Home Safe Sales Soar As Trust In Banks Collapses

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Financial crisis: Home safe sales soar as trust in banks collapses
Worried savers are taking their cash out of banks and investing in home safes in an attempt to beat the current banking crisis.

Sales of household safes have soared as the ongoing economic downturn has seen the markets collapse and banks pushed into hasty mergers.

Russ Reader, managing director of Leigh Safes said: "It's simple, if there is a lack of confidence in banks buy safes and put the contents on their home insurance.

"We've seen a 25 per cent increase in sales and inquiries over the last four weeks, in particular for higher-grade safes that insurance companies approve for larger sums."

Safe companies claims sales began to rise following the troubles with Northern and Rock and increased again following the Bradford and Bingle
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The R3VOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED ! hosted by Alex Jones

Are your friends and family still asleep? Imagine being able to watch, on a dish network, at your friends house, all of the content found on InfoWars.com and other like-minded minded organizations. Imagine the conversations that will occur after they see and hear some of the news they havent been getting from the main stream [...]

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[Source: War On You

Awash In Profits, Exxon Extracting Every Penny From Its Franchisees

Every time Sohaila Rezazadeh rings up a sale at her Exxon station on Chain Bridge Road in Oakton, her cash register sends the information to Exxon Mobil’s central computers. If she raises the price of gasoline a couple of pennies, chances are that Exxon will raise the wholesale price she pays by the same amount.Through [...]

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[Source: War On You

VA Opposes Much of Bill to Improve Care for Women Veterans

by Les Blumenthal McClatchy Newspapers 5-22-2008 Department of Veterans Affairs officials said Wednesday that they oppose much of a Senate bill to improve care for female veterans even as the number of women seeking VA medical services is expected to double within the next five years.A top VA official admitted during a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing that [...]

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[Source: War On You

The Economist Intelligence Unit briefing: China and Japan

Despite warming relations, rivalry and suspicion persist

China and Japan have issued a joint communique emphasising their intention to take a forward-looking and constructive approach to bilateral relations. As a symbol of warming ties between the two countries, the communique is significant in its own right, as indeed is the state visit to Japan of China's president, Hu Jintao, during which the joint statement was released. Relations between China and Japan have undoubtedly improved compared with just a few years ago. Yet while both governments recognise the strategic benefits of a stronger friendship, fundamental tensions and areas of strategic rivalry remain.

At one level, Mr Hu's visit and the joint statement he signed with the Japanese prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, on May 7th are proof positive of the "warm spring" in relations that the two governments have recently claimed is occurring. Mr Hu's visit is the first to Japan by a Chinese head of state since 1998, and would not have been possible without an improvement on the situation that has prevailed for much of the intervening period. Not only was the previous visit to Japan by a Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, a diplomatic disaster (Tokyo took offence when Mr Jiang demanded a stronger Japanese apology for prewar and wartime atrocities in China), but relations between the two countries were also badly strained by Junichiro Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo during his five-year tenure as Japanese prime minister from 2001 to 2006. ...

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[Source: The Economist: News analysis

3 Industries With Strong Job Growth

IT WAS ONLY a matter of time before the turmoil hitting the credit markets and housing industry started to take its toll on hiring.

During the first quarter, more than 200,000 workers were handed pink slips, according to a survey by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Among the hardest hit industries, the financial and retail sectors shed 26,719 and 16,608 jobs, respectively. The rockiest region was the West/Southwest with California losing a total of 22,866 positions.

Still, however, we aren't seeing the massive layoffs we experienced after the 2001 recession and the dot.com bust — at least not yet. The unemployment rate sits at a relatively healthy 5.1% (back in 2003, it hit an annual average of 6%) and many industries, including health care and technology, are still hiring, according to Monster.com's (MNST: 24.33, +0.08, +0.32%) March employment survey. Regionally, the top growth markets according to online classified ads, include Pittsburgh, followed by Houston and Dallas.

If you've recently been laid off or are simply looking for greener pastures, here are some industries (beyond health care and technology) that are looking for workers.


Not all professions are prone to pink slips. Here are some fields that are hiring.

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[Source: SmartMoney.com - Consumer Action

Turning green?

Candidates' views on oil and the climate

DO VOTERS worry more about climate change, America?s dependence on foreign oil or the cost of filling their petrol tanks? The last may well be the most pressing. This week the president of OPEC, Chakib Khelil, raised the spectre of the price of a barrel of oil hitting an eye-popping $200. Even at nearly $120 a barrel, the current price, motorists are squealing. A poll released on Tuesday April 29th suggests that the price of petrol is the single greatest concern among voters today.

No wonder that the three candidates for president are tapping into these issues. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic rivals, both say they will do something about climate change and energy security. So does the Republican candidate-designate John McCain, and unusually forcefully for a member of his party. The politicians have been spurred along by a variety of forces, from Al Gore pointing to evidence of man?s part in causing climate change, to pressure from religious environmentalists who see a God-given duty to act as stewards of the planet. Foreign-policy types, too, worry about America?s reliance on oil from the Middle East. ...

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[Source: The Economist: News analysis

VeriChip Markets Its Implantable RFID Tags and Services Direct to Consumers

April 28, 2008VeriChip has launched a direct-to-consumer initiative known as Health Link, making its RFID systempreviously branded as VeriMedavailable to customers in South Florida’s tri-county area. For $149, a consumer can have a passive 134 kHz RFID chip, compliant with the ISO 11784 and 11785 standards, implanted in his or her arm, with the transponder’s [...]

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[Source: War On You

The promised land

Land reform is going too slowly in South Africa

South Africa is debating legislation to speed up the process of land reform. Fears that this presages Zimbabwean-style land-grabs are probably misplaced, but the transfer of land will be accelerated.

Legislation designed to hasten the transfer of land from white to black ownership is currently before the South African parliament. The Expropriation Amendment Bill?approved by the cabinet before being passed onto a parliamentary committee in late March?is generating considerable controversy because of fears that safeguards on land ownership may be eroded. Indeed, some critics contend that the new laws are the first step towards Zimbabwean-style land take-overs. This seems to be overly pessimistic, but the government is undeniably under pressure to speed up land reform. ...

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[Source: The Economist: News analysis

Report from Nevada GOP Caucus - Ron Paul can not be allowed to win!

1417 is the number of credentialed delegates that can vote and a quorum is 709.
 
At the beginning of the Convention the State GOP/McCain campaign tried to limit who could be considered delegates. This prompted a floor fight that went on for hours. The...

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[Source: ronpaulforum.info

A bloody crackdown

Worsening repression inside Zimbabwe

THE situation in Zimbabwe is akin to war, says the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). It is certainly looking ever more brutal. Violence and repression have escalated dramatically over the past few days. Pro-government militias roam the countryside, terrorising and beating suspected opposition supporters. The police remain idle or, in some cases, join in with the beatings. The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights, a local outfit, has treated over 240 cases of injury, including broken limbs, resulting from organised violence since parliamentary and presidential elections just over three weeks ago.

Human Rights Watch, an international group, says that ZANU-PF, the ruling party of President Robert Mugabe, has set up torture camps across the country as part of a systematic campaign to intimidate the opposition, which won the parliamentary elections and, it claims, the presidential vote too. Victims are taken to the camps at night and beaten for hours with thick sticks, bars and army batons. Huts and houses have been torched. An unofficial curfew is in force in the poor suburbs of Harare, the capital. The MDC says that ten of its supporters have been killed, some shot dead. The opposition also says that some 3,000 families have had to flee their homes, 500 people have been put in hospital and over 400 opposition activists have been arrested. ...

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[Source: The Economist: News analysis -

The week ahead

What may be in the news

? DEMOCRATS in Pennsylvania have their say about who the party's presidential candidate should be when the state holds its primary election on Tuesday April 22nd. In the six weeks since the last contest in Mississippi Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have made gaffes over Bosnian snipers and free-trade agreements (Mrs Clinton) and race-baiting pastors and ?bitter? voters (Mr Obama). Mrs Clinton is expected to win the vote on Tuesday. If not, it will spell the end of her campaign.

For background see article ...

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[Source: The Economist: News analysis

ABC gets slammed for debate.

Editor & Publisher called this week’s ABC presidential debate “perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years.”Moderators George Stephanopolous and Charlie Gibson spent the first 50 minutes obsessed with distractions that only political insiders care about–gaffes, polling numbers, the stale Rev. Wright story, and the old-news Bosnia story. [...]

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[Source: War On You -

Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo warn 'delusional' investors on stocks

Wall Street faces the growing risk of an equities bloodbath in coming months as the credit crunch spreads to the wider economy and earnings crumble, according to a pair of grim reports issued by Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo.

Goldman Sachs said the key for equities will be the full-year guidance offered by companies

David Kostin, the chief US investment guru for Goldman Sachs, expects the S&P 500 index of Wall Street equities to plummet a further 15pc over the "near term" as companies scramble to lower their outlook for this year.

"Although only a few firms have reported first quarter results, early signs are awful. We expect a swath of lowered profit guidance," he said in a research note published today, entitled 'Fasten Seatbelts'.

Mr Kostin, who replaced the ever-bullish Abby Cohen as chief strategist in December, expects the S&P index to reach 1,160, which would amount to a fall of 27pc from the bull market peak of 1,576 in September and enter the annals as a relatively severe bear market.