More Facts ...

World

"Red" China - for all the successes economically, a story in today's WSJ shows the inherent nature of the regime: "Chinese authorities ordered two elderly women to spend a year of "re-education through labor" after they applied to stage a protest at an Olympic protest zone over being evicted from their homes." Maybe it's not "Red" anymore, but has morphed into an oligarchic tyranny. Labor camp for merely 'applying' to protest eviction from their homes ... sheeesh how oppressive it that ?

Russian occupation of Georgia continues. The lies of its government are exposed. Putin rants about "genocide" and Russian media claimed 2,000 killed. Here's a fact from FT: "A Russian commission designed to look into allegations of ethnic cleansing and genocide by Georgia in the breakaway enclave of South Ossetia says that Georgian forces killed 133 civilians in a bombardment starting on August 7, but adds that the number could climb. ... an earlier Russian estimate of 2,000 victims was challenged by Human Rights Watch, which said hospital records in Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, showed only 44 dead."

I wonder how many Georgians the Russians and their killers in the "white armed band" South Ossetian militia murdered ? That would be interesting to know for both the South Ossetians shellings of Georgian villages BEFORE the invasion and then afterward. More and more evidence seems to show that the Moscow government was simply lying and accusing others of what their forces were doing as propaganda.

Georgia's government was certainly stupid and I do not support their actions, but perhaps their true "stupidity" was falling into a Russian trap ?

Markets

Bear raids do exist. From the WSJ: "In an apparent attempt to prevent a repeat of the cascading rumors that helped sink Bear Stearns Cos., the Federal Reserve last month quietly called one major bank to see if it had pulled a credit line from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., people familiar with the matter said. Responding to a July rumor that Credit Suisse Group planned to pull a line of credit to Lehman, Federal Reserve officials called to see if it was in fact true, according to these people. Credit Suisse told Fed officials there was no truth to the rumor and it had no intention of pulling the line of credit, the people said." So the "rumor" was simply false ... a lie probably initiated by hedge funds to help their short raids.

When will the SEC stop these ? Fraud in selling virtual shares short must be banned and the uptick rule reinstated. Of course with the SEC and staff looking for high paying jobs on the Street, the beefers and their law firms, should we really expect them to do anything their Street and beefer masters do not approve ?

Will any high profile pundits draw the logical conclusions from these simple facts ? I doubt it.

Word of the Day

"Camorra" - noun [$100]
Camorra means 1. (upper case 'C') a secret society of Naples, Italy first publicly known about in 1820, that developed into a powerful political organization and was later asscoicted with blackmail, robbery, etc. until its destruction in 1911; 2. (lower case 'c') any similar society or group.
Sentences: (A) Last fall's Communist Party Congress in "Red" China partly revealed its ruling camorra to the world, but thereafter it again disappeared under the cloak of secrecy. (B) The ruling camorra of Russia is a mystery. Which cliques and factions and people have power ? To this observer, the old Soviet Union was more transparent as at least the names it the Politburo and Central Committee members were known.