Billionaire George Soros is predicting protests by Occupy Wall Street will turn violent, while warning the U.S. financial system may collapse.

In an interview with Newsweek writer John Arlidge, Soros reportedly said riots on the streets of American cities are inevitable.

“‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he says, almost gleefully,” when asked about the prospect of Occupy turning violent, writes Arlidge.

Soros claimed the riots will “be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States.”

“At times like these, survival is the most important thing,” Soros continued.

“I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros said.

“We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse,” he said.

“The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”

In the interview, Soros claimed the Occupy Wall Street movement “is an inchoate, leaderless manifestation of protest.”

However, WND has repeatedly documented the billionaire’s many ties to Occupy, including how the group’s reported nerve center is staffed by professional agitators deeply linked to organizations funded by Soros.

Those groups, most prominent among them being the Tides Center, have been involved with Occupy since the anti-Wall Street movement’s inception.

Tides functions as a money tunnel in which major leftist donors provide large sums that are channeled to hundreds of radical groups.

Read More about the Left’s agenda………………..

Read all The Crap Here……………….

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
January 10, 2012
President Obama Announces New White House Director of Domestic Policy Council Cecilia Muñoz

Washington, DC – Today, January 10th, the White House announced that current Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Cecilia Muñoz will now serve as the Director of the Domestic Policy Council. Ms. Munoz will coordinate the policy-making process and supervise the execution of domestic policy in the White House.

“Over the past three years, Cecilia has been a trusted advisor who has demonstrated sound judgment day in and day out,” said President Obama. “Cecilia has done an extraordinary job working on behalf of middle class families, and I’m confident she’ll bring the same unwavering dedication to her new position.”

Cecilia Muñoz currently serves as Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs where she oversees the Obama Administration’s relationships with state and local governments. As Director of Intergovernmental Affairs under Valerie Jarrett, Ms. Muñoz leads a partnership between federal, state, local, and tribal governments that Governing magazine described as “more prominent and responsive than it ever was,” citing praise from local and state elected officials from across the political spectrum. Under Muñoz’s leadership, this partnership has brought the voices of local elected officials and the people they represent into the White House in the development and execution of policies to address local challenges in the economy, health care, disaster relief, and transportation infrastructure among others.

Ms. Muñoz also leads the Administration’s efforts to fix the broken immigration system so that it meets America’s 21st century economic and security needs. In addition, she serves as Co-Chair of the President’s Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status, which has worked to not only continue to address the question of the island’s political status, but also partnered with local officials to address immediate concerns over jobs and the economy, health care, education, the environment, energy, and infrastructure.

Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Muñoz served as Senior Vice President for the Office of Research, Advocacy, and Legislation at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the nation’s largest Latino civil rights organization. She supervised NCLR’s policy staff covering a variety of issues of importance to Latinos, including civil rights, employment, poverty, farmworker issues, education, health, housing, and immigration. Her particular area of expertise is immigration policy, which she covered at NCLR for twenty years.

Ms. Muñoz is the former Chair of the Board of Center for Community Change, and served on the U.S. Programs Board of the Open Society Institute and the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Philanthropies and the National Immigration Forum. In June 2000, she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in recognition of her work on immigration and civil rights.

Ms. Muñoz is the daughter of immigrants from Bolivia and was born in Detroit, Michigan. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and her master’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley. In 2007, she served as the Towsley Foundation Policymaker in Residence at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.

The first enviromentalist and champion of ordinary Americans-President Theodore Roosevelt. But, we now have Republicans who actually want to turn the clock back before Teddy Roosevelt’s term as President and return to the good ole days of the 19th Century Robber Barons.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration wants to more quickly reunite Americans with their illegal immigrant spouses and children in a move long sought by advocates but panned by Republicans as a way to push unpopular policies around Congress.

Currently, many illegal immigrants must leave the country before they can ask the federal government to waive a three- to 10-year ban on legally coming back to the U.S. The length of the ban depends on how long they have lived in the U.S. without permission.

On Friday, the Obama administration proposed changing the rule to let children and spouses ask the government to decide on the waiver request before they head to their home country to seek a visa to return here legally.

The illegal immigrants would still have to go abroad to finish the visa process, but getting a provisional waiver approved in advance would reduce the time they are out of the country from months to days or weeks, said Alejandro Mayorkas, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The purpose is “to minimize the extent to which bureaucratic delays separate Americans from their families for long periods of time,” Mayorkas told reporters.

It currently takes about six months for the government to issue a waiver, Mayorkas said.

The waiver shift is the latest move by President Barack Obama to make changes to immigration policy without congressional action. Congressional Republicans repeatedly have criticized the administration for policy changes they describe as providing “backdoor amnesty” to illegal immigrants.

Read More…………….

From Al Jazzera

In the calculation of what was won and lost in this war, Ahmed Hassan lost almost everything.

Sitting in front of the trailer that is now his home in a compound for displaced people, the former shopkeeper explains how he lost three sons within months of each other in 2006.

Two were shot and the other killed by a bomb planted near his car in the city of Khalis in Diyala province. The family left their home after that, along with tens of thousands of Iraqis forced out by sectarian violence.

The elections that were the country’s biggest achievement, with voters proudly dipping their fingers in ink to show they had voted, are small compensation.

“We sacrificed our sons for that purple finger,” Hassan says.

With the last of the US combat troops gone, the fractures at the intersection of security and political faultlines here appear to be widening.

“My fear is that pressures are building and there could be a spark,” said US Army Colonel Richard Welch as he packed up to leave. “We have not yet reached a phase where things are irreversible.”

Welch worked in Iraq for seven years – the longest time spent in Iraq by an US officer –trying to persuade Sunni armed groups and Shia fighters to put down their weapons and take part in politics.

After an election last year in which no single group won a majority, the main Sunni-based party, Iraqiya, joined a coalition with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shia bloc and the Kurds to form a government of ‘national unity’.

The power-sharing that Iraqiya and its supporters expected never happened. Instead critics say, Prime Minister al-Maliki consolidated his hold on power, creating new security services to answer directly to him, replacing army commanders with party loyalists and using the pretext of suspected coup attempts to arrest political opponents.

The political bloc, Iraqiya, said on the weekend it was suspending its participation in parliament and in cabinet until it was given a role in decision-making.

“Last year in the 2010 elections many on the Sunni side or the Shia fringes joined the Iraqiya list,” said Welch, adding “many in the group are wondering whether the democratic process is going to work for them and they are deliberating that right now.”

Outside of Baghdad, tension seems to be running even higher.

In Diyala, a province with a Sunni majority but a large Shia minority, Shia fighters set fire to the governor’s house after a push by provincial council members to demand autonomy for the region.

Syria going Iraq way?

Adding to the worries are fears that violence in neighbouring Syria could reignite sectarian tension in Iraq if the unrest spreads. More than 5,000 Syrians have been killed in the government’s crackdown against an uprising.

“In Syria there is definitely a sectarian dimension to the fight and this is a fact,” Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, told Al Jazeera. He said Iraq was working to persuade the Syrian government to implement an Arab League initiative to stop the violence and open talks with the opposition.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad along with key leaders and many of the senior military officers are from Syria’s Allawite minority, an offshoot of Shia Islam. Most Syrians are Sunni.

Zebari, who says Iraq came to the brink of all-out civil war five years ago, warned that if unchecked, Syria could go the same way.

“It has a strong dimension of sectarian conflict…these things can develop into civil war unless they are checked.”

Read more…..

“Today’s job news is the latest indicator of how badly America needs fundamental change from Bush-McCain policies that have been devastating for working families and catastrophic for our economy. While George Bush and John McCain’s answer to this recession has been to watch it happen while pushing for more tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, more families are facing foreclosure, rising costs, and disappearing jobs. It’s time for a new direction, with immediate relief for homeowners, a second stimulus package that expands unemployment insurance and helps state and local governments, and investments in millions of new jobs to strengthen our economy. Our economy is struggling because the American people are struggling, and simply bailing out investment banks on Wall Street will not help Main Street.”

Read more at the American Presidency Project: www.presidency.ucsb.edu http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=91008#ixzz1h6NEbrDW

Now with Obama stating that The Bush Administration is causing High Unemployment Look at what Obama did to improve those Numbers and their affects!

“Here’s a chart of the U6 unemployment from 200o to 2011. This measure includes people who need to work but have given up on looking for a job, and those who want full time work but are stuck in part time jobs. It’s currently over 16%. This is the record President Obama has to run on in 2012. This is why the campaign will be so nasty.”

“It’s been estimated that the regulations the Obama administration has unleashed on American businesses and industries have killed almost 3 million jobs. He’s starting to make people wish for the good old days of Jimmy Carter.”

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have cost taxpayers almost $150 billion, the largest bailout of the financial crisis [AFP]

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has brought civil fraud charges against six former top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying they misled the government and taxpayers about risky subprime mortgages the agencies held during the housing bust.

Those charged include the mortgage giants’ two former CEOs, Fannie’s Daniel Mudd and Freddie’s Richard Syron. They are the highest-profile individuals to be charged in connection with the 2008 financial crisis.

Mudd, 53, and Syron, 68, led the agencies when the housing bubble burst in late 2006 and 2007. The four other top executives also worked for the companies during that time. The case was filed in federal court in New York City.

In a statement released through his attorney on Friday, Mudd said the lawsuit “should never have been brought” and said the government reviewed and approved all of the company’s financial disclosures.

“Every piece of material data about loans held by Fannie Mae was known to the United States government to the investing public,” Mudd said.

“The SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] is wrong, and I look forward to a court where fairness and reason, not politics, is the standard for justice.”

Accountability questioned

Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington DC, said: “One of the reasons why I think this is so remarkable is that people are wondering ‘where is the accountability at Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac?’

“The SEC has this job of keeping these companies accountable and there has been incredible criticism about their track records leading up to the housing bubble burst, but also in aftermath of it.”

According to the lawsuit, Fannie told investors in 2007 that it had roughly $4.8b worth of subprime loans on its books, or just 0.2 per cent of its portfolio.

The SEC says that Fannie actually had about $43b worth of products targeted to borrowers with weak credit, or 11 per cent of its holdings.

Mudd told a congressional panel in March 2007 that Fannie’s subprime business represented less than “2 per cent of our book”. He also said the company held subprime mortgages “very carefully”.

So far, the companies have cost taxpayers almost $150b, the largest bailout of the financial crisis. They could cost up to $259b, according to its government regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Administration.

Read More @ Al Jazeera