konane's Blog

An excellent reasoned discussion well worth the read.  Quoted in full from Powerlineblog.com.

________

March 5, 2010 Posted by Paul at 8:33 AM

"Earlier this week, Fox News identified the seven Justice Department officials who, prior to being brought to DOJ by the Obama administration, provided legal services to terrorists and terrorist suspects, including Osama bin Laden's driver, John Walker Lindh, and Jose Padilla. The names of two other such lawyers were already known. DOJ has confirmed that Fox News got the additional seven right.

It was appropriate for Senator Grassley and others to seek this information. It is also approprirate to (1) point to the correlation between the presence of this many representatives of terrorists and terrorist suspects and the Holder Justice Department's policy on dealing with terrorists and (2) attempt to ascertain the extent to which these lawyers are making decisions about how to deal with terrorists.

Finally, it is appropriate to criticize lawyers who defend terrorists and terrorist suspects. Contrary to what Walter Dellinger would like us to believe, these lawyers have no professional obligation to represent terrorists and terrorist suspects. They did so by choice and this choice, like all others, is fair game for criticism.

However, it is entirely inappropriate to suggest that these lawyers share the values of terrorists or to dub the seven DOJ lawyers "The al Qaeda Seven." Unfortunately, this is what a video released by the organization Keep America Safe does.

I would rather give up my law license than represent Osama bin Laden's driver, for example. And I take a very dim view of the decision by Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal to undertake that representation.

However, I would not deserve to have a law license if my personal views on this matter caused me to launch vicious, unfounded attacks on lawyers who exercise their right to represent despicable clients.

Via Repubclic.

SCOTT notes: I feel roughly the same way Bill Kristol , Liz Cheney and Debra Burlingame do about lawyers who undertake the representation of enemy combatants pro bono as a glorious professional cause. It is unfortunate Bill and Liz and Debra had to seek to shame the Department of Justice into identifying the seven previously unidentified Department of Justice officials who represented or advocated on behalf of Guantanamo detainees. The disclosure of their identities was pro bono publico too.

PAUL adds: The Huffington Post has a story about conservative reaction (or at least the reaction of a handful of conservatives) to the video. The story says I declared that what Cheney did is comparable if not potentially worse than the notorious anti-communist crusades launched by Sen. Joseph McCarthy. It then quotes some of the things I told Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein.

The quotes themselves are accurate, but I think the characterization of what I said is somewhat misleading. In response to Stein's questions asking me to compare the video to "McCarthyism," I said the implication that the DOJ lawyers share al Qaeda's values is almost certainly false. I also said that some of McCarthy's assertions were true and others were false (or unfounded, I'm not sure which word I used).

That, if I recall correctly, was the extent of my willingness to compare the video to "McCarthyism." I don't think I said or implied that the video is comparable to or worse than the totality of what goes by the name of McCarthyism or to the "crusades" launched by Sen. McCarthy.

JOHN adds: Defending the poor, the friendless and the unpopular is a proud tradition of the American bar. I grew up with that tradition, as the son of a small-town lawyer. When criminal defendants needed representation and were indigent--as most of them were--the lawyers in town took turns representing them, for free or for a pittance. It went with the territory, just as doctors treated people for free when they couldn't afford to pay. On those rare occasions when a serious crime was committed, the local judge would ask one of the town's skilled trial lawyers to defend the accused to make sure that the defendant got not just a defense, but a competent defense. That's what happened in To Kill A Mockingbird, as I recall. The local judge asked Atticus Finch to defend the apparently-doomed black man who had been accused of rape. And Finch was duty-bound to accept, although the assignment could only mean trouble for him.

That noble tradition is invoked by those who defended terrorist detainees and who now have gone to work for the Justice Department. Properly so, perhaps. Yet I wonder whether that is exactly what is going on here.

The law firms that signed up to defend al Qaeda terrorists are among the most prestigious in the country. Large law firms of this sort are among our most powerful institutions. They brought vast stature and resources to the task of representing terrorist detainees. The situation is not quite as though a random lawyer in New York or Washington, D.C. had taken his dutiful turn at the thankless job of defending a client who couldn't afford to pay.

One wonders: do these firms, or these lawyers, normally make a practice of volunteering to defend criminal defendants? (These detainees were not criminal defendants, for the most part, but the analogy is nevertheless apt.) My guess is that they do not. What, exactly, drew them to the cause of the terrorist detainees? Was it a humanitarian impulse to defend the friendless? Or were the country's wealthiest and best-connected law firms lining up for the privilege of taking on the terrorists' cases? Were the lawyers who volunteered to represent terrorists driven by ideology? That is to say, were they part of that large segment of the establishment that tried to undermine the foreign and national security policies of the Bush administration? If so, what ideology do these individuals now bring to the Department of Justice? And what roles are they playing within DOJ?

These strike me as legitimate questions. I certainly don't question the right of these lawyers to volunteer their services where they choose, and normally, the motives of a lawyer who volunteers to work for free would be no one else's business. But when those same lawyers, a very short time later, are tapped to work at the Justice Department, isn't the ideology that they--and Eric Holder--bring to national security issues fair game? I think it is.

As for the video, the phrase "the al Qaeda seven" is perhaps unfair. But the point of the video was to pressure Eric Holder to release the names of the lawyers who have shifted over from representing terrorists to representing the American people. He has now done so. If, as is often said, personnel is policy, the fact that the Obama administration has brought not one, not two, but seven lawyers (or is it nine, altogether?) who represented al Qaeda terrorists into the Justice Department may well be worthy of further discussion."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/03/025746.php

http://www.energydigital.com/MarketSector/Renewables/Green-stimulus-package-should--buy-American--argue-senators_41819.aspx

ABC's Matthew Jaffe reports from Washington:

A self-proclaimed psychic who called himself "America's Prophet" and claimed the ability to predict stock market changes was charged today by the Securities & Exchange Commission with multi-million dollar securities fraud.

Sean David Morton started to solicit investors in the summer of 2006 by promising to use his psychic abilities for investment guidance, the SEC alleged in the complaint.

"I have called all the highs and lows of the market, giving exact dates for rises and crashes over the last 14 years," Morton said in a newsletter to potential investors. Along with his newsletter, Morton also used his website, public speaking engagements, and appearances on a nationally syndicated radio show to promote his Delphi Investment Group.

According to George Canellos, director of the SEC's New York Regional Office, "Morton's self-proclaimed psychic powers were nothing more than a scam to attract investors and steal their money."

In all, Morton raised more than $6 million from over 100 investors in 2006 and 2007. Morton invested about half the funds with foreign currency trading firms and diverted some of the investor funds, including at least $240,000 into his and his wife's non-profit religious organization, Prophecy Research Institute.

Morton, his wife Melissa Morton, and three corporate entities that they own under the umbrella of the Delphi Associates Investment Group were the subject of the SEC charges.

The SEC complaint can be found HERE.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2010/03/selfproclaimed-psychic-charged-with-investor-fraud.html

"Obama looking to give new life to immigration reform

In an effort to advance a bill through Congress before midterm elections, the president meets with two senators who have spent months trying to craft legislation.

By Peter Nicholas
March 4, 2010 | 6:18 p.m.
Source Los Angeles Times

"Reporting from Washington - Despite steep odds, the White House has discussed prospects for reviving a major overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, a commitment that President Obama has postponed once already.

Obama took up the issue privately with his staff Monday in a bid to advance a bill through Congress before lawmakers become too distracted by approaching midterm elections.

In the session, Obama and members of his Domestic Policy Council outlined ways to resuscitate the effort in a White House meeting with two senators -- Democrat Charles E. Schumer of New York and Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- who have spent months trying to craft a bill.

According to a person familiar with the meeting, the White House may ask Schumer and Graham to at least produce a blueprint that could be turned into legislative language.

The basis of a bill would include a path toward citizenship for the 10.8 million people living in the U.S. illegally. Citizenship would not be granted lightly, the White House said. Undocumented workers would need to register, pay taxes and pay a penalty for violating the law. Failure to comply might result in deportation.

Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman, said the president's support for an immigration bill, which would also include improved border security, was "unwavering."

Participants in the White House gathering also pointed to an immigration rally set for March 21 in Washington as a way to spotlight the issue and build needed momentum.

Though proponents of an immigration overhaul were pleased that the White House wasn't abandoning the effort, they also wanted Obama to take on a more assertive role, rather than leave it to Congress to work out a compromise.

Immigration is a delicate issue for the White House. After promising to revamp in his first year of office what many see as a fractured system, Obama risks angering a growing, politically potent Latino constituency if he defers the goal until 2011.

But with the healthcare debate still unresolved, Democrats are wary of plunging into another polarizing issue.

"Right now we have a little problem with the 'Chicken Little' mentality: The sky is falling and consequently we can't do anything," Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said in an interview.

Republicans are unlikely to cooperate. On Capitol Hill, Republicans said that partisan tensions had only gotten worse since Obama signaled this week that he would push forward with a healthcare bill, whether he could get GOP votes or not.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said in an interview, "The things you hear from the administration won't be well received."

Schumer, speaking as he walked quickly through the Capitol, said he was having trouble rounding up Republican supporters apart from Graham. "It's tough finding someone, but we're trying," Schumer said.

On Thursday, Schumer met with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who oversees the government's immigration efforts, to strategize over potential Republican co-sponsors.

"We're very hopeful we can get a bill done. We have all the pieces in place. We just need a second Republican," Schumer said in a statement.

Among proponents, there is a consensus that a proposal must move by April or early May to have a realistic chance of passing this year. If that deadline slips, Congress' focus is likely to shift to the November elections, making it impossible to take up major legislation.

"There's no question that this is a heavy lift and the window is narrowing," said Janet Murguia, president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group.

When it comes to immigration, Obama's strategy echoes that of healthcare. He has deferred heavily to Congress, leaving it up to Schumer and Graham to reach a breakthrough with the idea that he would put his weight behind the resulting compromise."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-immigration5-2010mar05,0,1123497.story

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"Passing the healthcare proposals before Congress will "hang out to dry" every Democratic incumbent running for reelection this fall, Howard Dean said Thursday.

Dean, a physician by training who's a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), said that Democrats in Congress -- and President Barack Obama -- would do themselves more harm than good by passing the current healthcare bill.

"The plan, as it comes from the Senate, hangs out every Democrat who's running for office to dry -- including the president, in 2012, because it makes him defend a plan that isn't in effect essentially yet," Dean said during an appearance on the liberal Bill Press Radio Show.

Dean, who has clashed publicly with the White House over the healthcare proposals favored by the administration, said that by passing the bills under consideration, Democrats would essentially be conceding defeat to Republicans.

"It's easy to campaign on repealing something if no one knows what the something is," Dean said. "And fundamentally people don't understand what the president's healthcare plan is."

"And if it passes next week and get's signed into law the week after, we're not going to be able to explain it to people over the din of Fox News and the Republicans," the former Democratic party chairman added.

Dean said that the only solution to correct the bill was to offer a buy-in to Medicare for consumers, which had once been proposed in the Senate, but was ditched by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as unable to win enough votes to pass.

"The president needs a win here," Dean said."

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/84969-howard-dean-health-bill-hangs-dem-incumbents-and-obama-out-to-dry-in-elections

Posted by Karl Denninger in Corruption

"Now Seniors Get To Feel The Bezzle

http://market-ticker.org/archives/2033-Now-Seniors-Get-To-Feel-The-Bezzle.html

Source Weeklystandard.com 

"Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he's obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson's brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

“Scott Matheson is a distinguished candidate for the Tenth Circuit court,” President Obama said.  “Both his legal and academic credentials are impressive and his commitment to judicial integrity is unwavering.  I am honored to nominate this lifelong Utahn to the federal bench.” 

Scott M. Matheson, Jr.: Nominee for the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit

Scott M. Matheson currently holds the Hugh B. Brown Presidential Endowed Chair at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1985.  He served as Dean of the Law School from 1998 to 2006.  He also taught First Amendment Law at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government from 1989 to 1990. 

While on public service leave from the University of Utah from 1993 to 1997, Matheson served as United States Attorney for the District of Utah.  In 2007, he was appointed by Governor Jon Huntsman to chair the Utah Mine Safety Commission.  He also worked as a Deputy County Attorney for Salt Lake County from 1988 to 1989.  Prior to joining the University faculty, Matheson was an associate attorney from 1981 to 1985 at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C.

Matheson was born and raised in Utah and is a sixth generation Utahn.  He received an A.B. from Stanford University in 1975, an M.A. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980.

So, Scott Matheson appears to have the credentials to be a judge, but was his nomination used to buy off his brother's vote?

The timing of this nomination looks suspicious, especially in light Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak's claim that he was offered a federal job not to run against Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania primary. Many speculated that Sestak, a former admiral, was offered the Secretary of the Navy job."

http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-now-selling-appeals-court-judgeships-health-care-votes

"Scientists at the heart of the Climategate row were yesterday accused by a leading academic body of undermining science's credibility.

The Institute of Physics said 'worrying implications' had been raised after it was revealed the University of East Anglia had manipulated data on global warming.

The rebuke - the strongest yet from the scientific community - came as Professor Phil Jones, the researcher at the heart of the scandal, told MPs he had written 'some pretty awful emails' - but denied trying to suppress data. 

On the spot: Professor Phil Jones being grilled by the Science and Technology committee in the Commons yesterday

The Climategate row, which was first revealed by the Daily Mail in November, was triggered when a hacker stole hundreds of emails sent from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.

They revealed scientists plotting how to avoid responding to Freedom of Information requests from climate change sceptics.

Some even appeared to show the researchers discussing how to manipulate raw data from tree rings about historical temperatures.

In one, Professor Jones talks about using a 'trick' to massage figures and 'hide the decline'. 

Giving evidence to a Science and Technology Committee inquiry, the Institute of Physics said: 'Unless the disclosed emails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research and for the credibility of the scientific method.

'The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital.'

Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled the CRU had broken Freedom of Information rules by refusing to hand over raw data.

But yesterday Professor Jones - in his first public appearance since the scandal broke - denied manipulating the figures.

Looking pale and clasping his shaking hands in front of him, he told MPs: 'I have obviously written some pretty awful emails.'

He admitted withholding data about global temperatures but said the information was publicly available from American websites.

And he claimed it was not 'standard practice' to release data and computer models so other scientists could check and challenge research.

'I don't think there is anything in those emails that really supports any view that I, or the CRU, have been trying to pervert the peer review process in any way,' he said.

Professor Jones, who was forced to stand down as head of the CRU last year, also insisted the scientific findings on climate change were robust."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254660/Climategate-expert-tells-MPs.html

By Christopher Booker
Published: 7:49PM GMT 27 Feb 2010

Source Telegraph.co.uk

"The news from sunny Bali that there is to be an international investigation into the conduct of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri would have made front-page headlines a few weeks back. But while Scotland and North America are still swept by blizzards, in their worst winter for decades, there has been something of a lull in the global warming storm – after three months when the IPCC and Dr Pachauri were themselves battered by almost daily blizzards of new scandals and revelations. And one reason for this lull is that the real message of all the scandals has been lost.

The chief defence offered by the warmists to all those revelations centred on the IPCC's last 2007 report is that they were only a few marginal mistakes scattered through a vast, 3,000-page document. OK, they say, it might have been wrong to predict that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035; that global warming was about to destroy 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest and cut African crop yields by 50 per cent; that sea levels were rising dangerously; that hurricanes, droughts and other "extreme weather events" were getting worse. These were a handful of isolated errors in a massive report; behind them the mighty edifice of global warming orthodoxy remains unscathed. The "science is settled", the "consensus" is intact.

But this completely misses the point. Put the errors together and it can be seen that one after another they tick off all the central, iconic issues of the entire global warming saga. Apart from those non-vanishing polar bears, no fears of climate change have been played on more insistently than these: the destruction of Himalayan glaciers and Amazonian rainforest; famine in Africa; fast-rising sea levels; the threat of hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves all becoming more frequent.

All these alarms were given special prominence in the IPCC's 2007 report and each of them has now been shown to be based, not on hard evidence, but on scare stories, derived not from proper scientists but from environmental activists. Those glaciers are not vanishing; the damage to the rainforest is not from climate change but logging and agriculture; African crop yields are more likely to increase than diminish; the modest rise in sea levels is slowing not accelerating; hurricane activity is lower than it was 60 years ago; droughts were more frequent in the past; there has been no increase in floods or heatwaves.

Furthermore, it has also emerged in almost every case that the decision to include these scare stories rather than hard scientific evidence was deliberate. As several IPCC scientists have pointed out about the scare over Himalayan glaciers, for instance, those responsible for including it were well aware that proper science said something quite different. But it was inserted nevertheless – because that was the story wanted by those in charge.

In addition, we can now read in shocking detail the truth of the outrageous efforts made to ensure that the same 2007 report was able to keep on board IPCC's most shameless stunt of all – the notorious "hockey stick" graph purporting to show that in the late 20th century, temperatures had been hurtling up to unprecedented levels. This was deemed necessary because, after the graph was made the centrepiece of the IPCC's 2001 report, it had been exposed as no more than a statistical illusion. (For a full account see Andrew Montford's The Hockey Stick Illusion, and also my own book The Real Global Warming Disaster.)

In other words, in crucial respects the IPCC's 2007 report was no more than reckless propaganda, designed to panic the world's politicians into agreeing at Copenhagen in 2009 that we should all pay by far the largest single bill ever presented to the human race, amounting to tens of trillions of dollars. And as we know, faced with the prospect of this financial and economic abyss, December's Copenhagen conference ended in shambles, with virtually nothing agreed.

What is staggering is the speed and the scale of the unravelling – assisted of course, just before Copenhagen, by "Climategate", the emails and computer codes leaked from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. Their significance was the light they shone on the activities of a small group of British and US scientists at the heart of the IPCC, as they discussed ways of manipulating data to show the world warming faster than the evidence justified; fighting off legitimate requests for data from outside experts to hide their manipulations; and conspiring to silence their critics by excluding their work from scientific journals and the IPCC's 2007 report itself. (Again, a devastating analysis of this story has just been published by Stephen Mosher and Tom Fuller in Climategate: The CRUtape Letters).

Almost as revealing as the leaked documents themselves, however, was the recent interview given to the BBC by the CRU's suspended director, Dr Phil Jones, who has played a central role in the global warming scare for 20 years, not least as custodian of the most prestigious of the four global temperature records relied on by the IPCC. In his interview Jones seemed to be chucking overboard one key prop of warmest faith after another, as he admitted that the world might have been hotter during the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years ago than it is today, that before any rise in CO2 levels temperatures rose faster between 1860 and 1880 than they have done in the past 30 years, and that in the past decade their trend has been falling rather than rising.

The implications of all this for the warming scare, as it has been presented to us over the past two decades, can scarcely be overestimated. The reputation of the IPCC is in shreds. And this is to say nothing of the personal reputation of the man who was the mastermind of its 2007 report, its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri.

It was in this newspaper that we first revealed how Pachauri has earned millions of pounds for his Delhi-based research institute Teri, and further details are still emerging of how he has parlayed his position into a worldwide business empire, including 17 lucrative contracts from the EU alone. But we should not expect the truth to break in too suddenly on this mass of vested interests. Too many people have too much at stake to allow the faith in man-made global warming, which has sustained them so long and which is today making so many of them rich, to be abandoned. The so-called investigations into Climategate and Dr Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann seem like no more than empty establishment whitewashes. There is little reason to expect that the inquiry into the record of the IPCC and Dr Pachauri that is now being set up by the UN Environment Programme and the world's politicians will be very different.

Since 1988, when the greatest scare the world has seen got under way, hundreds of billions of pounds have been poured into academic research projects designed not to test the CO2 warming thesis but to take it as a given fact, and to use computer models to make its impacts seem as scary as possible. The new global "carbon trading" market, already worth $126 billion a year, could soon be worth trillions. Governments, including our own, are calling for hundreds of billions more to be chucked into absurd "carbon-saving" energy schemes, with the cost to be met by all of us in soaring taxes and energy bills.

With all this mighty army of gullible politicians, dutiful officials, busy carbon traders, eager "renewables" developers and compliant, funding-hungry academics standing to benefit from the greatest perversion of the principles of true science the world has ever seen, who are we to protest that their emperor has no clothes? (How apt that that fairy tale should have been written in Copenhagen.) Let all that fluffy white "global warming" continue to fall from the skies, while people shiver in homes that, increasingly, they will find they can no longer afford to heat. We have called into being a true Frankenstein's monster. It will take a mighty long time to cut it down to size."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/7332803/A-perfect-storm-is-brewing-for-the-IPCC.html

Poor Pelosi can't see beyond her power grabbing arrogance.

___________________

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100228/ap_on_go_co/us_pelosi_tea_party

Sad we have to depend on foreign press to let us know what's happening here.

__________

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/28/tea-party-debra-medina-texas

Submitted by bmoreland on 02/26/2010 11:22 -0500

Source ZeroHedge.com

"I have long suspected that it was only a matter of time before banks began to adjust their Collection efforts to reflect Government Guarantees on their loan portfolios.

Simply put, imagine you are a bank with $100 billion in loans. Of this, $20 Billion is guaranteed by the government, $80 billion is your own money. If you managed the collection organization responsible for servicing this debt wouldn't you be just a wee bit tempted to make sure that your $80 billion was getting the priority?

The table below details the past 12 quarters of Total Loans for Bank of America along with the portion that is Noncurrent:

The Noncurrent percentage has jumped from 5.30% in Q3 to 6.75% in Q4. Quarter on Quarter there is another $12.44 Billion in Noncurrent loans.

The next table details the same 12 quarters and reviews what portion of the Noncurrent loans are guaranteed by the Government (er, you and me the taxpayer):

Bank of America has had a massive jump in the Noncurrent loans that are Governement Guaranteed. The Quarter on Quarter jump is... wait for it... $11.40 Billion.

So, magically, the incremental $12.44 Billion that has become Noncurrent Quarter on Quarter at Bank of America has a guarantee on $11.40 Billion. Nearly 92% of the jump in their Noncurrent loans are covered by us, the taxpayer.

This is no consipiracy theory discussion - these are cold hard facts supporting what any reasonable actor would do in the situtation. If the government is going to cover my losses on a portion of my loan portfolio I can well guarantee you I'd be moving my best collectors to the portfolio I'm responsible for. The government can have my new hires, my undesirables, my slow workers, etc...

I highly doubt that we'll ever hear about this, but this is yet another massive shift from the taxpayer to the banks."

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/bank-america-gaming-government-loan-guarantees

Representatives of George Soros's investment business were among an all-star line up of Wall Street investors at an 'ideas dinner' at a private townhouse in Manhattan, according to reports.

A spokesman for Soros Fund Management said the legendary investor did not attend the dinner on February 8, but did not deny that his firm was represented.

At the dinner, the speculators are said to have argued that the euro is likely to plunge in value to parity with the dollar.

The single currency has been under enormous pressure because of Greece's debt crisis, plus financial worries in Portugal, Italy, Spain and Ireland.

But, it has also struggled because hedge funds have been placing huge bets on the currency's decline, which could make the speculators hundreds of millions of pounds.

The euro traded at $1.51 in December, but has since fallen to $1.34. Details of the secretive dinner emerged days after Mr Soros, chairman of Soros

Fund Management, warned in a newspaper article that the euro could 'fall apart' even if the European Union can agree a deal to shore up support for stricken Greece.

Mr Soros, who made more than $1billion by currency speculation when the pound was ejected from the Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday in 1992, believes the structure of the euro is 'patently flawed'.

(photo) Hitting back: Greek PM George Papandreou blames 'speculators' for preying on the country's troubles

He said: 'Makeshift assistance should be enough for Greece, but that leaves Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland.

'Together they constitute too large a portion of euroland to be helped in this way.'

He believes that unless the European Commission is given sweeping powers over taxation and spending, the single currency will always be vulnerable to financial turbulence in individual states.

'If member countries cannot take the next steps forward, the euro may fall apart,' he added.

Last night, Greek prime minister George Papandreou hit back at the 'speculators' who he blames for preying on the country's troubles.

Following a visit by EU economic inspectors and experts from the International Monetary Fund, he told the country's parliament that the worst fears about Greece's economy had been confirmed.

Greece is desperate to restore the confidence of investors in its debt after revealing that the previous government understated its budget deficit by half.

Outlining the precarious nature of Greece's finances, Mr Papandreou said: 'There is only one dilemma: Will we let the country go bankrupt or will we react?

'Will we let the speculators strangle us, or will we take our fate in our own hands?'

The Greek leader also called for more help from the EU with its debt crisis. Until now, the EU has offered political support but no bailout.

(photo) With friends like this: The cover of the German magazine 'Focus' this week, which shows the Venus de Milo giving the finger by a headline accusing Greece of swindling its way into the euro

(photo) Row: Greek daily Eleftheros Typos ran this depiction of the statue of the goddess Victoria, atop the Siegessaeule in Berlin, holding a swastika earlier this week in reaction to the Focus cover

But a row is still festering between Berlin and Athens over the crisis.

(photo) Tight spot: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the situation was 'difficult'

A Greek consumer group called for a boycott of German goods today after a German magazine blasted the country as 'cheats.

The new trade war came as Angela Merkel admitted the euro is in 'a difficult situation' for the first time.

She spoke as German magazine Focus ran a cover image of the armless Venus de Milo somehow raising her middle finger under the headline 'Cheats in the euro family' to suggest that Greece deliberately misled EU peers to swindle its way into the euro.

The cover sparked outrage in Greece, prompting the demands for a boycott. A Greek newspaper has also hit back, running an image showing the statue of the goddess Victoria atop the Siegessaeule in Berlin holding a swastika.

'The falsification of a statue of Greek history, beauty and civilisation, from a time when there (in Germany) they were eating bananas on trees is impermissible and unforgivable,' a statement from the Consumer Institute (INKA) said.

'Greeks are no crooks, we want the German government to condemn this most improper publication,' said INKA president George Lakouritis.

'If you have such friends, what do you need enemies for?'

INKA distributed leaflets in central Athens and in front of German-owned consumer electronics store Media Markt, urging Greeks to heed the boycott.

Merkel's government has so far deflected appeals to promise aid to heavily indebted Greece. Opinion polls show that a majority of Germans oppose a bailout.

Germany's ambassador to Greece, Wolfgang Schultheiss, said yesterday he regretted that German press reports caused offence. 'Germany is firmly on Greece's side,' Schultheiss said after being summoned by Greece's parliament speaker Filippos Petsalnikos.

But it wasn't enough for Mr Lakouritis. 'The ambassador's statements were not satisfactory,' he said.

Yesterday Mrs Merkel admitted that Greece's debt crisis has plunged the euro into a ‘difficult situation'.

The admission from the leader of Europe's biggest economy prompted fresh fears about the collapse of the single currency.

In the gravest sign yet of the international threat posed by Greece’s crippling debt crisis, Mrs Merkel warned for the first time that the eurozone faces a ‘ dangerous’ period." 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1253791/Is-man-broke-Bank-England-George-Soros-centre-hedge-funds-betting-crisis-hit-euro.html

Would be nice to have stock in companies which make printing presses for the Fed.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=alet_UTqF04M

http://www.slate.com/id/2245621/?GT1=38001