Quick Overview

• Sweden AMS unemployment rate July, at 5.2% versus 5.3% expected.

• Norwegian Retail Sales MoM June, at -1.1% versus -1.2% expected.
  

• Norwegian Unemployment rate (AKU) May, at 4.6% versus 3.9% expected.
  

• UK Visible trade balance June, at -6463 versus -6200 expected.
  

• US MBA Mortgage Applications Aug, out at 4.95 showed the housing industry still has a pulse and the housing sector may be able to stabilize now that mortgage rates have stopped rising.
  

• Canadian Housing starts July, at 236.5k versus 225.0K expected.
  

• Machinery orders in Japan +8.5% in June, more than expected.
  
  

• The U.S. Department of Energy said that:
  Supplies of crude oil were down 1.1 million barrels to 332.6 million barrels.
  Supplies of unleaded gasoline were down 3.2 million barrels
  Supplies of heating oil supplies were up 1.1 million barrels.
  
  

• DJ Newswires said China's textile industry expects cotton imports to increase from 2.6 million tons last year to 7 million by 2010.
  

Bush Pilot
This explains EVERYTHING!

Public Pension Plans Face Billions in Shortages And that may well understate the gap: Barclays Global Investments has calculated that if America’s state pension plans were required to use the same methods as corporations, the total value of the benefits they have promised would grow 22 percent, to $2.5 trillion. Only $1.7 trillion has been set aside to pay those benefits.

Quick Overview

• The Fed on Tuesday halted a more than two-year string of interest-rate rises, holding its benchmark rate steady at 5.25% while it gauges whether a slowing economy will keep inflation in check.
  
  

• The confidence of American consumers fell slightly in the latest week, with gasoline prices still high amid signs of a slowing economy, ABC News and The Washington Post said on Tuesday.
  
  

• The Labor Department said that business productivity increased 1.1% YoY in the second quarter, down from YoY rate of 4.3% in the first quarter.
  

• Japan's July bank lending rose 2.2% YoY which was the fastest pace in a decade.
  
  

• Germany's June industrial production fell -0.4%, which was weaker than the consensus expectation of +0.3%.

Bush, Rice, Twerps, and Children in Power
by Fred Reed

I’m wondering. Help me wonder. Either Georgie Bush is the minor, depressing, witless ferret I think he is, or I am. It has to be one or the other. If things don’t start looking up pretty soon internationally, I’m going to be pretty sure which.

As best as I can tell, what the Maximum Cipher lacks, among an inexhaustible list of other things, is a hop-toad’s understanding of how people work. Here we have the explanation of just about everything he does. He’s dealing with a world full of people, but has no idea what people are. He probably couldn’t recognize one. So he doesn’t take their predictable behavior into account.

Quick Overview

• The Fed reported that YoY consumer borrowing rose 5.7% in June, up sharply from a 3.3 percent increase in May.
  
  

• Japan's July foreign exchange reserves rose $7.06 billion on month to $871.94 billion, the Finance Ministry said Monday.
  
  

• China's National Foreign Exchange Center set the Yuan rate at a record 7.9699 to the dollar.
  
  

• Sweden’s GDP rose 5.5% YoY versus 4.2% expected.
  

• MoM UK’s Industrial Production fell -0.1% in June vs. 0.2% expected, YoY -0.7 vs. -0.3% exp.
  

• UK’s Manufacturing Production was up 0.1% in June vs. 0.2% expected, YoY 0.9% vs. 0.9% exp.
  

• BP said Sunday it would shut down the Prudhoe Bay oil field, which represents 8 percent of daily U.S. crude production, because of possible pipeline corrosion.
  
  
  

Good as gold?
Commentary: Questions about market manipulation, missing M3 figures
When last calculable, the chart of this was ominous: Turk not unreasonably comments: "Why does the Fed no longer want to report the total quantity of dollars in circulation? They know what's coming - massive amounts of dollar creation to fund the worsening trade and federal government budget deficits."

Fed admits US recession on cards
As Fed chairman Ben Bernanke prepares to decide whether to raise American interest rates for the 18th time on Tuesday, bond prices and the high level of borrowing costs are now showing a 38 per cent chance of recession, according to a model published by Fed economist Jonathan Wright earlier this year.

International crime rings, not hackers, true Internet villains More than two billion dollars will be stolen this year by online "phishing," using fake website and bogus e-mails to trick people into revealing personal information then used for identity theft, according to Evron.

Half of U.S. still believes Iraq had WMD Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?
Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.
People tend to become "independent of reality" in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.

Shortly before invasion, Bush didn't know there were two sects of Islam
Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

Ethanol war brewing Everywhere you look these days, tech and business world luminaries - like Richard Branson, Paul Allen, Steve Case, Vinod Khosla, John Doerr, and Bill Gates - are laying down big bets on ethanol, a substitute for gasoline that's already finding its way into pumps.

Quick Overview

• The U.S. unemployment rate rose from 4.6% to 4.8% in July, weaker than expected. After the report, fed funds futures priced in a 16% chance of a Fed rate increase next week.
  

• Canada's unemployment rate increased from 6.1% to 6.4%.
  
  

• Australia's Reserve Bank expects real GDP to increase 3.5% this year with inflation around 3.0%.
  
  
  

• The International Monetary Fund has raised its forecast for German economic growth this year to 1.4 percent from 1.3.
  
  

• 414 companies in the S&P 500 (83%) have released results, and earnings rose by an average of 19% .
  
  

• German June factory orders unexpectedly declined -0.5% from a changed -1.5% decline in May.
  
  

• YoY U.K. personal bankruptcies rose +66% in the second quarter, the highest level since records began in 1960.

CONTRA KELO
Ohio’s top court has told the U.S. Supreme Court, "Thanks, but no thanks" for its rationale in Kelo v. City of New London, the 2005 case that allowed state and local governments to seize private property for private economic development.

China hit by rising air pollution
China is the world's largest sulphur dioxide polluter, emitting nearly 26m tons of the gas in 2005.

Net Neutrality May Derail Telecom Bill

Top Military Lawyers Oppose Plan for Special Courts
The military's top uniformed lawyers, appearing at a Senate hearing yesterday, criticized key provisions of a proposed new U.S. plan for special military courts, affirming that they did not see eye to eye with the senior Bush administration political appointees who developed the plan and presented it to them last week.

Quick Overview

• U.S. jobless claims were up 14,000 last week to 315,000, more than expected.
  

• The U.S. economy’s service sector growth, the biggest part of the economy, declined in July reducing expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates next week.
  

• The European Central Bank increased its rate from 2.75% to 3.00%, as expected.
  

• The Bank of England surprisingly increased its lending rate from 4.50% to 4.75.
  

• An index of European service activity dropped from 60.7 to 57.9 in July.
  

‘The Trouble With You, Blumert’

I want to make LewRockwell.com’s already vast reach even vaster. I want to spread the truth about peace, freedom, and the free market, much more broadly. That’s how to deal with these cretins. But we can't do it without you.

I’d like a larger budget to get Lew some help. We also need more internet security. And we need to reach more people. I wish you could see the mail we get. Young libertarians, conservatives, and even leftists, from all over America and the world, can’t get enough of LewRockwell.com, and thanks to us, they do not buy the media lies, and they tell others, who tell others.

Banking on War
In the end, it is worthwhile to remember that whenever you see George W. Bush talking about winning the "War on Terror," you are looking at the largest arms dealer on the planet.

Quick Overview

• Bank of Japan Policy Board member Atsushi Mizuno said on Wednesday it would be a mistake to think there will be no more rate rises this year, although the central bank has said future rate moves will be gradual
  
  

• The Reserve Bank of Australia has lifted interest rates to 6%. This is the second increase this year.
  
  

• The U.S. Department of Energy said that::
  Supplies of crude oil were down 1.8 million barrels to 333.7 million barrels.
  Supplies of unleaded gasoline were down 100,000 barrels
  Supplies of heating oil were up 1.7 million barrels.
  

• The International Cotton Advisory Committee expects 2006-2007 world ending stocks to total 45 million bales, less than the USDA's 47.5 million bale estimate
  

• The Mortgage Bankers Association said its index of mortgage applications is at the lowest level since May 2002.
  
  

Quick Overview

• The core personal consumption expenditure index, a measure that strips out food and energy prices and is closely watched by the Federal Reserve, rose 0.2 % in June. YoY the core PCE was up 2.4 %, after growing at 2.2 % YoY for May and April.
  
  

• The ISM's prices paid index was 78.5 in July versus June's 76.5.
  
  

• The Institute for Supply Management's July manufacturing index was 54.7, above an expected 53.6, and rebounding from June's 53.8.
  
  

• U.S. Construction spending was at an annual rate of $1.217 trillion in June, up slightly from May's pace.
  
  

• Germany's July unemployment rate fell to a 2-year low of 10.6% from 10.8%.
  
  

• Japan's land prices rose +0.9% in 2005. Land prices in Tokyo rose +5.4% in 2005, for the second year of growth.
  
  

• The unemployment rate in the Euro-12 improved from 7.9% to 7.8% in June while unemployment in the EU-25 improved from 8.2% to 8.1%.