Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): 500,000,000 Americans a month lose their jobs unless we pass another corrupt, disgusting economic stimulus bill to transfer money from the average American to the politically connected businesses and individuals.

Pete Stark (D-CA): The Federal Government can do most anything in this country

3 charges filed against Rep. Waters California Democrat Maxine Waters faces a House trial this fall on three charges of ethical wrongdoing, setting the stage for a second election-season public airing of ethics problems for a longtime Democratic lawmaker.

The charges focus on whether Waters broke the rules in requesting federal help for a bank where her husband owned stock and had served on the board of directors. She denied the charges Monday. (Read more from news.yahoo.com)

When I saw this story covered on CNN by Wolf Blitzer, the caption on bottom of the screen read “are black Congressmen being singled out?” or something like that, which seems like a desperate attempt at distracting from the issue of corruption.

Hundreds of residents of one of the poorest municipalities in Los Angeles County shouted in protest last night as tensions rose over a report that the city’s manager earns an annual salary of almost $800,000.

An overflow crowd packed a City Council meeting in Bell, a mostly Hispanic city of 38,000 about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles, to call for the resignation of Mayor Oscar Hernandez and other city officials. Residents left standing outside the chamber banged on the doors and shouted “fuera,” or “get out” in Spanish.

It was the first council meeting since the Los Angeles Times reported July 15 that Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo earns $787,637 — with annual 12 percent raises — and that Bell pays its police chief $457,000, more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck makes in a city of 3.8 million people. Bell council members earn almost $100,000 for part-time work. (Read more from bloomberg.com)

Here’s a head scratcher: as everyone knows from elementary chemistry courses, gold is the most inert metal in the world – it does not rust, nor corrode. Yet this is precisely what Russian commercial precious metal trading company, International Reserve Payment System, discovered on thousands of (allegedly) 999 gold coins “St George” issued by the Central Russian Bank. The serendipitous discovery occurred after various clients of the company had requested that their gold be stored not in a safe, but in a far more secure place: “buried under an oak tree.” As the website of IRPS president German Sterligoff notes: once buried, “the coins began to oxidize under the influence of moisture.” And hence the headscratcher: nowhere in history (that we know of) does 999, and even 925 gold, oxidize, rust, stain, spot or form patinas, under any conditions. (Read more from zerohedge.com)

Obviously, global warming is much more severe than we thought.

Ben Davies, CEO of Hinde Capital, first explains gold’s rising value in terms of the massive money printing going on all over the world. The interviewer questions whether there isn’t a gold bubble forming and cites reports of “over leveraging” in the “non-physical” gold market. This is euphemistic language for the massive fraud widely reported in the alternative media.

In the quarter ended March 31, Goldman made money on every single trading day. The firm did not record a loss of even $0.01 on even one day in the last quarter. That’s 63 days profitable out of 63 trading days. (Read more from zerohedge.com)

The U.S. government’s program to bail out the banking industry is not be doing much to help small businesses play a part in the economic recovery, an overseer of the government’s bailout program said on Thursday. (Read more from reuters.com)

Imagine my complete lack of surprise.

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: For those concerned about stimulus spending, the General Services Administration sends word tonight that $18 million in additional funds are being spent to redesign the Recovery.gov Web site.

The new Web site promises to give taxpayers more information about where their money is going than the current version of the site.

“Recovery.gov 2.0 will use innovative and interactive technologies to help taxpayers see where their dollars are being spent,” James A. Williams, commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, says in a press release announcing the contract awarded to Maryland-based Smartronix Inc. “Armed with easy access to this information, taxpayers can make government more accountable for its decisions.”

The contract calls for spending $9.5 million through January, and as much as $18 million through 2014, according to the GSA press release.

“We are pleased that another major milestone has been achieved,” Earl E. Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, says in the press release. “We thank the GSA for its assistance and look forward to working with Smartronix. (Read more from blogs.abcnews.com)

Continuing on the trail of exposing what is rapidly becoming one of the largest frauds in commodity markets history is the most recent interview by Eric King with GATA’s Adrian Douglas, Harvey Orgen (who recently testified before the CFTC hearing) and his son, Lenny, in which the two discuss their visit to the only bullion bank vault in Canada, that of ScotiaMocatta, located at 40 King Street West in Toronto, and find the vault is practically empty. This is a relevant segue to a class action lawsuit filed against Morgan Stanley, which was settled out of court, in which it was alleged that Morgan Stanley told clients it was selling them precious metals that they would own in full and that the company would store, yet even despite charging storage fees was not in actual possession of the bullion. It appears that this kind of lack of physical holdings by all who claim to have gold in storage, is pervasive as the actual gold globally is held primarily in paper or electronic form. Lenny Organ who was the person to enter the vault of ScotiaMocatta, says “What shocked me was how little gold and silver they actually had.” Lenny describes exactly how much (or little as the case may be) silver was available – roughly 60,000 ounces. As for gold – 210 400 oz bars, 4,000 maples, 500 eagles, 10 kilo bars, 10 one kilogram pieces of gold nugget form, which Adrian Douglas calculates as being $100 million worth, which is just one tenth of what the Royal Mint of Canada sold in 2008, or over $1 billion worth of gold. As Orgen concludes: “The game ends when the people who own all these paper obligations say enough and take physical delivery, and that’s when the mess will occur.” (Read more from zerohedge.com)

Huffington Post: It’s Ponzimonium in the Gold Market

PR Newswire: Silver Short Squeeze Could Be Imminent
JP Morgan took over the concentrated short position in silver from Bear Stearns and gained complete control over the paper price of silver. Within weeks, JP Morgan was able to manipulate the price of silver down to below $9 per ounce. NIA believes they were able to drive the price of silver down through “naked short selling,” selling paper silver that is unbacked by physical silver.

The longer Andrew Maguire interview they reference is here.

Also,

CFTC whistleblower injured in London hit-and-run
A London trader walks the CFTC through a silver manipulation in advance