TBR News July 3, 2020

The Voice of the White House
Comments: “The fictional hysteria about Corona virus is growing day by day. The headlines are filled with doom and destruction, vague of a secret banking club? Whatever it is, it had caused terrible economic havoc in the United States but the media is blissfully unaware of this because, in the main, most of them have the intellect of a chicken.”

The Table of Contents

• Huge Pandemic sweeps nation, millions dead!
• Win for Trump’s niece in battle to publish memoir as court lifts injunction
• Nord Stream 2 Could Sever Transatlantic Ties
• Can Nord Stream 2 pipeline still be completed despite US sanctions?
• Troops sent to DC during George Floyd protests had bayonets, top general says
• Even the South Pole Is Warming, and Quickly, Scientists Say
• The Great MERS Rip-Off
• The Encyclopedia of American Loons

Huge Pandemic sweeps nation, millions dead!
June 24, 2020
Dr. Ethelridge Minge, DVM
Yesterdays Science Tomorrow

A shocking resurgence of the Corona virus is sweeping the United States, leaving millions dead in its wake.

The streets of New York are piled yards high with the dead and bulldozers are busy pushing them into the East River.

Maine is virtually depopulated and packs of wolves have been seen in Bangor eating the dead and dying citizens.

President Trump is moving his Southern White House from Florida to an unnamed island in the Caribbean and Congress has fled Washington.

Little Greta Thumberg was going to address a joint session of Congress on Friday demanding they not only halt climate change but stop the spread of Corona virus but events have caused her to sail back to Sweden on her motorized ironing board.

California is one vast charnel house and the odor of the rotting dead can be smelt even in Nevada.

With all America’s major cities blanketed by dying citizens, funeral directors are raking in huge profits. They often sell the same casket ten times while dumping the contents into supermarket dumpsters for their eventual compacting.

The remaining citizens are keeping alive by wearing WWII gas masks and eating only radiated candied goat meat.

Commercial aircraft have landed with their cabins packed with the dead and dying so travel by mule is recommended by the one WHO spokesman still in place.

Initially, the Chinese have been blamed but now it is believed that the culprits are from a hitherto secret lab in Lichtenstein.

President Trump exhortations to drink a cup of Drano for a certain cure are being attacked as “monstrous” by health associations but as Trump was sent by God Himself to save poor America, the sale of Drano has tripled in the last week.

Reuters has been listing the dead by shoe size but the Guardian is more interested in hat sizes.

Since most Americans do not wear hats, or ties, the figures are viewed as questionable by Advanced Scientists.

All of this could have been avoided, Judge Roy Moore has said, if only Americans would attend daily services at a Christian church.

Of his choice, naturally.

Win for Trump’s niece in battle to publish memoir as court lifts injunction
Judge lifts order that sought to block distribution of book
President’s brother Robert sued to prevent publication
July 2, 2020
AP

A New York appeals court cleared the way late on Wednesday for a publisher to resume distribution to booksellers of a tell-all book by Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, despite the objections of the president’s brother.

The New York state supreme court appellate division said it was lifting a temporary restraint that a judge put on Simon & Schuster a day earlier that sought to block distribution of Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.

Although the book was scheduled to be published on 28 July, Simon & Schuster said thousands of copies of the 75,000-copy first run of the book had already been sent to bookstores and others.

The appeals ruling, written by Judge Alan Scheinkman, left in place restraints against Mary Trump, the book’s author and the president’s niece, at least until a hearing due on 10 July.

The president’s brother, Robert Trump, has said she agreed with family members not to write about their relationships without permission.

Robert Trump had sued Mary Trump to block publication of a book promoted to contain an “insider’s perspective” of “countless holiday meals”, “family interactions“ and “family events”.

An email seeking comment was sent to Robert Trump’s lawyer on Wednesday. The appeals court noted it was ruling after hearing oral arguments from lawyers for Mary Trump and Simon & Schuster and before lawyers for Robert Trump submitted opposition papers.

Scheinkman left in place a restraint that blocked Mary Trump and any agent of hers from distributing the book, but the court made clear it was not considering the publisher to be an agent, though that issue could be decided in further proceedings at the lower court.

“The evidence submitted is insufficient for this court to determine whether the plaintiff is likely to succeed in establishing that claim,“ the appeals court said in an opinion written by Scheinkman.

In court papers, the publisher said it was not aware of an agreement between Mary Trump and her relatives until she was sued.

In a statement, Simon & Schuster said it was gratified with the ruling, which it said would let Mary Trump tell her story.

The publisher said the book was of “great interest and importance to the national discourse that fully deserves to be published for the benefit of the American public”.

It added: “As all know, there are well-established precedents against prior restraint and pre-publication injunctions, and we remain confident that the preliminary injunction will be denied.”

Mary Trump’s lawyer, Theodore Boutrous Jr, a first amendment free speech specialist, said in a statement it was “very good news that the prior restraint against Simon & Schuster has been vacated”.

He added that he believed a similar finding was necessary for Mary Trump, “based on the first amendment and basic contract law”

Nord Stream 2 Could Sever Transatlantic Ties
July 3, 2020
by Andreas Kluth
Bloomberg

U.S. President Donald Trump is furious at Germany for many reasons, not all of them fathomable. In phone conversations with Angela Merkel, he’s allegedly called the German chancellor “stupid” and denigrated her in “near-sadistic” tones. Though this be madness, as the Bard might say, there is — on rare occasions — method in it. One such case is Nord Stream 2.

It is an almost-finished gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea between Russia and Germany, running right next to the original Nord Stream, which has been in operation since 2011. “We’re supposed to protect Germany from Russia, but Germany is paying Russia billions of dollars for energy coming from a pipeline,” Trump roared at a recent campaign rally. “Excuse me, how does that work?”

As is his wont, the president thereby conflated many things. One of his grievances is that Germany has long been scrimping on its military spending, in effect free-riding on U.S. protection, for which he wants to punish his “delinquent” ally. Another is that the European Union, which he considers Germany’s marionette, allegedly takes advantage of the U.S. in business. Trump also wants to sell Europe more American liquefied natural gas (LNG).

But Trump isn’t the only American trying to stop Nord Stream 2. In December, Congress aimed sanctions at a Swiss company that supplied the ships to lower the pipes into the water. This delayed the pipeline’s launch. Then Russia sent another vessel to finish the job. So this week a bipartisan group of Senators moved to widen the sanctions in order to kill Nord Stream 2 altogether.

The problem is that if this new round becomes law, it will amount to an all-out economic assault on Europe. It could hit individuals and companies from many countries that are only tangential to the project — by underwriting insurance for the pipeline, say, or providing port services to the ships involved.

Considering this an instance of illegal American extraterritoriality, the German government now plans to make the EU retaliate against the U.S. Trump, in the heat of America’s “silly season” leading up to November, could then strike back with new tariffs on German cars or a full-blown trade war. The transatlantic alliance, which was already frayed, is close to tearing.

To me, this situation increasingly resembles “chicken,” a classic in game theory. The question is whether both sides are merely feigning recklessness (as the game assumes) or are already too far gone. And that applies just as much to the Germans. They like to play the reasonable side in transatlantic fights but deserve just as much blame as Trump and Congress for causing this mess.

If Russia were a normal country, the German rationale for this pipeline might make sense. Europe will need more gas, especially to replace much dirtier coal and to supplement renewable sources of energy on the way to becoming carbon-neutral. And to get that gas, it makes sense to diversify — between Norwegian imports, American LNG or any other sort, including the Russian stuff. And piping it into Europe along the shortest route — through the Baltic — is efficient.

But Russia is far from a normal country. It has for years been waging hybrid warfare in Europe, ranging from disinformation campaigns to aggression in Ukraine. At Germany’s urging, Russia recently extended a contract with Kiev to keep piping gas through Ukraine for several more years. But in the longer term, the new pipeline gives Russia dangerous geopolitical and strategic options.

With two pipelines through the Baltic and another big one through the Black Sea, Russia could in the future cut all central and eastern European countries out of billions in transit fees. The country already controls almost 40% of the EU’s gas market even without Nord Stream 2. Once that goes online, the rest of Europe may become too dependent and therefore vulnerable to blackmail. When Trump calls Germany “a captive to Russia,” he has half a point.

This is why Poland and the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia also oppose Nord Stream 2. As NATO’s eastern front line and former victims of invasion and aggression, they fear Russia more viscerally than Germans do nowadays. Psychologically, the Poles distrust any deal between Germany and Russia over their heads, because it reminds them of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, which carved up their region between Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence.

My question to the Germans, then, is why they have for years been deaf to these strategic concerns by their partners in NATO and the European Union, while coddling their own pro-Russian business lobbies and, of course, the Kremlin.

German intransigence looks even more unsavory when considering who within Germany is most passionately in favor of the pipeline. Support for it skews sharply to the left, with its long tradition of anti-American and pro-Russian leanings. The most egregious example is Gerhard Schroeder, a Social Democrat who was Angela Merkel’s predecessor as chancellor. He’s always been buddies with Russian President Vladimir Putin. These days he also chairs the supervisory board of Nord Stream AG, which is owned by Gazprom PJSC and thus controlled by the Kremlin, as well as the board of Rosneft Oil Co PJSC, a Russian oil giant.

This week, Schroeder testified to the Bundestag that Germany and Europe should prepare tough countermeasures against U.S. sanctions. He won support from The Left, a party that descends from the former regime in East Germany.

Nord Stream 2 was and is a terrible idea. It’s a geopolitical project disguised as a private business deal. It has shown Germany to be an insensitive and naïve ally, and the U.S. to be a truculent one. It is now rending what little remains of their former relationship. If there is any way to leave these pipes buried and forgotten under the sea, all involved should discreetly and diplomatically search for it. Otherwise, this game of chicken will end the way it’s not supposed to.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andreas Kluth is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He was previously editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist. He’s the author of “Hannibal and Me.”

  Can Nord Stream 2 pipeline still be completed despite US sanctions?
The US administration appears resolved to prevent the completion of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline across the Baltic Sea, sanctioning every party involved in the project.
June 18, 2020
by Sabine Kinkartz (Berlin)
DW

Nord Stream 2, which was originally scheduled to start delivering gas from Russia to Western Europe toward the end of 2019, is almost completed. Of a total of 2,360 kilometers (1,466 miles), 2,200 kilometers of the pipeline have been laid.

But work came to a standstill in December, following a US sanctions law, which exerted enormous pressure on pipe-laying company Allseas, headquartered in Switzerland. The firm decided to withdraw its specialized ships from the project.

German Left party MP Klaus Ernst, who heads the parliamentary Economic Committee, knows how much pressure had been exerted, citing letters that two US senators had sent to Allseas’ CEO last December.

The policymakers threatened to freeze all assets of Allseas in the US, stop all of its transactions through US banks and withdraw the visas of all employees, should the company not stop its involvement in Nord Stream 2.

The power of extraterritorial sanctions

Allseas was also told to not even think about exploiting a 1-month period of transition mentioned in the US sanctions bill. The letters said Allseas would destroy its own market value and jeopardize its survival, should it try and complete the job within 30 days.

With Allseas’ ships withdrawn, there are plans now to complete Nord Stream 2 with the help of two Russian specialized vessels. The US administration wants to prevent that with its Protecting Europe’s Security Clarification Act. A draft of the act has been making the rounds for a week now and has the support of both Republicans and Democrats.

The act is to be implemented retroactively from December 2019 and thus fit in seamlessly with the sanctions already in place since then.

Targeted against all and sundry

In the future, US sanctions are to target everyone who’s still involved in the Nord Stream 2 project, including all companies and persons contributing to equipping the pipe-laying ships, as well as IT service firms, insurance companies and certifiers, says Michael Harms, who heads the German Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations.

Even authorities could find themselves on the firing line. “Administrative measures taken by state authorities are also planned to be sanctioned,” says Klaus Ernst, “such as approval procedures for new pipe-laying ships.” This would take sanctions to a new level, he adds, and speaks of a direct assault on Europe’s legal system and Germany’s and other EU nations’ sovereignty.

Officials, who are supposed to give the green light to something that’s in line with German and EU laws, will now also have to think about possible US sanctions against them including travel bans, Ernst notes.

Could the act still be stopped?

Harms gets really angry when he thinks about it and demands the German government do everything in its power to prevent the new sanctions. He thinks the acting US ambassador to Germany should be summoned over this and be told that the new sanctions threat is perceived as unfriendly behavior. The Left party’s Ernst even wants the European Commission to get involved.

Although the pipeline in question leads from Russia to Germany, four other nations — all of them EU members — are co-financing the project, as the gas is also to be supplied to the Czech Republic and many other European countries — hence the demand for the European Commission to get involved in the spat.

Ernst insists that the responsible EU commissioners and German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier go to Washington “to unambiguously communicate the German and wider European position on Nord Stream 2.” The politician wouldn’t even rule out sanctions on US gas or direct sanctions against US policymakers as a last resort.

Financial protective shield

For his part, Harms doesn’t want to escalate matters this way and rejects countersanctions while seeing eye to eye with Ernst’s political agenda. However, he doesn’t believe that the US administration will cave in and wants the German government and the European Commission to provide a financial rescue package for the project.

Harms says this could be a strong signal to Washington that sanctions will not be crowned by success. He’s also called for legal support for the companies affected by US sanctions.

Both Ernst and Harms agree that an expansion of extraterritorial sanctions as practiced by the US have ushered in a new phase in already strained US-German relations. “We must not bow to the pressure,” says Ernst.

Russia in focus

Harms says he was in the US a couple of times for talks before the coronavirus pandemic broke out. He understood from what he’d heard that the US resolve to nix Nord Stream 2 can by no means be attributed only to its plan to sell its own liquefied natural gas to Europe.

“There’s a bipartisan wish to punish Russia because of its meddling with US elections and other things,” Harms said. Nevertheless, he added, Americans would have to be reminded time and again that when they pursue their foreign policy objectives, they should not harm their own allies overseas.

Troops sent to DC during George Floyd protests had bayonets, top general says
Some troops sent to Washington did not have riot response training, Associated Press finds
July 3, 2020
by Victoria Bekiempis in New York and agency
The Guardian

The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Army Gen Mark Milley, confirmed that some US troops sent to Washington during protests over George Floyd’s police killing were issued with bayonets.

The Associated Press, which reported on the bayonets in June, also obtained documents revealing that some service members sent to the capital area in case they were ordered in to support law enforcement and National Guard in crowd control, did not have training in riot response.

In June, soldiers of the army’s 82nd airborne division from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as well as the 3rd US infantry regiment, from Washington DC, were mobilized as demonstrators protested against police brutality and systemic racism, particularly affecting Black Americans.

After the troops arrived in outskirts of the nation’s capital, however, they were not sent to the demonstrations. While the soldiers were given bayonets, they were told that these implements were to stay in their sheaths, not affixed to their service rifles, Milley disclosed to two US congress members in a letter obtained by the AP.

These soldiers were also informed that no weapons were to enter Washington “without clear orders and only after non-lethal options were first reviewed”, Milley said

In Milley’s 26 June letter, he claimed the order to mobilize these troops was from Army Maj Gen Omar Jones, who works as commander of the Washington DC military district.

Milley’s letter was sent to the congressmen Ted Lieu of California and Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois after both Democrats demanded an explanation following the AP’s report on bayonets.

Neither members of the 82nd airborne nor 3rd infantry regiment were called off-base into Washington DC, and paratroopers from the 82nd airborne were sent back to North Carolina on 4 June.

A document obtained by the news organization also revealed that some military members “were not prepared” especially for dealing with demonstrators, and that commanders planned on giving them training within four days of their arrival.

While service members with bayonets were not called off-base, the military’s presence during unrest spurred extensive outrage

Law enforcement agents violently ousted peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square next to the White House so that Donald Trump and an entourage that included Milley and the defense secretary, Mark Esper, could have a photo op in front of St John’s church, known as the Church of the Presidents.

In a highly contentious escalation of tension and audacious stretch of presidential authority and use of the US military, Trump had threatened to deploy federal forces across the US and in defiance of any dissenting governors or mayor in order to quell civil unrest. He appeared to begin by demonstrating a swift scrambling of US soldiers to be poised outside the capital.

Milley publicly apologized for participating in the photo op about one week later.

“I should not have been there,” Milley said in a pre-recorded video commencement address for National Defense University.

“My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

On 29 June, a congressional committee heard testimony from witnesses of the Lafayette Square incident, including some who suffered injuries, USA Today reported.

Meanwhile, on 9 July, Esper and Milley are due to testify at a House armed services committee hearing on Department of Defense authorities and roles related to civilian law enforcement

Esper has said he hadn’t known Trump was intending to hold a photo op.

It was another sign of strain between Trump and the military, a relationship he has championed, soon followed by the fake reports that Russia had put a bounty on US military heads in Afghanistan.

Even the South Pole Is Warming, and Quickly, Scientists Say
Surface air temperatures at the bottom of the world have risen three times faster than the global average since the 1990s.
June 29, 2020
by Henry Fountain
The New York Times

The South Pole, the most isolated part of the planet, is also one of the most rapidly warming ones, scientists said Monday, with surface air temperatures rising since the 1990s at a rate that is three times faster than the global average.

While the warming could be the result of natural climate change alone, the researchers said, it is likely that the effects of human-caused warming contributed to it.

The pole, home to a United States research base in the high, icy emptiness of the Antarctic interior, warmed by about 0.6 degrees Celsius, or 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit, per decade over the past 30 years, the researchers reported in a paper published in Nature Climate Change. The global average over that time was about 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade.

Although parts of coastal Antarctica are losing ice, which contributes to sea level rise, the pole is in no danger of melting, as the year-round average temperature is still about minus-50 degrees Celsius. But the finding shows that no place is unaffected by change on a warming planet.

Analyzing weather data and using climate models, the researchers found that the rising temperatures are a result of changes in atmospheric circulation that have their origins thousands of miles away in the western tropical Pacific Ocean.

“The South Pole is warming at an incredible rate, and it is chiefly driven by the tropics,” said Kyle R. Clem, a postdoctoral researcher at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and the lead author of the study.

While climate change resulting from emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases has very likely played a role, the analysis showed that natural climate variability could account for all of the extreme swing in temperature, effectively masking any human-caused contribution.

“The Antarctic interior may be one of the few places remaining on Earth where the anthropogenic signal cannot be easily teased out due to such extreme variability,” Dr. Clem said.

“But you’re very, very unlikely to get a warming trend that strong without increasing greenhouse gases,” he added.

Temperature records at the pole have been kept since 1957, when the first American base was completed there. For decades, average temperatures were steady or declining. Strong westerly winds that circled the continent served as a barrier, preventing warmer air from intruding into the interior.

But that changed near the end of the 20th century, Dr. Clem said, when sea-surface temperatures in the western tropical Pacific began to rise, part of a natural oscillation that occurs on a time scale of decades.

The warming ocean heated the air, which caused ripples of high and low pressure in the atmosphere that reached all the way to the Antarctic Peninsula, more than 5,000 miles away. Scientists call these kinds of long-distance links teleconnections.

Coupled with the stronger westerly winds, which are part of another long-term pattern, the ripples led to stronger storms in the Weddell Sea, east of the peninsula. These rotating, or cyclonic, storms, swept warmer air from the South Atlantic Ocean into the interior of the continent.

Stronger storms in the Weddell Sea have also led to a recent decline in sea ice in the region.

Dr. Clem said the warming was not uniform across the Antarctic Plateau, the enormous expanse that covers most of the interior, including the pole, with an average elevation of nearly two miles. But the only other permanent base on the plateau, Russia’s Vostok station about 800 miles from the pole, has also recorded rapidly rising temperatures, he said.

The ripples from the tropical Pacific also had an effect on the Antarctic Peninsula, which for most of the late 20th century had been one of the fastest-warming areas in the world. But in the last few decades the rate of warming there has declined significantly.

In an email message, two researchers at the University of Colorado, Sharon E. Stammerjohn and Ted A. Scambos, said that while the rest of the world has been warming steadily over the past five decades, Antarctica has seen major swings, and probably always has. Neither scientist was involved in the research, but they wrote a commentary on the study published in the same issue of the journal.

As ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific switch toward cooling, they said, the rate of warming at the South Pole will likely decline as well, but not by as much as it would have without human-caused climate change.

In an interview, Dr. Stammerjohn said “warming at the South Pole is significant because it’s the most remote place on the planet.”

“But it’s still never going to get above freezing,” she said. “We don’t have to worry too much about losing ice at the pole just yet. But definitely the coastlines are another matter.”

Especially along the coast of West Antarctica, warm water brought up from depth by the action of wind is melting ice shelves from underneath, which ultimately leads to sea level rise.

Dr. Stammerjohn said there was more and more evidence that the way the planet is responding to warming was changing the atmosphere and ocean circulation on a large scale.

“And that’s what’s contributing to the warmer waters at depth,” she said. “There’s going to be a lot of variability superimposed on that, but the direction, and the projection, would be toward more and more warm water and more ice sheet loss.”

“It’s so easy to think that Antarctica is isolated and remote and is not going to respond to climate change,” Dr. Stammerjohn said. While the impact at the South Pole may not be all that significant, ice loss along the coast has huge implications.

“It’s the one that’s going to change our sea level dramatically,” she said.

Warming at South Pole, she said, is “the ultimate canary in the coal mine, one that we can no longer ignore.”

The Great MERS Rip-Off

Many factors combined to create the current housing crisis in the United States.

Low interest rates after the 2001 stock market crash spurred the housing boom. Housing prices skyrocketed above historic trendlines. People were duped into thinking prices would rise forever, but it was inevitable that the housing bubble would burst, and houses would suddenly be worth a lot less. With house prices falling, lots of people are now finding they owe more than their house is worth. This problem is exacerbated by predatory loan arrangements that have left millions facing suddenly rising mortgage payments.

A lot of people and corporations deserve blame for this state of affairs.

Instead of warning consumers about the housing bubble – which would have gone a long way to counter the excessive price run-ups – then-Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan denied a bubble was occurring.

Wall Street firms created exotic investment instruments that made possible the purchase and trading of large numbers of mortgages. This created conditions so that banks and initial lenders took less care in issuing mortgages – since they wouldn’t be responsible for mortgages gone bad. The Wall Street firms not only sold these instruments to duped investors, they took on major liabilities on their own – even though it was obvious the housing bubble would have to burst.

Rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, which evaluated the riskiness of these new mortgage investment instruments, failed utterly. The housing bubble meant mortgage investments were sure to lose money, but the ratings agencies gave them top ratings anyway. Along with the “innovation” of the Wall Street firms, the ratings agencies helped maintain a market that dramatically exacerbated, and to a considerable degree may have created, the housing bubble.

Financial bubbles create an incentive for criminal and shady activity. Just like the stock bubble of the late 1990s created the climate for Enron and dozens of other companies to cook their books, the housing bubble created incentives for predatory lenders to exploit consumers.

The predatory lenders offered low rates, at least at first. Rates would rise later, but the lenders said that – because home prices were rising so fast and would continue to do so – borrowers could always refinance with a new loan.

The biggest of the predatory lenders was Countrywide, a mortgage lender acquired by Bank of America in January 2008. The company and its CEO, Angelo Mozilo, made a bundle, while setting up thousands and thousands of families for financial ruin.

“Over the past few years,” says Martin Eakes of the Center for Responsible Lending, “by steering millions of people into bad loans, Countrywide has been the largest rogue mortgage lender in the country. According to Countrywide’s own data, more than 80 percent of its exotic adjustable-rate loans were made to borrowers that do not meet current banking standards. Countrywide knew that these homeowners would not be able to make their monthly loan payments after dramatic payment increases became effective.”

The Center for Responsible Lending has compiled a dossier on Countrywide’s irresponsible practices, presented in a report, “Unfair and Unsafe.” Its devastating report, based on customer complaints, lawsuits, regulatory actions, news accounts, government reports and company documents, shows how Countrywide engaged in rampant wrongdoing:

“Lawsuits filed around the country have accused Countrywide of preying on borrowers through a variety of unfair and fraudulent tactics that have siphoned equity out of their homes and pushed many into foreclosure,” notes “Unfair and Unsafe.” “Borrowers and regulators have accused the company of: steering borrowers with good credit into higher-cost ‘subprime’ loans; gouging minority borrowers with discriminatory rates and fees; working in cahoots with mortgage brokers who use bait-and-switch tactics to land borrowers into loans they can’t afford; targeting elderly and non-English-speaking borrowers for abusive loans; and packing loans with inflated and unauthorized fees.”

In one lawsuit, Albert Zacholl, a 74-year-old man living in Southern California, alleges that Countrywide and a pair of mortgage brokers “cold-called and aggressively baited” him. They promised him $30,000 cash, a mortgage that would replace his previous mortgage (which was leaving him owing more each month) and a monthly payment that would not exceed $1,700. Zacholl told the brokers that his income consisted of a pension of $350 a month and Social Security payments of $958, and that with help from his son, he could afford a mortgage up to $1,700. According to the lawsuit, the broker falsified his loan application by putting down an income of $7,000 a month, and then arranged for a high-interest mortgage that required him to pay more than $3,000 a month (and failed to deliver the $30,000 cash payment). The motivation for the scam, according to the lawsuit, was to collect $13,000 in fees.

In court papers, the Center for Responsible Lending reports, Countrywide responded that Zacholl “consented to the terms of the transaction” and that any problems were the result of his own “negligence and carelessness.”

• Dangerous products. Countrywide has been a leader in pushing unsound mortgage terms. These include “exploding” subprime adjustable rate mortgages – with reasonable interest rates in the first year that jump in subsequent years, often by as much as 30 percent to 50 percent.
• Conflicts of interest. “Countrywide has created a corporate structure designed to allow its subsidiaries to work hand-in-hand in squeezing borrowers with excessive fees and penalties,” according to “Unfair and Unsafe.” Countrywide affiliates handle appraisals, credit reports, flood certifications and other documentation for new loans; provide “force-placing” insurance for borrowers whose homeowners insurance has lapsed; and serve as a foreclosure trustee. The interconnections enable Countrywide to charge high fees, and deny borrowers the benefit of third parties’ independent judgment and independent interests.
• Broken promises on loan modifications. The company has a history of failing to fully live up to its promises to help borrowers keep their homes by modifying onerous loans, according to “Unfair and Unsafe.” The report cites a Fall 2007 Credit Suisse review that ranked Countrywide as one of the mortgage lenders least willing to adjust loan terms.

Countrywide says it is committed to working out fair arrangements to keep homeowners in their houses. In December, it entered into an arrangement with the community group ACORN designed to help subprime borrowers.

“During the first 11 months of 2007, Countrywide helped more than 69,000 customers retain their homes through solutions such as loan modifications, long-term repayment plans, special forbearance and other options,” says Steve Bailey, a Countrywide senior managing director of loan administration. “Regardless of the reason for the payment difficulties, Countrywide wants to try to find reasonable solutions for our borrowers.”

• Abusive loan servicing. Borrowers claim that Countrywide has engaged in sloppy and fraudulent loan servicing that has produced unwarranted fees and foreclosures.

With the collapse of the housing market in 2007, Countrywide’s fortunes turned, its mortgage-backed securities plummeted in value, and the company seemed on the edge of bankruptcy. In January 2008, Bank of America agreed to buy the company.

Do not weep for company co-founder and long-time CEO Angelo Mozilo, however. Mozilo grabbed compensation worth $185 million from 2002-2006, according to an analysis by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Between November 2006 and December 2007, Mozilo sold $150 million in stock – effectively jumping from a sinking corporate ship for which he was supposedly at the helm, or at least on the captain’s deck.

“Particularly, the discrepancy between Mr. Mozilo’s compensation and Countrywide’s performance is striking,” concludes the Oversight Committee analysis. “In 2007, Countrywide announced a $1.2 billion loss in the third quarter and an additional loss of $422 million in the fourth quarter.” By the end of the year, the company’s stock fell 80 percent from its February peak. “During the same period, Mr. Mozilo was paid $1.9 million in salary, received $20 million in stock awards contingent upon performance, and sold $121 million in stock.”

Mozilo retired as CEO in 2006, remaining as company chair and an employee. The House Oversight Committee analysis shows that his compensation contract, taking effect in 2007, was outrageous, and based in part on recommendations from a compensation consultant loyal to Mozilo rather than Countrywide.

Even so, Mozilo was bitter that the company did not give him everything he wanted. In an e-mail message turned up by the Oversight Committee, Mozilo wrote to the compensation consultant:

“I appreciate your input but at this stage in my life at Countrywide this process is no longer about money but more about respect and acknowledgement of my accomplishments. … Boards have been placed under enormous pressure by the left wing anti business press and the envious leaders of unions and other so called ‘CEO Comp Watchers’ and therefore Boards are being forced to protect themselves irrespective of the potential negative long term impact on public companies. I strongly believe that a decade from now there will be a recognition that entrepreneurship has been driven out of the public sector resulting in underperforming companies and a willingness on the part of Boards to pay for performance.”

With attention focused on the discrepancy between Mozilo’s compensation package and Countrywide’s well-being, he waived various payments – totaling $37.5 million – he could have received once Bank of America finalizes its takeover.

In March 2008, Mozilo appeared before the House Oversight Committee to explain his compensation.

“Countrywide’s board,” he testified, “has aligned the interests of our top executives, including me, with shareholders by making our compensation primarily performance-based – namely, tied to earnings per share and share price appreciation. Since 1982 through early 2007, Countrywide’s stock appreciated over 23,000 percent, reaching a peak market value of over $25 billion from a starting value of zero. As a result, over recent years, I have received substantial income from bonuses under a formula that was approved by our shareholders on at least two occasions.”

He also received substantial stock options, explaining, these were “options that required the price of the stock to rise above the option price before any income could be realized, thereby aligning me squarely with our shareholders.” In anticipation of his retirement, he testified, he put in place a plan to cash in some stock options earned in earlier years. His sales were thus planned in advance of Countrywide’s downturn. But he continues to hold substantial shares in Countrywide – shares worth much less than before the company’s stock collapsed.

Mozilo testified that he is “very proud of the home ownership opportunities that Countrywide has provided for over 20 million families,” while acknowledging the hardship faced by homeowners and Countrywide employees and shareholders.

“In my 55 years in the industry,” he said, “this by far is the worst housing crisis I have ever seen, combined with an unprecedented collapse of the credit and liquidity markets.”

“The problem we face,” he said, “is the deterioration of the value of homes. As values were going up, we had no problem. We had no delinquencies and no foreclosures, because people had options, because people run into three things in their lives generally – loss of job, loss of marriage, loss of health. When that happens and they own a home, and it impacts their income, they generally have a way out – sell the house, refinance, do something.

“That equity that they have in their homes has been virtually wiped out. And that’s what’s exacerbating this whole foreclosure problem.”

Wasn’t that problem entirely foreseeable? Didn’t Countrywide’s lending policies – which generously might be called aggressive – depend on constantly rising housing values in what was obviously a bubble market?

BAD NEWS AHEAD FOR COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE

Congressional Oversight Panel –

Over the next few years, a wave of commercial real estate loan failures could threaten America’s already-weakened financial system. The Congressional Oversight Panel is deeply concerned that commercial loan losses could jeopardize the stability of many banks, particularly the nation’s mid-size and smaller banks, and that as the damage spreads beyond individual banks that it will contribute to prolonged weakness throughout the economy.

Between 2010 and 2014, about $1.4 trillion in commercial real estate loans will reach the end of their terms. Nearly half are at present “underwater’- that is, the borrower owes more than the underlying property is currently worth. Commercial property values have fallen more than 40 percent since the beginning of 2007. Increased vacancy rates, which now range from eight percent for multifamily housing to 18 percent for office buildings, and falling rents, which have declined 40 percent for office space and 33 percent for retail space, have exerted a powerful downward pressure on the value of commercial properties.

The largest commercial real estate loan losses are projected for 2011 and beyond; losses at banks alone could range as high as $200-$300 billion. The stress tests conducted last year for 19 major financial institutions examined their capital reserves only through the end of 2010.

Even more significantly, small and mid-sized banks were never subjected to any exercise comparable to the stress tests, despite the fact that small and mid-sized banks are proportionately even more exposed than their larger counterparts to commercial real estate loan losses.

A significant wave of commercial mortgage defaults would trigger economic damage that could touch the lives of nearly every American. Empty office complexes, hotels, and retail stores could lead directly to lost jobs. Foreclosures on apartment complexes could push families out of their residences, even if they had never missed a rent payment. Banks that suffer, or are afraid of suffering, commercial mortgage losses could grow even more reluctant to lend, which could in turn further reduce access to credit for more businesses and families and accelerate a negative economic cycle.

It is difficult to predict either the number of foreclosures to come or who will be most immediately affected. In the worst case scenario, hundreds more community and mid-sized banks could face insolvency. Because these banks play a critical role in financing the small businesses that could help the American economy create new jobs, their widespread failure could disrupt local communities, undermine the economic recovery, and extend an already painful recession.

Although only bankers are aware of it, there is a second wave of economic disaster starting to build up that will make the earlier one pale into insignificance. Let us start out with MERS, shall we?

MERS = Mortgage Electronic Registration Inc.holds approximately 60 million Amerrican mortgages and is a Delaware corporation whose sole shareholder is Mers Corp. MersCorp and its specified members have agreed to include the MERS corporate name on any mortgage that was executed in conjunction with any mortgage loan made by any member of MersCorp. Thus in place of the original lender being named as the mortgagee on the mortgage that is supposed to secure their loan, MERS is named as the “nominee” for the lender who actually loaned the money to the borrower. In other words MERS is really nothing more than a name that is used on the mortgage instrument in place of the actual lender. MERS’ primary function, therefore, is to act as a document custodian. MERS was created solely to simplify the process of transferring mortgages by avoiding the need to re-record liens – and pay county recorder filing fees – each time a loan is assigned. Instead, servicers record loans only once and MERS’ electronic system monitors transfers and facilitates the trading of notes. It has very conserbatively estimated that as of February, 2010, over half of all new residential mortgage loans in the United States are registered with MERS and recorded in county recording offices in MERS’ name

MersCorp was the created in the early 1990’s by the former C.E.O.’s of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Indy Mac, Countrywide, Stewart Title Insurance and the American Land Title Association. The executives of these companies lined their pockets with billions of dollars of unearned bonuses and free stock by creating so-called mortgage backed securities using bogus mortgage loans to unqualified borrowers thereby creating a huge false demand for residential homes and thereby falsely inflating the value of those homes. MERS marketing claims that its “paperless systems fit within the legal framework of the laws of all fifty states” are now being vetted by courts and legal commentators throughout the country.

The MERS paperless system is the type of crooked rip-off scheme that is has been seen for generations past in the crooked financial world. In this present case, MERS was created in the boardrooms of the most powerful and controlling members of the American financial institutions. This gigantic scheme completely ignored long standing law of commerce relating to mortgage lending and did so for its own prsonal gain. That the inevitable collapse of the crooked mortgage swindles would lead to terrible national reprecussions was a matter of little or no interest to the upper levels of America’s banking and financial world because the only interest of these entities was to grab the money of suckers, keep it in the form of ficticious bonuses, real estate and very large accounts in foreign banks.. The effect of this system has led to catastrophic metldown on both the American and global economy.

MERS, it has clearly been proven in many civil cases, does not hold any promissory notes of any kind.. A party must have possession of a promissory note in order to have standing to enforce and/or otherwise collect a debt that is owed to another party. Given this clear-cut legal definition,  MERS does not have legal standing to enforce or collect on the over 60 million mortgages it controls and no member of MERS has any standing in an American civil court.

MERS has been taken to civil courts across the country and charged with a lack of standing in reprossion issues. When the mortgage debacle initially, and invevitably, began, MERS always rotinely broght actions against defauilting mortgage holders purporting to represent the owners of the defaulted mortgages but once the courts discovered that MERS was only a front organization that did not hold any deed nor was aware of who or what agencies might hold a deed, they have been routinely been denied in their attempts to force foreclosure.  In the past, persons alleging they were officials of MERS in foreclosure motions, purported to be the holders of the mortgage, when, in fact, they nor only were not the holder of the mortgage but, under a court order, could not produce the identity of the actual holder. These so-called MERS officers have usually been just employees of entities who are servicing the loan for the actual lender. MERS, it is now widely acknowledged by the courty, has no legal right to foreclose or otherwise collect debt which are evidenced by promissory notes held by someone else.

The American media routinely identifies MERS as a mortgage lender, creditor, and mortgage company, when in point of fact MERS has never loaned so much as a dollar to anyone, is not a creditor and is not a mortgage company. MERS is merely a name that is printed on mortgages, purporting to give MERS some sort of legal status, in the matter of a loan made by a completely different and almost always,a totally unknown enitity.

The infamous collapse of the American housing bubble originated, in the main, with one Angelo Mozilo, CEO of the later failed Countrywide Mortgage.

Mozilo started working in his father’s butcher shop, in the Bronx, when he was ten years old. He graduated from Fordham in 1960, and that year he met David Loeb.. In 1968, Mozilo and Loeb created a new mortgage company, Countrywide, together. Mozilo believed the company should make special efforts to lower the barrier for minorities and others who had been excluded from homeownership. Loeb died in 2003

In 1996, Countrywide created a new subsidiary for subprime loans.

The standard Countrywide procedure was to openly solicit persons who either had no credit or could not obtain it, and, by the use of false credit reports drawn up in their offices, arrange mortgages. The new home owners were barely able to meet the minimum interest only payments and when, as always happens, the mortgage payments are increased to far, far more than could be paid, defaults and repossessions were inevitable. Countrywide sold these mortgages to lower-tier banks which in turn, put them together in packages and sold them to the large American banks. These so-called “bundled mortgages” were quickly sold these major banking houses to many foreign investors with the comments that when the payments increased, so also would the income from the original mortgage. In 1996, Countrywide created a new subsidiary for subprime loans..

At one point in time, Countrywide Financial Corporation was regarded with awe in the business world. In 2003, Fortune observed that Countrywide was expected to write $400 billion in home loans and earn $1.9 billion. Countrywide’s chairman and C.E.O., Angelo Mozilo, did rather well himself. In 2003, he received nearly $33 million in compensation. By that same year, Wall Street had become addicted to home loans, which bankers used to create immensely lucrative mortgage-backed securities and, later, collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.s—and Countrywide was their biggest supplier. Under Mozilo’s leadership, Countrywide’s growth had been astonishing.

He was aiming to achieve a market share—thirty to forty per cent—that was far greater than anyone in the financial-services industry had ever attained. For several years, Countrywide continued to thrive. Then, inevitably, in 2007, subprime defaults began to rocket upwards , forcing the top American bankers to abandoned the mortgage-backed securities they had previously prized. It was obvious to them that the fraudulent mortgages engendered by Countrywide had been highly suceessful as a marketinig program but it was obvious to eveyone concerned, at all levels, that the mortgages based entirely on false and misleading credit information were bound to eventually default. In August of 2007, the top American bankers cut off

Countrywide’s short-term funding, which seriously hindered its ability to operate, and in just a few months following this abandonment,  Mozilo was forced to choose between bankruptcy orselling out to the best bidder.. In January, 2008, Bank of America announced that it would buy the company for a fraction of what Countrywide was worth at its peak. Mozilo was subsequently named a defendant in more than a hundred civil lawsuits and a target of a criminal investigation. On June 4th, 2007 the S.E.C., in a civil suit, charged Mozilo, David Sambol, and Eric Sieracki with securities fraud; Mozilo was also charged with insider trading. The complaint formalized a public indictment of Mozilo as an icon of corporate malfeasance and greed.

In essence, not only bad credit risks were used to create and sell mortgages on American homes that were essentially worthless. By grouping all of these together and selling them abroad, the banks all made huge profits. When the kissing had to stop, there were two major groups holding the financial bag. The first were the investors and the second were, not those with weak credit, but those who had excellent credit and who were able, and willing to pay off their mortgages.

Unfortunately, as no one knows who owns the title to any home, when the legitimate mortgage holder finally pays off his mortgage, or tries to sell his house, a clear title to said house or property cannot ever be found so, in essence, the innocent mortgage payer can never own or sell his house. This is a terrible economic time bomb quietly ticking away under the feet of the Bank of America and if, and when, it explodes, another bank is but a fond memory.

Readers wishing to find out if their title is secure should write to Vermont Trotter, an investigative reporter whose own mortgage ended up in the courts. Mr. Trotter is embarking on a series of articles on this subject and is able, and willing, to forward requests for information to attorneys specializing in the subject.

Vermont Trotter: wordpress@chinkinthearmor.net If you want to know how to get in touch w/ Mr. Trotter or how to find the pre-eminent lawyer on this subject,  go to: www.ChinkintheArmor.net,  leave a comment on any article and he will respond.

MERS definitely greases the skids for securitization, which may ultimately be an unsupportable concept, but even there, people need to be careful what they wish for – a world of merely originate-and-hold mortgages.

Certainly, Countrywide was a main player in the housing crisis, but it was far from the only one, and it was one, that at least in some sense, ceased to exist, unlike others.

About Interthinx

Interthinx, Inc., an ISO business, is the nation’s leading provider of proven risk mitigation and regulatory compliance tools for the financial services industry. Used at every point in the mortgage lifecycle to prevent mortgage fraud, compliance violations and to assess risk, Interthinx is relied upon by more than 1,100 customers, including 15 of the top 20 mortgage lenders and three of the top five largest financial institutions. With technology that earned Mortgage Technology Magazine’s prestigious 10X Award as “a diagnostic and corrective solution of the highest order,” Interthinx expertise in predictive analytics, data mining, and risk scoring sets the standard for the industry and directly increases the value of client portfolios. For more information, visit www.interthinx.com or call (800) 333-4510.

About ISO

A leading source of information about risk, ISO provides data, analytics, and decision-support services to professionals in many fields, including insurance, finance, real estate, health services, government, human resources, and risk management. Using advanced technologies to collect, analyze, develop, and deliver information, ISO helps customers evaluate and manage risk. The company draws on vast expertise in actuarial science, insurance coverages, fire protection, fraud prevention, catastrophe and weather risk, predictive modeling, data management, economic forecasting, social and technological trends, and many other fields. To meet the needs of diverse clients, ISO employs an experienced staff of business and technical specialists, analysts, and certified professionals. In the United States and around the world, ISO helps customers protect people, property, and financial assets. For more information, visit www.iso.com .

 

The Encyclopedia of American Loons

Scott Pollack

Scott Pollack is the self-declared chief editor of something called the Critical Post, where he constructs sentences like this (concerning socialists): “Your leadership, which springs from post graduate degree, liberal feminist chauvinists, brought about by a usurpatious lawyer class, and the Edward Bernays school of PR, artfully used by all of America’s large corporations, as well as, the Rockefeller Foundation’s various think tank initiatives, and now adopted by a greed filled Bolshevik-minded, Hungarian by the name of Soros, sadly and ironically, a misguided Jew no less, and we all suffer by comparison to him…this leadership again…female or male, has no clue of Austrian economics, among other things, and therefore, the rest of the dogmas they preach, have no effect except that of degenerated natures and malevolent, commercial – political manifestations, which is what prevails, and only tenuously, presently, in the fabric of the American Collective Conscience.” But fear not; Pollack is no anti-semite. After all, the cited sentence comes from a tribute to Pam Geller, “a beautiful, (soul and otherwise) and glamorous siren songstress of reason in a sea of Muslim, as well as, liberal confounded argument,” who is Jewish. Like Jesus, in fact. You can read the rest of it here.

Diagnosis: Yeah, pretty obscure. Pollack’s got his defenders, though, which is absolutely insane.

Joseph Pizzorno

Not as market-aggressive as Joe Mercola or as high-profile as Andrew Weil, Joseph Pizzorno is nevertheless one of the most influential pseudoscientists affiliated with the world of woo (and associated conspiracy mongering) working today. Pizzorno is the founding President and currently President Emeritus of Bastyr University, arguably the most influential “schools” of naturopathic “medicine” in North America, and is still involved in the institution where he, right from the beginning and until 2000, was running its day-to-day operations. Now, Pizzorno’s style is a far cry from the paranoia-driven delusions of someone like, say, Mike Adams – he did, for instance, recognize Hulda Clark’s quackery for what it was (not exactly a major cognitive feat, though) – but his own brand of naturopathy is hardly more evidence-based or health-promoting; it just sounds less deranged to the uninitiated. Bastyr embraces homeopathy without criticism, for instance; indeed, Bastyr’s students are required to study homeopathy together with all the other nonsense suggested to be beneficial by naturopaths, from myofascial analysis and vega testing to traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda and even distant healing and germ theory denialism. Make no mistake; Pizzorno, his university, and naturopathy in general, are anti-science to the core

Pizzorno is the co-author of the Textbook of Natural Medicine(with Michael T. Murray, who is also former faculty at Bastyr University and currently on its Board of Regents), which is widely used even in accredited education programs – despite being demonstrably a piece of unscientific junk. The book is described in some detail here. It is advertised as “the gold standard in natural medicine,” and as a scientific presentation that “includes the science behind concepts and treatments, and discusses Western medical treatments and how they can work with natural medicine in a comprehensive treatment plan;” more than “10,000 research literature citations show that the content is based on science rather than opinions or anecdotes.” It is interesting that they felt the need to point it out. Of course, as most critics would also point out, more important than what they included is what they did not include (i.e. all the well-designed tests, real scientific literature, and the parts of the texts they cited that do not support the conclusions they wish to draw); besides, the authors are fully prepared to drop any pretense of scientific support when it suits them, and the chapters on therapeutic modalitis baldly admits that “[a]lthough this textbook is strongly oriented to the scientific method and the use of the peer-review literature for documentation of the efficacy of a therapy, these modalities’ widespread clinical use and long history of patient satisfaction demand that they be given a place here even though the mechanisms of action of several have yet to be elicited.” Or in short: when scientific evidence shows that what they wish would work doesn’t work, disregard the science and rely on anecdotes and appeals to popularity or tradition instead. Among the most obvious and damning things that should strike anyone opening the book is naturopathy’s wholesale endorsement of medieval-style and thoroughly refuted vitalism; Pizzorno and Murray are unfazed by refutation, however, and claim against all evidence, knowledge and reality that homeostasis, entropy, and even evolution require vitalistic rather than mechanistic explanations. This is, of course, not simply false but a testament to the authors’ poor judgment and equally poor understanding of science. There is a good review of the second edition of the textbook here.

Pizzorno is also co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods and The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine, the Bible of Woo, in which more or less every piece of quackery is described as efficacious and studies that might seem to support those types of quackery if you don’t look closely enough to see the flaws, are carefully selected to provide a sheen of legitimacy while the many high-quality studies that don’t “fit the narrative” are just not mentioned. Like the textbook, the Encyclopedia (e.g.) recommends a range of questionable dietary measures, vitamins, minerals, and/or herbs for more than 70 health problems ranging from acne to AIDS – in many cases daily administration of ten or more products is recommended, often in dosages high enough to cause toxicity.

Pizzorno is also the author of Total Wellness: Improve Your Health By Understanding Your Body’s Healing Systems, which even contains a chapter titled “Strengthen Your Immune System” arguing (assuming) that “immune suppression” as an underlying cause of most disease. Total Wellness book is also antivaccine, of course. “Quackery” simply isn’t strong enough to describe the nature of Pizzorno’s advice. And things are barely better in his How to Prevent and Treat Cancer with Natural Medicine (with Murray, Tim Birdsall, and Paul Riley), one of many cancer quack books providing a whole “arsenal” of advice that range from the admittedly sensible to the useless, and since the latter is hard to distinguish from the former in the authors’ presentation, the book is one to avoid completely and with prejudice if you ever need information about cancer.

From the very founding of Bastyr, Pizzorno’s main concern seems to have been how to make naturopathic quackery look respectable. An important part of that process was of course to get their naturopathic program accredited, and to achieve this goal, Pizzorno helped write the CNME standards for naturopathic programs that would eventually be used to accredit Bastyr’s naturopathic program in 1987. Yes, accredidation is a mess; what Pizzorno and his allies achieved, was establishing a separate accrediting agency for naturopathic schools, effectively shielding them from effective oversight of their pseudoscience-filled curricula. Pizzorno is also on the board of AAFP’s Board on Functional Medicine; “functional medicine” being one of the ultimate misnomers in the world of woo.

Pizzorno has worked tirelessly to achieve more widespread acceptance of quackery through other venues as well, including offering courses for the American Council for Continuing Medical Education, where he for instance teaches about “Detoxification” and “Assessing Body Burden” – the latter presumably related to his Encyclopedia’s nonsensical claim that 25% of the US population suffers from heavy metal poisoning, which can ostensibly be assessed by provoked urine testing. That is a myth, of course, but tests almost ensuring false positives are useful for people pushing fraudulent detox regimes – you won’t have toxic levels of heavy metals in your body after completing the detox regimes, of course, and what more do you want? More on his efforts here.

As for his own background, Pizzorno has a B.S. in Chemistry and an N.D. (Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine) degree in 1975 from National College of Naturopathic Medicine. He does, in other words, not have a background in medicine.

Diagnosis: Quackery galore. But Pizzorno isn’t just a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist with a website, and his efforts to give naturopathy a sheen of legitimacy – marketing is everything, since most people don’t have the resources or background knowledge to assess the contents – have proved scarily successful. Definitely one of the most dangerous loons alive today.