In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss naked short selling by Goldman Sachs and piling on JP Morgan all while being hounded by a Fox News helicopter. In the second half of the show Max talks to Francine McKenna of reTheAuditors.com about Jamie Dimon, London whales and MF Global.

Inflation slowed to 3 per cent last month due to the timing of Easter and a drop in transport prices, but is likely to stay above its 2 per cent target, fuelling controversy over the Bank of England’s quantitative easing policy.

TUESDAY, MAY 22, 2012

KingCast and Mortgage Movies Video: Drouin Case -- Wells Fargo, Sand Canyon and Option One Lose Motion to Dismiss in NH Federal Court.

This case supports everything I've been arguing to the U.S. DOJ about my status as a journalist exempt from payment of FOIA fees as noted in yesterday's journal entry:
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2012/05/kingcastmortgage-movies-to-...

JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is a Federal Reserve board member which has given Wall Street banks $16 Trillion in secret bailouts while paying the banks not to lend money.

A Chinese company is planning to buy US cinema chain, AMC Entertainment Holdings. The acquisition will create the largest movie theater chain in the world...

Wall Street Banks scammed the public when they shared secret earnings estimates and valuations of Facebook with insiders much worse than they publicly reported.

Greece's struggling banking industry has been secretly injected with around €100 billion in emergency liquidity from the country’s central bank which was approved by the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, according to the FT.

This follow reports of a ‘run’ developing on Greek banks last week, which were emphatically denied by the Greek PM’s office.

And now comes some news about the Facebook (FB) IPO that buyers deserve to be outraged about.

Reuters' Alistair Barr is reporting that Facebook's lead underwriters, Morgan Stanley (MS), JP Morgan (JPM), and Goldman Sachs (GS) all cut their earnings forecasts for the company in the middle of the IPO roadshow.

This by itself is highly unusual (I've never seen it during 20 years in and around the tech IPO business).

But, just as important, news of the estimate cut was passed on only to a handful of big investor clients, not everyone else who was considering an investment in Facebook.

A broker has given up his license yo protest a new campaign by government regulators telling him he could not answer customer questions about buying silver.

THank you Russian Today for broadcasting the truth

Christine Lagarde, of the International Monetary Fund, said the Bank should ‘reassess the efficacy’ of cutting rates below the current record low of 0.5 per cent to reduce the cost of borrowing for businesses and homeowners.

"Cut the cost of borrowing for businesses and homeowners" translates to increase bank profits.

Susanne Posel, Contributor
Activist Post

The European Union (EU) is claiming that Google overstepped its bounds as a monopoly. Officials in the EU have been conducting anti-trust investigation into Google’s treatment of search term results.

'I believe that these fast-moving markets would particularly benefit from a quick resolution of the competition issues identified,' said Joaquín Almunia, the head of competition policy for the European Commission. 'Restoring competition swiftly to the benefit of users at an early stage is always preferable to lengthy proceedings, although these sometimes become indispensable to competition enforcement.

Almunia said that Google is becoming a dominant abuser with regard to its business practices.

Susanne Posel, Contributor
Activist Post

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. is a serving member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Dimon was given his seat on the Fed’s board in 2007. He has enjoyed his position throughout the financial crisis that his and several other mega-banks have caused through irresponsible behavior on the global stock market.

Dimon is not the only banking executive to serve two masters...

By Matt Taibbi-Rolling Stone Magazine

Nato summit leaders should have been forced to watch the moving protest of the former troops chucking their medals away.

It was one of the most moving experiences many of us had witnessed in our lives. It is hard to describe in words. I couldn't get the lump out of my throat. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a woman next to me crying. Their words, their voices, crackling under the emotion of their courageous act, breaking under the weight of the pain, the trauma, their anger, sadness, and hope – theirs was a heroic and beautiful act, a moving ceremony. It was a privilege to be there with these women and men who served in our wars.

Operation Iraqi Freedom medal. Tossed. Global War on Terror medal. Thrown. National Defense medal. Pitched. Marine Corps Good Conduct medal. Flung. Navy and Marine Corps medal. Chucked.

Did you catch what Jamie Dimon said yesterday 5/21/12 during an Investment Conference?

This is So Good! Wow, he sure did slip up BIG TIME!

Do as we say..... NOT as we Think!

Love it!

So, you’ve spent — or your parents…or the taxpayers have spent — $150,000 on your education. And you’re retarded.

And now you enter the job market. And don’t think you’ll have an easy time of it. Because previous graduates of this university and others have applied the lessons they learned in school and made a god-awful mess of the economy. There are 14 million people without jobs. About one in 20 young people is jobless.

It is the first week of August, 1964, and U.S. warships under the command of U.S. Navy Admiral George Stephen Morrison have allegedly come under attack while patrolling Vietnam’s Tonkin Gulf. This event, subsequently dubbed the ‘Tonkin Gulf Incident,’ will result in the immediate passing by the U.S. Congress of the obviously pre-drafted Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which will, in turn, quickly lead to America’s deep immersion into the bloody Vietnam quagmire.

Susanne Posel, Contributor
Activist Post

Earlier this year, the President created the Global Development Council (GDC); a new commission that is promoting global growth and expansion through international initiatives.

The purpose of the council is to advance the US government’s “national security objectives: security, prosperity, respect for universal values, and a just and sustainable international order.”

Funding for the GDC dictates their policy with the engagement of financial partners and beneficiaries as well as stakeholders.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will govern GDC. Through foreign governments and hidden within humanitarian aid, GDC utilizes non-profit advocacy groups, philanthropic individuals and charities as well as partner with mutli-national corporations to give them seats on the council. Hillary Clinton, secretary of State, as well as member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is involved with the dealings of GDC...

Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng arrived in the United States Saturday night in Newark, N.J., and was ferried to an apartment at New York University, where he will be a fellow at the School of Law. You see the American dream is still alive and well, at least for a Chinese national.

There are at present thousands of US nationals living in tent cities. These people are educated. They worked and paid into this corrupt system all their lives and now they are discarded like garbage as a Chinaman is handed everything the US has to offer on a silver platter.

The state of California has been in a downward spiral when it comes to it's financial situation. Governor Jerry Brown is now proposing implementing austerity measures to pull the Golden State out of the red. Social programs such as welfare and healthcare for the poor are the first to be slashed and Dr. Caroline Heldman, politics professor at Occidental College, joins us with her take on the situation.

Germany's relentless push for Eurozone-wide austerity is driving the global economy towards catastrophe. So says the British Shadow Chancellor or opposition finance spokesman Ed Balls, who argues that someone's got to persuade Berlin to change course. To discuss this in more detail, RT talks to James Meadway, senior economist at the New Economics Foundation think-tank in London.

Bloomberg reports investors are worried JP Morgan is planning to pull back in the European mortgage bond market in the wake of the CIO disaster, causing significant volatility. JP Morgan is the biggest buyer of European home-loan bonds. Is this just one of many examples of how JP Morgan's reckless 2 billion dollar trading loss may be felt most by other people and firms, while JP Morgan could, perversely enough, actually be the firm to benefit most?

Montreal students prepare for a massive following mass arrests and police brutality that included percussion bombs and tear gas which left 20 injured.

In the 1980s, the military had its infamous $800 toilet seat. Today, it has a $17,000 drip pan.

Thanks to a powerful Kentucky congressman who has steered tens of millions of federal dollars to his district, the Army has bought about $6.5 million worth of the “leakproof” drip pans in the last three years to catch transmission fluid on Black Hawk helicopters. And it might want more from the Kentucky company that makes the pans, even though a similar pan from another company costs a small fraction of the price: about $2,500.

A for dummies post post-mortem analysis of Facebook's Epic IPO Crash which has left mom and pop investors with losses of up to 20% in the span of 48 hours.

The House bill basically provides Israel with a blank check drawn on the U.S. taxpayer to maintain its “qualitative military edge” over all of its neighbors combined.

The Ben-Ami – Kristol debate, coming on the heels of a similar debate held two weeks ago between controversial author Peter Beinart and the conservative Shalem Center’s Daniel Gordis at Columbia University, appears to signal an attempt by the Jewish community – at least in New York – to create an ongoing dialogue between its warring “factions” and to arrest the polarization of the community.

“I am happy to agree with Obama to a considerable degree,” said Kristol, one of America’s most well-known conservative commentators. He added that he does not expect Israel to be “that great an issue” in the upcoming November elections.

Nonetheless, Kristol elicited howls of protest from the audience when he predicted that the next U.S. secretary of state in a “Romney administration” would be former Democratic vice presidential nominee Senator Joe Lieberman. Ben-Ami wryly noted, “Israel already has a Lieberman as foreign minister.”

Using the branding power of Facebook, Wall Street has suckered the masses back into the stock market only to burn them for a 20% loss in two days of trading.

I just started reading the “summary” version of WWF’s biennial “state of the planet” report (loaded with lots of large print, white space, pretty pictures, and ominous graphics) and already I have a headache.

On page two I was told quite emphatically that “demand on natural resources has doubled since 1966? and that “we are currently using the equivalent of 1.5 planets to support our activities.”

OK, I never did like fractions much, but even I can figure out that this means that we have already consumed the planet we’re on, plus one half of an imaginary planet that doesn’t exist, and so we therefore must be hanging out in space somewhere waiting for a couple more planets to come floating by so that we can consume them, too, like “Day of the Locusts,” or Super-Mario-Pac-Men, or…, or…, or something.

Susanne Posel, Contributor
Activist Post

In a report from the World Bank, Africa’s economic development was outlined as a “golden opportunity for a green future”.

At the 4th Africa Carbon Forum (ACF) “The vast potential represented by African countries in the fight against climate change cannot be underestimated,” said Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

“The Africa Carbon Forum is where potential projects and developers and funders can meet, exchange ideas, and – it is hoped – take the concrete steps toward greening Africa’s future.”

The ACF held a conference where policymakers, project developers, and private investors discussed climate-smart agriculture, public and private partnerships and funding for projects. However, it is clear that Africa holds more promise than just the inception of carbon emission reduction and carbon finance...

On Meet The Press this morning MSNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer warns there will be financial anarchy and bank runs in both Spain and Italy within weeks.

French banks may have to be nationalized as France’s mortgage sector has just dropped straight off a cliff and the banks are on the hook to cover the crash.

The US economy has slowed to stall speed. A few lonely forecasters fear that America has already fallen back into recession, replicating the terrible double-dip of 1937.

The Philly Fed’s manufacturing index dropped suddenly to minus 5.8 in May. The US Conference Board’s index of leading indicators fell in April. Job creation has slipped from 250,000 a month to nearer 130,000 in March and April.

The Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) says post-War personal income growth in the US has never been this weak for three months in a row without triggering a recession. It has happened ten out of ten times.

It is this fresh menace - combined with China’s failure to calibrate its heralded soft-landing - that poses the real danger to southern Europe’s arc of depression over the next year. Greece is just a poignant detail.

Noah Bonn, Contributor
Activist Post

Corruption is everywhere, but nowhere is it so blatant and so deep-seated as in the 5 following industries: Banking, Energy, Agriculture/Biotech, Media, and Healthcare.

Conspicuously missing from this list, of course, is politics.

The reason that politics was not included is because political corruption is very rarely confined to the political arena. It is almost entirely the result of financial lobby and backing, so I decided to focus on the industries behind the issue, rather than the politicians themselves.

Hopefully you will find this article eye-opening, as well as empowering in your effort to affect change today...

The private equity firm co-founded by presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney “fired a lot of people” to get “prosperity for the rich,” CNBC analyst Jim Cramer said during an appearance on Meet The Press this morning. During a panel discussion on the effectiveness of an ad from President Obama’s campaign highlighting Romney’s past at Bain Capital, which bankrupted nearly a quarter of the companies in which it invested while making billions of dollars, Cramer said the firm’s past earned Romney a reputation as a “job destroyer, not a creator.”

"Look on the bright side, it won't happen now because no-one's working" - Official White Horse Souse

Up until 26 minutes ago, $38.00 was the most important number for Facebook. That is no longer the case. Below, courtesy of Grant Stevens and Things That Make You Go Hmm are a few more numbers that readers may be interested in.

About Face(book) took all of 24 hours. The FaceBook $38/share support freebie courtesy of Morgan Stanley is now gone. As of moments ago the stock was well below its IPO price and sliding. The humiliation for a Zuckerpunched Morgan Stanley, which is now funding its $70 million IPO fee with hundreds of millions in sales and trading losses, and which is scrubbing any mention of the FaceBook IPO from its pitchbooks, and of course the NASDAQ, is just soaring by the minute.

Indonesia appears to no longer be willing to trade physical commodities and currencies for US dollars.

The nation has instituted a 20% export tax on minerals including gold, silver, and platinum to discourage exploitation of the nation’s resources until 2014, when Indonesia will begin banning exports of raw materials (natural resources).

Indonesia has decided to retain gold, silver and platinum in the list of minerals enforced with a 20 percent export tax but coal is exempted.

Did he really seriously say that?

What has the war in Afghanistan gotten us? Besides the military making billions by smuggling in and keeping the heroin pipeline going!

Oh, besides Afghanistan has major minerals in the country that could transform it into being one of the most important mining countries in the world.

Yet We the Tax Payers of the United States are suffering within the U.S. and 'supporting' Afghanistan at the same time. We are losing our most valuable resources too.... the death of our soldiers due to the fake war there.

Wars are all about taking over resources of another country with made up excuses.

A specter haunts Europe. No, it's not communism; it's US rating agencies. Greece is bankrupt; the eurozone is about to crack; JP Morgan makes billion-dollar "mistakes"; there's no (jobs) future for the new generations. And yet the weaponized arm of the Western 0.1% elites occupies Chicago - turned into an Orwellian police city-state - to discuss "smart defense".

In Afghanistan, the "smart" North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is in fact bound for a humiliating escape. "Smart defense"

is code for "there's no money". Only five among 28 NATO member states spend 2% of their gross domestic product on the military - as NATO would have it.

Paul Craig Roberts
Activist Post

The US financial system and, probably, the financial system of Europe, like the police, no longer serves a useful social purpose.

In the US the police have proven themselves to be a greater threat to public safety than private sector criminals. I just googled “police brutality” and up came 183,000,000 results...

http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2012/05/kingcastmortgage-movies-to-...

The DOJ Attorney Janice Galli McLeod arbitrarily and capriciously denied my free press fee exemption to help cover up U.S. Trustee Lawrence Sumski's failures of Due Diligence on Bankruptcy B10 Proofs of claim. There is no logical reason why I was denied the exemption based on years of experience as a paid journalist and mortgage industry professional in addition to my current journalism activities that include actual courtroom coverage and analysis of current legal cases and other legislative developments. FOIA was specifically modified to reflect the changes in in journalism to incorporate people like Neil Garfield or me, and a recent NH case of Mortgage Specialists v. Implode-Explode supports my contentions in every aspect. Note that the case involved now is based in NH.

As the media blackout for the reasons behind a now estimated $5 billion loss at JP Morgan Chase continues, Open Secrets learns Congress has millions invested in the firm.

HSBC has set out contingency plans for all its 15 Greek branches to cope with a return of the drachma.

Iain Mackay, HSBC finance director, said it had made "preparations at multiple levels" to cope with the currency's re-emergence from an 11-year hibernation should Greece leave the euro. The bank has already reduced its exposure to Greece but has also trained staff at its branch network to be ready should the worst happen. This includes work to manage IT systems, branch funding, how to deal with customers and how to update ATM systems to dispense drachmas.

Facebook turns people’s private information into its own private income stream. The company makes about 85% of its income, over $3 billion a year, as an advertising platform. Using Facebook has a dark side. According to a study sponsored by Microsoft, 75% of companies now require human resource officials to check out a job applicant’s online presence before making a job offer. In a troubling trend, more and more employers are asking job applicants for their Facebook passwords.

The House bill basically provides Israel with a blank check drawn on the U.S. taxpayer to maintain its “qualitative military edge” over all of its neighbors combined. t requires the White House to prepare an annual report on how that superiority is being maintained. The resolution passed on May 9 by a vote of 411–2 on a “suspension of the rules,” which is intended for non-controversial legislation requiring little debate and a quick vote.

What's the standoff between China and the Philippines over an atoll in the South China Sea all about? Is it a matter of seafood and sovereignty ... or gas fields and gambling?
Most notorious is the infamous Chinese nine-dash line, a scrotum-shaped outrage that extends from Hainan Island to brush the shores of Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines, and encompasses almost the entire South China Sea.
But a closer look reveals that there is some genuine method to the madness and the Chinese government has drawn certain lessons from past maritime debacles, most notably the Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands crisis with Japan.

In the matter of the Scarborough Shoal mess, it should be admitted that the Philippines started it.

The procedures for securing a US$3.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund will stop due to concerns of fund officials about social and political discord over the loan, Finance Minister Momtaz al-Saeed has said.

The Finance Ministry is urgently looking into alternative scenarios of how to maintain its weak cash reserves if the revenue inflows outlook deteriorates.

The only apparently safe option is to cut or suspend certain expenses. The total in June is projected at 5 billion euros, of which 4 billion is expected to flow in from the International Monetary Fund and the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).

May 19 (Bloomberg) -- Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter in Facebook Inc.’s initial public offering, stands to take a hit from a stock market debut that stoked disappointment among investors in the largest social network.

The bank stepped in to prop up the stock from dipping below its $38 IPO price yesterday, said people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the purchases were private. Morgan Stanley, based in New York, was the only underwriter among Facebook’s 33 banks with the responsibility to support the shares, the people said.

I heard it for the first time last week from one of the neo-con national socialists. “We are going to have to get used to eating beans and rice for a while.” Of course the elitist that uttered these words has never known a hard day in his life and when he says “we” he means you and me, the middle class and poor.

Yesterday I heard another utterance that caused me concern, “We are all going to have to pay higher taxes, especially that 50% that pay none”, of course again meaning the middle class and those working poor who are living so far beneath the poverty level that they are exempt from income tax.

Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence.–Paul Craig Roberts

“The new tyranny is arising in the West, not in Russia and China. The danger to humanity is in the nuclear button briefcase in the Oval Office and in the brainwashed and militant American (sic) population, the most totally disinformed and ignorant people on earth.”

It’s well-worth following what Roberts has to say. He’s one of the most informed thinkers and writers in America.

NICOSIA, Cyprus, May 18 (UPI) -- The dispute between Turkey and Israel over major natural gas fields under the eastern Mediterranean escalated sharply after Ankara scrambled F-16s to intercept an Israeli aircraft over Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus, where Ankara has started exploratory drilling.

Fines by breaking seat belt laws is TAXATION BY CITATION. Someone who is not wearing a seat belt has not harmed no one or someones property. It is a government scam to make money.

Bestselling author and legendary conspiracy researcher Jim Marrs has yet again exposed information that the mainstream corporate media has refused to report, unearthing the lies to expose the insidious alliances that make up a secret world. In the explosive The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy, Marrs digs beneath the media noise surrounding the financial bailouts of 2008 and 2009 while exploring the back rooms and shadowy deals of our nation's past to craft a frightening history that no one else is brave enough to tell.

The Wall Street Journal reports the JP Morgan’s losses on their illegal ‘synthetic’ securities speculation was approved directly by CEO Dimon and have now grown to $5 billion.

Britain's economy may suffer “permanent” damage and “never quite get back up” if the euro collapses in a chaotic way, the Government’s chief economic forecaster has said.

Robert Chote, the head of the Office of Budget Responsibility, issued the warning amid fears of financial shockwaves across Europe if Greece crashes out of the single currency.

The senior Government economist, who has access to the most up-to-date Treasury data, said this could cause a recession as bad as the last one and “lingering, long-lasting effects” for Britain’s public finances.

He said it could “permanently hamper the economy” in the worst case scenario, raising the prospect that Britain may never again see the same high growth it has had in recent decades.

All the major Western Central Banks will print to infinity in an attempt to prevent financial Armageddon.

Once the policy is underway, QE cannot be removed from the economy without economic collapse until the system is reset. QE to Infinity…AND BEYOND!!!

It was George Santayana who famously said "Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it." There are millions and millions of people who are blissfully unaware of the financial fraud that they partake in daily. These people will be left holding worthless fiat paper when the official monopolized money machine collapses, taking everyone's digital, paper & monetized debt instruments with it

Our new National Anthem!

Susanne Posel, Contributor
Activist Post

The New Hampshire House of Representatives voted to ban UN Agenda 21 polices.

This legislation will prevent local, county and state governments from adopting the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) programs.

ICLEI is a UN agency that provides “local” community plans, software and training to towns and cities that pay their dues.

NH is not the only state to pass anti-Agenda 21 legislation...

Washington •French President Francois Hollande said Friday he would carry out his pledge to withdraw combat forces from Afghanistan by year’s end, two years earlier than the U.S. ally once planned. He made the declaration to President Barack Obama in the Oval Office.

Speaking after the White House meeting, Hollande said he stands by a campaign promise to withdraw troops, but said France will keep supporting Afghanistan in a "different way." The war, more than a decade old, draws even less public support in France than in the United States.

New York

1 in every 2,677 homes received a foreclosure filing in Q1 2012

Properties with foreclosure filings:
2,812

Change from March 2012:
-7.62%

Change from April 2011:
+7.25%

Members of the Class of 2012,

As a former secretary of labor and current professor, I feel I owe it to you to tell you the truth about the pieces of parchment you’re picking up today.

You’re f*cked.

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post

Over the past few months, the dismal financial state of the United States Postal Service has been the subject of much derision and contempt in the mainstream media. The massive debt held by the USPS has been the bloody sheet waived by both reactionary Republicans and Wall Street Democrats in order to justify the privatization or even the elimination of such an important service from oversight and administration by the Federal government.

The large debt held by USPS, coupled with exaggerations of wait times and other aspects involved in shipping services, are constantly highlighted as the latest example of how “government is incapable of running anything effectively.” The general public is then subjected to a barrage of “free market” solutions which are, as is almost always the case, nothing more than the fleecing of the taxpayer who will inevitably end up paying more and receiving less while benefiting crony corporations...

In response to the question in the title I can report that most of my readers are. Almost everyone got the point of the last column. They see the absurdity of the government’s claim that the identity of the tough, macho Navy Seals, who allegedly murdered Osama bin Laden, has to be kept secret in order to protect our fierce warriors from reprisals from Muslim terrorists, while those government officials responsible for the torture and deaths of large numbers of Muslims can walk around, identity known, unprotected and safe.

Ron Paul 2012 Campaign

Jesse Benton, Chief Strategist:Dr. Paul is NOT dropping out or suspending his campaign.

Ron Paul is the Only Candidate Who Matters in this Election

Please watch this video and pass it along!

I questioned David Morgan of Silver-Investor.com and The Morgan Report on May 15th 2012.

This is not your "normal" metals interview - it is about the emotional value people put on the investments of metals and how the bankers are working on the psychological part to stop people from investing in metals.

"Centralization induces apoplexy at the center and anemia at the extremities." ~ Lamenais

The present political system is clearly insane. It suffers from schizophrenia. Around the world, almost no one trusts the politicians, yet almost everyone votes for incumbent politicians who promise to reform the government.

For those of us who dread the centralization of anything, our boats have begun to come in.

No ship will come in. Its model is the Titanic.

A melee ensues after a protester pulls down a NATO banner.

The police presence in the Loop was enormous Friday afternoon, leaving the appearance that there were several officers per protester.

After a downtown rally that peacefully crossed the Loop, NATO protesters joined forces with organized labor Friday night, lending their voices to striking workers at the Congress Plaza Hotel.

More evidence, if you needed any, that these days of demonstrations in Chicago are about more than the NATO Summit. Young people gathered here say they are looking for opportunity and a way forward.

Ron Paul's new strategy to win the GOP nomination for the 2012 Presidential Election as he heads full force toward the Republican National Convention.

As the run on the banks spread in Europe, with 30% of customers pulling cash out of UK branches of Spain's Santander bank, the Euro spikes on absolutely no news.

...Today was all about one thing - the disaster that was/is/and will be Facebook - between late openings, overwhelmed systems, a dump to the syndicate bid and almost 600mm shares traded with the syndicate just soaking it all up at $38.00 early and into the close.

Is it any wonder that every other social media stock plunged and how do they expect to ever get another internet IPO off again (at anything but a massive discount). No matter what correlation trick was tried to juice markets today - for the tenth day-in-a-row markets saw a BTFD turn into a STFR...

7.58pm: This is turning into something of a farce.

According to reports from Athens, the Greek government is now rejecting Berlin's denial, insisting that Merkel did suggest running a referendum alongside the June 17 vote.....

7.21pm BST: The German government has now denied that Angela Merkel suggested that Greece should hold a referendum.

Since 2008 the vast majority of the Western population dream about saying "no" to the banks, but no one has dared to do so. No one except the Icelanders, who have carried out a peaceful revolution that has managed not only to overthrow a government and draft a new constitution, but also seeks to jail those responsible for the country's economic debacle.

The United States on Thursday announced the imposition of antidumping tariffs of more than 31 percent on solar panels from China.

The move by the Commerce Department is certain to infuriate Chinese officials already upset after recent bilateral frictions over China’s human rights policies and its increasingly confrontational approach toward American allies like the Philippines and Japan.