Yoruba nation in disarray - Daniel

http://odili.net/news/source/2010/mar/31/601.html

THE Ogun State governor, Chief Gbenga Daniel, has described the Yoruba nation as one in disarray, contending that the people had no common agenda in sight. Daniel, who spoke on Tuesday at the meeting of the South-West governors and traditional rulers held at the Governor's Lodge in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, said that it was high time the Yoruba race stopped basking in the past glory when the past was daily turning into indictment in this present age.

He noted that Yoruba people were blessed with a good physical environment and rich culture, adding that they also had both human and natural resources to be a leading race.

The meeting had in attendance governors of Osun and Ekiti states, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola and Mr Segun Oni respectively; the deputy governor of Ondo State, Alhaji Alli Olanusi and Chief Adebayo Faleti, who represented Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala of Oyo State.

Traditional rulers in attendance included the Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade; the Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba (Dr) Sikiru Adetona; the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo; the Akarigbo of Remoland, Oba (Dr) Michael Adeniyi Sonariwo.

Daniel said politics must be used for the overall development of the citizenry and not for personal impoverishment, adding that it should be a means of bringing the much-needed Yoruba unity and progress.

According to Daniel, "should we continue to sit idly and look while our race is losing out in Nigeria's political economy? Politics must be for the development of our people and not their impoverishment. Politics must never be allowed to polarise us.
"Rather, it must be a means of bringing the much-needed unity, development and progress to Yoruba race. Our past leaders used the instrumentality of politics to give us leverage in the national politics of Nigeria," he added.
At the end of a closed door session, the Aloko of Iloko-Ijesa, Oba Oladele Olashore, disclosed that a committee was set up to discuss on the unity of Yoruba nation.
The monarch said the meeting was not a political one, adding that it was about developing the Yoruba race.
He said he hoped that the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi and the Oba of Lagos, Oba Rilwan Akiolu, would attend the next meeting.
The monarch commended the convener of the meeting, Governor Daniel, for the initiative and said the traditional rulers were ready to work with the governors in the South-West to ensure unity and development.
Earlier, eminent Yoruba leaders and governors converged on the June 12 Cultural Centre, Kuto, to celebrate the 20th remembrance anniversary and launch of the complete musical works of the doyen of Nigerian theatre, the late Hubert Ogunde.

Source: Nigerian Tribune (

NH teacher, 100, gets degree a day before dying

AP – This undated black and white photo released by the Carpenter Family on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010, shows … By KATHY McCORMACK, Associated Press Writer Kathy Mccormack, Associated Press Writer – Tue Jan 26, 11:30 pm ET
CONCORD, N.H. – It was Harriet Richardson Ames' dream to earn her bachelor's degree in education. She finally reached that milestone, nearly three weeks after achieving another: her 100th birthday.

On Saturday, the day after receiving her diploma at her bedside, the retired schoolteacher died, pleased that she had accomplished her goal, her daughter said. Ames had been in hospice care.

"She had what I call a 'bucket list,' and that was the last thing on it," Marjorie Carpenter said Tuesday.

Ames, who turned 100 on Jan. 2, had earned a two-year teaching certificate in 1931 at Keene Normal School, now Keene State College. She taught in a one-room schoolhouse in South Newbury, and later spent 20 years as a teaching principal at Memorial School in Pittsfield, where she taught first-graders.

Through the years, she had taken classes at the University of New Hampshire, Plymouth Teachers College and Keene State to earn credits for her degree. With her eyesight failing, she stopped after retiring in 1971 and was never sure if she had enough credits.

Her wish for a degree became known when a Keene State film professor interviewed her a couple of years ago for a piece on the college's own centennial, which the school celebrated last year.

The school decided to research her coursework and see if it could award Ames her long-sought diploma. The offices of the provost, registrar and other departments worked quickly in the last month to determine, that indeed, it could.

"She wanted to be the best that she could be," said Norma Walker, coordinator of the Keene State College Golden Circle Society, an alumni group for classes that graduated 50 or more years ago.

Walker said when she mentioned to Ames during a recent visit that the college was working on the degree, Ames started to cry and said, "'If I die tomorrow, I'll know I'll die happy, because my degree's in the works.'"

College officials, including Walker, drove the document to Ames' bedside on Friday.

Walker, who first met Ames in 1997 at an alumni gathering, said she enjoyed listening to her talk about her students and how she encouraged them to read.

"She's the kind of person that every parent would want their first-graders to have as a teacher," very loving and caring, Walker said. She will read Ames' diploma at a memorial service this Saturday, "if I can do it without crying."

Paula Finnegan Dickinson of Gilford, who was Ames' student back in 1956 and became an educator herself, regarded her as a mentor and dear friend.

"Mrs. Ames, along with Dick, Jane, Sally, Spot and Puff, became our friend," Dickinson said, recalling the "Dick and Jane" series that was used in class reading groups. "With her enthusiasm, these characters came to life. ... Mrs. Ames showed us how reading opened the doors to other experiences we in Pittsfield might never have known."

A world against us

Japan Abandons America
Japan might prove dollar's nemesis, not China
Germany Declares Economic War
US dollar seen caught in G20 meeting's crosshairs
Retirements in Peril: US System Full of Holes
FDIC is Broke, Taxpayers at Risk
Mission Accomplished: Part 1, Wrecking of the World's Greatest Economy
Sweet Spots (The Mogambo Guru)
FOREX-Dollar slides to 1-year low vs euro before Fed, G20
UK: Investors "Panic Buy" Other Currencies as Sterling Slides
When Housing is Priced in Gold
Dollar under scrutiny at G20 summit
House Passes Bill To Prevent Government Shutdown
Bailout Money for Smaller Banks Being Weighed
G-20 Leaders Declare Summit a Success
Lost Vegas: Living Underground in Flood Tunnels
Long-Term Prospects Good for Gold Bugs

Unemploymet Among Young Americans

Unemployment Among Young Americans Hits 52.2% - -- a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept.-- And worse, without a clear economic recovery plan aimed at creating entry-level jobs, the odds of many of these young adults -- aged 16 to 24, excluding students -- getting a job and moving out of their parents' houses are long.
Marc Faber on the future: Wars, massive government debt defaults, and the impoverishment of large segments of Western society.
Sugar's 'Perfect Storm' May Triple Price by June
What if everyone in the world wanted a 1oz Gold Coin?
Tidal Wave of Homeless Kids Hits Schools
35 Million Americans on Foodstamps
Karl Denninger: Deflationary Collapse Dead Ahead - The battle over whether the collapse will be deflationary or inflationary doesn't negate the fact that both lead to collapse.
World Bank: US Should Not Take Dollar's Place for Granted World Bank President Robert Zoellick: “The United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar’s place as the world’s predominant reserve currency.”
The Shadow Foreclosure Industry
Fed’s Alvarez Threatens Congress With Higher Rates if Fed is Audited
A Rich Uncle (Sam) is Picking Up the Borrowing Slack
Food Police Turns Liberals towards Libertarianism
The Dark Years Are Here

Buying our own debt and printing 1.45 trillion??

Gold $990 - there's that sell-off we talked about. :-) Now, to the horror show that is our economy...


Federal Reserve Accounts For 50% of Second Quarter Treasury Purchases -- This is pure desperation on the part of our government. We're buying our own debt?

Orders for durable goods drop unexpectedly – New York Times
"Termites in the attic": is it time to panic about America's soaring debt? – Yahoo! Finance
Desperately seeking an exit strategy. (Roubini says debt monetization and inflation "the path of least resistance") - In all honesty, there's just no way out now. The US lacks the unity and honesty to get out of the situation we're in. Corruption at all levels will be our undoing.

Lehman Brothers Revisited - Strong words from Peter Schiff: "If the current policies continue, the America we know – for which our forebears risked so much – will cease to exist. "

UK: Crude Price "Shock" Next Threat to Recovery - "Soaring energy prices could fuel inflation and derail economic recovery, one of the Bank of England's most senior policymakers warned yesterday."

UK: Markets in Government-Fueled Bubble Says Hedge Fund Manager
US Debt Crisis May Cause "Fall Of Rome" Scenario - “The bad news is at the end of a 10-year period we’re still not going to have fixed the problem,” Duncan said in an interview in Hong Kong yesterday. “Eventually it will lead to high rates of inflation well down the line and really destabilize things to the point where there may be irreparable damage. A kind of ‘Fall of Rome’ scenario."

Things are Getting Better? - Basically, the "recovery" that has been touted has only been for the elite bankers and a few corporate bigwigs. From the middle class on down, there has been no recovery. Unemployment continues to climb.

Thank The Fed for Your Lack of Purchasing Power (The Mogambo Guru)
US new home sales rise - This headline should really read like this: The People who still have some money left have bought into the positive spin put out by the mainstream media, and mistakenly believing that the housing market has bottomed, purchased a new home.




FROM A MARTIN WEISS NEWSLETTER:


It’s starting to look like the Fed’s going to need a skyscraper-full of new printing presses ...

In a statement released yesterday, the Federal Reserve said,

“To provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets, and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve will purchase a total of $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and up to $200 billion of agency debt.”

That’s a total of $1.45 trillion! Where’s the Fed going to get the money? Simple: They’ll have to PRINT it — create it out of thin air!

Plus, even former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan is beginning to panic about the dollar’s decline, warning that total U.S. private and public debt — now at 84% of GDP and still soaring — is “very dangerous” and threatens both long-term Treasuries and the dollar.

Business as usual

International Monetary Fund to sell over 403 tons of gold - It will be interesting to see who the buyers are. China has already admitted that they have to buy gold "quietly" since their purchases drive up the price. Also, this quantity will certainly cause a fluctuation in the price simply because there is more gold on the market. At one point this year, American Gold Eagles were very difficult to find.

America armed, but guns not necessarily loaded -- Ammo is hard to find. If that worries politicians, then it's a good thing.

Oil Prices Dip Below $69, Supplies Jump -- Watching oil this close is pointless unless you're a day trader. Once the world unhinges from the US dollar as the reserve currency, the price of oil will rise. The key is to make your investments outside of the US dollar in foreign markets.

IMF: No Full Recovery Until 2015 -- "But....but...........Bernanke said it was over.....", said the disillusioned American.

UK: Jobless Claims Show Demise of Slump May Be Exaggerated -- They deceive us for our own good!

Treasuries Fall After 5-Year-Notes Auction -- Our buyers have apparently gotten a peek behind the curtain.

UK: HSBC Staff Carrying Personal Alarms in Case of Customer Rage -- They know it's coming.

One million school children now homeless

The Economy Is A Lie, Too

By Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research, September 22, 2009



Americans cannot get any truth out of their government about anything, the economy included. Americans are being driven into the ground economically, with one million school children now homeless, while Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announces that the recession is over.


The spin that masquerades as news is becoming more delusional. Consumer spending is 70% of the US economy. It is the driving force, and it has been shut down. Except for the super rich, there has been no growth in consumer incomes in the 21st century. Statistician John Williams of shadowstats.com reports that real household income has never recovered its pre-2001 peak.



The US economy has been kept going by substituting growth in consumer debt for growth in consumer income. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan encouraged consumer debt with low interest rates. The low interest rates pushed up home prices, enabling Americans to refinance their homes and spend the equity. Credit cards were maxed out in expectations of rising real estate and equity values to pay the accumulated debt. The binge was halted when the real estate and equity bubbles burst.



As consumers no longer can expand their indebtedness and their incomes are not rising, there is no basis for a growing consumer economy. Indeed, statistics indicate that consumers are paying down debt in their efforts to survive financially. In an economy in which the consumer is the driving force, that is bad news.



The banks, now investment banks thanks to greed-driven deregulation that repealed the learned lessons of the past, were even more reckless than consumers and took speculative leverage to new heights. At the urging of Larry Summers and Goldman Sachs’ CEO Henry Paulson, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Bush administration went along with removing restrictions on debt leverage.



When the bubble burst, the extraordinary leverage threatened the financial system with collapse. The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve stepped forward with no one knows how many trillions of dollars to “save the financial system,” which, of course, meant to save the greed-driven financial institutions that had caused the economic crisis that dispossessed ordinary Americans of half of their life savings.



The consumer has been chastened, but not the banks. Refreshed with the TARP $700 billion and the Federal Reserve’s expanded balance sheet, banks are again behaving like hedge funds. Leveraged speculation is producing another bubble with the current stock market rally, which is not a sign of economic recovery but is the final savaging of Americans’ wealth by a few investment banks and their Washington friends. Goldman Sachs, rolling in profits, announced six figure bonuses to employees.



The rest of America is suffering terribly.



The unemployment rate, as reported, is a fiction and has been since the Clinton administration. The unemployment rate does not include jobless Americans who have been unemployed for more than a year and have given up on finding work. The reported 10% unemployment rate is understated by the millions of Americans who are suffering long-term unemployment and are no longer counted as unemployed. As each month passes, unemployed Americans drop off the unemployment role due to nothing except the passing of time.



The inflation rate, especially “core inflation,” is another fiction. “Core inflation” does not include food and energy, two of Americans’ biggest budget items. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) assumes, ever since the Boskin Commission during the Clinton administration, that if prices of items go up consumers substitute cheaper items. This is certainly the case, but this way of measuring inflation means that the CPI is no longer comparable to past years, because the basket of goods in the index is variable.



The Boskin Commission’s CPI, by lowering the measured rate of inflation, raises the real GDP growth rate. The result of the statistical manipulation is an understated inflation rate, thus eroding the real value of Social Security income, and an overstated growth rate. Statistical manipulation cloaks a declining standard of living.



In bygone days of American prosperity, American incomes rose with productivity. It was the real growth in American incomes that propelled the US economy.



In today’s America, the only incomes that rise are in the financial sector that risks the country’s future on excessive leverage and in the corporate world that substitutes foreign for American labor. Under the compensation rules and emphasis on shareholder earnings that hold sway in the US today, corporate executives maximize earnings and their compensation by minimizing the employment of Americans.



Try to find some acknowledgement of this in the “mainstream media,” or among economists, who suck up to the offshoring corporations for grants.



The worst part of the decline is yet to come. Bank failures and home foreclosures are yet to peak. The commercial real estate bust is yet to hit. The dollar crisis is building.



When it hits, interest rates will rise dramatically as the US struggles to finance its massive budget and trade deficits while the rest of the world tries to escape a depreciating dollar.



Since the spring of this year, the value of the US dollar has collapsed against every currency except those pegged to it. The Swiss franc has risen 14% against the dollar. Every hard currency from the Canadian dollar to the Euro and UK pound has risen at least 13 % against the US dollar since April 2009. The Japanese yen is not far behind, and the Brazilian real has risen 25% against the almighty US dollar. Even the Russian ruble has risen 13% against the US dollar.



What sort of recovery is it when the safest investment is to bet against the US dollar?



The American household of my day, in which the husband worked and the wife provided household services and raised the children, scarcely exists today. Most, if not all, members of a household have to work in order to pay the bills. However, the jobs are disappearing, even the part-time ones.



If measured according to the methodology used when I was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, the unemployment rate today in the US is above 20%. Moreover, there is no obvious way of reducing it. There are no factories, with work forces temporarily laid off by high interest rates, waiting for a lower interest rate policy to call their workforces back into production.



The work has been moved abroad. In the bygone days of American prosperity, CEOs were inculcated with the view that they had equal responsibilities to customers, employees, and shareholders. This view has been exterminated. Pushed by Wall Street and the threat of takeovers promising “enhanced shareholder value,” and incentivized by “performance pay,” CEOs use every means to substitute cheaper foreign employees for Americans .



Despite 20% unemployment and cum laude engineering graduates who cannot find jobs or even job interviews, Congress continues to support 65,000 annual H-1B work visas for foreigners.



In the midst of the highest unemployment since the Great Depression what kind of a fool do you need to be to think that there is a shortage of qualified US workers?



Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. His new book, War of the Worlds: How the Economy Was Lost, will be published next month by AK Press/CounterPunch. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com


Global Research Articles by Paul Craig Roberts