It cannot be disputed America (its government, its society, its churches, its peoples) has forgotten, ignored, denied & discarded the Bible, God's Word, as the sole source of life, "Mankind shall not live by bread (food) alone, but by every word that proceeds from YHWH. Matt. 4:4, And this is the record, that God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." I John 5:11. This is where our need begins and ends.
Your "religion" doesn't matter a hill of beans. No Baptist, no Protestant, no Catholic, no Mormon, no Muslim, no Hare Krishna, no Buddhist, nor anything other than faith in Christ alone will regenerate the human soul & spirit. This claim is not my opinion, resolution, nor supposition. It is the resounding declaration of our Creator Himself, "Unless you believe (accept, embrace, adhere) that I AM the Living GOD, you will die in your sin." John 8:24 "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. John 1:3
My motivation for this Blog is not driven by hatred, vengeance, or anger at the world. It is solely driven by YHWH's love for sinners, among whom I am counted prevalent. My sins are as scarlet, but Christ made them white as snow. "YHWH showed His love for me in that while I am yet a sinner, Christ died for me. And rose that I shall have eternal life." Rom 5:8, 6:23. I'm no different than anyone of you, "For all have sinned and fallen short of YHWH's glory."Rom 3:23 , I simple came to Christ with a repentant, sorrowful heart and accepted His grace. "For by grace are you saved (redeemed, brought back into fellowship) through faith (trusting YHWH's Word); and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God." Eph 2:8
While the news all around us is increasingly bad, the Goods News of Christ is calling out God's people to new heights of Faith. Bible (God's Word) prophecy is being fulfilled right before our eyes, yet the world is too blind to see, read, or believe. Else they would repent and seek His mercy, grace, and healing.
I'm not a seer, nor doomsday prophet, nor a gloomy pessimist. I'm merely a Watchman on the Wall (Isaiah 21:6), I tell what I see. As with Noah, I saw this Flood coming, a global life-altering Tsunami washing over the world. It has been building and accelerating for over 40 years. This tsunami will change the faces of many nations and lives of billions unlike ever before. We must be spiritually, mentally & emotionally prepared. There is very little we can prepare for physically. Only God can meet these needs. You have to make the choice for yourself and your family.
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Eight financial companies -- Citigroup Inc, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Wells Fargo & Co, JPMorgan Chase & Co, American International Group Inc, Bank of America Corp and GE Financial -- are in greatest need of capital, he said.
"Debt or TARP capital is not true capital. Long-term debt financing is not the solution. Only injections of true tangible common equity will solve the current crisis," he said in a note dated November 19.
Currently, the U.S. financial system has $37 trillion of debt outstanding, he noted.
Combined, these eight companies have roughly $12.2 trillion of assets and only $406 billion of tangible common capital, or just 3.4 percent, the analyst said in his note to clients.
Miller said these institutions need somewhere between $1 trillion and $1.2trillion of capital to put their balance sheets back on solid ground and begin to extend credit again, given their dependence on short-term funding and the illiquid nature of their asset bases.
Since the summer of 2007, Wall Street has been hammered by a sharp pullback in debt markets, which began with mortgage woes and escalated into a credit crisis, slowing economic activity around the world.
RECAPITALIZATION NEEDS
The bulk of the capital will have to come from the U.S. government, Miller said. The government needs to take the initial steps to begin the process, and private capital and earnings can finish the job.
"The quicker the government acts, the sooner the financial system can work through its current problems and begin to supply credit again to the economy," he said.
The U.S. government must declare a bank-dividend holiday and convert the TARP funding into pure tangible common equity to get the credit markets functioning.
Also, the government should support a centralized CDS clearinghouse that backstops all transactions and eliminates the cross-default problem, the analyst said.
Top U.S. financial regulators said on Friday they were working on developing a centralized clearinghouse for credit default swaps, the exotic instruments that have exacerbated the financial crisis of recent months.
The weakened economy and global credit crisis had pushed the U.S. government into bailing out companies including insurer AIG, investment bank Bear Stearns, and mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Regulators have also shown a willingness this year to intervene when banks appeared to struggle. They pushed Wachovia Corp into finding a buyer and arranged for JPMorgan to buy Washington Mutual Inc's banking assets after worried customers began to yank deposits.
Miller, however, said it could take three to five years for the financial system to fix itself completely, with adequate capital and appropriately priced interest rate and credit risk.
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Weekly jobless claims surge to 16-year high
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits surged last week to their highest level in 16 years, Labor Department data showed on Thursday, as a harsh economic environment forces employers to cut back on hiring.
Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits were a seasonally adjusted 542,000 in the week ended November 15 from a revised 515,000 the previous week. That was higher than analysts' forecast for a reading of 505,000 new claims.
U.S. stock futures tumbled on the data and Treasury debt prices edged higher, attracting a safe-haven bid. The U.S. dollar deepened losses against the yen.
The latest data has added to fears that the U.S. economy faces a deep recession and paints a gloomy outlook for the labor market.
"This report paints a pretty bleak job picture for mid-November and reinforces the comments from the Fed yesterday almost guaranteeing a sizable Fed rate cut at the next Fed meeting on December 16," said Cary Leahey, economist at Decision Economics in New York.
"It means we're probably facing another payroll employment report showing November job losses in the vicinity of 200,000."
The Federal Reserve has slashed its economic growth outlook through 2009 to minimal levels, minutes from the central bank's Oct 28-29 policy meeting released on Wednesday showed.
A Labor Department official said there were no special factors influencing the report.
The four-week moving average of new jobless claims, a better gauge of underlying labor trends because it irons out week-to-week volatility, rose to 506,500 from 490,750 the week before, the highest since the start of 1983.
Continuing claims were 4.012 million in the week ended November 8, the latest data available, up from 3.903 million the prior week and the highest since December 1982.
Analysts estimated so-called continued claims would be 3.92 million. The insured unemployment rate, a measure of the workforce receiving unemployment benefits, was 3.0 percent in the week ended Nov 8, rising from 2.9 percent the prior week.
This was the highest reading since June 2003.
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Foreign Aid Money Spent on $23 Million Art Ceiling at U.N. Human Rights Council
Tuesday , November 18, 2008
The U.N. Human Rights Council, frequently accused of coddling some of the world's most repressive governments, threw itself a party in Geneva Tuesday that featured the unveiling of a $23 million mural paid for in part with foreign aid funds.
In a ceremony attended by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Spanish artist Miquel Barcelo told the press that his 16,000-square-foot ceiling artwork reminded him of "an image of the world dripping toward the sky" — but it reminded critics of money slipping out of relief coffers.
"In Spain there's a controversy because they took money out of the foreign aid budget — took money from starving children in Africa — and spent it on colorful stalactites," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch.
Click here to see photos of the $23 million ceiling art.
Spanish taxpayers paid for most of the sprawling sculpture, which has been compared to the Sistine Chapel, but around $633,000 came from Spain's budget for overseas development aid.
Spain's conservative opposition party blasted the government for diverting money from projects to alleviate poverty in poorer countries, though the government insisted the funding for Barcelo's work was kept separate.
Ban himself praised the piece and thanked Barcelo for putting his "unique talents to work in the service of the world." The artwork will soar above the Human Rights Council's chambers at U.N.'s European headquarters in Geneva, which may soon undergo a $1 billion renovation — but only after a $1.9 billion facelift of the U.N.'s New York offices is completed.
Meanwhile, international humanitarian groups pleaded with the human rights panel to take time out from their party to address the worsening human rights "catastrophe" in the Congo, where the government is fighting a deadly battle with several rebel groups.
"Mass displacement, killings and sexual violence — involving hundreds of thousands of victims, if not more — require an urgent response," according to a statement issued jointly Tuesday by Freedom House and U.N. Watch.
Congo has been off the radar at the Human Rights Council, which removed its monitor from the African country in March when the Congolese government and a group of neighboring nations applied pressure on the council to expel the monitor.
"When the Human Rights Council was established two years ago there were about 12 or so monitors, and gradually one after another has been scrapped," said Neuer. "The other ones are all on the chopping block."
Violence is worsening in the country, where an estimated 4 million people have been killed in the past 10 years and tens of thousands have been displaced in recent months.
"The [Lord's Resistance Army] leader, Joseph Kony, is continuing his brutal and abusive tactics," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The U.S. and U.K., along with the U.N. and governments in the region, should actively work together to apprehend LRA leaders wanted by the [International Criminal Court]."
Secretary-General Ban has supported a U.N. resolution that would increase the U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo by 3,100 troops and police, but some critics say that move would not be enough.
Human rights groups — and U.N. officials themselves — have criticized the peacekeeping force for failing to protect civilians in places like Kiwanja, where at least 20 people were killed this week.
The 17,000-man U.N. deployment is already the U.N.'s largest peacekeeping commitment, but is restricted by tough rules of engagement and has a massive territory to cover. Congo is the size of Western Europe, and North Kivu, where the fighting is centered, is one-and-a-half times the size of France.
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