ars were also found next to bodies lying in coffins for viewing by relatives the next day, police said.

A businessman and a morgue attendant have been arrested. The businessman was said to be renting part of the morgue for his funeral services firm.

They told police the caviar had been intended to personal use during the pending new year celebrations.

The red and black caviar, weighing 175kg (385lb), apparently comes from endangered species. The red caviar, which made up most of the haul, was stored in five containers marked “Aviation Security. Inspected”.

Police also found caviar in a fridge in a morgue workers’ rest area and among the businessman’s belongings.

It is unclear whether the men, aged 64 and 42, will face charges as possession of caviar is not illegal. Such a large amount would have cost a fortune on the open market and much of the trade in Russia is on the black market. (Read more)

When I had the honor of leading the True Finn Party to electoral victory in April, we made a solemn promise to oppose the bailouts of euro-zone member states. Europe is suffering from the economic gangrene of insolvency—both public and private. Unless we amputate that which cannot be saved, we risk poisoning the whole body.

To understand the real nature and purpose of the bailouts, we first have to understand who really benefits from them.

At the risk of being accused of populism, we’ll begin with the obvious: It is not the little guy who benefits. He is being milked and lied to in order to keep the insolvent system running. He is paid less and taxed more to provide the money needed to keep this Ponzi scheme going. Meanwhile, a symbiosis has developed between politicians and banks: Our political leaders borrow ever more money to pay off the banks, which return the favor by lending ever more money back to our governments.

In a true market economy, bad choices get penalized. Instead of accepting losses on unsound investments—which would have led to the probable collapse of some banks—it was decided to transfer the losses to taxpayers via loans, guarantees and opaque constructs such as the European Financial Stability Fund.

The money did not go to help indebted economies. It flowed through the European Central Bank and recipient states to the coffers of big banks and investment funds.

Further contrary to the official wisdom, the recipient states did not want such “help,” not this way. The natural option for them was to admit insolvency and let failed private lenders, wherever they were based, eat their losses.

That was not to be. Ireland was forced to take the money. The same happened to Portugal.

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Why did the Brussels-Frankfurt extortion racket force these countries to accept the money along with “recovery” plans that would inevitably fail? Because they needed to please the tax-guzzling banks, which might otherwise refuse to turn up at the next Spanish, Belgian, Italian or even French bond auction.

Unfortunately for this financial and political cartel, their plan isn’t working. Already under this scheme, Greece, Ireland and Portugal are ruined. They will never be able to save and grow fast enough to pay back the debts with which Brussels has saddled them in the name of saving them.

Setting up the European Stability Mechanism is no solution. It would institutionalize the system of wealth transfers from private citizens to compromised politicians and failed bankers, creating a huge moral hazard and destroying what remains of Europe’s competitive banking landscape.

Fortunately, it is not too late to stop the rot. . . . (Read more)

Arab farmers will be granted egg production quotas for the first time in the history of the State of Israel. The cabinet decided to grant such quotas a year ago based on a recommendation from the Agriculture Ministry in a bid to prevent intervention from the High Court of Justice.

Six Arab farmers who met the ministry’s quality standards have now been chosen. However, other Arab farmers are complaining that the conditions set for receiving an egg quota make it financially not worthwhile.

Unofficially, milk and egg production have always been considered “Zionist agricultural branches” and have been chosen to provide a significant part of the livelihood for Jewish agricultural settlements – and Arabs and other minority group farmers have been consistently excluded from these sectors for years with various justifications. The production of milk and eggs and their sale in Israel requires licenses from the Agriculture Ministry or other statutory bodies under the ministry’s auspices.

The Knesset Economic Affairs Committee met on Tuesday to discuss and approve the Agriculture Ministry’s regulations for the production and sale of eggs for 2012. In 2011, 3,000 hen houses for egg production produced 1.9 billion eggs, and the plans for 2012 forecast similar numbers.

. . . .

Only Israeli citizens qualify for the quotas, say the farmers, and the quotas are available only in “national priority areas,” and the farmers must have land zoned for raising livestock and zoned for chicken coops. In addition, the growers must meet veterinary requirements and other restrictions. (Read more)

Warning: DEBKA is an unreliable source. If true, this story is huge, but that’s a big ‘if.’

India has reportedly agreed to pay Tehran in gold for the oil it buys, in a move aimed at protecting Delhi from US-sanctions targeting countries who trade with Iran. China, another buyer of Iranian oil, may follow Delhi’s lead.

The report, by the Israeli-based news website DEBKAfile, states that Iran and India are negotiating backup alternatives with China and Russia, should the US and EU find a way to block the gold payment mechanism.

Delhi’s move is seen as surprising, as earlier India and Iran said they would switch to yen and rupees. China, another major importer of Iranian oil, may follow Delhi’s lead, the report adds.

India and China need to switch from the dollar in bilateral trade, since the US and EU have issued unilateral sanctions against the Iranian oil industry and financial institutions. The sanctions would ban any bank involved in oil trade with Iran from dealing with American and European counterparts. (Read more)

The Iranian geopolitical tension is supporting gold as Britain, America and France have delivered a clear message to Iran, sending six warships led by a 100,000 ton aircraft carrier through the highly sensitive Strait of Hormuz.

Reuters report that the EU has agreed to freeze the assets of the Iranian central bank and ban all trade in gold and other precious metals with the Iranian Central Bank and other public bodies in Iran.

According to IMF data, at the last official count (in 1996), Iran had reserves of just over 168 tonnes of gold. The FT reported in March 2011 that Iran has bought large amounts of bullion on the international market to diversify away from the dollar, citing a senior Bank of England official.

Currency wars continue and are deepening.

Many Asian markets are closed for the Lunar New Year holiday which has led to lower volumes. (Read more)

Small countries, like Ireland have the ability to say “why send our money to them, they have nothing to do with Ireland.”

Big countries like the US do not.

From today’s Open Europe news summary (my emphasis in italicized bold lettering):

France and Germany push for greater “tax coordination” in the EU and swifter negotiations on FTT
France and Germany yesterday unveiled a set of joint proposals which they say would boost growth in the EU. The proposals will be submitted to European leaders at their meeting on 30 January. The document reads, “European institutions and member states should accelerate the process of tax coordination…In particular, the negotiation of the European Commission proposals on Energy Tax Directive, Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base and Common System of Financial Transaction Tax should be accelerated.”

In an interview with Bild, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán argues, “We support the initiative of Chancellor Angela Merkel on the fiscal union. But we strictly reject a Europe-wide harmonised tax system. Hungary’s low tax rate is for us a competitive advantage that we cannot do without.” Handelsblatt notes that the Czech Republic has voiced opposition to the introduction of an EU-wide FTT.

This was very interesting. It’s definitely a worst-case and I disagree with some of his points. Nevertheless…

Green is the new color of corruption. “There’s just one problem: ‘Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops,’ the New York Times reports, cellulosic ethanol ‘does not exist.’

This has not, however, prevented the Environmental Protection Agency from levying penalties on petroleum companies for failing to purchase this nonexistent fuel.”

More: http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech-mainmenu-30/energy/10508-oil-companies-fined-for-not-buying-nonexistent-cellulosic-ethanol

Downgrades of EU countries are pushing investment money into US. But US has a worse debt-to-GDP ratio than all European countries but Italy and Greece. And this doesn’t even include much of the US off-book debt!

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul today announced that he is returning $500,000 to the United States Treasury – money unspent from his official operating budget. The total amount being returned is more than 16 percent of Paul’s original office budget. As far as is known, no U.S. Senator has returned as much to taxpayers. (Read more)

#1 During fiscal year 2011, the U.S. government spent 3.7 trillion dollars but it only brought in 2.4 trillion dollars.

#2 When Ronald Reagan took office, the U.S. national debt was less than 1 trillion dollars. Today, the U.S. national debt is over 15.2 trillion dollars.

#3 During 2011, U.S. debt surpassed 100 percent of GDP for the first time ever.

#4 According to Wikipedia, the monetary base “consists of coins, paper money (both as bank vault cash and as currency circulating in the public), and commercial banks’ reserves with the central bank.” Currently the U.S. monetary base is sitting somewhere around 2.7 trillion dollars. So if you went out and gathered all of that money up it would only make a small dent in our national debt. But afterwards there would be no currency for anyone to use.

#5 The U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2011.

#6 The U.S. government has total assets of 2.7 trillion dollars and has total liabilities of 17.5 trillion dollars. The liabilities do not even count 4.7 trillion dollars of intragovernmental debt that is currently outstanding.

#7 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

#8 It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will surpass 23 trillion dollars in 2015.

#9 According to the GAO, the U.S. government is facing 34 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities for social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare. These are obligations that we have already committed ourselves to but that we do not have any money for.

#10 Others estimate that the unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government now total over 117 trillion dollars.

#11 According to the GAO, the ratio of debt held by the public to GDP is projected to reach 287 percent of GDP by 2086.

#12 Others are much less optimistic. A recently revised IMF policy paper entitled “An Analysis of U.S. Fiscal and Generational Imbalances: Who Will Pay and How?” projects that U.S. government debt will rise to about 400 percent of GDP by the year 2050.

#13 The United States government is responsible for more than a third of all the government debt in the entire world.

#14 If you divide up the national debt equally among all U.S. taxpayers, each taxpayer would owe approximately $134,685.

#15 Mandatory federal spending surpassed total federal revenue for the first time ever in fiscal 2011. That was not supposed to happen until 50 years from now.

#16 Between 2007 and 2010, U.S. GDP grew by only 4.26%, but the U.S. national debt soared by 61% during that same time period.

#17 During Barack Obama’s first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

#18 When you add up all spending by the federal government, state governments and local governments, it comes to 46.6% of GDP.

#19 Our nation is more addicted to government checks than ever before. In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.

#20 U.S. households are now actually receiving more money directly from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes.

#21 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

#22 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.

#23 In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States.

#24 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.

#25 Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.

#26 If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion each and every year.

#27 If you were alive when Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now. But this year alone the U.S. government is going to add more than a trillion dollars to the national debt.

#28 If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.

#29 A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times. That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.

#30 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 470,000 years to pay off the national debt.

#31 If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.

#32 According to Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, the U.S. is facing a “fiscal gap” of over 200 trillion dollars in the future. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article that he did for CNN….

The government’s total indebtedness – its fiscal gap – now stands at $211 trillion, by my arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the difference, measured in present value, between all projected future spending obligations – including our huge defense expenditures and massive entitlement programs, as well as making interest and principal payments on the official debt – and all projected future taxes.

#33 If you add up all forms of debt in the United States (government, business and consumer), it comes to more than 56 trillion dollars. That is more than $683,000 per family. Unfortunately, the average amount of savings per family in the U.S. is only about $4,735.

#34 The U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913. (Read more)