China unlikely to overtake US economy: Treasury head
"I think that there's more risk on the downside for China, although I am an optimist," the Treasury secretary said.

Quick Overview

• Bank of Japan voted unanimously to keep the overnight call rate target at 0.25 %. BOJ Governor Fukui said that he "cannot rule out the possibility" of another rate hike this year. Market expectation for a rate hike this year has dropped to 25%.
  
  

• Bank of Japan reported producer prices in September rose 3.6 %, the most in 25 years.
  
  

• China’s current reserves surged to a record $988 billion at the end of September, up 28.5% YoY.
  
  

• YoY consumer prices in France were up 1.5% in September
  

• U.S. Retail sales were down 0.4% in September. Excluding autos, sales were down 0.5%. The weakness came mostly from lower gasoline prices.
  

• The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index rose from 85.4 to 92.3 in October, more than expected.
  

• Argentina may limit wheat exports in an attempt to keep domestic prices down.
  

• BBC News reported that Ghana and the Ivory Coast are struggling to contain the spread of swollen shoot virus which is hitting their cocoa crops. The two countries account for over one-half of the world's cocoa production.
  

• (Bloomberg) -- Hedge-fund managers and other large speculators placed a record amount of bets the yen will decline against the dollar, according to weekly data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Army chief: British troops must pull out of Iraq soon
General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the army, dropped a political bombshell last night by saying that Britain must withdraw from Iraq "soon" or risk serious consequences for Iraqi and British society.

Quick Overview

• The U.S. Census Bureau said that U.S. exports were up $2.7 billion in August to $122.4 billion while imports were up $4.6 billion to $192.3 billion. The rise in the U.S. trade deficit nudged the dollar off against the Euro and yen.
  

• U.S. Jobless claims were up 4,000 last week.
  

• Consumer prices in Germany were down 0.5% in September and up 1.0% YoY.
  

• Canada's exports were up 0.3% in August -- imports were down 0.6%.
  

• The U.S. Department of Agriculture cut its 2006-07 global wheat production estimate by 11 million tons to 585.1 million tons. This in turn led to a 7.1 million-ton drop to global ending stocks to 119.3 million tons, a 25-year low. The USDA lowered
  Australian 2006-07 wheat production to 11 million tons from its 19.5-
  million-ton estimate in September.
  
  

• The USDA's 2006-2007 U.S. ending stocks estimate for:
  Corn was reduced from 1.220 to .996 billion bushels.
  Soybeans were increased from 530 to 555 million bushels.
  Wheat was reduced from 429 to 418 million bushels.
  Sugar was reduced from 1.756 to 1.755 million tons.
  Cotton was increased from 4.60 to 5.40 million bales.
  

• The USDA's 2006-2007 world ending stocks estimate for:
  Corn was reduced from 92 to 90 million tons.
  Soybeans were increased from 52 to 55 million tons.
  Wheat was reduced from 126 to 119 million tons (the lowest stocks figure in 25 years)
  Cotton was increased from 47 to 52 million tons.
  
  

• The U.S. Department of Energy said that:
  Supplies of crude oil were up 2.4 million barrels.
  Supplies of unleaded gasoline were up 300,000 barrels.
  Supplies of heating oil supplies were down 1.8 million barrels.
  Supplies of natural gas were up 62 billion cubic feet.
  

Gold Rush Plunges Undersea as Miners Scour Pacific
Placer Dome Ltd., a Vancouver-based mining company later acquired by Toronto-based Barrick, invested $12 million in 2005 and 2006 to fund Nautilus's first tests. The company was founded in 1997 by Julian Malnic, an Australian writer of mining newsletters who acquired offshore exploration licenses from Papua New Guinea.
Nautilus went public on Canada's TSX Venture Exchange in May, raising C$25 million ($22.3 million). Neptune raised 9.3 million pounds ($17.6 million) on London's Alternative Investment Market in October 2005.
Barrick converted Placer Dome's investment into a 9.59 percent stake in Nautilus in August.
``Our Nautilus stake allows us to participate in the future upside,'' says Alex Davidson, executive vice president of exploration and corporate development at Barrick.

600,000 Dead in Iraq

Today the public health department at Johns Hopkins has released a new study of deaths in Iraq, based on a new larger sample of the population. Around 600,000 have died in Iraq since the U.S. attacked in the spring of 2003.

September foreclosures up 19 percent
Foreclosures in the state grew 19 percent from August to September, pushing California to the top of the list for the most new foreclosure filings in September. The number of foreclosures in the state tripled since September 2005, with 14,806 properties entering some stage of foreclosure, or about one for every 825 households. This represents an increase of 40 percent since July.

Quick Overview

• The U.S. Treasury said the federal government posted a $247.7 billion deficit in 2005-2006, down from $319 billion the previous year and the smallest in four years.
  

• Minutes from the Fed September policy meeting showed officials remain "concerned" about upside inflation risks.
  
  

• GDP in the EU-12 was up 0.9% QoQ and up 2.7% YoY.
  

Iowa 'futures' show Republican weakness
"The best guess coming from the market is that it will be a divided Congress," says Prof. Forrest Nelson of the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business, which has operated the markets since since 1988.

Quick Overview

• Machinery orders in Japan were up 6.7% in August, less than expected.
  

• (Bloomberg) -- The Bank of Japan will probably keep interest rates unchanged at a policy meeting this week, judging that gains in consumer prices are not yet sufficient to warrant raising the lowest borrowing costs among major economies.
  
  

• The world continues to be surprised by the significance of Australia's parched wheat fields that will yield only a fraction of last year's production. There is talk that Australia may have to purchase wheat to meet commitments. Argentina is also suffering dry conditions.
  
  
• The International Copper Study Group said that world copper production exceeded usage in the first half of 2006 by 13,000 tons.
  

Quick Overview

• The U.S. Federal Reserve could do "fairly little" and let the bond market stabilize the economy, St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President William Poole told the Financial Times in an interview published on Tuesday.
  
  

• The Australia Grains Council said the domestic wheat crop could be as low as 10 million tons, which is below recent industry forecasts and is less than half last year's crop of 25 million tons.
  
  

• OPEC agreed to reduce oil production by one million barrels a day.
  

• Industrial production in Germany rose 1.9% in August.
  
  

Legislating Morality
John Pugsley

This is a test. Can you see the relationship between these two news stories?

"The U.S. Congress has passed a law, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, banning the use of credit cards, checks, and electronic fund transfers for Internet gaming, and President Bush is expected to sign it."

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called on state legislators to take "swift and dramatic action" to fix what he called a "dangerous situation" in California's jam-packed prisons. Prison officials warn they will simply run out of prison beds by June. Already inmates are stacked on double- and triple-bunks in gymnasiums and day centers."


Answer: It's cause and effect. Any law that forbids individuals from using their own property as they please is certain to increase the need for prisons. Criminalizing voluntary exchanges between individuals (victimless crimes) increases the profitability of supplying outlawed products, creates a black-market rife with violence, decreases respect for law, fills prisons, and increases the power of the state. It doesn't matter if it's gambling, drugs, alcohol, sex, or cigarettes.

A special comment about lying
Keith Olbermann on the difference between terrorists and critics

Quick Overview

• U.S. Interest rates may not be high enough to quell a recent bout of inflation, Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Charles Plosser said on Thursday.
  
  

• First-time U.S. jobless claims fell 17,000 to 302,000 last week, the Labor Department said Thursday.
  
  

• Statistics Canada estimated Canada's wheat crop at 26.3 million tons, down 2% YoY.
  

• The European Central Bank increased its interest rate from 3.00% to 3.25%.
  

• OPEC reportedly decided to cut production by 1 million barrels a day.
  

• The U.S. DoE said that underground supplies of natural gas were up 73 billion cubic feet last week to 3.327 trillion cubic feet.
  

• Conflicting opinions arose on Thursday whether the European Central Bank had sold its full 500-t yearly quota of gold under the five-year Central Bank Gold Agreement.

Quick Overview

• The U.S. Federal Reserve remains worried inflation is too high, but is also watching to see how much a "substantial correction" in housing markets will slow economic growth, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday.
  
  

• The U.S. economy’s service sector grew at its slowest rate in three years, the Institute for Supply Management said Wednesday.
  

• U.S. Factory orders were unchanged in August, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.
  

• The MBA mortgage applications index rose sharply by +11.9%.
  

• The U.S. Department of Energy said that::
  Supplies of crude oil were up 3.3 million barrels last week to 328.1 million barrels.
  Supplies of unleaded gasoline were up 1.2 million barrels
  Supplies of heating oil supplies were down 400,000 barrels.
  

• Dow-Jones reported that in the first nine months of 2006, the U.S. bought 70% of Brazil's 2.3 billion liters of ethanol exports.
  

• The Australian central bank left its key interest rate unchanged.
  

• YoY Retail sales volume in the EU-12 up 2.4% in August.
  

• Services index in the U.K. up 0.9% QoQ
  

Are You an 'Unlawful Combatant'?
Maybe so… Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Warner, all Republicans, grandstanded for weeks over the torture provisions, then capitulated. Another "Republican maverick," Arlen Specter, zeroed in on the real
issue, however, when he said the bill would set us back 800 years by repealing the habeas corpus protections against arbitrary arrest and jailings – and then went ahead and voted for it, anyway.

Is Olbermann on Thin Ice?
But MSNBC is still owned by GE's conservative bosses, and managed by NBC's ever-timid executives. Olbermann knows this reality as well as anyone; six months ago on C-SPAN, while expressing confidence that good ratings would keep them at bay, he remarked: "There are people I know in the hierarchy of NBC, the company, and GE, the company, who do not like to see the current presidential administration criticized at all."

A National Driver's License and the Fading Right of Anonymity Real Bad ID
By STAN COX
REAL ID mandates nine data elements that the national driver's license must have, but puts no limit on the kinds of data that may be stored on the card's chip or in any database that the card might link to. It says the card must be readable by all state goverments and the US government but doesn't say that it cannot be readable by businesses or other entities. So far, those questions have been left up to Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and to the states.

Quick Overview

• The U.S. economy is likely heading for a soft-landing rather than a full-blown recession as slowdowns in the housing and job markets constrain consumer spending, the National Retail Federation trade group said on Tuesday.
  

• The Renewable Fuels Association said the U.S. consumed 360,000 barrels ar day of ethanol in July, more than the 316,000 daily barrels that were produced.
  

• December gold tumbled $21.80 to end at $581.50, the lowest close in three months, in sympathy with the lower price of crude oil.
  

• The European Aug unemployment rate rose to 7.9% from 7.8% in July, which was the first rise in the unemployment rate in nearly 3 years.
  

• Retail sales in Australia were up 0.3% in August, better than expected.
  

• Japan's Finance Minister Kohi Omi said that, "Judging from the current state of the economy, we can declare Japan's deflation is over."
  

• Oil tumbled more than two dollars on Tuesday to below $59 a barrel, sinking to the lowest level since February and prompting OPEC's president to call on the exporter group to deepen supply cuts
  

• The yen dropped against the dollar and Euro after North Korea said it will conduct a nuclear test.

The St. Petersburg Times and The Miami Herald were given copies of the e-mail, as were other news organizations, including Fox News.

Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice All Received 9/11 Report They Denied Receiving
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning.

Quick Overview

• The Institute for Supply Management said Monday its manufacturing index fell to 52.9 in September, its lowest level since last May.
  
  

• Construction spending rose 0.3% in August, the Commerce Department said Monday
  
  

• The Bank of Japan's Tankan business survey increased from 21 to 24 stronger than expected, putting the Japanese economy back in a more positive light and increasing the chances for another BOJ rate hike before year-end.
  

• The People's Bank of China expects the economy to grow 10.5% this year.
  

Decimating the Constitution with Military Tribunals
Given all the glorification being bestowed on three U.S. senators for displaying “principle” in standing against President Bush’s plan to amend the Geneva Convention to permit torture of detainees, followed by their quick compromise abandoning any semblance of principle, it is easy to lose sight of something much bigger: The military tribunals that the president and the Congress are set to approve will constitute the most radical, dangerous, and disgraceful transformation in the U.S. criminal-justice system since our nation’s inception.

Bush 'kept Blair in the dark over Iraq' An explosive new book claims that Tony Blair pleaded in vain with George Bush to share vital combat intelligence about the Iraq war.

Congress Adds Internet Gambling Ban To U.S. Port Security Bill
Lawmakers added Internet gambling prohibitions at the last minute as they were finishing legislation on increasing security at U.S. ports. They connected unrelated measures to try to get approval, according to sources.

World finance watchdogs focus on opaque derivatives market
The world's three most powerful financial regulators want to tighten up derivatives markets, where explosive growth in recent times has sparked fears of a potential financial disaster.
Officials from Britain's Financial Services Authority, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the US Securities and Exchange Commission warn that countries must join forces to help contain risks posed by the rapid global expansion of derivatives.

Top Republicans accused of cover-up over sex scandal
Within hours of the departure of Mark Foley, a lawmaker from the Palm Beach area dogged for years by rumours about his sexuality, the party of "family values" turned on itself in an unseemly sequence of
denials, accusations and counter-accusations in which the party's top leaders appeared frantic to save their own political skins.

Detainee bill lifts Bush's power to new heights
President now has legal authority even courts can't challenge
"The president walked away with a lot more than most people thought," Ackerman said. He said the bill "further entrenches presidential power" and allows the administration to declare even a U.S. citizen an unlawful combatant subject to indefinite detention. "And it's not only about these prisoners," Ackerman said. "If Congress can strip courts of jurisdiction over cases because it fears their outcome, judicial independence is threatened."

Benjamin Franklin's prescient warning should give us pause: "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

Swiss plan tunnel under Strait of Gibraltar
The Swiss Lombardi engineering firm has won the contract to design a railway tunnel between Europe and Africa running under the Strait of Gibraltar.

G.O.P. Leaders Knew in Late ’05 of E-Mail
Top House Republicans knew for months about e-mail traffic between Representative Mark Foley and a former teenage page, but kept the matter secret and allowed Mr. Foley to remain head of a Congressional caucus on children’s issues, Republican lawmakers said Saturday.

White House on a Rampage Against the Constitution RALPH NADER
So long as the lawyers and their bar associations in America do not challenge the advancing dictatorial powers of George W. Bush, so long as citizen groups, labor unions and libertarians, conservatives and liberals avoid uniting together, these constitutional crimes against due process, probable cause, habeas corpus, together with torture and indefinite imprisonment at the whim of the Executive branch, will worsen and erode American jurisprudence with serious consequences for both the nation's security and its liberties.

Remember that telling thought by the British Parliamentarian, Edmund Burke, at the time of the American Revolution: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Rounding Up U.S. Citizens
Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."
Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to protect us against terrorism. Frightened they might lose their majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill through Congress with little substantive debate.

Benjamin Franklin's prescient warning should give us pause: "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

Bush faces wave of challenges to terror law
"The fact that they are denying the right of habeas corpus is so unlawful and unconstitutional that it throws us back to before King John and the Magna Carta," said Michael Ratner, president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights"

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety: Benjamin Franklin

The Blind Leading the Willing
A compromise between those who don't care and those who don't want to know.
By Dahlia Lithwick
We've reached a defining moment in our democracy when our elected officials are celebrating their own blind ignorance as a means of keeping the rest of us blindly ignorant as well.

The Antifederalists Were Right
September 27 marks the anniversary of the publication of the first of the Antifederalist Papers in 1789. The Antifederalists were opponents of ratifying the US Constitution. They feared that it would create an overbearing central government, while the Constitution's proponents promised that this would not happen. As the losers in that debate, they are largely overlooked today. But that does not mean they were wrong or that we are not indebted to them.

Quick Overview

• U.S. Personal incomes were up 0.3% in August while consumer spending was up 0.1%.
  

• The U.S. core rate of personal consumption expenditures, was up 2.5% YoY.

• The Chicago Purchasing Managers' index increased from 57.1 to 62.1 in September, more than expected
  

• The University of Michigan's index of consumer sentiment increased from 82.0 to 85.4 in September, more than expected.
  

• Canada's GDP was up 0.2% in July and up 2.5% YoY.
  

• Consumer prices in Tokyo were up 0.4% YoY. In all of Japan, consumer prices were up 0.9% YoY.
  Japan's unemployment rate was unchanged in August at 4.1%.
  

• Consumer prices in the Euro zone were up 1.8% in September YoY,
  

• New Zealand's GDP was up 0.5% in the second quarter and up 1.9% YoY
  
  

• The USDA said that, on September 1st, there were:
  1.97 billion bushels of corn in storage, down 7% YoY
  449 million bushels of soybeans in storage, up 75% YoY -- the most since 1986.
  1.74 billion bushels of wheat in storage, down 9% YoY.
  The USDA estimates 2006-2007 U.S. wheat production at 1.81 billion bushels, a bit more than expected.
  

• The USDA said there were 62.7 million hogs in inventory on September 1st, up 1.4% YoY. Hogs kept for breeding were up 1.8% YoY.
  
  

• It's getting hard to grow oranges in the Sunshine State. Months long droughts are broken by nasty hurricane seasons. Three diseases that kill and damage citrus trees and fruit continue to spread.
  
  
  

Bank faulted over data transfers to U.S
The Belgian banking consortium Swift breached European privacy rules when it aided the U.S. anti-terrorism program by providing confidential information about money transfers, Belgium's privacy protection commission concluded Thursday.
"It has to be seen as a gross miscalculation by Swift that it has, for years, secretly and systematically transferred massive amounts of personal data for surveillance without effective and clear legal basis and independent controls in line with Belgian and European law," the report said

Ashcroft Is Denied Immunity in Case A federal judge in Idaho has ruled that former attorney general John D. Ashcroft can be held personally responsible for the wrongful detention of a U.S. citizen arrested as a "material witness" in a terrorism case.

Deficit comes in below projections, thanks to `off-budget' borrowing The U.S. government closes the books on fiscal 2006 Saturday, and politicians are likely to trumpet that the federal deficit came in almost $60 billion below projections. Problem is, they won't be using the same math you use.

Senate OKs detainee interrogation bill
"The habeas corpus language in this bill is as legally abusive of rights guaranteed in the Constitution as the actions at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and secret prisons that were physically abusive of detainees," said Sen. Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Armed Services panel.

Something bad is about to happen. Only you can stop it, and the clock is ticking.

We hate to sound apocalyptic. We loathe the politics of fear (even if it works!). So we're not looking to scare you.

But you need to know that the end is near for "archaic" ideas like . . .
* the right to security in your home and papers
* the right to be free from unreasonable searches
* the safety net of judicial warrant requirements
* the right to a trial by a jury of your peers in a system of due process
* reasonable bail and recourse for false arrest
* protection from cruel and unusual punishment

Those were great ideals for "dead white men," but apparently your children won't need them anymore. Because, you know, the politicians need to protect you and your children from terrorism.

But the politicians need to get a grip, and a sense of proportion. You don't turn the country upside down for light and transient causes. You're more likely to die in your car, or be struck by lightening, than be harmed by terrorism.
We don't fret about such risks, so why are destroying American freedom in the name of an even smaller risk?

A bill is about to pass the House. It permits unlimited spying on your internet usage and telecommunications, the Fourth Amendment be damned. For brevity, I'll call it the "Spying on Americans Act," or SPA for short.The SPA is likely to pass the Senate too, but there we have a chance to stop it.

Under SPA . . .
* The President can spy on you without a warrant
* You'll never learn that his spys have done so, until they use the information against you (legally or not)
* Your phone and internet providers can't refuse to provide information about you * Or tell you they've done so after the fact

The result will be more warrantless searches than in all of U.S. history. And if that history is any guide, it's only a matter of time before this power is used for reasons other than "national security."

Read Whole Story

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety: Benjamin Franklin

Quick Overview

• The Dow-Jones industrial average briefly traded above its record high close set on Jan. 14, 2000.
  

• U.S. corporate profits were up 0.3% in the second quarter.
  

• The U.S. Commerce Department estimates US GDP growth in the second quarter at of 2.6%, down from the previous estimate of 2.9%. YoY GDP was up 3.5%.
  

• Copper demand growth in China, the world's biggest consumer of the metal, may slow to 5.6 percent this year, as record prices prompt makers of cables, wires and air-conditioners to switch to cheaper substitutes. Consumption may be 3.8 million metric tons, versus 3.86 million tons and last year's growth of 9 percent.
  

• The U.S. Labor Department said that jobless claims were down 6,000 last week to 316,000.
  

• The International Grains Council lowered global wheat production by 5 million tons to 588 million tons.
  

• AWB Ltd. lowered the estimate of Australia's wheat crop from 16.4 million tons to 13.5 million, down from 25.1 million tons last year. Hot and dry conditions have hurt this year's crop.
  
  

• The U.S. Department of Energy said that underground supplies of natural gas rose 77 billion cubic feet to 3.254 trillion cubic feet. Supplies are up 13% YoY.
  

• German September unemployment fell 17,000 to 4.43 million, the fifth drop in the past six months.
  

• Retail sales in Japan increased 2.0% in August, more than expected.
  

• France's GDP increased 1.2% in the second quarter, the best quarterly performance in over five years.
  

• Worker productivity in the U.K. increased 1.8%.
  

• The Chinese Yuan rose to a new 12-3/4-year high at 7.8957 Yuan/USD

Quick Overview

• U.S. Durable goods orders were down 0.5% in August, weaker than expected. In July, orders were revised lower, from a 2.4% to a 2.7% decline.
  

• U.S New home sales were up 4.1% MoM. New home inventory dropped from 7.0 to 6.6 months. YoY new home sales are down 16%.
  

• The Mortgage Bankers Association said that YoY mortgage applications were down 21% last week.
  
  

• The U.S. Department of Energy said that:
  Supplies of crude oil supplies were down 100,000 barrels to 324.8 million barrels.
  Supplies of unleaded gasoline were up 6.3 million barrels
  Supplies of heating oil were up 2.1 million barrels.
  
  

• U.K.s GDP rose 0.7% in the second quarter and 2.6% YoY.
  

• Argentina built up monetary reserves of $28.725 billion which, however, it doesn't intend to use to repay the holdouts from its default in December 2001, Martin Redrado, president of Argentina's Central Bank said.
  
  

• Japan's new Finance Minister Koji Omi said on Wednesday he saw no need to comment or act on movements in the euro/yen rate now and warned markets "I'm still an amateur" on currencies.

The Suspension of Habeas Corpus

House Passes Measure on Religion Suits

Health insurance premiums continue to soar

White House said to bar hurricane report

Most Iraqis Favor Immediate U.S. Pullout,

Greenspan: Dump SarbOx He said the evidence is clear that Sarbanes-Oxley strictures are driving initial public stock offerings away from the New York Stock Exchange and to the London Stock Exchange.

The United States of Barbarism
The details of the torture deal vivify how our politicians no longer give a darn about maintaining even a pretense of due process. The agreement will permit the use of coerced confessions in military tribunals – turning the judicial clock back to the 1600s. The Washington Post noted that the agreement permits “defense attorneys to challenge the use of hearsay information obtained through coercive interrogations in distant countries only if they can prove it is unreliable.” Thus, there is a presumption of correctness to whatever accusation is bludgeoned out of people in secret prisons around the world.

Quick Overview

• After a sharp downturn in August, The Conference Board's index of consumer confidence rose from 100.2 to 104.5 in September, the New York-based Conference Board said Tuesday
  
  

• The confidence of American consumers edged up during the latest week, helped by lower gasoline prices and despite signs of a cooling U.S. economy, ABC News and The Washington Post said on Tuesday.
  
  

• The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's manufacturing index rose from +3 to +9 in September, more than expected.
  

• The National Cocoa Development Committee estimates Nigerian production at 220,000 tons of cocoa in 2006-2007, up 10% YoY.
  

• Germany's September Ifo business confidence index fell slightly to 104.9 from 105.0 in August, but was stronger than market expectations for a decline to 104.4.
  

• Canada officially posted at C$13.2 billion federal budget surplus in 2005-2006, the third largest ever.
  
  

• YoY the Mexican economy expanded 5.00 percent in July.

General: Appeals for More Troops Were Denied Adding to criticism of the Bush administration's prosecution of the war in Iraq, a retired senior general who commanded an infantry division in the conflict said Monday that requests by commanders for more soldiers were repeatedly turned down.


Million unexploded cluster bombs could be in Lebanon
The bomblets, half the size of a can of soda, are lying in people’s houses, gardens, on the street and on farmland, he said.
So far, 14 people have been killed and around 90 injured from unexploded ordnance ..

A textbook definition of cowardice
..But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed, until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.
Except for this.
After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts—that he was president on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.
Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.
As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.
Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon.
Consider the timing: the very weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is—not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it.

Quick Overview

• A top U.S. Federal Reserve official said on Monday the economy is doing well but inflation remains a concern, in remarks that challenge views the central bank will cut interest rates early next year.

• The National Association of Realtors said that U.S. existing home sales were at an annual rate of 6.30 million units in August, more than expected. The median home price was down 1.7% from a year ago, the first annual drop in eleven years.
  

• Canada posted a C$13.2 billion budget surplus for the 2005-06 fiscal year.
  

US housing slump may prompt Fed to reduce rates
Signs of a crumbling U.S. housing market and worries that the slump may hurt the overall economy are feeding the idea the central bank will be forced to trim short-term interest rates sooner than many had forecast.

County pension hedge fund loss nearly doubles
The county pension system's estimated losses from the crash of a Connecticut-based hedge fund have climbed to $87 million, nearly twice the figure given just two days ago.


(Hedge fund Amaranth Advisors LLC, which lost about $6 billion trading natural gas futures this month, said it plans to stay in business but has sworn off energy trading. Amaranth founder Nicholas Maounis told investors Friday on a conference call that)