USA Watchdog | June 8 2012
The UN says that civil war in Syria is “imminent.” It looks to me it’s been imminent for months. More than 9,000 people have been killed in the uprising which, at its core, is a fight between Shia and Sunni. That’s the Hatfields and McCoys to you and me. There is mounting pressure from the U.S. calling for regime change, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed that call, again, this week. There is covert support of the rebels from the west, but no official military intervention–yet. The EU debt crisis is bad and getting worse. Spanish banks have openly asked for a bailout, but the entire Euro-zone appears to be in trouble. Still, the leaders of the Western world want to keep it together no matter what. Barack Obama and David Cameron (UK) have been involved with EU leaders to try to continue to bail it out and keep the monetary union together.
Massive money printing will be necessary according to Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Nigel Farage, who says buy gold and expect very big inflation. Germany is being asked to carry the bailout weight, but it doesn’t want to take on all the debt. If it does, it will be asking to be in control of most of Europe. It tried that before in WWII. Meanwhile, Fed Chief Ben Bernanke says he will provide more stimulus but isn’t giving up any details. The Fed meets in a couple of weeks to decide the money printing course. Record lows are being recorded with mortgage interest rates and Treasury rates. Some say it is a flight to quality, but others say it is, at least in part, the Federal Reserve suppressing interest rates behind the scenes.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker survived an attempt to kick him out of office over cutting the benefits of some public worker unions. This is a bad sign for the public unions everywhere. I think you can call this the beginning of a nationwide taxpayer revolt. The big story on Capitol Hill this week is Attorney General Eric Holder and the “Fast and Furious” debacle that ended with the death of a border patrol officer. He was shot with assault rifles given to Mexican drug cartels by the ATF. It was a sting operation that went very bad. Congress was grilling Holder about it yesterday but should have been asking him why there have been zero prosecutions of big bankers for trillions of dollars in fraud in the financial meltdown. Oh, both Republicans and Democrats got bought off; I mean, got campaign money from Wall Street. So, I guess we should forget that.
Finally, the biggest distraction of the week for serious news is Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s crack down on big sugary drinks in New York City. This story seemed to get way more coverage than all the stories I just mentioned. Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com gives his take on these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up.
