Dear CIGAs,

I would like to extend a very special thanks today to CIGA Green Hornet for his friendship and help.

Dear Jim,

First Mrs. Bhutto gets killed after she repeatedly voiced her concerns about security. Now it looks as if the same thing happened to this cricket team. I think the writing is on the wall that Pakistan is truly out of control! Terrorists who kill people do not get away unless they have help from law enforcement. This shows again how you have been years ahead warning us of Pakistan’s collapse.

Best,
CIGA Big Tatanka

Suspicions grow that attack was ‘inside job’
Conspiracy theories fuelled by security lapses as hunt for gunmen continues
By Omar Waraich in Lahore
Thursday, 5 March 2009

Dramatic footage showing the alleged perpetrators of Tuesday’s audacious attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team making their getaway was released by a Pakistani news channel last night.

The grainy images, captured by four CCTV cameras minutes after the ambush, show the gunmen strolling calmly through the back streets of Liberty Market just before 9am. In one sequence, three of the men walk down a narrow, deserted street, carrying heavy bags and with weapons slung over their shoulders. They then mount a waiting motorcycle and speed away.

Yesterday, police released "wanted" posters bearing sketches of the suspects. Up to 14 masked gunmen took part in the attack on the Sri Lankan team’s tour bus at the Liberty Square roundabout in the heart of Lahore. They opened fire on the bus, killing a driver and six police officers escorting the Sri Lankans. Six players and two assistant coaches were wounded.

More…

Dear Jim,

Shadow Government Statistics (SGS) www.shadowstats.com and their CEO John Williams estimate that 899,000 people lost jobs in the last month after adjusting for seasonality in the numbers, and there was a restatement upward of job losses in Jan 2009 and December 2008.

If you count discouraged workers…

According to Shadowstats.com non-farm unemployment may have hit 34% in the Great Depression. Economists say total unemployment hit 25%, but the agricultural sector where employment was higher was a much larger percentage of total employment than it is today. Thus, even though data is hard to gather on the great depression, the numbers may be correct.

Today’s official unemployment numbers are quite suspect. To quote SGS “During the Clinton administration, ‘discouraged workers’- those who had given up looking for a job because there were no jobs to be had – were redefined so as to be counted only if they had been "discouraged" for less than a year. This time qualification defined away the bulk of the discouraged workers. Adding them back into the total unemployed, actual unemployment, as estimated by the SGS-alternate unemployment measure, rose to about 19.1% in February from 18% in January.

This is a lot of people, and it is closing in on the very high numbers seen during the Great Depression. For this reason I continue to contend that we are in a depression.

Respectfully yours,

Monty Guild
www.GuildInvestment.com

Dear Mr. Sinclair,

For your information:

A thriller by the Swiss writer Mathias Frey titled "Excess". Unfortunately it is only available online at this time in German. I don’t know why he hasn’t found a publisher or contacted a film producer. This is Wag the Dog squared, easily. A triple-A page turner.

http://www.excess.ch/

Have a good weekend,
CIGA Annette

Jim,

It looks like the mainstream media has finally identified the problem. Will DC figure it out and repent before it is too late? Ha! Not a chance!!

CIGA Jeff

Dear Jeff,

We wish it was only $700 trillion. The real number is one quadrillion, one thousand and one hundred forty-four trillion, notional value. The BIS has skewed the figure by moving to a cartoon computer model called value to maturity. Notional value becomes real total value upon bankruptcy.

Regards,
Jim

The $700 trillion elephant
Commentary: Gargantuan derivatives market weighs on all other issues
By Thomas Kostigen, MarketWatch
Last update: 12:01 a.m. EST March 6, 2009

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) — There’s a $700 trillion elephant in the room and it’s time we found out how much it really weighs on the economy.

Derivative contracts total about three-quarters of a quadrillion dollars in "notional" amounts, according to the Bank for International Settlements. These contracts are tallied in notional values because no one really can say how much they are worth.

But valuing them correctly is exactly what we should be doing because these comprise the viral disease that has infected the financial markets and the economies of the world.

Try as we might to salvage the residential real estate market, it’s at best worth $23 trillion in the U.S. We’re struggling to save the stock market, but that’s valued at less than $15 trillion. And we hope to keep the entire U.S. economy from collapsing, yet gross domestic product stands at $14.2 trillion.

Compare any of these to the derivatives market and you can easily see that we are just closing the windows as a tsunami crashes to shore. The total value of all the stock markets in the world amounts to less than $50 trillion, according to the World Federation of Exchanges.

More…

Jim,

31 million Americans means that 10% of the American population is on food stamps. I will be interested to see what this number is by next year. Tough economic times indeed!

Cheers,
CIGA Cheryl

Food stamp enrollment jumps to record 31.8 million
Thu Mar 5, 2009 3:34pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A record 31.8 million Americans received food stamps at the latest count, an increase of 700,000 people in one month with the United States in recession, government figures showed on Thursday.

Food stamps, which help poor people buy groceries, are the major U.S. anti-hunger program, forecast to cost at least $51 billion in this fiscal year ending September 30, up $10 billion from fiscal 2008.

"A weakened economy means that many more individuals are turning to SNAP/food stamps," said the Food Research and Action Center. Last summer food stamps were renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

The average food stamp benefit is $115 a month for individuals and $255 a month per household.

Enrollment for food stamps in December was up 2.2 percent from the previous month with increases in all but three states. Ohio had the largest increase among large states, up 3.4 percent, to 1.26 million people. Texas had the largest enrollment, 3.05 million, up 1.8 percent.

The previous record for food stamp enrollment was 31.6 million last September, which included "disaster" stamps for states hit by hurricanes and floods.

In April, food stamp benefits will increase temporarily by 13 percent under provisions of the recently enacted economic stimulus law. Ellen Vollenger of the Food Research and Action Center said some families will see increases of $80 a month.

More…