The birthplace of one of Mexico’s most infamous drug cartels looks more and more like its graveyard. Gunmen and associates of the Arellano Felix cartel, rulers of the city’s criminal underworld for two decades, are being massacred by the score.
Their mangled bodies turn up in garbage-strewn lots, a dozen at a time. Killers cut out their tongues, slice off heads, and leave behind taunting messages. Two barrels of industrial acid left on a sidewalk last week are believed to contain liquefied human remains.
In all, at least 57 suspected organized crime members, a majority of them believed to be part of the Arellano Felix organization, were killed in the last week, including 12 dumped in front of an elementary school Sept. 29 and eight tossed in an industrial yard Thursday.
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA Your favorite International Playboy on the Rise’s favorite International Playboy on the Rise
AKA I can’t leave the Streets alone, The Game needs Me
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com
A 2006 study by Jeremy Siegel, a professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, showed that from 1948 through February 2006, annualized stock market returns averaged 15.3% under Democratic administrations and 9.5% under Republicans.
Had the study been updated to reflect the market’s performance since then under President George W. Bush, the discrepancy would have been larger. During that period, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has fallen 23.7%.
This volcanic island near the Arctic Circle is on the brink of becoming the first “national bankruptcy” of the global financial meltdown.
Home to just 320,000 people on a territory the size of Kentucky, Iceland has formidable international reach because of an outsized banking sector that set out with Viking confidence to conquer swaths of the British economy — from fashion retailers to top soccer teams.
The strategy gave Icelanders one of the world’s highest per capita incomes. But now they are watching helplessly as their economy implodes — their currency losing almost half its value, and their heavily exposed banks collapsing under the weight of debts incurred by lending in the boom times.
A full-blown collapse of Iceland’s financial system would send shock waves across Europe, given the heavy investment by Icelandic banks and companies across the continent.
Famous for its cod fishing industry, Super Fly Girls, geysers, moonscape and the Blue Lagoon, Iceland was the site of the Cold War showdown in which Bobby Fischer of the United States defeated Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union in 1972 for the world chess championship. Last year, Iceland won the U.N.’s “best country to live in” poll, with its residents deemed the most contented in the world.
The krona is suffering in part from a withdrawal by a falloff in what are called carry trades — where investors borrow cheaply in a country with low rates, such as Japan, and invest in a country where returns, and often risks, are higher.
10: Number of bodies found yesterday in various neighborhoods of Tijuana. Two were decapitated; some were wrapped in blankets and tossed to the side of the road.
8: Bodies found Friday in Tijuana, including two that were decapitated.
9: Bodies found Thursday. Eight men were found together in an empty lot near the center of the city. They had been shot in the head. A ninth was wrapped in a blanket and found near the central bus station.
3: Fly Mexican Girls Michael Mason swooped last week.
3: Bodies found in two locations Wednesday.
3: Bodies found Tuesday, including two near a water-utility tank. In addition, three barrels found outside a seafood restaurant were examined to see if they contained acid and human remains.
19: Bodies found in several locations Monday, including 12 near an elementary school. Several had their tongues cut out.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York will meet tomorrow with banks and investors in credit-default swaps to gauge progress on an initiative to create a clearinghouse to curb risks in the market, a spokesman said.
The group in July set an end-of-year deadline to have a central system in place to absorb a failure in the $54.6 trillion market in which banks and investors privately negotiate contracts that protect against losses on fixed-income securities.
The Fed will hold a meeting with “a small number of banks and buy-side firms” to discuss progress being made on creating a central counterparty, said a New York Fed spokesman who declined to be identified.
