in the day, the Labor Dept. announced that the consumer price index actually fell 0.1% in August, led by a steep decline in energy prices. After hitting $145 a barrel in early July, crude oil has plummeted on concerns that a global economic slowdown will decrease demand. On Sept. 16 oil fell $4.91, to $90.80 a barrel, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Doing Plenty
In a week of deep uncertainty on Wall Street, the Fed is doing plenty to keep the gears turning in the financial system, even though it didn't cut rates. The Fed injected a bigger-than-usual $70 billion into the U.S. banking system on Sept. 15 to satisfy a cash-hoarding surge among banks. It pumped in a further $50 billion on Sept. 16. The injection of funds limited a spike in the federal funds rate, which is the rate that banks charge each other for overnight loans.
Analysts said that by voting against a rate cut, the Fed seems to be focusing on ensuring that borrowing is freely available rather than making borrowing cheaper. Stuart Hoffman, chief economist of PNC Financial Services Group, said in an interview that cutting rates would have been "the wrong weapon aimed at the wrong target." Paul Ashworth, senior U.S. economist of Capital Economics, said in a statement after the vote: "The Fed is now more than ever determined to tackle the funding problems in financial markets by widening the scope of its liquidity programs rather than lowering interest rates."
In this credit crunch the Fed has vastly expanded its lending programs, accepting more kinds of assets as collateral and even opening lending to investment banks for the first time. Those moves are apart from whatever the lending rate is. Before the vote, Robert McTeer, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, told Bloomberg Radio: "We have a very concentrated problem in housing that's not really a rate problem, and we've got a financial crisis that's really not a rate problem."'
But if the credit crunch causes further weakness, the Fed is likely to be forced to cut the federal funds rate. Hoffman, the PNC economist, said: "They've at least opened the door to a rate cut, even if they're not ready to step across the threshold."
Coy is BusinessWeek's Economics editor.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/sep2008/db20080916_417024.htm?chan=top%2Bnews_top%2Bnews%2Bindex%2B-%2Btemp_top%2Bstory

Beats there man with heart so tuff
That would not say one woman is enough?

Nigerian with 86 wives arrested under Sharia laws September 16, 2008 - 9:01am
By BASHIR ADIGUN Associated Press Writer
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) - Police in northern Nigeria have arrested a Muslim preacher who claims 86 wives and 107 children, charging him with breaking Islamic laws governing marriage.
Authorities detained Mohammed Bello Masaba, 84, on Monday after an order from northern Niger state's Islamic court, according to police spokesman Richard Oguche. The preacher was charged with "infringing on Islamic laws," Oguche told The Associated Press by telephone from the state.
It was unclear when the man would appear before the court, or what the potential punishment could be. Muslim principles forbid men to take more than four wives.
Around half of Nigeria's 140 million people are Muslim, and Niger was one of twelve majority-Muslim states that adopted the Islamic Sharia criminal code after Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999. The move sparked religious riots throughout the country that left thousands dead.
But severe corporal punishments imposed by the Sharia courts are rarely carried out and no executions have taken place. Nigeria's secular, federal government, which controls the national security forces, has said it won't allow the most serious Sharia punishments.
Analysts say Sharia was implemented for political reasons as well as religious conviction _ as a show of strength by the Muslim northerners and as an acknowledgment that secular courts had failed to stem years of crime.
Nigeria has 24 other states that do not follow Sharia law.
Masaba says God enables him to maintain such a large family.
"A man with 10 wives would collapse and die, but my own power is given by Allah. That is why I have been able to control 86 of them," he has been quoted as saying in Nigeria's local media.
http://wtop.com/?nid=387&sid=1479106