Glenn Beck: The Creature From Jekyll Island

G. Edward Griffin, the author of the book "The Creature From Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve" was on Glenn Beck's TV program yesterday. He was...and here's the first part of the Fox News clip of that interview...and I'm hoping the rest of it will be posted sometime today...as only the first twelve minutes were available as of 7:00 a.m. Eastern time this morning.  It runs about eleven minutes...and the part that is posted is well worth watching. The link is here.

In the Sovereign Fiscal Responsibility Index, the Comeback America Initiative ranked 34 countries according to their ability to meet their financial challenges, and the US finished 28th, said David Walker, head of the organization and former US comptroller general. The link to the story, which is posted over at cnbc.com, is here.

Radiation At Fukushima Water Jumps To Over 1 Sievert, 10 Million Times Higher Than "Normal", Plutonium Tests Ordered For The First Time

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/27/2011 11:20 -0400

And the hits just keep on coming. Earlier today, TEPCO announced that the radiation in the water pool of reactor #2 had been measured at 1,000 millisieverts/h (1 sievert/h) - the highest reading so far recorded since the Fukushima disaster started. As a reminder, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says a single dose of 1,000 millisieverts is enough to cause haemorrhaging, which a ten hour exposure to this dose is enough to result in death. "The situation is serious. They have to pump away this water on the floor, get rid of it to lower the radiation," said Robert Finck, radiation protection specialist at the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, speaking before the operator expressed doubt about the high reading. "It's virtually impossible to work, you can only be there for a few minutes. It's impossible to say how long it will take before they can gradually take control." From Kyodo: "Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the concentration of radioactive substances of the puddle was 10 million times higher than that seen usually in water in a reactor core, but later decided to reanalyze the data because it found some errors." And keep in mind this is the idiocy that is resulting after last week the brilliant geniuses at TECPO came up with the plan to water each and every reactor: now it's time to remove the water, but the water just happens to be so radioactive, nobody can remove it. In the meantime the leak into the ocean keeps getting worse: "Radioactive iodine-131 at a concentration 1,850.5 times the legal limit was detected in a seawater sample taken around 330 meters south of the plant, near a drainage outlet of the four troubled reactors, compared with 1,250.8 times the limit found Friday, the agency said." And while Zero Hedge has long believed that the only possible outcome here is the Plan Z concrete entombment, which will guarantee an 80 km non-inhabitable radius around Fukushima in perpetuity, finally the "experts" are warming up to this idea: per Reuters: "Experts say there is still too much heat in the reactor cores and spent fuel at the Fukushima plant for a similar last-ditch solution to be considered yet."

Following The Earlier TEPCO Reporting Flap, Here Is A Simple Way To Resolve The True Radioactivity At Reactor 2

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/27/2011 12:41 -0400

Here is a simple way to clear up the flap over the earlier "false" reporting on whether or not TEPCO screwed up by releasing the figure of 1 sievert of radiation as emanating from the water pool at Reactor 2. From the IAEA: "As previously reported, three workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were exposed on 24 March to elevated levels of radiation. The IAEA has received additional information on the incident from the Japanese authorities. For two of the three workers, significant skin contamination over their legs was confirmed. The Japanese authorities have stated that during medical examinations carried out at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in the Chiba Prefecture, the level of local exposure to the workers’ legs was estimated to be between 2 and 6 sieverts. While the patients did not require medical treatment, doctors decided to keep them in hospital and monitor their progress over coming days." All that needs to be disclosed now is how long these workers were in the contaminated water for. If it was between 2 and 6 hours, and the cumulative exposure was 2 - 6 sieverts, it would be rather consistent with the reported record exposure of 1 sievert/hour. If it was shorter, and the upper estimate is correct, the exposure could be as high as 6 sieverts/hour, a figure, based on the prior methodology, about 60 million times higher than permitted.

Exit Polls Indicate Merkel's CDU Set To Lose Key Baden-Wuerttemberg Regional Election; SPD, Greens To Win With 48.5% Of Votes

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/27/2011 12:29 -0400

And more bad news for European cohesiveness. From Reuters: "Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats will lose control of Germany's most prosperous state to the centre-left opposition in a major upset to her centre-right government, according to TV exit polls.  In Baden-Wuerttemberg state, the Greens and Social Democrats (SPD) looked set to win a combined 48.5 percent in an election on Sunday where Japan's nuclear disaster played a major role. The centre-left has long pushed to end the use of nuclear power. The Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Free Democrat coalition partners, big backers of prolonging the use of nuclear power in Germany, won a combined 43 percent of the vote, network ARD said shortly after polls closed at 1600 GMT." For Merkel, this is probably the last nail in the political coffin as the troubled premier is no longer able to placate either a broader Eurozone demanding far greater taxpayer concessions from her citizens in preventing the fall of the Euro (and the return of the Deutsche Mark, which would surge upon reimplementation, crippling Germany's export market, as a the old system reasserts itself), nor can she convince her own people that she has their best interests in mind, with the latest flap over nuclear power plants certainly not helping. 

Nash Equilibrium Fail: Ireland Wants Senior Bondholder Haircuts

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/27/2011 12:04 -0400

And so the great decade + old eurozone game theory project of Europe is about to come crashing down. Following Europe's decision to leave Ireland out in the cold, due to the country's ongoing unwillingness to pander with unilateral concessions to the global banking syndicate, the Emerald Isle has apparently decided to call the EU's bluff. Reuters reports: "Ireland's government wants to impose losses on some senior bondholders in Irish lenders to reduce the burden on taxpayers from a prolonged banking crisis, a senior minister said on Sunday...Analysts widely expect the government to impose losses on senior bondholders in nationalized lenders Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide because they have sold their deposits and are being wound down. Hitting any unsecured unguaranteed senior bonds in Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks (AIB), which amount to over 11 billion euros, would be more controversial." Yet most controversial would be the fact that the Eurozone is now unable to control its wayward son, which seems set on actually following the will of its people than that of the plutocrats. And just like Tunisia set a precedent to the MENA region with an act many thought was unthinkable, should Ireland follow through with this near-revolutionary act of a debt impairing chain-reaction, most other countries are set to follow suit, leading not only to the inevitable end of the one currency block, expected for so long by many euroskeptics, but yet another US taxpayer funded bailout, as was revealed on Thursday of last week, when we observed the upcoming "threat to the international monetary system" as predicted by the IMF.




If Big Banks Raise Fees, Bank Elsewhere: Rep. Bawney Fwank