GDP REVISED DOWN FOR Q1 2010 TO 2.7% FROM 3.0%

According to The Associated Press:

Gross domestic product rose by an annual rate of 2.7 percent in the January-to-March period, the Commerce Department said Friday. That was less than the 3 percent estimate for the quarter that the government released last month. It was also much slower than the 5.6 percent pace in the previous quarter.

Federal Judge Asks Prosecutors Of Hutaree: Where's The Sedition?

The Associated Press has reported that after two days of hearings this week, a federal judge who must decide whether to keep the Hutaree militia locked up hasn't heard anything so far which indicated specific acts of violence were about to be unleashed by the group, nor anything qualifying as seditious conspiracy.

One prosecutor quoted the leader of the militia as saying, "It's now time to strike and take our nation back so that we may be free again from tyranny. Time is up," leading one defense attorney to retort that talk of that sort can routinely be heard on conservative talk radio and that millions of Americans are talking that way these days.

Read the full story here.

Militia Failure Friday Number One

The FBI's m/o is similar to the one used by the Feds to seize failing banks, except that the FBI uses military roadblocks and helicopter air support when it swoops in on the weekend. I'm going to call this Militia Failure Friday number one, because there will be more.

Jennifer Chambers, writing for The Detroit News in the story "Seven Arrested in FBI Raids Linked to Christian Militia Group," which appeared here, reports that:

seven people, including some from Michigan, have been arrested in raids by a FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana as part of an investigation into an Adrian-based Christian militia group, a person familiar with the matter said. ...

Sources have said the FBI was in the second day of raids around the southeastern Michigan city of Adrian that are connected to a militia group, known as the Hutaree, an Adrian-based group whose members describe themselves as Christian soldiers preparing for the arrival and battle with the anti-Christ.

WXYZ-TV reports that helicopters were spotted in the sky for much of Saturday night, and agents set up checkpoints throughout the area. Witnesses told the station that it was like a small army had descended on the area. The Department of Homeland Security and the Joint Terrorism Task Force are also involved in the raids. ...

The Associated Press is reporting that FBI spokesman Scott Wilson in Cleveland said agents arrested two people Saturday in northwest Ohio. A third arrest was made in Illinois on Sunday, a day after raids in northwest Indiana.

There is much more at the link.

Foreclosure Tsunami Continues

As reported by the Associated Press today:

A record 2.8 million households were threatened with foreclosure last year, and that number is expected to rise this year as more unemployed and cash-strapped homeowners fall behind on their mortgages. . . .

The number of households that received a foreclosure-related notice rose 21 percent from 2008, RealtyTrac Inc. reported Thursday. . . .

Home prices have stabilized in some cities, but are still down 30 percent nationally from mid-2006. . . .

The foreclosure crisis isn't letting up. Between 3 and 3.5 million homes are expected to enter some phase of foreclosure this year, said Rick Sharga, senior vice president of Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac, which began tracking the data five years ago.

To read the entire entry, go here.

Sham Economy, Part Three

In late October the government reported that third quarter GDP came in at 3.5%, about half of which was attributed widely to stimulus schemes like the first time home buyer credit and the cash for clunkers program.

Then the first revision brought the "growth" down to 2.8%. Today the Associated Press is reporting that the final revision brings third quarter growth down to 2.2%, which means that the economy, minus the hundreds of $billions in other stimulus spending, may actually have contracted in the third quarter, meaning "the recession" hadn't ended yet:

The economy grew at a 2.2 percent pace in the third quarter, as the recovery got off to a weaker start than previously thought. ...

The Commerce Department's new reading on gross domestic product for the July-to-September quarter was slower than the 2.8 percent growth rate estimated just a month ago. Economists were predicting that figure wouldn't be revised in the government's final estimate on third-quarter GDP.

You mean the same economists who warned us so long in advance of last year's financial tsunami?

The stuff they ladle out in this soup line we're standing in comes out of a crock of you know what.

FDIC In The Red . . . 140 Failed Banks Year to Date . . . $30 Billion Down, $100 Billion To Go

The Associated Press is reporting:

The 140 bank failures are the most in a year since 1992 at the height of the savings-and-loan crisis. They have cost the government-backed deposit insurance fund - which has fallen into the red - more than $30 billion so far this year. The failures compare with 25 last year and three in 2007.

The FDIC expects the cost of bank failures to grow to about $100 billion over the next four years. ...

If the economic recovery falters, defaults on the high-risk loans could spike. Nearly $500 billion in commercial real estate loans are expected to come due annually over the next few years.

Go here for the rest of the story.