SAR #13161

Turns out the walls do have ears.

Faint Praise: Obama says that recording every piece of electronic communication- phone calls, emails, internet use, texts, and credit card swipes is "a modest encroachment" on privacy. Being force-fed in Guantanamo qualifies as "a mild encroachment" and there are 12,500 US citizens in solitary confinement. It's not that things could be worse, it's that they are.

Clip & Save: According to French president Francois Hollande, “the crisis in Europe is over.” Would somebody please let Greeks and Spaniards know...

De Rigueur: The National Surveillance Agency has asked for a criminal investigation into leaks about secret programs it says don't exist or if they do it's legal, mostly and besides, they collected those 20 trillion phone calls and emails for our own good. Thank goodness, Snowden chose to out himself, so we can switch immediately to crucifying the tattle-tale anc continue to pretend that the Great Noo-noo doesn't exist. Stay tuned, there's likely to be more...

Housing: Vcant houses are being kept off the market in order to mask the size of the overhanging supply. In Florida (for example) there are 350,000 foreclosures lost in legal limbo for years, and 600,000 more will be joining them. Fannie, Freddie and the FHA hold about 200,000 foreclosed properties and have more than 1.4 million that are more than 90 days delinquent. There are 12.6 million vacant houses in the US and 1.5 million more that are underwater. Another 6 million will be foreclosed over the next five years. As for the current 'boom', private mortgage banks have laid off 25 to 50% of their operations staff. The purported 12.6% y/y increase in house prices was engineered by the same folks who crashed the financial system in the first place Their endgame is to make us all into serfs by throwing people out of their houses and then renting them the same place.

Clarification: According to the Director of National Intelligence, “PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program,” Those programs are known by other names.

Shadows: Hedge Funds now own as much of the stock market as they did just before the 2008 crash and are holding only 4.3% of their assets in cash – which ties the peak back in 2007. Keep in mind that hedge funds as a group have not beat the market in most of the last decade and maybe they are wrong again this time.

Bits And Pieces: It turns out that NSA currently collects about 3 billion pieces of data a month within the US on US citizens. But that's only about 3% of its total take, which means that we're pretty boring.

Round & Round: Why would someone pay $250 to rent a $60 tire for 18 months? Because they literally owe their souls to soulless sharks who claim "We see tremendous opportunity serving people...”

Porn O'Graph: What's for lunch?

The Parting Shot:

Deptford Pink Dianthus armeria