Hyundai shows off SKorea’s first electric car

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Sep 9, 5:31 AM (ET)

By KELLY OLSEN

(AP) South Korean President Lee Myung-bak test drives an electric vehicle at the compound of the… Full Image

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – Hyundai Motor unveiled its first electric car Thursday – the BlueOn – as it moves to catch up with Japanese rivals that have jumped ahead in the field.

Hyundai showed off the car on the grounds of Seoul’s hillside Blue House, the office and residence of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who took it for a spin while Cabinet ministers, officials and electric-vehicle industry representatives looked on.

South Korea’s biggest automaker said that it invested about 40 billion won ($34.3 million) over one year to create the vehicle, which is based on the automaker’s small i10 hatchback.

Hyundai, which hailed the small car as South Korea’s first full-speed electric vehicle, said that it plans to deliver 30 of them on a test basis to various South Korean government organizations by October and plans to manufacture 2,500 by the end of 2012.

“We are proud to introduce the world to BlueOn, which was fully developed in Korea and displays Hyundai’s latest technological advancements,” Lee Hyun-Soon, vice chairman at the automaker’s research and development center, said in a release.

“Consumers’ interests and demand for eco-friendly cars are rising and securing such advanced technology is critical in becoming an industry leader,” he said.

Hyundai has in recent years won strong reviews for quality and design as it increased market share and brand recognition worldwide, but Japanese rivals have pushed ahead in electric vehicles.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp. already manufactures the iMiEV electric car, while Nissan Motor Co. plans to mass produce its Leaf electric vehicle during this fiscal year.

The 2,500 cars Hyundai plans to produce will include retail sales in South Korea, said Song Meeyoung, a company spokeswoman. She could not say exactly when consumer sales would begin.

As for overseas sales, she said it was “too early too discuss potential export markets at the moment.”

The BlueOn has a maximum speed of 130 kph (80.6 mph), can accelerate to 100 kph in 13.1 seconds and travel as much as 140 kilometers on a single charge of its lithium-ion polymer battery, Hyundai said.

The automaker boasted that it carried out “hundreds of thousands of kilometers worth of endurance testing to secure safety.”

The company also said the car makes an artificial engine sound as a safety feature for warning pedestrians because electric vehicles make little or no sound at low speeds.

The name BlueOn was derived from its Blue Drive strategy of “eco-friendly products and technologies” and the word “on” from “switch on.”

Hyundai’s stock price fell 0.7 percent Thursday to close at 151,000 won. Hyundai shares tripled in value in 2009.

TIME FOR HELICOPTER BEN TO DROP SOME MONEY ON MAIN STREET

Ellen Brown, September 8th, 2010
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/bernankes_helicopters.php

The Fed is proposing another round of “quantitative easing,” although the first round failed to reverse deflation. It failed because the money went into the coffers of banks, which failed to lend it on. To reverse deflation, the money needs to be funneled directly to state and local economies.

In 2002, in a speech that earned him the nickname “Helicopter Ben,” then-Fed Governor Bernanke famously said that the government could easily reverse a deflation, just by printing money and dropping it from helicopters. “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent),” he said, “that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.” Later in the speech he discussed “a money-financed tax cut,” which he said was “essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous ‘helicopter drop’ of money.” You could cure a deflation, said Professor Friedman, simply by dropping money from helicopters.

It seems logical enough. If there is insufficient money in the money supply (deflation), the solution is to put more money into it. But if deflation is so easy to fix, then why has the Fed’s massive attempts to date failed to do the job? At the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole summit on August 27, Chairman Bernanke said he would fight deflation with his whole arsenal, including “quantitative easing” (QE) – purchasing longterm securities with money created on a computer. Yet since 2008, the Fed has added more than $1.2 trillion to “base money” doing just that, and the economy is still in a serious deflationary spiral. In the first quarter of this year, the money supply actually shrank at a record annual rate of 9.6%.

Cullen Roche at The Pragmatic Capitalist has an answer to that puzzle.  He says that as currently practiced, quantitative easing (QE) is not really a money drop.  It is just an asset swap:

“[T]he Fed doesn’t actually ‘print’ anything when it initiates its QE policy.  The Fed simply electronically swaps an asset with the private sector.  In most cases it swaps deposits with an interest bearing asset.”

The Fed just swaps Federal Reserve Notes (dollar bills) for other assets (promissory notes or debt) that can quickly be turned into money.  The Fed is merely trading one form of liquidity for another, without raising the overall water level in the pool. 

The mechanics of how QE works were revealed in a remarkable segment on National Public Radio on August 26, describing how a team of Fed employees bought $1.25 trillion in mortgage bonds beginning in late 2008.  According to NPR:

“The Fed was able to spend so much money so quickly because it has a unique power: It can create money out of thin air, whenever it decides to do so.  So . . . the mortgage team would decide to buy a bond, they’d push a button on the computer – ‘and voila, money is created.’

“The thing about bonds, of course, is that people pay them back.  So that $1.25 trillion in mortgage bonds will shrink over time, as they get repaid.  Earlier this month, the Fed announced that it will use the proceeds from the mortgage bonds to buy Treasury bonds – essentially keeping all that newly created money in circulation.  The decision was a sign that the Fed thinks the economy still needs to be propped up with extraordinary measures.”

“Extraordinary measures” was a reference to Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act, which allows the Fed in “unusual and exigent circumstances” to buy “notes, drafts and bills of  exchange” (debt instruments) from “any individual, partnership or corporation” satisfying its requirements.  The Fed was supposedly engaging in these extraordinary measures to “reflate” the money supply and get credit flowing again.  Yet the money supply continued to shrink.  The problem, as Roche explains, is that the dollars were merely being swapped for other highly liquid assets on bank balance sheets.  That this sort of asset swap will not pump up a collapsed money supply has been shown not only by the Fed’s failed experiments over the last two years but by two decades of failed QE policy in Japan, an economy which remains in the deflationary doldrums.  To reverse deflation, it seems, QE needs to be directed somewhere else besides the balance sheets of private banks.  What we need is the sort of helicopter drop described by Bernanke in 2002 – one over the towns and cities of the real economy. 

There is another interesting lesson suggested by two decades of failed QE: it might actually be possible for the government to “print” its way out of debt, without triggering the dreaded hyperinflation long warned of by pundits.  Swapping dollars for debt hasn’t inflated the circulating money supply to date because federal debt securities already serve as forms of “money” in the economy.

The Textbook Money Multiplier Model . . .  
And Why It Is Obsolete

Beginning with some definitions, “quantitative easing” is explained in Wikipedia like this:

“A central bank . . . first credit[s] its own account with money it has created ex nihilo (‘out of nothing’). It then purchases financial assets, including government bonds, mortgage-backed securities and corporate bonds, from banks and other financial institutions in a process referred to as open market operations.  The purchases, by way of account deposits, give banks the excess reserves required for them to create new money, and thus a hopeful stimulation of the economy, by the process of deposit multiplication from increased lending in the fractional reserve banking system.” 

“Deposit multiplication” is the textbook explanation for how credit expands as it circulates through the economy.  In the textbook model, banks must retain “reserves” equal to 10% of outstanding deposits (including deposits created as loans).  With a 10% reserve requirement, a $100 deposit can support a $90 loan, which gets deposited in another bank, where it becomes an $81 loan, and so forth, until a $100 deposit becomes $1,000 in credit-money. 

The theory is that increasing the banks’ reserves will stimulate this process, but both the Federal Reserve and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) now concede that the process has not been working in the textbook way.  (The BIS is “the central bankers’ central bank” in Basel, Switzerland.)  The futile effort to push more money into bloated bank reserve accounts has been compared to adding more apples to shelves that are already overstocked with apples.  Adding more reserves to a banking system that already has more reserves than it can use has no net effect on the money supply. 

The failure of QE either to increase bank lending or to inflate the money supply was confirmed in a March 24 paper by Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald L. Kohn, who wrote:

“The huge quantity of bank reserves that were created [by quantitative easing] has been seen largely as a byproduct of the purchases [of debt instruments] that would be unlikely to have a significant independent effect on financial markets and the economy. This view is not consistent with the simple models in many textbooks or the monetarist tradition in monetary policy, which emphasizes a line of causation from reserves to the money supply to economic activity and inflation.”

The textbook model is obsolete because banks don’t make lending decisions based on how many reserves they have.  They can always get the reserves they need.  If customers don’t walk in the door with new deposits, the bank can borrow deposits from other banks, something they can now do at the very low Fed funds rate of .2% (1/5^th of 1%).  And if those deposits are not available, the Federal Reserve itself will supply the reserves.  This was confirmed in a BIS working paper called “Unconventional Monetary Policies: An Appraisal”, which observed:

“[T]he level of reserves hardly figures in banks’ lending decisions. The amount of credit outstanding is determined by banks’ willingness to supply loans, based on perceived risk-return trade-offs, and by the demand for those loans. . . .

“The aggregate availability of bank reserves does not constrain the expansion [of credit] directly. The reason is simple: . . . in order to avoid extreme volatility in the interest rate, central banks supply reserves as demanded by the system. From this perspective, a reserve requirement, depending on its remuneration, affects the cost . . . of loans, but does not constrain credit expansion quantitatively. . . . [A]n expansion of reserves in excess of any requirement does not give banks more resources to expand lending. It only changes the composition of liquid assets of the banking system. Given the very high substitutability between bank reserves and other government assets held for liquidity purposes, the impact can be marginal at best.”

Again, one form of liquidity is just substituted for another, without changing the overall level in the pool. 

If bank reserves do not constrain bank lending, what does?  According to the BIS paper, “the main . . . constraint on the expansion of credit is minimum capital requirements.”  These capital requirements, known as “Basel I” and “Basel II,” were imposed by the BIS itself.  It is interesting that the BIS knows that the main constraints on bank lending are its own capital requirements, yet it is talking about raising them, in an economic climate in which lending is already seriously impaired.  Either the BIS is talking out of both sides of its mouth, or its writers don’t read each other. 

A Solution to the Federal Debt Crisis?

Another interesting aside arising from all this is the suggestion that the government could actually print its way out of debt – it could print dollars and buy back its bonds — without creating inflation.  As Roche observes:

“[Quantitative easing] in time of a balance sheet recession is not actually inflationary at all.  With the government merely swapping assets they are not actually ‘printing’ any new money.  In fact, the government is now essentially stealing interest bearing assets from the private sector and replacing them with deposits.  . . . [T]his policy response would in fact be deflationary – not inflationary.”

Roche concludes, “the inflationistas have been wrong and the USA defaultistas have been horribly wrong.”  The “inflationistas” are the pundits screaming that QE will end in hyperinflation, and the “defaultistas” are those insisting that the U.S. must eventually default on its debt.  Representing both camps, for example, is Richard Russell, who writes:

“In my opinion, the US MUST default on its debt. There are two ways to default. One is simply to renege on the debt. . . . The other way to default on the debt is to inflate it away. I’m absolutely convinced that this is the path that the US will take. If the US inflates enough, then over time (many years) the devalued dollar will tend to reduce the power of the debts.”

The failed QE experiments in Japan and the U.S. suggest, however, that there is a third alternative.  Printing dollars to pay the debt (referred to by Russell as “inflating the debt away”) might actually eliminate the debt without creating inflation.  This is because federal bonds and Federal Reserve Notes are interchangeable forms of liquidity.  Government securities trade around the world just as if they were money.  A $100 bond represents a claim on $100 worth of goods and services, just as a $100 bill does.  The difference, as Thomas Edison said nearly a century ago, is merely that “the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. . . . Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people.”

The Fed’s earlier attempts at QE involved swapping $1.25 trillion in mortgaged-backed securities (MBS) for dollars created on a computer screen.  As noted in the NPR segment, many of those securities have come due and have gotten paid off, putting cash in the Fed’s till.  The Fed now proposes to use this money to buy long-term Treasury debt rather than MBS.  That means the Fed will, in effect, be buying the government’s debt with dollars created on a computer screen.  The privately-owned Federal Reserve is not actually an arm of the federal government, but if it were, the government would thus be printing its way out of debt – just as Helicopter Ben proposed in 2002.  Recall that he said, “the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press” – the U.S. government, not the central bank that has done all the QE to date. 

Running the government’s printing presses to pay its bills has not seriously been tried since the Civil War, when President Lincoln saved the North from a crippling war debt at usurious interest rates by printing Greenbacks (U.S. Notes).  Other countries, however, have tested and proven this model more recently.  They include Germany, which pulled itself out of a massive financial collapse in the early 1930s by printing a form of currency called “MEFO bills”; and Australia, New Zealand and Canada, all of which successfully funded public works in the first half of the twentieth century simply by advancing the credit of the nation.  China, Malaysia, Guernsey, Jersey, India, Argentina and other countries have also revived their economies at critical times by this means.  The U.S. government could do this too.  It could print dollars (or type them into electronic bank accounts) and spend the money on the sorts of local public projects that would put people back to work and get the economy rolling again. 

How to Reverse a Deflation:
Do a Helicopter Drop on the States

The government could pay its bills by issuing Greenbacks as Lincoln did, but it probably won’t, given the current deadlock in Congress.  Today only the Federal Reserve Chairman seems to be in a position to act unilaterally, without asking anyone’s permission.  Chairman Bernanke could execute his own plan and generate the credit needed to get the economy churning again, by aiming his “quantitative easing” tool at the states.  After all, if Wall Street (which got us into this mess) can borrow at .2%, underwritten by the Fed as “lender  of last resort,” then state and local governments should be able to as well.  Chairman Bernanke could credit the Fed’s account with money created ex nihilo (out of nothing) and swap it for state and municipal bonds at the Fed funds rate. 

A “state” might not qualify as an “individual, partnership or corporation” under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act, but a state-owned bank would.  Bruce Cahan, an attorney and social entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, California, proposes that the Fed could diversify its role by buying long-term bonds in existing or newly-chartered state-owned banks.  These banks, which would have a mandate to serve state and local communities, would more quickly and accountably lend for in-state purposes than private banks do now. They could be required to use accepted transparency accounting standards to trace how the proceeds of their loans flowed into the economy.  Local needs would thus determine how best to jumpstart and keep alive businesses and households that the “too big to fail” megabanks no longer want to fund on fair credit terms.  Adding a state-owned bank would also bring competition to regional banking markets such as that of the San Francisco Bay area, which are now dominated by out-of-state megabanks.  By funding state-owned banks, the Fed could inject “liquidity” where it is most needed, in local markets where workers are hired and real goods and services are sold. 

Ellen Brown is an attorney and the author of eleven books.  In Web of Debt, her latest book, she shows how the Federal Reserve and “the money trust” have usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are webofdebt.com, ellenbrown.com, and public-banking.com.

BP spill: White House says oil has gone, but Gulf’s fishermen are not so sure

Counsellors and lawyers are busier than seafarers in Louisiana, as some experts warn that fishing industry will never recover

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• Suzanne Goldenberg
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 6 September 2010 19.33 BST
• Article history

An oyster boat sails past anchored fishing vessels on a waterway in Yscloskey, Louisiana. Fishermen fear that the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will cause longterm harm to their industry. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

High tide, and the remains of a late summer storm, and it is hard to tell on this strip of land between the Mississippi and the marsh where land ends and water begins. It was here – in the most southerly reaches of Louisiana on terrain that is slowly sliding into the sea – that oil from BP’s Macondo well first started coming ashore, about a week after the 20 April explosion on the Deepwater Horizon. Eleven men were killed when the drilling platform blew up.

And it is here where local people will take the most convincing that the worst of the oil spill is behind them and that recovery is under way.

Barack Obama’s point man on the spill, the US Coast Guard’s former commander, Thad Allen, said at the weekend that the well no longer posed any threat to the Gulf. Crews will begin the last few remaining operations needed to abandon the well this week.

People here live and die by the water. On a fine day the docks in Venice empty out, with seaworthy boats and able-bodied crew off to look for oil contamination, at sea and in the marsh grass.

No one, it seems, believes the assurances from the White House or government scientists that the oil is largely gone. And no one really believes BP when oil company executives say they will stay in Louisiana for the long haul.

They have seen one exodus already, just before Tropical Storm Bonnie blew through, about a week after the well was capped in mid-July. BP evacuated work crews and boats; many have not returned.

“Oh, the oil’s out there,” said a captain of one of the air boats chewing through the marsh. When the water is clear the oil pops out like a giant black teardrop. He said the air boats were carrying away up to 3,000 white plastic trash bags of oiled sand from a nearby section of marsh each day. “We’ll be here for at least a year – if they still want us, that is.”

The autumn shrimping season opened on schedule on 16 August and the authorities have steadily been opening up more of the Gulf for fishing. About 83% of US waters in the Gulf are now open for fishing. The first tests on shrimp, swordfish and tuna hauled out of the Gulf showed no traces of oil.

But Acy Cooper, who wears a shrimpers’ white rubber boots even on days when he is not fishing, is possessed by a powerful sense of dread. How can we know for sure that the shrimp is safe from crude or its toxic components? He has seen oil in certain shrimping areas.

“We are only going to get one shot at this. If we don’t do it right, we are going to be in big trouble if any tainted shrimp gets on the market,” he said. “We don’t want to get anything on the market that is going to kill us in the long run.”

Not even the most stringent testing can ensure that fishermen stay out of oiled waters – not when some fishermen have been out of work since late April. “Some people are so hungry they are going to do what they can to survive,” Cooper said.

Already the local economy is being transformed. On noticeboards, cards for mental health services and lawyers offering to sue BP are tacked on top of advertisements for fishing guides. It is getting harder to find a market for fish.

The other day George Barisich, the head of the United Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, had to drive all the way into Mississippi before he could find a processor who wanted his shrimp. He said he was reduced to selling for just $1.40 (90p) per pound.

Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency have been on local radio shows, such as Talk of the Bayou, trying to persuade fishermen like Cooper they have nothing to fear.

“So far we haven’t seen a bit of evidence the oil is getting real deep in the marsh,” said Jacqueline Michel, a NOAA biochemist.

Only 22 of the 2,000 water samples taken from the Gulf contained traces of oil, and none has permeated deep into the wetlands, which are breeding grounds for shrimp.

The callers were not buying it, and neither was Cooper. He worries that the last few months may have ruined the fisherman’s life for some.

Although local people complain that BP gave too many jobs to outsiders rather than locals for cleanup work, some taken on have become used to earning good money – even when they were waiting around at the marina – on the oil company’s “vessels of opportunity” programme for the cleanup.

Cooper is worried they may give up on shrimping, now that it’s such an uncertain occupation.

“We are on the verge of losing this industry,” he said. “The chain is broken with the vessels of opportunity.”

For Al Sunseri that chain stretches back to 1876 when his family set up the P&J Oyster Company on the edges of New Orleans’ French quarter.

He still turns up for work at 4.30am, but there are no workers shucking oysters on the loading dock. Eleven people have been let go.

Premium oysters are a vanishing commodity. Those oysters not killed by the oil were finished off by the Louisiana government’s decision to flood the Gulf with fresh water to try to keep the oil offshore.

Sunseri now occupies his time taking orders on a clipboard, trying to mollify the desperate chefs who are his main customer base. He is running dangerously low on shucked oysters.

He asks callers if they could get by with a smaller order. “I am just going to have to tell people I don’t have them and that is not something that I am used to doing,” he said.

The shortage has pushed the price of oysters in the shell up 40% since the spill. That is too rich in the depths of a recession – even for a luxury product. Sunseri also worries that what oysters he can find are of variable quality.

“I know they say about 40% of the oyster growing area is open but as far as productive areas, it is maybe about 15%,” he said. “We don’t have babies, and we don’t have the market-sized ones.”

He moves over to a tabletop display of oyster shells. Those that are being harvested are about half normal size. “These would ordinarily not be harvested for another year,” he said.

“They really should be in there developing. The few little oysters that I am selling right now are really inferior.”

Even industry cheerleader Mike Voisin, who chairs the Louisiana Oyster Task Force, admits it will be three years before the oyster beds resettle. Until then, he says, the harvest will probably fall to half of the usual 113,000 tonne annual take.

The timespan is depressing for Sunseri. He said he is telling his children: “Your daddy does not care if this business fizzles away. Don’t feel the burden of carrying this on.”

For Ryan Lambert, who once counted himself the biggest fishing charter operator around Venice, such acceptance is unthinkable. He is much too angry to be resigned.

The spill left him with a calendar showing week after week of cancelled bookings, gutting a business that once brought in $1.3m a year.

By BP’s reckoning though, his losses were just $66,000. Lambert is furious. He said he has paid his accountant hundreds of dollars to meet BP’s demands for documentation. “I shouldn’t have to fight for the money that is owed me,” he said. “I am not the bad guy here. They are the ones who ruined it for me, not vice versa. For me to have to fight for them to pay me for what they did makes me sick.”

He is also worried sick that the fish will start disappearing, as they did in the years after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, and that his business will be dealt a slow, painful death.

He built his company from scratch, starting from his love of bass fishing; now his clients troop into his fishing lodge from all across the country. He rebuilt once before, after Hurricane Katrina. He is not sure he can do it again, or wait for the Gulf to make a full recovery.

“I am 52 years old. I can’t wait 20 years for them to clean things up.”

He feels certain BP will pull out much sooner. “The well will be stopped, and then they will hang around until the oil stops coming up on the beaches, and then they will be gone,” he said.

“Anything they don’t clean will be left to me and the microbes and Mother Nature until all of a sudden we won’t be America’s best fishery any more.

“This will be history some day, and I will still have that problem.”

Voices on the ground

‘On television they are saying all the time that there is no oil. What BP did is that they succeeded in buying off the White House and Congress and most of the senators, and now they are buying off the networks’

Dean Blanchard, shrimp magnate

‘The oil is still very in the coastal areas, it’s still coming up along the beaches, and it’s in the bottom offshore as well as in the bays and estuaries. A lot needs to be addressed before BP says it has all been attended to’

Wilma Subra, chemist

‘The only silver lining that is going to come out of this is that the goverment and the country are going to understand the importance of the Gulf’

George Barisich, president, United Commercial Fishermen’s Association

‘Ironically, this catastrophe may in the end run have more impact on oil leasing programmes than on the Gulf of Mexico … We recognise now that we have something much more like a nuclear reactor on our hands than a wood-burning stove and that is an awreness that is new to the federal government, new ot the public, and new to Congress’

Oliver Houck, environmental law professor at Tulane University

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  MPs to question BP rig operator amid fears of similar disaster in North Sea

  Head of Transocean, which operated destroyed Deepwater Horizon oil rig, to be asked about safety and deepwater drilling

• BP, battered but still standing, faces up to its post-oil spill future

• Oil industry regulation: scepticism over new sheriff in the wild wild west

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Ripping Off Dead War Vets’ Beneficiaries
By Stephen Lendman
9-5-10

 

Wall Street and other financial scammers do it from the living, Prudential and many insurers from the dead, ripping off families of killed war vets. On July 28, Bloomberg.com’s David Evans discussed how it works in an article titled, “Fallen Soldiers’ Families Denied Cash as Insurers Profit,” a polite way of explaining grand theft. From the living, it’s bad enough, from the dead, it gives chutzpah new meaning, affecting countless thousands of bereaved families.   Evans wrote about one, Cindy Lohman. Two weeks after her son Ryan was killed, she received a Prudential Financial, Inc. “9-inch-by-12-inch envelope,” the company managing life insurance for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).   A letter explained. As his beneficiary, she was entitled to $400,000 in death benefits along with something looking like a checkbook. The funds “would be placed in a convenient interest-bearing account, allowing her time to decide how to use” them, the letter saying:   “You can hold the money in the account for safekeeping for as long as you like,” plus a disclaimer in easily overlooked fine print, explaining “what it called its Alliance Account,” a non-FDIC insured scheme, a ripoff to defraud beneficiaries like Lohman.   After leaving the funds untouched for months, she tried unsuccessfully using one of the “checks,” then failed a second time. She was “shocked,” saying she thought the money was FDIC insured, in a bank, to be used freely.   Not so. The “checks” were drafts or IOUs. “That money – like $28 billion in 1 million death-benefit accounts managed by (130 insurers like Prudential) wasn’t actually sitting in a bank.” It was in Prudential’s general corporate account earning income – around 4.8% for insurers, 1% or less for survivors. This summer it was 0.5%, less than half what some banks pay on jumbo CDs, and way less than insurers yield on their investments.   “It’s a betrayal,” said Lohman. “It saddens me as an American that a company would stoop so low as to make a profit on the death of a soldier. Is there anything lower than that?”   For sure – waging an illegal war of aggression, sending young men and women to die for a lie, Ryan Lohman one of thousands affected (plus others maimed and disabled for life), their deaths compounded by insurance fraud ripping of their survivors, and VA officials doing nothing to stop it, claiming ignorance when they damn well knew or easily could have found out. For every branch of government, the business of America is business, the public their patsies to be scammed of their money, health and welfare.   So-Called “Retained-Asset” Accounts   They’ve become standard practice “in an industry that touches virtually every American: There are more than 300 million active life insurance policies in the US, and the industry holds $4.6 trillion in assets, according to the American Council of Life Insurers.”   Insurers tell survivors their money is safe, guaranteed by them not the government, making them woefully unsafe when investments are ripped off, and the principal depends on the company’s health.   According to Jeffrey Stempel, Law Professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law, the “checkbook” system cheats survivors.   “It’s institutionalized bad faith. In my view, this is a scheme to defraud by inducing the policyholder’s beneficiary to let the life insurance company retain assets they’re not entitled to. It’s turning death claims into a profit center,” and Washington lets them get away with it.   Three firms, including Prudential and Metropolitan Life, handle retained-asset accounts for about 130 life insurers. No public records show how much, but at least $28 billion is involved.   Besides scamming beneficiaries, insurance companies may be violating federal bank law – a 1933 statute making it “a felony for any company to accept deposits without state or federal authorization.” Only chartered banks and credit unions can do it. Insurers aren’t chartered or regulated, so funds they hold for beneficiaries will disappear if they go under.   Further, the bogus Obama administration “financial reform” doesn’t address retained-asset accounts, only a new federal insurance office with no teeth. The same holds for the entire bill, a gift to Wall Street and big insurers, small investors left unprotected, or as one analyst explained – “austerity” for the public, high times for the big boys, and why not. They wrote the bill and got what they want as they did for “healthcare reform” and everything else Congress enacts, corporate occupied territory like the White House and all federal agencies. How else could Wall Street and insurers like Prudential commit fraud and get away with it.   Pru and Met Life alone rip off hundreds of millions of dollars annually, stealing one of their main profit centers with no accountability. Since 1999, the VA let Prudential send survivors “checkbooks” for its Alliance Account. “In 2009 alone, (recipient) families….were supposed to be paid” $1 billion in death benefits “immediately, according to their insurance policies. They weren’t.”   Pru VA policies offer either a lump sum payment or 36 monthly installments. About 90% choose the former and get a “checkbook,” not a cashable check. Yet under a 2008 law, recipients have one year to put their funds into a tax-free Roth IRA. Lohman said Pru never told her. Unless Congress corrects the fraud, she and other recipients “will remain a secret profit center for the life insurance industry,” their officials robbing the graves of dead soldiers.   Parents Sue for Lost Benefits   On August 30, AP reported that the parents of six dead soldiers “are suing Prudential Financial, saying it paid paltry interest on military life insurance benefits while keeping more generous” payouts for itself.   Filed in Springfield, MA US District Court, it accuses Pru of using “bookkeeping maneuvers,” misrepresenting how benefits are handled. “Their attorneys are seeking class-action status” for potentially tens of thousands of others.   One of four attorneys involved, Cristobal Bonifaz, said lost interest varies, “depending on how quickly beneficiaries withdrew the money,” those leaving it untouched (the great majority) owed the most, as much as $30,000 per recipient.   “What we’re saying to Prudential is, ‘You kept investing the money, but that money did not belong to you as of the day that person died, and whatever you made off it, you should give to those persons it was meant for.”   Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. Plaintiffs in the current suit are parents of soldiers who died in Iraq, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and those dying after returning home.   Lead plaintiffs, Kevin and Joyce Lucey, spoke for many saying: “It’s totally unacceptable for any company to think they can treat any family that has gone through this kind of trauma, especially military families. (We) think it becomes part of our responsibility to make sure no one has to go through anything similar to this.”   Given Washington’s complicity with banksterism, insurance fraud, and numerous other corporate scams, imagine how many others haven’t come to light. Imagine also the challenges ordinary people face for restitution, even by class-action, deep-pocketed bigness and business-friendly courts huge hurdles to overcome, plus interminable litigation years, especially when high stakes are involved.   Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.   http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Christians: Beware the fox in the hen house and the Bible Literacy Project

By: Devvy
September 5, 2010

Separation of Church and State has been a very lucrative business for the ACLU and AU (Americans United for the Separation of Church and State) for over a half century. They prowl the country looking for the right chicken to pluck.

Only someone who has put their brain on idle for the past 25 years can deny the attack on Christianity in this country is (1) real and in your face, and (2) a serious and constant war to wear down the American people. Get rid of the Ten Commandment anywhere in public! Why rot the minds of members of Congress and other elected offices with God’s commandments: no lying, stealing, adultery, or murder (abortion). Useful fools throughout this country are increasingly taking to protecting the barbaric, totalitarian system called Islam masquerading as a religion, while accepting the massive assault on Christianity.

Funny thing, though, history doesn’t back up all the blathering by those who work so hard to shut out God in America. Take for instance The New England Primer of 1777:

“In the early colonial period, reading the Bible was the primary reason and motivation for learning to read. For example, in 1647, the “Old Deluder Act” was passed by the Massachusetts General Court required every township with 50 or more families to hire a teacher.  Similar legislation quickly spread to the other New England colonies, being the first step towards compulsory education. The preamble was explicit that knowledge of the Scriptures was the chief goal, and that “one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, [is] to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures” (see text with original spelling and typesetting represented in Ford, and an modernized spelling rendering of the text is found here). Illiterate people were at the mercy of other people for their knowledge of God and His Word, and  inaccessibility to the Bible had fomented centuries of darkness prior to the Reformation. Indeed the appearance of early primers in England has been connected directly to the beginning of the Reformation. Only literate people could have the privilege of direct, independent access to God’s revelation.

“This connection and between learning the alphabet and learning Scripture and doctrine is pervasive in The New England Primer. And the concern that children come to know Christ as Savior and Lord is obvious. By the modern taste, specific language in the Primer is frequently termed stern and morbid. Our modern culture tries to avoid the recognition of death. But to the colonial culture, where death was ever present, the reality of coming to know Christ before one’s demise was of urgent concern. The truth spoken in verses such as “As runs the Glass our life does pass” (for letter ‘G’) is irrefutable–albeit unpopular.

“The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Schools throughout the country, as well as counties and local municipalities, have been under attack for decades by threats of lawsuits or actual lawsuits by the ACLU and the AU for even whispering the word God. All based on the First Amendment.

Now, let me give you an example. After 9/11 our nation is in anguish and pain. A school puts God Bless America up on their marquee. In marches those pious (oops) bastions of constitutional enforcement, ACLU lawyers. Why, you can’t put that on your marquee – it violates separation of church and state! Do you hear me? We will sue!

Go back and read the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Did Congress come into Smith County School District to make a law establishing any religion? Well, no. Congress has never done such a thing, yet toxic organizations who purport to support the First Amendment and “everyone’s right to worship” constantly use threats of lawsuits to convince everyone that a simple statement on a school marquee translates to Congress coming into the school district and establishing a religion.

How about the Ten Commandments on display at the Supreme Court building in Alabama? Those of us who were outraged over the removal of Chief Justice Roy Moore from the Alabama Supreme Court remember very well:

“U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled the granite carving was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. Moore refused to obey the order but was overruled by his eight colleagues on the state Supreme Court.”

Let’s apply that monument sitting on display with the words in the First Amendment because words have meaning: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Now, did Congress sweep into the State of Alabama and make a law establishing any religion as a result of that monument sitting there? Well, no.

A federal judge, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, appointed by Jimmy Carter, decided to rewrite the First Amendment: A display of the Ten Commandments anywhere in public buildings or in front of a public building constitutes establishing Christianity as an official religion by Congress in the State of Alabama. That’s exactly what Thompson’s ruling said. A violation of church and state. Hooey!

What did Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story have to say about the matter back in 1833, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States?

“The whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the State governments, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice and the State Constitutions.”

That quote comes from a book that should be read by Americans so they can get actual historical facts about the issue of religion when this nation was birthed and for centuries to come: The Original 13: A Documentary History of Religion in America’s First Thirteen States by William J. Federer. I’m sure it drives atheists and the other God-hating organization nuts, but they are historical facts. I have never and do not endorse any state of the Union establishing any religion, but tens of millions of us are fed up with the ACLU and AU and their never ending lawsuits based on a local high school football team violating church and state because they willingly decide to say a little prayer before a game.

How about my state’s constitution?

The Texas Constitution Preamble

Humbly invoking the blessings of Almighty God, the people of the State of Texas, do ordain and establish this Constitution.

How about California’s State Constitution?

California Constitution – Preamble

We, the People of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure and perpetuate its blessings, do establish this Constitution.

How about the State of Vermont?

Article 3rd. Freedom in religion; right and duty of religious worship (notes) — That all persons have a natural and unalienable right, to worship Almighty God, according to the dictates of their own consciences and understandings, as in their opinion shall be regulated by the word of God;…Nevertheless, every sect or denomination of Christians ought to observe the sabbath or Lord’s day, and keep up some sort of religious worship, which to them shall seem most agreeable to the revealed will of God.

Why hasn’t the ACLU or the AU sued to force any state of the Union to take those “offensive” words out of their state constitutions? Why? Because they would lose. The ACLU and AU prey on school districts and municipalities who cave rather than face monster legal bills.

Please remember that communism cannot take root and grow in a country until God is driven out. The communitarian doctrine is the communist morality. This is important to understand. Communitarianism is a toxic, evil doctrine. Communitarian policy does not get  enough attention, but it’s critical you take the time to learn because it’s the poison is being inculcated in your child’s brain; children and college students.

 I’m old enough to remember prayer in public school. I’m also old enough to see the complete and total meltdown of a moral nation into one of decadent sewage since prayer was taken out of schools.

Over the years truly Herculean efforts have been underway by dedicated organizations like the National Council On Bible Curriculum In Public Schools; board members include Chuck Norris and his wife. I have been truly awed by their work as well as so many others (too many to name) to right the wrong regarding any mention of God or the Bible in public schools. Before anyone reaches for the phone to call the ACLU, here is their mission statement:

“A program is underway to serve the public through educational efforts concerning a First Amendment right and religious freedom issue. This is to bring a state certified Bible course (elective) into the public high schools nationwide.

“The curriculum for the program shows a concern to convey the content of the Bible as compared to literature and history. The program is concerned with education rather than indoctrination of students. The central approach of the class is simply to study the Bible as a foundation document of society, and that approach is altogether appropriate in a comprehensive program of secular education.”

Programs are now being taught in America’s schools in exactly the context described above. But, there is a problem with one of the textbooks and content. There is also the age old problem of the fox in the hen house and in this case, one who has tremendous influence.

The textbook I refer to is The Bible and Its Influence (Bible Literacy Project). I have the ‘Student Text’ and the Teacher’s Edition right in front of me.

This textbook is from the Bible Literacy Project. The only problem is that it contains a slew of problematic passages. Many well known pastors and reverends have stepped forward to voice their objection to this textbook; see a list here.Those who have done the hard research about the Bible Literacy Project are shocked that popular Christian leader and cultural commentator, Chuck Colson, continues to support the BLP despite being told the truth about that operation. One has to wonder why?

See these two images?

They are the opening pages of the student text which can be purchased from Amazon. One name that sticks out is Charles Haynes who is a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center. Now, you might ask just why are so many Christians fighting the Bible Literacy Project and in particular, Charles Haynes? What is it you should know about the BLP, Charles Haynes and the Communitarian Network? Here is an excellent piece written by Alabama State Senator, Scott Beason:

The deception of the Bible Literacy Project
April 10, 2008

“Virtually banned from American schools in the early ’60s, the Bible has faced a rising onslaught of wrath, ridicule and legal assaults. So, why after all these years would liberal opponents suddenly turn and support a textbook titled, “The Bible and Its Influence”? Why such enthusiastic acclaim for a controversial curriculum published for public schools by the Bible Literacy Project?

“The answer may lie behind a man by the name of Charles Haynes, a key player in the work of the Bible Literacy Project.

* Charles Haynes, of the innocuous-sounding Freedom Forum / First Amendment Center, has written an article entitled “When the Government Prays, No One Wins,” in which he infers that the National Day of Prayer should be declared illegal. This has been published nationwide (see last article on page).

* Charles Haynes co-authors books with the Council On Islamic Education, which also endorses the guidelines by which “The Bible and Its Influence” was written.

* Charles Haynes serves on the Board of the Pluralism Project, along with a Wiccan high priestess, Margot Adler.

* Charles Haynes is the author of a Communitarian manifesto on religious education. In addition, Haynes authored “Public Schools and Sexual Orientation: A First Amendment Framework”, which is endorsed by the radical Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network.

“The Communitarian Network has been written about by both Joseph Farah, founder of WorldNetDaily, and Gen. Ben Partin. Farah says, “The best I can decipher of this popular new idea of Communitarianism is that it is not a new idea at all. To put it in its simplest form, I would describe it as a form of communism for people who believe in God.” Partin says that the bottom line of the Communitarians is to bring in communism. Six members of the Board of Directors and Advisory Board for the Bible Literacy Project are signatories to the Communitarian Platform.

* Charles Haynes was a project director for the liberal Americans United for Separation of Church and State (Washington Times by Larry Whitham, July 27, 1990, “Teachers Study Role of Religion in History”).

* Charles Haynes was a contributor, reviewer, and consultant to the Bible Literacy Project’s textbook, “The Bible and Its Influence.”

* The Bible Literacy Project textbook has an almost full-page promotion of UNESCO (page 365). (UNESCO’s first director-general, socialist Julian Huxley, laid the foundation for today’s global education. Pointing to facilitated group dialogue as the solution, he wrote, “The task before UNESCO … is to the help the emergence of a single world culture. …”).

“The textbook by the Bible Literacy Project, “The Bible and Its Influence,” incorporates the Hegelian dialectic process outlined in “Finding Common Ground: A First Amendment Guide to Religion and Public Education” by Charles Haynes and ACLU author/lawyer Oliver Thomas. Thus, schoolchildren learn “about the Bible” through a pre-planned group process that twists the Bible into the evolving ideals of the planned global spirituality.”

There’s an old saying: Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

If you are concerned about what your child is being taught, then please read the full column above.

The “I’m too busy” excuse is no excuse when it comes to what propaganda is being pumped in your child’s head at school and who is priming them for spiritual disaster. I am a strong supporter of the goals of the many, many fine organizations all across America who have worked so hard to bring the Bible back into the class room for study, but I also know from being an activist full time in the trenches for two decades that the deceivers are draped in the American flag. Their target is your child. Don’t let that happen. Do not support the Bible Literacy Project or any of the players like Charles Haynes, their foundations or centers.

Once you do the homework, I hope parents by the millions will demand their schools remove and stop using The Bible and Its Influence (Bible Literacy Project). If the school refuses, put it in writing that your child will not participate in being taught dangerous and anti-Biblical material. Rise up and stand firm on this because your child’s soul is at stake.

“The National Council on Bible Curriculum has been voted into 555 school districts (2,061 high schools) in 38 states. Over 360,000 students have already taken this course nationwide, on the high school campus, during school hours, for credit. I have devoted many hours to studying this and fully endorse and support their program.”  Talk to your school district policy makers and tell them you want the National Council on Bible Curriculum used and not any books or materials from the Bible Literacy Project. Stand firm.

I’ll tell you something else and this is just my personal opinion. I believe without hesitation or doubt that those who fought for and birthed this constitutional republic were divinely inspired and driven to define for the whole world what freedom and liberty really means. They believed our rights come from God and not government. Look at how America has not only ignored God’s laws, but has become one awash in immoral degeneracy while gradually accepting a nation without God. Like secular conservatives.  Like the rotten, corrupt and morally bankrupt politicians in this country.

The people of this country had better get down on their knees, as George Washington did at Valley Forge, humbly beg God’s forgiveness and ask him to help us as we fight evil in human form. Without his blessing, we will fail and our republic will fall.

Important Links:

Media’s “Go-To” Man on Religion in Public Schools Has Conflict of Interest
The real Charles Haynes

Charles Haynes and Communitarianism

2nd VP Southern Baptist Convention Still Says No to Bible Literacy Project
Ltr from Dr. James Kennedy denouncing the Bible Literacy Project (scroll down)

ACLU fulfilling communist agenda

Connecticut School Removes Lord Reference in High School Diplomas
“We certainly don’t want to offend anyone”

Really? That dolt should read his own state constitution:

Constitution of the State of Connecticut – Preamble
“The People of Connecticut acknowledging with gratitude, the good providence of God;”

Music can be banned if it even sounds religious
No crosses for the fallen
America, 2010: Christians hauled to jail for preaching Jesus
Bible finally allowed in Florida school
Mention of ‘God’ stops kindergarten field trip
“I didn’t know it was a sin saying ‘God’ in America.”

Board enraged by any mention of ‘God’
Dispute over teacher’s patriotic banners escalates

This is a perfect example of the absolute stupidity and hysterical nonsense going on in schools. One banner reads:

All Men are created Equal. They are endowed by their Creator.

Where have you read those words before? The Declaration of Independence

Perhaps the fact challenged board at that school should go back to school and learn something besides political correctness.

More insanity and stupidity:

Georgia Senior Citizens Told They Can’t Pray Before Meals

“If there’s one thing Mayor Glenn “Pig” Jones can’t stomach, it’s telling elderly citizens at a local senior citizens center that they can’t pray before meals.

“But Jones, mayor of Port Wentworth, Ga., a town of roughly 3,000 near Savannah, has been doing just that since last week, when the company that provides food for the seniors — with federal funding — determined that saying an organized prayer before meals violates the separation of church and state.”

First of all, Congress has no legal authority to steal the fruits of your labor to provide funds for senior meals in any state. That is the domain of the State Legislatures.
Second, tell the state to find a new company to provide the meals paid for by their taxpayers.

America’s Christian Roots

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Devvy Kidd authored the booklets, Why A Bankrupt America and Blind Loyalty; two million copies distributed. Devvy appears on radio shows all over the country. She left the Republican Party in 1996 and has been an independent voter ever since. Devvy is a constitutionalist who believes in the supreme law of the land, not some political party.

Visit Devvy’s website at: http://www.devvy.com. You can also sign up for her free email alerts. Devvy’s radio show broadcasts Mon-Fri. To listen, go to: http://www.devvy.com/new_site/rense_show.html

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Kinect’s Israeli partner sees a remoteless world

Israeli partner of Microsoft’s new Kinect game controller envisions a remote-free future

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Tia Goldenberg, Associated Press Writer, On Saturday September 4, 2010, 10:48 am EDT

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Inon Beracha envisions a world where your movements control the gadgets and devices around you. There’s no remote control to lose, no buttons to push. The air conditioner senses your presence and changes the temperature to your liking.

Controlling your surroundings with the wave of a hand sounds like magic, but Beracha’s company, PrimeSense, is already making headway, thanks to a little help from video games.

PrimeSense’s 3-D camera is a key component of Microsoft Corp.’s Kinect motion- and voice-control technology for the Xbox 360 game system. Coming this fall, Kinect will let people play games and watch movies on the Xbox with no wand, controller, mat or remote. It recognizes users’ gestures and voices, so you can control on-screen characters in racing, action and sports games simply by speaking or moving your body. If it’s a hit, it could pave the way for a remoteless future.

Beracha and his PrimeSense colleagues see their technology as an integral part of the home of the future. PrimeSense already has other collaborations in the works, with TVs and PCs fitted with its device targeted for next year.

“Our vision is to see this technology become ubiquitous, in every consumer device,” said Beracha, PrimeSense CEO.

Several companies have developed depth-sensing cameras. Another Israeli company, 3DV Systems, developed one that determined the depth of the picture with a technique similar to radar. Microsoft snapped up that company in 2009, but didn’t use its camera for the Kinect.

The camera from 3DV was relatively sophisticated and expensive. PrimeSense’s, by contrast, is a fairly standard one that you might find in any Web camera, according to Adi Berenson, the company’s vice president of business development.

The setup is able to determine depth because the camera is paired with a projector that emits invisible, infrared light in a complicated speckle pattern. The camera picks up how the pattern is distorted when it hits objects. At a distance of 7 feet, it can distinguish depth differences of less than an inch, Berenson said. That’s enough to decipher gestures and hand movements. At a distance of 3 feet, the resolution is finer, and facial expressions can be distinguished.

Kinect also has a microphone that picks up the location of sounds, helping the system understand its surroundings. Microsoft’s software ties the components together.

Microsoft is counting on Kinect to lure people who haven’t traditionally been interested in video games. The company will start selling it in the U.S. for $150 on Nov. 4 and elsewhere at around the same time.

The founders of PrimeSense all hail from Israel, which has evolved from a farming nation into a high-tech powerhouse, known for its many startups and developments in communications, software and military technology.

The company started with Aviad Maizels, who worked in research and design for Israel’s military intelligence service. He was looking for a better way to interact with consumer devices, and games in particular. He teamed up with Alexander Shpunt, now the company’s chief technology officer, who came up with the camera system, building on the work of others on speckle patterns for depth-sensing.

The company got started in 2005. Its goal isn’t to make the gadgets. Rather the Tel Aviv-based company makes the sensor system and seeks others to embed it in products. Microsoft was the first to bite, Beracha said.

PrimeSense’s technology brings to mind the 2002 movie “Minority Report,” where Tom Cruise shifts documents and pictures around on a screen using a special glove. But with a depth-sensing camera, you wouldn’t need a glove to do the same thing. PrimeSense has made the hardware from the film — set in 2054 — look obsolete.

As is often the case with new technologies, gaming provides the first toe-hold. In four or five years, Beracha believes we can see a home furnished by gesture-controlled TVs and other electronics.

He acknowledged that PrimeSense’s technology may not be for every device or every consumer. Without an actual remote to tear away, parents may struggle with children refusing to turn off the TV. Some users may have a hard time completely letting go of remotes, he said.

The ultimate goal of the PrimeSense is “for humans and devices to live seamlessly side-by-side, so that we don’t have to do anything special for devices to work,” said Maizels, PrimeSense’s president.

AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson in New York contributed to this report.

Apple refreshes iTunes software, updates iPods

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Sep 1, 8:45 PM (ET)

By JESSICA MINTZ and JORDAN ROBERTSON

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Users of Apple Inc.’s iTunes software will now be able to see what songs their friends are buying and where their favorite bands are playing next.

These social features are part of Ping, a new Apple service akin to Facebook, Twitter and other popular social networks.

People can sign up, then find friends, acquaintances and public figures to “follow.” As with Facebook and Twitter, Ping will deliver a stream of updates, showing friends’ iTunes purchases and other information. Ping will also generate a personalized top-10 music chart based on what friends buy or listen to.

Apple says Ping is an optional service; people can choose to keep their music purchases and other iTunes actions private.

Ping doesn’t have to rival Facebook or Twitter in popularity to be a success, Forrester analyst James McQuivey said. He said Ping just needs to help Apple sell a few more songs.

The social feature is the first obvious sign that Apple is integrating technology from the music startup Lala.com, which it bought last year.

Lala also gave members a peek at what music friends were playing. And it had developed – but never introduced – an iPhone app that would have allowed users unlimited streaming of songs for 10 cents each.

Apple, however, gave no indication Wednesday that it might be working on a Lala-inspired streaming music service, which might let people access their vast iTunes music libraries remotely instead of having to download and store them individually.

Other companies are set to benefit from Ping, including Live Nation Entertainment Inc., which powers the concert listings of the new Ping music discovery tool. CEO Michael Rapino said in a statement he was “thrilled” to take part in the plan, which he said will help sell tickets through LiveNation.com and Ticketmaster.com.

At a media event in San Francisco, Jobs also showed off a line of revamped iPods. Among them was a smaller, button-free iPod Nano that people control with swipes across its touch screen.

Apple also added a front-facing video camera to the iPod Touch so that people can use it for video chats using Apple’s FaceTime software, which was previously available only on the iPhone 4. The iPod Touch also got a new, sharper screen and a camera on the back for taking photos and recording video.

A new iPod Shuffle brings back buttons that Apple did away with in the most recent version.

Jobs also said Apple is updating the software that runs iPhones, the iPod Touch and the iPad. Next week, iPhone and iPod Touch users can get the free iOS 4.1, which adds the ability to upload high-definition video over Wi-Fi and improves the quality of photos taken with the devices.

The iPad, which currently runs an older version of iOS, will catch up to its siblings in November. It will get multitasking and other features Apple introduced in iOS 4, plus features such as wireless printing from the tablet. Apple had been criticized for making a powerful device but hobbling it by not including any ports for USB devices such as printers or thumb drives.

—

Mintz reported from Seattle. AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima in Los Angeles contributed to this report.