10 reasons why US can no longer dictate world policy

From The Economic Collapse:

1) China and Japan
2) The BRICs
3) China and Russia
4) China and Africa
5) China and UAE
6) Iran
7) China and Saudi Arabia
8) The UN
9) The IMF
10) Most of the rest of the world

World Revolution Update

World Revolution Update

We face a "Worldwide Banking Meltdown"

IMF advisor Robert Shapiro warns of a meltdown worse than 2008.
So what’s a country to do when faced with sovereign default?
Well in the birthplace of democracy, as the Greek government circles ever-increasingly down the toilet of fiscal insolvency, it apparently has found enough money to purchase 400 M1A1 Abrams tanks from the United States.
Well, I guess if they can’t afford to provide the Greek people with good governance, I guess they will NEED 400 tanks to keep the Greek people in line.

To the west, Spain tops that by offering Uncle Sam a navy base.

Under the agreement, four U.S. Aegis ships will be based at the Rota naval base near Cadiz in Spain. The agreement is part of U.S. President Barack Obama's phased adaptive approach to missile defense, under which ship-based, anti-ballistic missiles are being deployed in the eastern Mediterranean followed by ground-based systems in Romania and Poland.
The agreement "reflects a commitment of both countries to the alliance" and marks "an important step forward to protect NATO territories against missile threats," Rasmussen said. "It is smart defense at its best," he said, describing it as "countries working together and sharing together to provide something that benefits us all."
-Defense News

Come to think of it, considering that 169,000 Americans lost their job in September, Uncle Sam might need some more tanks and missile boats too.

Forensics don't lie

(sigh)
The medical report from the first post-rape examination of Nafissatou Diallo apparently confirms that the former hotel worker was indeed raped/sodomized in a non-consensual kinda way by former IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

"Cause of the injuries: assault. Rape," the report said, according to the French translation in L'Express.

A lawyer representing the accuser said the report proves the attack occurred.
-Yahoo! News

Wow.
Meanwhile, DSK is still out of jail and megarich, and Diallo's life is even worse off than it had been before she was raped.

DSK accuser admitted that she lied

So much for that case.

The accuser initially told prosecutors and the grand jury she fled to the hallway after the incident and waited for Strauss-Kahn to leave, and informed a supervisor of what happened shortly after, prosecutors said.

"The complainant (accuser) has since admitted that this account was false and that after the incident in Suite 2806, she proceeded to clean a nearby room and then returned to Suite 2806 and began to clean that suite before she reported the incident to her supervisor," the letter said.
-Reuters

Obviously, this doesn't prove that DSK didn't rape her, but it does mean that her credibility is shot, and that's more important in this legal system.

If charges are eventually dropped, Strauss-Kahn, 62, may be motivated to bring a civil suit against New York City police officers or prosecutors in the District Attorney's office.

"He lost his position at the IMF," said Michael Joseph, an attorney who specializes in malicious prosecutions. "His economic damages are potentially huge."
-Thomson Reuters

He can't sue to get back his frontrunning political clout back though.

Case against DSK might collapse?

“It is a mess, a mess on both sides.”

The case against former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn is aparently not going so well. Forensic evidence confirms that there was a sexual encounter between DSK and the Sofitel Hotel housekeeper, but her credibility is eroding.

According to the two officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.

That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.

According to the two officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.

That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.
-New York Times

DSK might be freed from house arrest, and the felony charges may be dismissed. Too bad Christine Lagarde already has his old job already.

World Revolution Update

Trucker blows up like balloon

To celebrate the news from the IMF that "inflation is a non-issue for the US", I give you yet another NMA animation. Way too funny.

WHAKATANE, New Zealand, May 26 (UPI) -- A New Zealand truck driver said he is "lucky to be alive" after an air hose became lodged in his buttocks and blew him up "like a balloon."
Steven McCormack, 48, said he fell from the rigging between his truck and the trailer at Waiotahi Contractors in Whakatane and he landed on the hose connected to the vehicle's air brakes, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday.
McCormack said the nozzle pierced his left buttocks and began pumping air into his body at 100 pounds per square inch.
"I was blowing up like a football," he said. "I had no choice but just to lay there, blowing up like a balloon."
Doctors said the air separated fat from muscle, caused his lungs to fill with fluid and compressed his heart.
McCormack was rescued by coworkers and taken to an intensive care unit at a Whakatane hospital. He said it took nearly three days for his body to deflate to normal size.
"You just have to burp it out, or fart it out," he said.
-UPI

Oh no they didn't

French Budget Minister Francois Baroin claimed today that China supports French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde as candidate to be the new head of the International Monetary Fund.

"It's a European consensus," he told France's Europe 1 radio. "The euro needs our attention, we need to have the Europeans (on board), the Chinese support the candidacy of Christine Lagarde."
-Reuters

Unfortunately for Baroin, and all of Europe, that simply isn't true.
The BRICS were quick to push back, reminding the backwards, debt-plagued old world where all roads into the future travel through.

In a unique show of force and unity, the IMF executive directors from Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa issued a joint statement in which they called for an end to the “obsolete unwritten convention” that head of the fund must hail from Europe.
“We are concerned with the public statements made recently by high-level European officials to the effect that the position of managing director should continue to be occupied by a European,” the executive directors said in a statement released by the IMF in Washington. “The convention that the selection of the managing director is made, in practice, on the basis of nationality undermines the legitimacy of the fund.”
-Globe and Mail

In their statement, the BRICS reminded everyone that some former Euro heavyweight named, appropriately, Jean-Claude Junker (seriously), had said back in 2007 that DSK would "probably" be the last European IMF head.
Problem is, there doesn't yet appear to be a good candidate from any 'emerging economies,' and the one name that has surfaced, Agustin Carstens, is some pig from Mexico that most people don't take seriously.
Really? Mexico?
And so the search for another pro-liquidity pervert continues...

DSK DNA update

Well, this whole DSK fiasco has me going lower than I thought I could ever willingly go, so I might as well press on, now that I've gone this far.

A DNA sample taken from Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF chief accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid, has been matched to material found on the maid's shirt, sources familiar with the case tell NBC New York.
-NBC New York

Another white dude felled by the ole 'DNA on the shirt' evidence.
Then this happened:

During their investigation, authorities cut out a piece of carpet and swabbed sinks and other surfaces in his hotel room. Investigators told the AP they believed the carpet in the hotel room may contain Strauss-Kahn's semen, spat out after an episode of forced oral sex by the maid.
-Inside Bay Area

Not sure why the Associated Press had to go there, but here I am as well. While here, I take note that it took over a week for the DNA on shirt evidence to come back, and remind you all that we're supposed to believe that Osama bin Laden's DNA was confirmed within a few hours at most. In a hostile foreign country. Or on a boat. Whatever.
In not enough time.