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Pwn2Own 2009 Winner Charlie Miller Interviewed
crazipper writes "Tom's Hardware interviewed Charlie Miller, winner of this year's Pwn2Own contest and formerly with the NSA. He discusses the effort it took before the contest to be able to take down a MacBook within seconds, sandboxing, and the effectiveness of the NX bit and ASLR. His outlook on end-users protecting themselves against attacks? 'Users are at the mercy of the products they buy.'"
Fed begins move that could sink dollar - Economists warn government subsidizing purchase of its debt
Posted: March 25, 2009 4:04 pm Eastern
NEW YORK The Federal Reserve began today to buy longer-term U.S. Treasury securities in a move some economists believe will end up "monetizing" the dollar, a process that could inflate the amount of money in circulation and cause serious devaluation of the currency on world markets.
The move comes the same day U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told the Council on Foreign Relations that the U.S. is "open" to a proposal by China to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency with a "super-currency" to be created by the International Monetary Fund, or IMF.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released yesterday a statement specifying that the Federal Open Market Trading Desk within the Fed will purchase up to $300 billion of longer-term U.S. Treasury securities over the next six months in what amounts to the a government-subsidized purchase of U.S. government debt.
To many Americans, the move appears equivalent to a retail consumer in debt using a Master Card to pay a Visa credit card bill.
"The Fed is monetizing U.S. Treasury debt in order to debase the dollar to create inflation in hopes of avoiding deflation," economist John Williams, author of the Internet newsletter Shadow Government Statistics, told WND in an e-mail.
"This move also sets the precedent for the Fed acting as lender of last resort to the U.S. Treasury, if foreign and other investors in U.S. treasuries balk at upcoming auctions or look to dump existing holdings," Williams said.
"The record federal deficits ahead mean record Treasury borrowings," he explained. "Fed monetization of the debt eventually means surging money supply growth and much higher inflation."
WND previously reported Williams' analysis of the U.S. Treasury's GAAP accounting of the federal budget deficit, which indicated the negative net worth of the U.S. government last year was $65.5 trillion in total obligations, a sum that exceeds the gross domestic product of the world.
"Because of the U.S. government's effective insolvency with $65 trillion in obligations, even before the Obama administration deficits, the higher inflation caused by the Fed buying Treasury debt has the early potential of evolving into an uncontrolled hyperinflation in which the U.S. dollar becomes totally worthless."
Williams' comments were especially pertinent after Britain announced earlier today that for the first time in almost seven years the country failed to find enough buyers of £1.75 billion ($2.55 billion) of bonds as debt investors rejected Prime Minister Gordon Brown's plan to stimulate England's economy with deficit-financed government spending, according to Bloomberg.
International economist Bob Chapman, author of the Internet newsletter International Forecaster, agrees.
"This is just the beginning," Chapman told WND in an e-mail. "The Obama administration expects to run annual deficits between $1-$2 trillion a year for the next decade, and we estimate that foreign buyers might only buy one-third to half that amount of debt. The Fed will have to monetize $3.75 trillion to $5.25 trillion over the next few years, just to buy the U.S. government debt."
The move by the Fed to buy Treasury debt comes as China proposes to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
As the Financial Times in London reported today, China's central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan has proposed to utilize Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, issued by the IMF as a world reserve currency.
Red Alert explained in an article in this week's issue that the IMF, with the support of the United States and Russia, appears positioned to launch a one-world currency at the G-20 meeting scheduled for London April 2, with the move intended as a last ditch effort to prevent massive bank failures throughout the European Union.
The idea is for the IMF to issue at least $250 billion in Specia
I don't think anyone's falling for your subtle scheme of trying to make conservatives look like rabid nutsos.
Damned liberal sock-puppet-operating conspirators.
Why on earth would one need a scheme to know conservatives are nutso?
Its been completely obvious for years!
just wish to say how amusing I find the above poster. The Right wingers are such good losers arent they?
In the light of the way the previous administration used the US constituion as toilet paper, any rational person sees the Obama adminstration as a quality unit.
Right wingers, they kick and scream, make up any lie they can think of and still get ignored, they find this very annoying and then spit their dummies and resort to spam and trolling.
You can post as much of this as you like but no one cares at all about your delusions.
Thanks for the laughs!