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Lessons From MF Global - Is Your Money at Risk?
One of the causes of the MF blow up is related to re-hypothecation. Most brokers and asset managers in the US are allowed to hypothecate and/or re-hypothecate assets held in customer margin accounts. This works similarly to a mortgage. You own your home, but the bank that holds your mortgage has a claim on that asset if you fail to pay. In other words, despite the fact that you are the owner of the asset, the bank has a "hypothetical" claim against that asset through the lien on your house -- thus the term hypothecation. More...
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Our Next "Lehman Moment" Is Coming Fast
Ah, then there's that little downgrade thing that happened on Friday after European markets were closed. Just because the downgrade of the U.S. from AAA to AA+ didn't cause our borrowing costs to rise doesn't mean it isn't going to happen in Euroland. It will happen. Downgrades will trigger new capital calls as margin requirements will increase to offset the lower quality of collateral, we're talking about the same collateral folks, the same sovereign bonds. It's an increasing pile, make that pyre, and it's going to self-ignite. More... |
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Wall Street's Ratings Agencies Undermine Europe's Attempt at Economic Recovery Acting Like Financial Terrorists
I could go on, but I don't have to. We are all living the decline with downward mobility, jobless and foreclosures, to cite a few trends that make life so miserable for so many. Now, our godlike financial ratings agencies have decided to degrade nine countries struggling to fix their financial crisis. The decision by Standard and Poors (Best renamed, "It is now Standard to Be Poor") to downgrade credit ratings for France, Italy, Austria and six other European countries signals those nations that Wall Street has them by the cojones. Their costs for borrowing will go up. They are being warned: We are in Charge. Do as we say! More... |
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The Mystery and Magic of Money
James Robertson, speaking in London in 2000, points out that the banks have been enjoying a free-lunch table for many years. In three decades there have been 97 bank crashes in the world. That's an average of more than three a year. There's surely a lesson here: |
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Plan to Keep Your Assets Safe From an Out-of-control Government
Most Americans still have yet to stick a single financial toe across the border, but more and more are considering it. Many, perhaps millions of toes are now twitching at the thought. Their owners want to end their absolute dependence on what happens in the US. They want to prepare for whatever is coming down the road, even though they don't know what it will be. They want to be as ready as possible, even though their worries can only guess at what's ahead. More... |
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The Fed Grants $7.77 Trillion in Secret Bank Loans Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a longtime advocate for reform of the Federal Reserve, is sharply criticizing the Federal Reserve today after Bloomberg news reported that the Federal Reserve secretly committed nearly $8 trillion in support to American and international financial institutions during the 2008 bailout. Kucinich recorded a video for his website before going to the floor of the House of Representatives to call upon Congress to reclaim its Constitution primacy over monetary policy. |
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Lessons for Europe From Argentina:Testing Ground for Engineering Financial Collapse
Clearly, this was a massive banker-orchestrated, government-backed robbery of the assets and savings of 40 million Argentinians.Half our population quickly fell below the poverty line, GDP contracted by almost 40% in 2002, millions lost their jobs, their savings, their homes to foreclosures, their livelihoods and yet… not one single bank folded or collapsed! So, "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrators, lend me your ears! You haven't got a chance! The global money masters already made their financial war game exercise in Argentina. More... |
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Pathogenesis of Central Bank Ruin
Big bank failures are coming. Unspeakable debt monetization is coming. Flash events are coming. More vanishing acts for private accounts are coming. Divergence in the gold price is coming that will shut down the COMEX altogether during a parade of lawsuits, but probably not prosecution. National debt defaults are coming. The new 2012 year will prove to be a tumultuous year, will chaos reigning and the global monetary system laid to waste. More... |
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The Bankers' New Gold
There are numerous implications regarding this latest bankster tactic to suppress the gold market, but before getting into those let's explore all of the reasons why bankers like "leasing gold" in the first place. The starting point is to note that it is with gold-leasing that we see the beginnings of the banksters' 100:1 leverage in the gold market. More... |
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Pulling Back the Curtain on the Wall Street Money Machine
We have been distracted here and in Europe by a sudden panic over our "sovereign debt" crises, when the real crisis is that our debt is NOT sovereign. We are indentured to a Wall Street money machine that creates our money and lends it back to us at interest, money our sovereign government could be creating itself, with full democratic oversight and accountability to the people. We have forgotten our roots, when the American colonists thrived on a system of money created by the people themselves, debt-free and interest-free. The continued dominance of the Wall Street money machine depends on that collective amnesia. The fact that this memory is surfacing again may be the machine's greatest threat—and our greatest hope as a nation. More... |
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Bank's leaked email admits "Occupy movement could impact our industry"
The financial website Zero Hedge has allegedly obtained a memo from Bank of America's field services operation warning, "We need to make sure we are all prepared." Vocal New York organizer Sean Barry told Raw Story Tuesday that an action known as "Occupy Our Homes" would place foreclosed and homeless families in otherwise-vacant homes. That effort began Tuesday with over 40 events in more than 20 cities. More... |
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One Bank to Rule Them All
Take a good look: This is the future of European democracy; one country after another stuffed into a fiscal straitjacket while their public assets are privatized, their unions are crushed, and their sovereignty is surrendered to unelected bankers and eurocrats. Europe is being handed over to big finance on a silver platter. This isn't a crisis; it's blackmail. More... |
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The Fed's 16 Trillion Dollar Bailout of the Too Big To Fail Banks
Not only did the Federal Reserve give 16.1 trillion dollars in nearly interest-free loans to the "too big to fail" banks, the Fed also paid them over 600 million dollars to help run the emergency lending program. According to the GAO, the Federal Reserve shelled out an astounding $659.4 million in "fees" to the very financial institutions which caused the financial crisis in the first place. In addition, it turns out that trillions of dollars of this bailout money actually went overseas. According to the GAO audit, approximately $3.08 trillion went to foreign banks in Europe and in Asia. More... |
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Bailout Bandits: The Biggest Borrowers From the U.S. Federal Reserve
That's evidently not true of the banking sector, however, whose massive financial-crisis windfall is just now coming to light. In its January issue, Bloomberg Markets magazine reveals that - at the March 9, 2009 nadir of the financial crisis - the U.S. Federal Reserve had committed $7.77 trillion to rescuing the American financial system. That total was more than half the value of all that was produced in the U.S. economy for that entire year. While this was going on however, it was a deep, dark secret. The Fed never let on, for instance, that American banks were in such deep trouble that they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 8, 2008 - "their neediest day," Bloomberg said. But here's the best part: Many of the biggest banks have ended up doing great as a result of the central bank's largesse. More... |
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Bankers have seized Europe: Goldman Sachs Has Taken Over
My opinion is based on the following facts. Goldman Sachs and US banks have guaranteed perhaps one trillion dollars or more of European sovereign debt by selling swaps or insurance against which they have not reserved. The fees the US banks received for guaranteeing the values of European sovereign debt instruments simply went into profits and executive bonuses. This, of course, is what ruined the American insurance giant, AIG, leading to the TARP bailout at US taxpayer expense and Goldman Sachs' enormous profits. More... |
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The Hallmark of the Fed is Duplicity, or, What's Risky is Safe
"President George W. Bush bestowed on his [then] intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye." What this means folks, if institutions like J.P. Morgan, Goldman or Morgan Stanley are deemed to be integral to U.S. National Security - can be "legally" excused from reporting their true financial condition – including KEEPING TWO SETS OF BOOKS. More... |
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The Goldman Rule: Don't Let This Puppet Master Pull Your Strings
The reality is that there is no revolving door. There are no doors at all. It is more like one giant corridor where all the water cooler talk is about paying for campaigns, paying lobbyists, and paying bonuses. There's a reason why Goldman Sachs is derisively referred to as "Government Sachs." The flow of executives and operatives between Goldman and Washington, and even other world governments and central banks for that matter, is legendary. I can't point out all the connections - there are simply too many. But I will point out a few that you may not be aware of. More... Check the article below to see how the financial industry is the top recipient of government subsidies. |
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Whirlwind Debt Crisis Ensures Gold $2000 Assured
The next PIIGS domino is soon to fall, for certain to take down Spanish Govt Bonds also. The new head of the EuroCB, the resplendent GSax pedigreed Mario Draghi, must cover the debt or watch the European Monetary Union crumble in a sea of fire. The central bank must make overt commitments of magnitude. If the crumble happens upon inaction, expect 20 Lehman events with numerous bank failures, starting with France. The conflagration would extend to London and New York. |
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The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth
The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. More... |
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The Continuing Zombification of the US Economy
As the economy becomes more zombified, the part of it dominated by these non-productive industries increases, leaving fewer resources for the productive part. And as the productive part weakens, so does the entire economy's ability to produce real wealth, or grow its way out of debt. More... |
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Time to turn outrage over bank fees toward entire financial industry
How many mutual funds, if faced with that kind of people-power backlash, could justify the management and marketing fees they're charging investors? How many banks would find their deposits running out the door if savers really took the time to shop around for the best rates? How many company 401(k) retirement savings plans would offer better investment choices if workers took an active role in monitoring the plans and agitating for improvements? None of this is easy — certainly not as easy as posting an angry comment on a blog trashing BofA. But the potential savings or added income for investors, savers and borrowers could far exceed the $60 a year that BofA would have siphoned away with the debit card fee. "Far too many consumers are sloppy with their finances," says Greg McBride, senior analyst at Bankrate.com. More... |
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The Pentagon's Planet of Bases
In a recent op-ed piece, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof made a trenchant point: "The United States maintains troops at more than 560 bases and other sites abroad, many of them a legacy of a world war that ended 65 years ago. Do we fear that if we pull our bases from Germany, Russia might invade?" The empire of bases, while still at or close to its height, is destined to shrink. The military is going to have to scale back its foreign footholds and lessen its global footprint in the years ahead. Economic realities will necessitate that. The choices the Pentagon makes today will likely determine on what terms its garrisons come home tomorrow. At the moment, they can still choose whether coming home will look like an act of magnanimous good statesmanship or inglorious retreat. More... |
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The Need For Monetary Reform
Thus the money issuing power should never be alienated from democratically elected government and placed ambiguously into private hands as it is in America in the Federal Reserve System today. Indeed, most people would be surprised to learn that the bulk of our money supply is not created by our government, but by private banks when they make loans. Through the Fed's fractional reserve process the system creates "money" when banks make loans into accounts; so most of our money is issued as interest-bearing debt. More... |
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US Corporations Moving to Offshore Tax Havens
Five years ago Congress passed legislation allowing $350 billion to be returned to the US at 5-1/4% taxation, not the normal 35%, because these corporations said they would use the funds to create jobs. Very few jobs were created and a large part of the funds were used to purchase company stock, which rose in value, allowing the officers of these corporations to sell stock from options and make billions of dollars in profit for themselves. These are the same corporations that have been responsible for the loss of 11.7 million jobs, the loss of good paying jobs 450,000 American companies and the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars in tax revenue. These corporations are responsible for the heart of American manufacturing being ripped out of America. It over time has spread as well into service and professional industries. More... The combined deficits of all 50 states is $250 billion. These untaxed profits could cover these deficits more than 3 times over. |
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When using cash is better than credit
MIT researchers found that people spend more if they are in a setting where they are able to use credit cards. Catherine Tucker, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, said, "I think the question is not whether consumers have a healthy relationship with cash, but whether they have an unhealthy relationship with credit cards." More... |
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Full-Blown Civil War Erupts On Wall Street
We need to keep in mind that the Federal Reserve has known about all of this criminal activity from the start. Yet, they have done everything they could, and are still trying, to keep this criminal operation up and running. As all these criminal banks begin to blow up, let's not forget who their central bank is and what they have done to the American people. More... |
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9 Trillion Dollars Missing from Federal Reserve Rep. Alan Grayson asks the Federal Reserve Inspector General about the trillions of dollars lent or spent by the Federal Reserve and where it went, and the trillions of off balance sheet obligations. Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman responds that the IG does not know and is not tracking where this money is.
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Big Banks Bonus Bonanza
Moreover, the $73 billion it would take to reset all underwater homeowners' principals and interest rates would be about half of the $143 billion the top six banks alone are getting ready to pay in 2010 in bonuses and compensation. Even if the top six banks were to absorb the full cost of modifying all underwater mortgages in the country, they would still have $70 billion left for bonuses and compensation. Instead of taking home $12.6 million like he did last year, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon would take home $6.1 million. He would still be one of the highest paid men in America. More... |
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The Next Financial Crisis Will Be Hellish, And It's On Its Way
Speaking in Tokyo, he pointed to derivatives, the financial hairball of futures, options, and swaps in which nearly all the world's major banks are tangled up. More... |
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How Deep is the Global Economic Rabbit Hole?
The economy is acting like a beloved plant you neglected and are now trying to bring back. What you don't know is that you killed 90% of the roots because you are deceived by a green shoot or two. You wake with the realization that your only real choice is to remove all the dead, repot it and prune it back to only what the remaining roots can support. Or you can be like the world's governments and economic leaders – flood it with water, fertilizer and sunlight then curse your "stupid" plant for being such an unappreciative slacker. More... |
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What An American Bank Run Would Look Like
The truth is that should there be a D-Day in the American banking system and there is a global scramble for physical paper (ignore gold) the conversion ratio for binary dollars into hard ones could be as high as 30 to 1. Which begs the question: should one apply a 90% discount when evaluating their electronic dollar exposure? That, and many other questions too. More... |
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Imperial Decline: Multi-Billion-Dollar Terrorists and the Disappearing Middle Class
The crumbling empire has depleted the US treasury. As the Congress and White House fight over raising the debt ceiling, the cost of war aggressively erodes any possibility of maintaining stable living standards for the American middle and working classes and heightens growing inequalities between the top 1% and the rest of the American people. Imperial wars are based on the pillage of the US treasury. The imperial state has, via extraordinary tax exemptions, concentrated wealth in the hands of the super-rich while the middle and working classes have been pushed downward, as only low paid jobs are available. More... |
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Armada of Black Swans Hitting U.S. Economy and Financial Markets
Consider the following black swan specimens, each of which is astounding, each alarming, each serving as one more added element to the ruined situation. The swan organization is admittedly rough, but the regiments are put in sensible order. Any small handful of these signals would qualify as forewarning a profound crisis. Not anymore, since crisis is the new normal. Not anymore, since black swans adorn the entire landscape. A healthy white swan gradually suffers from toxic exposure, quickly to turn black from a putrefaction process. Apologies for overlooking at least a dozen other important other black swans, as time and space did not permit the exhaustive catalogue process. Emphasis was given to the United States ponds and its migratory bird population. More... |
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Global Economic Crisis: Finance Is the New Mode of Warfare
The federal government may also become a seller.It has the Postal Service, and already is privatizing its army to private contractors.Newspapers have joked about Greece selling its Parthenon and other tourist sites. Imagine the U.S. Government selling its national parks and forests – to buyers who borrow the money from the banks. This would let the banks "earn their way out of debt" by creating a huge new market for them in privatizing and cutting up what used to be the public domain. It will end up in the hands of the wealthiest 10 percent of the population. In this respect the class war is back in business.We're going into a depression that is unnecessary – except to drive down wage levels and strip away government obligations to pay for Social Security, Medicare and other public programs. More... |
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A Financial Permanent Crisis
There are many analogies that we could use to illustrate what has gone on, but probably the best is a trauma patient coming into the hospital with a severed carotid artery. Instead of performing surgery and repairing the wound, doctors throw the unlucky fellow on a gurney with a piece of gauze taped over the incision. Every so often they check back in, throw another piece of gauze on it and walk out, never fixing the problem. That is precisely what is going on with regards to the Eurozone mess. And America's too. Lots of tape and gauze with precious little in the way of real solutions has been the norm for quite some time now and there is no reason to think that this will change unless it is out of dire necessity. More... |
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The Great Misdiagnosis of the U.S. Economy, Problem is Insolvency Not Liquidity
The national implosion, disintegration, and ruin of Greece is in full view. The plight of the United States debt situation is 100 times worse than Greece. The people of Athens are angry, with focus of their anger on the duplicitous and corrupted politicians who favor the bankers and yield to their demands. The people of the United States are angry but less perceptive. They still believe the mean nasty oil producers are lifting gasoline prices, still believe mean nasty speculators are lifting food prices, still believe mean nasty Chinese are lifting import prices, but have clearly come to believe that mean nasty bankers are illegally foreclosing on their homes. The intentional poor education on economic and financial matters has left the American public as mere cannon fodder on the financial battle field. More... |
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Seven reasons to avoid Wall Street 'protection rackets'
Now hold that definition in mind while you contemplate the fact that Wall Street is trying to sell you insurance against another financial crisis. According to a front-page report in the New York Times , Wall Street banks and hedge funds are raising billions by selling "tail risk" or "black swan" funds that will keep you solvent, in case some unnamed reckless greedheads somehow crash the markets like they did back in 2008. You couldn't make it up. It's like the town pyromaniac going door to door selling fire insurance. More... |
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The American Empire Hangs in the Balance as the ghosts of Roman Emperors Whisper
The average income of the 137 million people that sit at the bottom of the income pyramid has declined by 1% since 1970. The people at the top of the pyramid saw their average income rise by 385%. Was this because they worked harder? No. It was because they used their existing wealth to buy politicians and pay lobbyists to write laws, create loopholes, reduce regulations, and alter the tax code in their favor. This was not a conspiracy. It was human nature. Humans are driven by greed and fear. Lusting for power and wealth is a common human frailty. Those who are able to acquire wealth and power through their superior abilities and intellect are usually driven individuals. It is built into their DNA to seek more wealth and power. More. |
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Why jobs keep vanishing
There's only one problem: Congress is wrought up over the wrong deficit. The real deficit issue that has been out of control for 35 years is the trade deficit. That's the one that has decimated the American workforce, blocked the creation of millions of jobs, created millions more jobs for people in other countries, triggered pay cuts for millions of workers who still have jobs in the United States, and generally lowered the standard of living for many at the bottom and in the middle of the economic pile. Those at the top have flourished quite nicely under this policy. More... |
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Hyperinflation Special Report (2011)
With no viable or politically-practical way of balancing U.S. fiscal conditions and avoiding this financial economic Armageddon, the best that individuals can do at this point is to protect themselves, both as to meeting short-range survival needs as well as to preserving current wealth and assets over the longer term. Efforts there, respectively, would encompass building a store of key consumables, such as food and water, and moving assets into physical precious metals and outside of the U.S. dollar. More... |
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A Beginners Guide to Shadow Banking, Financial Crisis and Repo
It's true, and oddly enough, neither of the words is "subprime". So, what are the words? ----Bank run. The financial crisis was actually a run on the banking system. Only it wasn't a run in the usual sense of the word where jittery depositors line up on the street waiting to withdraw their savings, but a run on the shadow banking system where traditional banks get their funding via short-term loans in what's called the "repo market". (short for "repurchase agreement") The shadow banking system has become a critical part of the infrastructure of the modern financial system. It provides a way for banks to move credit risk off their balance sheets, thus reducing the amount of capital they need to support their operations. The banks argue that this new system has made credit cheaper for borrowers which, in turn, generates more activity and growth in the economy. But, of course, the risks are much greater too, as we can see from trillions of dollars that were lost following the meltdown of 2008. These risks cannot be contained as long as shadow banks remain unregulated. More... |
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The Rich Are Destroying the Economy
The Democrats fought the recession by the same methods the Republicans used to create it: allowing the super rich to recklessly dominate the economy while giving them massive handouts. This strategy, commonly referred to as Reaganomics or Trickle Down Economics, is now religion to both Democrats and Republicans; never mind the staged in-fighting for the gullible or complicit media. More... |
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Gold, The Real Reason for the Fall of Dominique Strauss-Kahn
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U.S. Hurtles Toward System Failure
This paragraph should be read twice: One should constantly remember that no solution to the financial crisis has been installed, nothing fixed, no big banks liquidated, no end to monetary inflation, no end to outsized USGovt deficits, no change of Goldman Sachs running the USGovt finance ministry, no discharge of big bank home inventory, no end to secretive subterranean support of stocks and bonds, no revival of the housing market, no return of US industry from Asia, no prosecution of Wall Street for multi-$trillion bond fraud, no end to money laundering of narco funds to Wall Street banks, no interruption to the endless costly wars, no end to the propaganda obediently pumped out by the US press & media networks. Nothing has changed except that some commodities are lower in price, including the queen Silver. More... |
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Nearly Half Of America Says U.S. Nearing Great Depression
Approximately 48 percent of Americans say they think that a Great Depression is either very or somewhat likely to occur within the year, according to a CNN Opinion Research Poll, the highest percentage of respondents that have stated that level of certainty since CNN first started asking the question in October 2008. The high percentage of Americans that say they believe that there will be an economic depression should raise alarm bells in and of itself, says CNN polling director Keating Holling. "That's not just economic pessimism," Holling told CNN, reflecting on the polling results, "that's economic fatalism." More... |
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Why Washington Isn't Doing Squat About Jobs and Wages
Republicans don't want to do anything about jobs and wages. They're so intent on unseating Obama they'd like the economy to remain in the dumps through Election Day. They also see the lousy economy as an opportunity to sell Americans their big lie that government spending is the culprit — and jobs will return if spending is cut and government shrinks. Democrats, meanwhile, don't want to admit the recovery has stalled. They worry such talk will further undermine consumer confidence or spook the bond market. They don't want to head into the election year sounding downbeat. And they don't think they have the votes for anything that will have much effect before Election Day anyway. But there's a third reason for Washington's inaction. It's not being talked about — which is itself evidence of the problem. More... |
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Offshoring Has Destroyed the Economy
Among the serious consequences of offshoring are the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that made the US an "opportunity society," an extraordinary worsening of the income distribution, and large trade and federal budget deficits that cannot be closed by normal means. These deficits now threaten the US dollar's role as world reserve currency. More... |
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The American Manufacturing Crisis and Why it Matters
When technological advances take place in the foreign industry, manufacturing is frequently located in that country to be near the source of the R&D. The issue of co-location of R&D and manufacturing is especially important because it means the value-added from both R&D and manufacturing will accrue to the innovating economy, at least when the technology is in its formative stages. Thus, an economy that initially controls both R&D and manufacturing can lose the value-added first from manufacturing and then R&D in the current technology life cycle—and then first R&D followed by manufacturing in the subsequent technology life cycle. It is no accident that 90 percent of electronics research and development now takes place in Asia, hardly boding well for America's future in an industry we dominated as recently as the early 1970s. More... |
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The Federal Reserve Destroying the U.S. Empire, A Fistful of Dollars
When this toxic brew of fraud and debt exploded in their faces, the value of the assets on their books plunged by 30% to 40% in 2008 and 2009. The 10 biggest financial institutions in the country were effectively bankrupt. An orderly bankruptcy liquidation that wiped out the bondholders, stockholders and top executives was the solution to excessive risk taking and failure. This was an unacceptable solution to the billionaire class that owns half the financial wealth in the country. The President was a multi-millionaire. The Treasury Secretary was a billionaire. There were 250 millionaires in Congress. The top executives of the banks that own and control the Federal Reserve are multi-millionaires. The owners and talking head pundits of the mainstream media are all in the billionaire/millionaire class. The cover story used to bilk $700 billion from middle class taxpayers into the coffers of Wall Street mega-banks was that if we didn't hand over the loot, the financial system would collapse and a Great Depression would ensue. More... |
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Money and The Truth about America
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10 Doomsday trends America can't survive
Capitalism has become a religion for the Super Rich, with many such "saviors." Heresies must be denied, such as this one: Doomsday Capitalism is destroying America from within. Here are highlights, with links to a few of the earlier hundred columns on topic. Ten macro trends building to a perfect storm, a critical mass, a flash point: more... |
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Sounds of Resistance
We don't have a budget crisis in Washington. We have a MORAL CRISIS. When Congress can seriously debate forcing veterans into homelessness, cutting early childhood education, Pell grants for our students, heating assistance for the elderly, and cutting food aid to pregnant women and children, while giving tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations, something is very, very wrong. If these corporations paid their share, we would not need to be cutting these programs. So on Friday April 15, 2011 hundreds of people met at Union Square Park in New York to protest this fact. This event was called the Sounds of Resistance and the target was Bank of America. While this bank received $billions in taxpayer funds, it made $billions in profits, it was busy foreclosing on millions of homeowners, all while working very hard to create over a hundred foreign tax havens to avoid paying taxes on their profits. Click here for video on YouTube site. |
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Big U.S. Firms Shift Hiring Abroad
The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show. That's a big switch from the 1990s, when they added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad. The growth of their overseas work forces is a sensitive point for U.S. companies. Many of them don't disclose how many of their workers are abroad. And some who do won't talk about it. More... |
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American Workers Got What They Deserved
Still reading? OK. You've had fair warning. So you're an American employee. Maybe you make car parts. Maybe you're an engineer or designer. Maybe you're an accountant, store clerk or tradesman. Whatever you do, you're probably stupid or lazy. Yes, I wrote it, and I mean it. You are either stupid or lazy. Maybe both. More... |
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Extend and Pretend is Wall Street Banks Friend
It should warm your heart to know that Financial Profits have amazingly reached their pre-crash highs. All it took was the Federal Reserve taking $1.3 trillion of bad loans off their books, overstating the value of their remaining loans by 40%, borrowing money from the Fed at 0%, relying on the Bernanke Put so their trading operations could gamble without fear of losses, and lastly by pretending their future losses will be lower and relieving their loan loss reserves. The banking industry didn't need to do any of that stodgy old school stuff like make loans to small businesses. Extending and pretending is much more profitable. The big four of JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo should have undergone orderly bankruptcy liquidation in 2008. They took on a vast amount of leverage and a vast amount of risk. Their greedy bets went bad. In a true capitalist system, they would have failed. Instead, in our crony capitalist system, they were bailed out by taxpayers and continue to function as zombie banks pretending to be healthy. More... |
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Globalists Target 100% State Owned Central Bank of Libya
Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money,the Libyan Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do business with Libya, they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. When the smoke eventually clears from all the cruise missiles and cluster bombs, you will see the Allied reformers move in to reform Libya's monetary system, pumping it full of worthless dollars, priming it for a series of chaotic inflationary cycles. Libya also holds more bullion as a proportion of gross domestic product than any country except Lebanon, according to the London-based World Gold Council using January data from the International Monetary Fund. Will this gold remain in Libya once Allied forces have taken control of Tripoli, or will it lost, or exchanged for pallets upon pallets of paper aka US dollars? More... |
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Secretive Plan For a Global Currency
Is the Group of Twenty Countries (G20) envisaging the creation of a Global Central bank? Who or what would serve as this global central bank, cloaked with the power to issue the global currency and police monetary policy for all humanity? When the world's central bankers met in Washington in September 2008 at the height of the financial meltdown, they discussed what body might be in a position to serve in that awesome and fearful role. A former governor of the Bank of England stated: The answer might already be staring us in the face, in the form of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS)... The IMF tends to couch its warnings about economic problems in very diplomatic language, but the BIS is more independent and much better placed to deal with this if it is given the power to do so. More... |
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Surf Warning: Tsunami to Lift Gold
A systemic breakdown is occurring, in the Weimarization of the USDollar. Last Thursday, the world went Weimar. Gold noticed, and its scout Silver pulls the golden bridle bit. More... |
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US may soon hit several debt walls
The United States is supposedly in economic recovery, yet President Obama projects a record $1.6 trillion deficit for 2011 - with years more trillion-dollar annual deficits and escalating debt ahead. Government debt is growing by $120 billion a month, three times faster than the $40 billion monthly increase in GDP. What is going on? The real issue is not the U.S. government's debt ceiling to accommodate ongoing deficit spending, but rather the wall that we are about to hit: foreign governments balking at financing U.S. debt except at significantly higher yields to offset the inflationary impact of the dollar's declining value. More... |
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Crank Up the Casino! Wall Street's Newest Ploy to Gorge on America's Economic Suffering
The perversity of gorging on suffering never seems to bother the American financial sector. JPMorgan feeds on our hunger with its lucrative food stamp card business. And AIG gets into the game of letting strangers bet on your life. Why shouldn't hedge funds make a little extra dough from the collapse of your hometown? More... |
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More Than Gold and Silver Prices Are Being Manipulated
In the split second of time after another brokerage enters a buy order for a stock, these ultra fast computers can automatically detect that order, arrange to buy the stock before the original order is filled, then sell the stock to the original purchaser at a price that was at least a few cents higher to the buyer than if the computer had never intervened. Compound this activity by thousands of trades per second all day long every day and you can understand how these brokerages have increased their reported profits despite lower volume from private investors. A side benefit to the US government is that this activity also tends to drive stock prices higher no matter what the state of the economy. More... |
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Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds
The commission that investigated the crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors and risky bets on securities backed by the loans. "The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done," the panel wrote in the report's conclusions, which were read by The New York Times. "If we accept this notion, it will happen again." More... |
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12 Economic Collapse Scenarios That We Could Potentially See In 2011
So will it be soon? Let's hope not. Let's certainly hope that it does not happen in 2011. Many of us need more time to prepare. Most of our families and friends need more time to prepare. Once this thing implodes there isn't going to be an opportunity to have a "do over". We simply will not be able to put the toothpaste back into the tube again. More... |
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Full Spectrum Dominance, The Pathology of U.S. and Global Monetary Policy
Question: Answer: |
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An Open Letter to Washington: How to Slash the Federal Budget Deficit and Save the U.S. Economy
With your policymaking actions of November and December, you have given the U.S. economy a short-term boost of adrenaline. But these short-term gains carry a long-term cost. In the wake of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, the U.S. federal government is looking at running $8 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years. If that forecast becomes a reality, the already-onerous national debt would soar to more than $20 trillion. Given that outlook, without additional action on your part, the U.S. economy faces a precarious future and won't return to full health. More... |
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Geithner Says the US Government Is Bankrupt
Geithner sent a letter to Congress on Jan. 6, 2011 asking for the debt limit to be raised. If it is not raised, he warned, the U.S. will default on its debt. In his words: "Never in our history has Congress failed to increase the debt limit when necessary. Failure to raise the limit would precipitate a default by the United States." He didn't say that the government will be inconvenienced. He didn't say that the government would be forced to muddle through by delaying payments, raising taxes, and cutting non-obligatory programs and services. He said the government will default. This means that the government doesn't have enough cash to pay its obligations to the many and sundry persons to whom it owes cash unless Congress authorizes an issue of even more debt. More... |
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Wall Street's Pentagon Papers: Biggest Financial Scam In World History
I understand the importance of the new WikiLeaks documents. However, we must not let them distract us from the new information the Federal Reserve was forced to release. Even if WikiLeaks reveals documents from inside a large American bank, as huge as that could be, it will most likely pale in comparison to what we just found out from the one-time peek we got into the inner-workings of the Federal Reserve. This is the Wall Street equivalent of the Pentagon Papers. I've written many reports detailing the crimes of Wall Street during this crisis. The level of fraud, from top to bottom, has been staggering. The lack of accountability and the complete disregard for the rule of law have made me and many of my colleagues extremely cynical and jaded when it comes to new evidence to pile on top of the mountain that we have already gathered. But we must not let our cynicism cloud our vision on the details within this new information. Just when I thought the banksters couldn't possibly shock me anymore… they did. More... |
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Big Risk: $1.2 Quadrillion Derivatives Market Dwarfs World GDP
A quadrillion is a big number: 1,000 times a trillion. (1 Million Billion). Yet according to one of the world's leading derivatives experts, Paul Wilmott, who holds a doctorate in applied mathematics from Oxford University, $1.2 quadrillion is the so-called notional value of the worldwide derivatives market. To put that in perspective, the world's annual gross domestic product is between $50 trillion and $60 trillion. More... As more and more money flows into this casino, less and less is available for productive enterprises.As a result the economy continues to shrink while unemployment figures are manipulated to make the public think that unemployment numbers are dropping. |
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America's Second Great Depression 2010 Year-End Update
Have you ever asked yourself why TARP funds are insufficient to fund smaller banks but they are sufficient to fund the largely insolvent banking cartel? As more banks fail or are seized (which does not necessarily indicate they have failed in my opinion) the number of problem banks continues to increase. |
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Chinese Take-Out Of The U.S. Economy, Debt Crisis Triggering Reserves Conversion into Gold and Silver
The new jobs created in China to enable the lower cost in producing exports to the US consumer, hellbent on consuming his entire house in home equity, hellbent on consuming his entire future in order to live for today. The result would be assuredly lost jobs in America. It was obvious to all except the clueless cast of hack US economists. They proclaimed that the lower costs of production would enable cheaper imports into the USEconomy, a new wave of spawned growth with ripple effects in benefit, wider distribution from this vast Asian pool, more retail jobs, and a new American growth spurt. What utter nonsense! But they continue to ply their trade. More... |
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Fed Names Recipients of $3.3 Trillion in Crisis Aid
Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. were among the biggest borrowers from one program, the Term Auction Facility, with as much as $45 billion apiece. Some aid went to U.S. units of foreign institutions, including Switzerland's UBS AG, France's Societe Generale and Germany's Dresdner Bank AG. The Fed posted the data on its website to comply with a provision in July's Dodd-Frank law overhauling financial regulation. More... Most of the money went to bail out the very same elites who created this mess. The productive sectors of Main Street and those they employ saw very little of this money. |
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Destructive Neoliberal Economic Austerity
In other words, make ordinary people bear the burden of bailing out banking giants responsible for the severest economic crisis since the Great Depression. How? The usual IMF solution, involving preservation of capital at the expense of workers - a package including wage and benefit cuts, less social spending, privatization of state resources, mass layoffs, deregulation, lower "onerous" taxes, maintaining corporate debt service, and harsh crackdowns against resisters. In the 1980s, it was called Reaganomics, trickle down, and Thatcherism. Today it's destructive "shock therapy" called austerity, the same scheme pitting capital against people - disposable workers tossed out for big money's gain. It's how predatory capitalism works, destructively for so many to enrich an elite few - snake oil peddled as an economic elixir, corrupted politicians and central bankers forcing harmful policies that, in fact, don't work. More... |
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QE2 & The Great Misdiagnosis
New money does not cure an insolvent banking system or insolvent households. It presents a new problem of significiant price inflation. They want it, so they can call it growth!! Producing high value products efficiently and cost effectively makes the nation competitive. Imposing a fair tax structure that is stable, reasonable, and with proper incentives makes it competitive. Having an active legal prosecution staff to combat bond fraud and defense appropriation fraud makes it competitive. Having a strong education system makes it competitive. A weaker currency raises the cost structure, increases import costs, and assists the export trade if a nation has one. The United States has shipped a large segment of it away in the last 10 years to China, after having shipped a larger segment away in the 1980 decade to the Pacific Rim. Not only did the US promote its financial sector, but it denigrated the industrial sector as dirty. By removing a significant portion of the nation's capacity to generate legitimate added value income, the USEconomy was left vulnerable to debt overload and insolvency. More... |
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Global Financial System Crisis, Collapse in Consumer Spending, Unemployment, Rising Prices
They will increase the public's comfort zone and keep the unemployed at bay – at least for now. The stock market the Fed is trying to save is rife with corruption, so much so that investors are leaving in droves. As a price for keeping the market going at a high level the SEC and CFTC turn a blind eye to blatant wrong doing in the form of naked shorting and flash trading, which is front running. These criminals are being allowed to run loose in our markets, particularly hedge funds. We see complaint after complaint after complaint in the thousands totally ignored and if you challenge either agency your problem gets worse. We have seen it first hand, and there is no longer anyone there to defend and protect you. How can investors risk their funds in such an environment, run by a criminal syndicate? Don't forget we spent 28 years on Wall Street, so we know what they are up too and what we are dealing with. The Fed, and the administration, had best do something constructive fast, because deterioration is upon us and once it gets going it will be very hard to stop. Inflation could lead to hyperinflation and then to deflationary depression. A fact that is really disconcerting is that half of investors are bullish on the economy and the market. The question is how long will QE2 last this time, and how much has already been discounted? Leading indicators are weak, so we see investors basing decisions quickly on the affects of QE2, which is not viable long term. Confidence otherwise is not evident and employment has declined in the past quarter as layoffs continue. Job openings are three times worse, which portends poorly for the future. More... |
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Gold and Silver Correct From Extremely Overbought Levels, But Too Early for a New Upleg
Whenever the lower and middle classes manage to acquire any significant capital, collectively speaking, they are systematically fleeced of it. That is what is happening now in the US housing market - and what is set to happen in the depths of the coming depression when property becomes virtually worthless is that millions will become dispossessed of their properties. At that point the elites will move in and buy up vast tracts of commercial and residential Real Estate at pennies on the dollar, and millions of former homeowners will face the choice between living in a tent city or moving back into their former home as rent paying tenants. This is the reason why savers and the prudent in the US are punished so harshly - they don't want people acquiring capital and thus the power of self-determination, they want them to go out and spend to generate ever greater profits for their vast business interests - so they drop interest rates to the floor (which they can of course use in their hugely profitable carry trade activities) and encourage the little guy to get up to his neck in debt. Jacked up interest rates can later be used as a tool to winkle the little guy out of his house. More... |
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The Largest Heist in History Building the Great Pyramid, The Global Financial Crisis Explained
As with any pyramid scheme (and as long as there is still cash in the scheme) the beneficiaries are the operators of the scheme and "customers" who know when to get out of it. During the hectic dawn of the current financial crisis it is very likely that bank executives realised that it was the time that their pyramid started collapsing. This easily explains why banks stopped trusting one another and interbank lending collapsed. It was impossible to predict which node (financial institution) of a pyramid scheme would collapse next. There was a very distinct risk that if a bank lent money to another, the next day the bank-borrower may be bust and the money would be gone. The collapse process, always an instant one, is accelerated by a dramatic loss of confidence amongst the pyramid customers. Once a single customer cannot withdraw his deposit, a great number of others start demanding payouts. City executives must have known this mechanism and explained to the government officials that unless the state shifts its weight injecting cash, guaranteeing deposits and lending, the system was bound to collapse. More... |
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The Deep Cause Of The Great Financial Crisis: The Peace Diktat Of Versailles
I have been a student of money and credit for over fifty years. I could summarize the result of my studies as follows: Most, if not all, the great events in the history of mankind since the advent of money, have a causal explanation. The causes are to be found in the use or abuse of money and credit -- provided that we penetrate historiography sufficiently deeply. The Great Depression of the 1930's, in particular, the unprecedented world-wide unemployment was caused by the decision of the victorious Entente powers to return to the gold standard after World War I, BUT without allowing the clearing house of the gold standard, the international bill market, to make a comeback. This decision was made in secret. It has never been made public. But there can be no doubt about the fact that in 1920 everybody, even Keynes himself, admitted the desirability of an expeditious return to the gold standard. Had there been no decision to ban it, bill trading would have started spontaneously. More... |
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Gold and the Currency Markets
One of the things that astound us is that few professionals have seen this coming over the past 10-1/2 years, and even those that do believe do not think this is an earth-shaking event. What we are about to experience is an event that only occurs every 300 to 500 years. All we can imagine is that they have a very limited perspective of history and particularly economic and financial history. More... |
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Ultimate Bailout: The $100 Trillion Cram Down
Because a Cram Down changes the ownership structure of a company, this one will change the ownership of the U.S. Never underestimate the politicians and bankers taking the easy way out. Printing money and kicking a bigger can down the road is always easier than facing the reality of your debts. More... |
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The Credit Meltdown and Wall Street's Shadow Banking System
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The Tax-Cut Racket
O.K., he didn't actually say that. But he might as well have, because that's what the current confrontation over taxes amounts to. Mr. McConnell, who was self-righteously denouncing the budget deficit just the other day, now wants to blow that deficit up with big tax cuts for the rich. But he doesn't have the votes. So he's trying to get what he wants by pointing a gun at the heads of middle-class families, threatening to force a jump in their taxes unless he gets paid off with hugely expensive tax breaks for the wealthy. More... |
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Who Owns the American Dollar?
But, as most such simple seeming things in life, the truth is neither simple or straight forward and the answer is neither silly, stupid or pointless, but indeed is critical to the well being of nations and hundreds of millions if not billions of people. For the truth of it, neither the people of America nor the government of America owns the US dollar. How's that, you say? Well, if one was to really dive just a bit deeper, before hitting the rocks just under the US greenback pond, one would quickly discover that the actual US dollar has not existed since 1913, where it was effectively killed. What is now called the US dollar is actually a Federal Reserve Note, says it right at the top of each bill. Why does that matter? Read on. |
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Filtering Through the Noise
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Successful Government Economic Policies? For Whom?
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Global Collapse of the Fiat Money System
When the ball hits the ceiling fan, sometime early 2011 at the earliest, there will be massive bank runs. I expect that the FED and other central banks will pre-empt such a run and will do the following: 1) Disallow cash withdrawals from banks beyond a certain amount, say US$1,000 per day; 2) Disallow cash transactions up to a certain amount, say US$10,000 for certain transactions; 3) Transactions (investments) for metals (gold and silver) will be restricted; 4) Worst-case scenario – the confiscation of gold AS HAPPENED IN WORLD WAR II. 5) Imposition of capital controls etc.; 6) Legislations that will compel most daily commercial transactions to be conducted through Debit and or Credit Cards; 7) Legislations to make it a criminal offence for any contraventions of the above. More... |
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Gold and Silver Protection From Economic Cancer and Desperation of QE2
Let me make a paradoxical point: THE UNITED STATES WILL BEGIN A RECOVERY WHEN THE TOO BIG TO FAIL BANKS ARE PLOWED UNDER. They are blocking remedy and restructure. They are resisting liquidation of badly impaired assets. They do not lend money, as their credit engines are broken, since they are dead entities that occupy space in the US financial sector. They cast large long shadows. Their removal from the scene of the crime would surely light a fuse of credit derivative accidents, the likes of which the world has never seen. Let's try THAT experiment!! Why the leading economists cannot see that credit is down since the big banks are dead is beyond me. More... |
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A Wealthy Economic Stimulus Needed
There are multiple reports of the wealthy making dramatic cutbacks such as:
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Four Deformations of the Apocalypse
More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell's stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes. More... |
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Cut Wall Street Out! How States Can Finance Their Own Economic Recovery
President Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan has so far failed to halt the growth of unemployment: 2.7 million jobs have been lost since the stimulus plan began. California has lost 336,400 jobs. Arizona has lost 77,300. Michigan has lost 137,300. A total of 49 states and the District of Columbia have all reported net job losses. In this dark firmament, however, one bright star shines. The sole state to actually gain jobs is an unlikely candidate for the distinction: More... |
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BP Collapse Potentially More Devastating than Lehman!
Now credit has been cut to BP. Counter-parties will not accept their name beyond one year in duration. This is unheard of. A giant is on the ropes. If he falls, the very earth may shake as he hits the ground. As we are beginning to see, the Western pension structure, financial trading and global credit are all inter-twined. BP is central to this, as a massive supplier of what many believe(d) to be AAA credit. So while we see banks roll over and die, and sovereign entities begin to falter… we now have a major oil company on the verge of going under. Another leg of the global economic "chair" is being viciously kicked out from under us." More... |
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Four Shocking Bombshells Bernanke Did NOT Tell Congress About Last Week
Bernanke won't say. But the answer is clear: The recovery had very little substance to begin with. Rather, it was, in essence, a mirage — a dead cat bounce bought and paid for by Washington's massive bailouts, stimulus programs, and money printing. Put another way, the recession never really ended. Yes, we saw some growth in GDP. And yes, thanks to that growth, some companies are still reporting better earnings — the news that spurred a rally in the stock market last week. But at the core of the economy, the fires that started the recession are still burning intensely. More... |
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It’s the End of the World As We Know It
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Stop The Parasites
In case you missed it, Washington Post’s stock went from $458 to $900 per share in the blink of an eye. All the orders at $900 were cancelled and the market authorities did the usual, “move along folks, nothing to see here,” bit. The culprits in both incidents (May 6 and yesterday) were High Frequency Trading Programs (HFTPs). The HFTP industry (and lobbying efforts), always defend their actions by stating that they provide liquidity or make sure the markets are efficient or other nonsensical arguments that fall apart the minute you spend more than 10 seconds thinking about them. More... |
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The End Game for Wall Street
But first, it's important for us to recognize just how crazy and dangerous the swaps market currently is. For example: No one has any idea what they are worth. Imagine if there were no stock exchanges, and the vast majority of stocks traded over the counter. Five banks -- Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), Citigroup (NYSE: C), and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) -- cornered the market, and only they had access to stock prices. So in order to buy shares of Microsoft, instead of just looking up its $26 price, you would have to call up Goldman Sachs and ask how much Microsoft will cost you. Goldman offers to sell you Microsoft at $30 per share, offers to buy shares from another customer at $20 per share, and pockets $10 for every share of Microsoft traded. That's basically how the anti-competitive swaps market works. It's an economically inefficient system that benefits too-big-to-fail banks by allowing them to rip off their customers. More... |
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Call To Act, Save And Strengthen Financial Reform
Matt Taibbi reports real reform is a goner, “The financial-services industry has reportedly flooded the Capitol with more than 2,000 paid lobbyists; even veteran members are stunned by the intensity of the blitz. "They're trying everything," says Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio. Wall Street's army is especially imposing given that the main (really, the only) progressive coalition working the other side of the aisle, Americans for Financial Reform, has been in existence less than a year – and has just 60 unpaid "volunteer" lobbyists working the Senate halls.” Not only are scammers getting off free; they are being overpaid in the process--- allowed to keep their gargantuan bonuses and obscene salaries. More... |
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| A Better Solution Than TARP by Rudy Avizius Posted June 1, 2010 Our government has committed $12,200 Billion in bailouts, guarantees, and backstops to the very same people who created this economic mess. Most of this money has not found its way to Main Street but instead has lined the pockets of the Wall Street types. Part of this was the $700 Billion TARP program. This video explains how instead of TARP, we could have used this money to LEVERAGE productive endeavors on Main Street that would have both employed our people and helped to reduce the federal deficits. Video... |
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The Big Short - How Wall St Destroyed Main St
The truth is that the CEO’s of all the Wall Street banks encouraged a casino culture of greed and gambling. The generation of fees became the sole driving incentive for every firm. It started with collateralizing subprime mortgages into packages of mortgage backed securities. Then they created Credit Default Swaps as insurance on these mortgages. When they ran out of chumps to put into houses, they created side bets with Credit Default Obligations that didn’t require an actual homeowner. More... |
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Gold Correction Factors, Hidden Dollar Swap Hammer
The most striking and predictable aspects of the Fin-Reg Bill are how the USFed has even more power than before. The original plan was to limit its power. So again, hats off to the syndicate. They took the honorable motive to limit syndicate powers and to audit the USFed, and turned it into even more USFed powers, like the rod to dissolve any financial firm that endangers the US financial system. Or should it be said endangers the syndicate? Goldman Sachs bribery to the US Congressional members must have played a prominent role. That is the capitalism at work in the United States. More... |
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America's Ten Most Corrupt Capitalists
The financial crisis has unveiled a new set of public villains—corrupt corporate capitalists who leveraged their connections in government for their own personal profit. During the Clinton and Bush administrations, many of these schemers were worshiped as geniuses, heroes or icons of American progress. But today we know these opportunists for what they are: Deregulatory hacks hellbent on making a profit at any cost. Without further ado, here are the 10 most corrupt capitalists in the U.S. economy. Click here to see the names of these true humanitarians. |
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Take Action! How We Can Save OUR Economy
The early indications are ominous, two of the most crucial aspects of true reform have already been dealt a severe blow. The amendment to break up the “too big to fail” banks has been voted down, and the bill to audit the Federal Reserve has been gutted of important provisions. We cannot just sit back and let politicians, who are overly influenced by campaign funding and lobbying activities on the part of the big banks who have plunged us into this crisis, decide our future without us. Our passive unwillingness to stand up for our own rights is part of the reason we are in this crisis to begin with. Right now is the most pivotal time for us to make our voice heard. More... |
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Crisis expert says derivatives market still 'grave threat'
Noted financial author Richard Duncan said banks and other financial institutions are beginning to pile back into the opaque financial instruments, as the total value of such contracts is "probably back" to $650 trillion. (That is actually 650,000 BILLION!) "This is a grave threat not only to the financial sector but also the entire global economy," Duncan said in a telephone interview with MarketWatch from his home in Bangkok as he prepares for a U.S. tour of his 2009 book, The Corruption of Capitalism. More... |
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Bowing To China: What It Means To Our Future
It seems hard to believe but in just two generations, from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, America has crumpled from world kingpin to global has-been. In fact this month President Obama bowed before Paramount Leader of China, Hu Jintao, at the nuclear security summit. It wasn’t until 2006, or 30 years after Mao’s death, that China accumulated its first $1 trillion in foreign reserves. Yet by last April that amount had doubled to $2 trillion and by the end of this year Beijing may hold in its hands $3 trillion in foreign reserves. If Obama gets his way, $1 trillion of that sum will be in liquid Treasury instruments. All that money has a lot of strings. More... |
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Is It Time for Law Abiding American Citizens to Stop Paying Their Taxes and Start a New Government?
Before you roll your eyes and dismiss me as some “extremist,” let me explain the situation to those who are unfamiliar with my past reports. In my report on the Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States, I lay out the case proving that our economy and tax system has become an organized criminal operation. I defy anyone who spends time researching and analyzing the facts and overwhelming evidence to support this claim to prove otherwise. I invite anyone who thinks I’m wrong to a debate on national television. I’m talking to you, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon and President Obama! More... |
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How To Make a $Million Dollars People across the country are using this corporate welfare scheme to make millions. The Wall St types tell us that they are geniuses and need to be paid obscene amounts of money to be able to attract and retain quality people. In reality, these people are not geniuses, but rather they are INSIDERS who gorge at the public trough and use the system to have taxpayers provide them with essentially free money. You need to know this information, because YOU the taxpayer are paying for this. |
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Sultans Of Swap: Fearing the Gearing!
Private Equity firms "bought more than 3000 American corporations from 2000 to 2008, employing close to 10 million people - nearly 1 of every 10 workers in the private sector. The formula was simple: buy a target company with a small down payment and lots of other people's money. Leverage it with huge loans using the acquired company - not the Private Equity firm - as collateral. Cut short-term costs through radical layoffs. Resell at a profit within 5 years, before the cuts & debt have totally crippled the business. More... |
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Will the US Devalue the Dollar?
That era is now ending because the critical balance between credit-driven expansion and debt-driven contraction has now shifted significantly in favor of the latter; and in 2010, both East and West now find themselves on the edge of a growing deflationary sinkhole created by the sequential collapse of two large US bubbles, the dot.com and US real estate bubbles. Capitalism cannot function unless its constantly compounding debt is serviced and/or paid down. Today, the US, the world’s largest debtor, can no longer pay what it owes except by rolling its debt forward and borrowing more, what the late economist Hyman Minsky called ponzi-financing, financing common in the final stages of mature capital systems. More... |
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Armageddon If you thought Wall Street’s debt crisis was traumatic, wait till you the see the consequences of Washington’s debt crisis! Never before in history has a world power like the U.S. been so utterly buried in debt! And never before has that debt been financed so massively by foreign investors! Washington’s debt crisis represents a unique, unparalleled, and unimaginable convergence of circumstances. Because no one can answer this simple question being asked by former GAO chief David Walker: Who will bail out America? Not you, not me, and not 300 million Americans! Not China, not Japan, nor all the powers on Earth put together! They’re simply not big enough. They don’t have the money. Yet, despite the utter gravity of our plight, nothing is being done to change our course. In recent weeks, Congress could not even agree to study the issue. They could not vote on a deficit commission. The president has just appointed a separate commission. But even after moons of deliberation, it will have no authority to bring its recommendations to a vote in Congress — let alone get them passed. More... |
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Avoid These Cash Machines When KKR bought Dollar General in 2007, it and fellow investors put up just $2.8 billion and borrowed the remaining $4.5 billion. At that time, Dollar General had just $260 million in debt, the interest on which it could easily cover with its earnings. Fast-forward to November 2009 and the IPO. Dollar General suddenly had about $4.2 billion in debt, and its ability to support its own debt is severely crimped. In fact, the business has to pay about 39% of its operating income just in interest. Ouch! That sudden debt spike shows that KKR and its co-investors simply transferred their borrowings of $4.5 billion onto Dollar General's balance sheet. For their efforts, they took home a 150% paper profit (based on the IPO price), excluding fees and the costs of some rather minimal work they performed in reorganizing Dollar General -- much of which was charged to Dollar General. As a final kick to the curb, just before making it a public company, the private-equity giant paid itself and other investors a fat dividend, to the tune of $239 million -- more than double what Dollar General earned in that quarter. As a public company, Dollar General doesn't even pay a dividend. And that's not the amazing part. More... |
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Obama, Now Fire Geithner and Summers Since becoming charter members of the Obama administration, both Geithner and Summers favored a much milder approach to bank reform. According to the Washington Post, industry executives were “startled and disheartened that Geithner was overruled” in favor of Volcker’s approach. Under Geithner’s watch, though, the banks have been using taxpayers’ money not to restart lending but to take over smaller banks, invest in the stock market, and continue to pay their executives obscene bonuses. The poor bankers, now standing like deer in the headlights, are breaking our hearts. Their flight from the stock market, which began yesterday, caused an immediate drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average of over 200 points. It shows the stranglehold the banks have had on the nation’s wealth. But in reality, the proposed “Volcker Rule” should be only the first step in the nation’s recovery from the worst financial crime spree in history. Think about it for a minute. Banks are allowed to create credit “out of thin air” only under a public charter. It is a fiduciary trust that should be regarded as sacrosanct. One way this trust has been abused has been for banks to use this created credit to buy companies whose employees are then fired and assets stripped before the company is sold at a profit to pay off the loans and the bankers’ brokerage fees. If this isn’t a crime against the national interest, what is? More... |
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Goldman Sachs Front Runs Executive Orders Goldman Sachs has admitted that they have been front running and opportuning against their clients in the fundamental strategies group, which is not subject to the same regulatory rules that equity research departments are. That is why they are called “Hannibal Lecter” in the business. They have been setting up clients to take losses so their trading would be profitable. That is like eating your own children. This is the bottom of the moral and ethical totem pole. The notional value of derivatives held by US commercial banks rose $804 billion in the third quarter, or 0.49%, to $204.3 trillion. That consisted of 1,065 banks, a fall of 45 from the prior quarter. Five major banks held 97% of the amounts and 88% of the exposure. The CEO’s are sorry for their risky behavior, but they are still engaged in it in a bigger way than ever. More... |
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Investment Opportunity or Economic Catasrophe? Coming Soon “…To put it bluntly, Faber says, ‘we are doomed’… Faber, a long-time critic of U.S. policies, argues the private sector acted rationally after 2008 by deleveraging and increasing its savings. The government, on the other hand, added more debt and leverage. They can get away with it for now because interest rates are low. Eventually, interest rates will rise, causing the public sector debt bubble to burst under the weight of government entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security… The only way out is for the government to print more dollars. Of course, that leads to inflation and a weak dollar. And, even worse, he says, ‘to distract the attention of ordinary people you go to war’… ” Now this is a guaranteed rape job. More... |
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The Gates of Financial and Economic Hell Have Opened The abyss is widening, many have already fallen in. The Fat Boys at Goldman say they are doing God's work, do they really believe that. Maybe they know dark secrets we are not privy to. What does God's work entail? Stopping fear and panic? Holding up asset prices and presenting the illusion of a stable, recovering economy? If they fail, then hell will follow. On the surface it appears that the Feds are creating a recovery with money borrowed from foreign lenders, it ain't necessarily so. Much of that money is actually printed by the Federal Reserve itself and given to the foreign entities who then lend it back to the U.S. Treasury. Why, because there have been funding auctions that failed to attract enough bids, when it happens it throws a frigid pall of fear over the financial markets . Everyone holds their breath and steps back. They can not let that happen again, one more time could be fatal. It is all a con, a phony recovery paid for by phony funding auctions. The foreigners don't want any more worthless paper from the U.S.A. that they know will never be paid back but what they do want is to get rid of all the garbage debt on their books from the likes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, debt know as agency paper. So a deal is struck. The Fed prints the money and takes the bad agency paper onto their books and the foreigners write a cheque using some of the new money they get to buy U.S. bonds, the treasury then pays them interest on the money they just gave them. More... |
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The recession is over but the depression has just begun Early this year, I wrote a post “We are in depression”, which called the ongoing downturn a depression with a small ‘d.’ I was optimistic that policymakers could engineer a fake recovery predicated on stimulus and asset price reflation – and this was bullish for financial shares if not the broader stock market. But, we are witnessing temporary salves for a deeper structural problem. So my goal was to find data which disproved my original thesis. But, I came away more convinced that we are in a tenuous cyclical upturn. This post will discuss why we are in a depression, not a recession and what this means about likely future economic and investing paths. I pull together a number of threads from previous posts, so it is pretty long. I have shortened it in order to pull all of the ideas into one post. So, please read the linked posts for background as I left out a lot of the detail in order to create this narrative. Let’s start here then with the crux of the issue: debt. More... |
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A Practical Way to End "Too Big to Fail" The ironclad rule of change is that it gets harder to rationalize as you move away from the "wake-up" event. Today, one year after Wall Street soiled itself, nothing has changed. And make no mistake: The farther we get from last fall, the harder it'll be to rationalize meaningful financial reform. Take the problem of "too big to fail." The best way to end it is to man up and break banks apart. But since banks suddenly appear young and spry again, finding the backbone to do so seems like a pipe dream. There's no more sense of urgency. There's no more panic. It's getting harder and harder to rationalize groundbreaking change. Why break up Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) when it's doing better than ever? That's the unfortunate mindset today. More... |
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Taxing the Speculators Should we use taxes to deter financial speculation? Yes, say top British officials, who oversee the City of London, one of the world’s two great banking centers. Other European governments agree — and they’re right. Unfortunately, United States officials — especially Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary — are dead set against the proposal. Let’s hope they reconsider: a financial transactions tax is an idea whose time has come. Such a tax would be a trivial expense for people engaged in foreign trade or long-term investment; but it would be a major disincentive for people trying to make a fast buck (or euro, or yen) by outguessing the markets over the course of a few days or weeks. It would, as Tobin said, “throw some sand in the well-greased wheels” of speculation. It would be a trivial expense for long-term investors, but it would deter much of the churning that now takes place in our hyperactive financial markets. More... |
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The Economic Crisis and What Must be Done
It is madness because the big decisions are not made by the U.S., by Congress, or by the Obama administration. The U.S. has, for half-a-century, been marching to the tune played by the international financial elite, and this fact did not change with the election of 2008. The financiers have put the people of this nation $57 trillion in debt, according to the latest reports, counting debt at the federal, state, business, and household levels. Interest alone on this debt is over $3 trillion of a GDP of $14 trillion. Failure of our political leadership to deal with this tragedy over the past three decades is nothing less than treason. More... |
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Red Alert: The Second Wave of The Financial Tsunami The Wave Is gathering force & could hit between the first & second quarter of 2010. The present fallout can be summarized in simple terms: Should a bankrupt country (the US) be allowed to use money created out of thin air to pay for goods produced with the sweat and tears of hardworking citizens of exporting countries? Adding insult to injury, the same dollars are now purchasing a lot less than before. So what is the use of being paid in a currency that is losing rapidly its value? On the other hand, the US is telling the whole world, especially the Chinese that if they are not happy with the status quo, there is nothing to stop them from selling to the other countries and accepting their currencies. But if they want to sell to the mighty USA, they must accept US toilet paper reserve currency and its right to create monies out of thin air! This is the ultimate poker game and whosoever blinks first loses and will suffer irreparable financial consequences. But who has the winning hand? More... |
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Confiscation Through Inflation
I would like to ask the U.S. Federal Reserve what their definition of the word "stable" is. More... |
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Obama's China Junket: "We're Opening Doors for Wall Street and Nothing More" China's dollar-peg creates an unfair advantage for China's manufactured goods, but so what? The Congress could change that in a minute by applying trade sanctions. But they won't. Because Congress is owned by Wall Street, and Wall Street thrives on the current system. Here's how it works: China sells the US cheap lead-based widgets, and then recycles the dollars into US Treasurys and "complex and utterly worthless" financial products. This provides the gargantuan investment banks with an endless flow of cheap capital to goose stocks and fatten the bottom line. Of course, the process does have it's shortcomings, like the fact that it crushes the domestic work-force, but that's how it was designed to work anyway. What economists call "unsustainable imbalances" are praised at the big brokerage houses as "windfall profits". The total destruction of the US labor movement is just an added perk for these well-heeled, flag-waving, uber-patriots. So, a large portion of China's industrial capacity is actually "China-based multinational corporations". Now that's interesting. So US workers are actually competing with US industries that are using sweatshop labor to enrich themselves while savaging the American middle class. Great. I wonder how many of these "industry leaders" affix the stars-n-stripes to their lapel each morning before they trundle off to work? More... |
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It's Time to End 'Too Big to Fail'
These statistics would be hilarious if they weren't true, and if the banks behind them didn't have the power to manipulate vast portions of the economy. We spent the latter half of 2008 feeling the wrath of "too big to fail." Today, banks are bigger than ever. We need to end that. We all know the downside of "too big to fail." They screw up; we pay the price. Yet many people (mostly bankers) still defend the practice. So rather than firing off reasons why "too big to fail" is such a menace -- you already know those -- we'll refute the arguments defending it. Start with the first argument -- that post-Lehman, the problem has evaporated. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, for example, recently argued that his bank wasn't too big to fail. Wrong. JPMorgan Chase is not very likely to fail at the moment, but let's not pretend that the eruption of its balance sheet, with more than $79 trillion in notional derivative exposure (we're not making that number up) wouldn't annihilate everything in sight. More... |
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Goldman Sach’s Undisclosed Role in AIG’s Distress
uring AIG’s bailout, Goldman had influence over the decision to use public funds to pay 100 cents on the dollar for these CDOs (the underlying risk of the credit derivatives), but none of the information about the volume of Goldman’s trades with AIG -or the Goldman CDOs hedged by AIG’s other counterparties - was made public. Goldman’s public disclosures in September 2008 obscured its contribution to AIG’s near bankruptcy and the need to bailout Goldman’s trading partners in AIG related transactions. Goldman’s trading activities played a starring role in the near collapse of the global markets. More... |
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U.S. Budget Deficit Debt Crisis, Austrian, East European or Glide Option Solution? I am outraged at the paltry proposed financial "reforms." Rahm Emanuel said that no crisis should be allowed to go to waste. The Obama administration is wasting this one. How can we allow banks to be too big to fail? Where is the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall? If we are going to allow large banks to exist, then their leverage must be reduced to the point where their failure would not risk the system and require taxpayer dollars. I don't care if that makes them less profitable. They are making those large profits because they have taxpayers implicitly behind them, and I get no dividend payments from them, the last time I checked. Where is Fannie and Freddie reform (and their breakup)? No mention of an exchange for credit default swaps? (And yes, I know that such an exchange would reduce the number of swaps and the profitability of them. That is the point. They are dangerous if allowed to become too big a market.) This bill reads as if bank lobbyists wrote it. Where is the populist outrage? We have let the fox set up the rules for running the hen house. Shame on us all if we allow this to happen. More... |
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Cut Wall St Out! How States Can Finance Their Own Recovery 2.7 million jobs have been lost since the stimulus plan began. California has lost 336,400 jobs. Arizona has lost 77,300. Michigan has lost 137,300. A total of 49 states and the District of Columbia have all reported net job losses. The sole state to actually gain jobs is an unlikely candidate for the distinction: North Dakota. North Dakota is also one of only two states expected to meet their budgets in 2010. (The other is Montana.) The state not only has no funding problems, but this year it has a budget surplus of $1.3 billion, the largest it has ever had. Why is North Dakota doing so well, when other states are suffering the ravages of a deepening credit crisis? Its secret may be that it has its own credit machine. North Dakota is the only state in the Union to own its own bank. The Bank of North Dakota (BND) was established by the state legislature in 1919, specifically to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men. The bank's stated mission is to deliver sound financial services that promote agriculture, commerce and industry in North Dakota. More... |
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U.S. Dollar Fiat Reserve Currency Root of the Global Financial Crisis At some point, interventionists will chance upon spending programs that actually have a positive effect on the economy long term. These will not center on projects like insulating schools or filling potholes or increasing our reliance on alternate energy sources, all of which have a place, however removed, in that they promote energy efficiency, but on sponsoring significant infrastructure projects that will serve to support, restore and expand our capacity for economic growth and increase our competitiveness. There is no end to the infrastructure work needing to be done in this regard: electrical transmission and base-load generation, water and wastewater treatment, rail expansion and electrification, light rail and public transport, ports and waterways, oil and gas pipelines and refining; after 30 years of neglect, the list seems endless. Certainly, we have neglected the infrastructure that supports our economy, threatening our productive base, but we are convinced that in order for the US to regain its economic footing, we will have to turn to our aging but still formidable productive capacities. We are constantly bombarded with stories about imperial over-reach and the decline of the American Empire, how uncompetitive we are, and an endless litany of what is going wrong—and much has. Somehow though, Americans have been given to understand that our manufacturing sector has been gutted and shipped lock, stock and barrel to China, which much to financial sector lobbyists’ chagrin, is patently untrue. More... |
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Is Your Bank Sitting In the Trillion Dollar Derivative Minefield? Total equity at the five banks is $737 billion. So if you assume that only 1% of derivatives are “at risk” (odds are it’s more) and 10% of that at risk money is lost, you’ve wiped out nearly 1/3 of the banks’ equity. More... |
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Fall of the Dollar on G-20 Finance Ministers Agenda In remarks that will fuel the row around excessive pay, Lord Griffiths, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, said banks should not be ashamed of rewarding their staff. Speaking to an audience at St Paul's Cathedral in London about morality in the marketplace last night, Griffiths said the British public should "tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all". With public anger mounting at the forecast of bumper bonuses for bankers only a year after the industry was rescued by the taxpayer, he said bankers' bonuses should be seen as part of a longer-term investment in Britain's economy. "I believe that we should be thinking about the medium-term common good, not the short -term common good ... We should not, therefore, be ashamed of offering compensation in an internationally competitive market which ensures the bank businesses here and employs British people," he said. More... |
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5 evil things credit card companies can (still) do President Obama discussed credit-card reform in Rio Rancho, N.M., in May.Credit card companies are socking it to consumers left and right. They're hiking interest rates to as much as 36% and doubling minimum monthly payments, frustrating customers who are already cash-strapped and credit-crunched. At the same time, credit card companies have been hard at work coming up with new ways to boost profits while sidestepping the reforms. No current laws cap credit card interest rates, according to Pamela Banks of Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, so technically the sky's the limit. But the CARD act will help curb abusive practices. As of February, issuers won't be able to arbitrarily raise rates on existing balances. But cardholders will still be subject to interest hikes for late payments and various other infractions. Fees aren't just rising -- they're multiplying. Cardholders are getting slapped with fees they've never seen before. The hitch: New laws can address only existing fees and business practices; they can't predict what credit card companies will do in the future. Consumer outrage is boiling over. More... |
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Death of Petro-Dollar, Told Ya So The story hit like a thief in the night, even bearing Biblical proportions. The end of the exclusive sale of MidEast oil in USDollars, the rise of Russian and Chinese influence in the Persian Gulf, the rise in importance for the Intl Monetary Fund basket of currencies, the final clarion call for the free ride by Americans on the Dollar Credit Card, and hidden implications that the Saudis must shop for a new security lord in the region with broad military might, these are revolutionary steps with profound geopolitical implications. The back-to-back stories in the UK Independent struck like powerful bolts of lightning in the middle of the night from a North American perspective. This is truly incredible news. The US will soon no longer be permitted to sell its indulgences. This is major Paradigm Shift material. When one combines the 0% US interest rate feeder system that shreds the USDollar with leveraged machinery designed by Wall Street itself, with the US$ rejection heralded by the Saudis side by side with their numerous global customers, the conclusion is easy. That is, easy except to the biased bankers who continue to occupy the corridors of finance on Wall Street. The conclusion is the death of the USDollar is written in stone, and a USTreasury default lies down the road. More... |
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How Deregulation Trashed the US Economy and Government Intervention Became the Only Way Out Remember the panic-inducing headlines of 2008? Government Takes Over Troubled Mortgage Giants, Lehman Brothers Files for Bankruptcy, Bank of America Buys Merrill Lynch, and Stock Prices Plummet – that last one just as the government announced an $85 billion emergency loan to rescue insurance giant AIG. And that was just the beginning. Next came the $700 billion bailout of “distressed” banks, a plan that gave Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the lame-duck Bush administration unprecedented power. We need to "remove the distressed assets from the financial system," argued Paulson, who had resigned as CEO of Goldman Sachs to become Treasury “czar” in 2006 – after amassing a personal net worth of $700 million during his time at the bank. More... |
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Is China Going to Go “Nuclear”? In case you have not heard the news, China has announced that it will be instructing its state-owned enterprises to potentially default on their derivatives contracts. As I have written extensively in the past, the derivatives market is a massive time bomb just waiting to go off. China’s latest move may be the match that lights the fuse. All told, US Commercial banks own $202 trillion in derivatives in notional value. To put that number into perspective, it’s roughly four times the global GDP. And 96% of this exposure sits on five banks’ balance sheets. Now consider that, combined, the top five banks (JP Morgan, Goldman, BofA, Citi, and HSBC) have roughly $700 billion in equity, and that’s it only 1% of the derivatives outstanding are actually “at risk.” Things are coming to a head in a very REAL way on the global stage, and it is not looking good at all. More... |
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A Year After a Cataclysm, Little Change on Wall St. One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the surprise is not how much has changed in the financial industry, but how little. Backstopped by huge federal guarantees, the biggest banks have restructured only around the edges. Employment in the industry has fallen just 8 percent since last September. Only a handful of big hedge funds have closed. Pay is already returning to precrash levels, topped by the 30,000 employees of Goldman Sachs, who are on track to earn an average of $700,000 this year. Nor are major pay cuts likely, according to a report last week from J.P. Morgan Securities. Executives at most big banks have kept their jobs. Financial stocks have soared since their winter lows. More... |
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Rolling the Dice Again The Wall Street gang is at it again! It’s been one year since Wall Street’s collapse and bailout took trillions from taxpayers and the sinking economy. The speculative instruments that pulled down the economy were those super-risky sub-prime mortgages, credit default swaps, collaterized debt obligations—you know—Las Vegas East, using other peoples’ savings. As if to elaborate their gigantic con job, the investment banks, guaranteed by you the taxpayers, are now packaging life insurance policies in what sane, on the ground businesses would consider deranged exotic money plays. The wild and crazy derivative spree is about to inject a new and recklessly ghoulish game of chance into the financial industry. The Wall Street casino boys are already drooling over the huge fees they expect to collect. Whatever wreckage occurs down the road will soak the investors. Washington, standby for another bailout! More....... |
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Dismantling the Temple The financial crisis has propelled the Federal Reserve into an excruciating political dilemma. The Fed is at the zenith of its influence, using its extraordinary powers to rescue the economy. Yet the extreme irregularity of its behavior is producing a legitimacy crisis for the central bank. The remote technocrats at the Fed who decide money and credit policy for the nation are deliberately opaque and little understood by most Americans. For the first time in generations, they are now threatened with popular rebellion. Where did the central bank get all the money it is handing out? Basically, the Fed printed it, out of thin air. That is what central banks do. Who told the Fed governors they could do this? Nobody, really--not Congress or the president. The Federal Reserve Board, alone among government agencies, does not submit its budgets to Congress for authorization and appropriation. It raises its own money, sets its own priorities. More... |
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China to Default on Derivative Contracts A remarkable story recently appeared in a leading Chinese business publication that threatens to upend the world of commodities. It seems that the government of China may be preparing the way for state-owned investment funds to walk away or default on OTC commodity derivatives contracts held with foreign banks if those contracts cause loss to the funds. What does this all mean and where do we go from here? Get ready for great and growing silver price volatility. This much is clear – the long anticipated default of the massive OTC silver derivatives position by China appears to be at hand. It’s hard to imagine a more profound event. All at once, the backing and excuse for the concentrated short position on the COMEX is exposed for the fraud it has always been. No longer can the CFTC pretend that the COMEX silver short position is backed by anything legitimate. Not when China, itself, is saying it may default. So many game changes have emerged in silver over the past few months that it is hard to appreciate them all. These recent announcements by China concerning its future intentions on select OTC commodity derivatives could be the most important of all. More... |
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Fiat Money in Death Throes Make no mistake about it: in this credit collapse we are witnessing the death throes of
irredeemable currency. In vain have governments and their client banks tried, for hundreds of
years, to graft this repulsive and degenerate bastard on the living organism of society. The result
was always the same: the healthy organism rejected the unnatural implant in its own good time.
The present episode is no different from earlier ones except, perhaps, in the degree of the
conceitedness of the perpetrators, and in their contempt for the native intelligence of man. |
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America: ‘Sold Out’ for $5.2 Billion! The country is in financial crisis and instead of the financial oligarchy being broken up to permit essential reform they are continuing to use their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed immediately to pull the economy out of its nosedive. Moreover, our legislators seem unwilling to act against these powerful financiers opting instead to succumb to their power and influence and continue to give them what they deem to be in their best interest instead of that of the taxpayers’. Rosenfield goes one step further in claiming that the Money Industry has, in fact, bought control of the American political system and, in the process, betrayed America’s trust in them. They are still in control and there is no end in sight. America’s economic system is where it is today because gambling became the financial sector’s principal preoccupation. The pile of chips grew so big that the Money Industry displaced real businesses that provided real goods, services and jobs. If we are to see the meaningful regulation we need, Congress must adopt the view that Wall Street has no legitimate seat at the table. With Wall Street having destroyed the system that enriched its high flyers, and plunged the global economy into deep recession, it’s time for Congress to tell Wall Street that its political investments have also gone bad. This time, legislating must be to control Wall Street, not further Wall Street’s control. More... |
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Bankers Are Scared. Are You? There have been some major bank failures and a few dozen local bank failures. The FDIC has depleted its reserves of T-bills. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury have subsidized these liquidations. The losses continue anyway. Commercial real estate is plummeting, and will produce hundreds of billions of dollars in losses for commercial banks. The residential housing market continues to plummet, with waves of mortgage re-sets scheduled for 2010 and 2011. There is end in sight. But the FED has kept the largest banks, now gutted, from going under. It has done this by doubling its balance sheet. This balance sheet serves as legal reserves for commercial banks. Because commercial bankers are petrified, they are not lending to the general public. They are lending to the FED. More... |
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Economic Policymakers Have Created A Perfect Storm
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How to Lower the U.S. Deficit Without Killing Social Security Workers are not so naive to think that the Bush/Obama bailouts — the fiscal crime of the century — will earn them “profits.” Just the opposite is the case. The profits that some giant banks are reporting are direct results of the bailout, itself a gigantic “forced borrowing” from working Americans, who will be paying the debt with their cherished social programs unless they mount an organized protest. Make no mistake, the corporate elite want the U.S. deficit taken care of and they don’t want to pay higher taxes to do it. They rightfully fear that foreign investors — most notably China and Japan — will quit feeding the American debt machine unless the deficit is drastically reduced. Instead of making workers pay off the deficit, the corporate elite should be forced to. A plan of action to accomplish this might look something like this: |
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The Federal Reserve Must Die “The Federal Reserve in collaboration with the giant banks has created the greatest financial crisis the world has ever seen. The foolish notion that unlimited amounts of money and credit created out of thin air can provide sustainable economic growth has delivered this crisis to us. Instead of economic growth and stable prices, (The Fed) has given us a system of government and finance that now threatens the world financial and political institutions. Pursuing the same policy of excessive spending, debt expansion and monetary inflation can only compound the problems that prevent the required corrections. Doubling the money supply didn’t work, quadrupling it won’t work either. Buying up the bad debt of privileged institutions and dumping worthless assets on the American people is morally wrong and economically futile.” - Representative from Texas Ron Paul questioning Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke |
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The Second Wave of The Depression: Hyperinflation Likely The second wave of the world economic depression is coming soon. Larry Summers, the economics czar of the Wall Street puppet regime currently in power in Washington, recently confessed to the Financial Times in an unguarded moment: “I don’t think the worst is over ….” A few weeks earlier, Jacques Attali, who served in the 1980s as the main economics adviser to French President Mitterrand, told an audience at the International Economic and Financial Forum (FIEF) in Paris that the world might well soon face a planetary Weimar “in the form of a hyperinflationary depression similar to the German events of 1922 - 1923. The next wave is likely to involve a worldwide dollar panic. Using ballpark figures, we can say that there are about $4 to $5 trillion sloshing around the world in the form of hot money, US Treasury securities, Euro dollars, and various forms of zeno-dollars. Japan has about a trillion, China almost $2 trillion, and so forth. It is naturally very unwise for a developing country like China to hold so many dollars rather than using them to purchase needed infrastructure and capital goods, and the Chinese leaders are now very uncomfortable with their own foolish decision, which was of course taken under heavy US pressure. But the point is that this $4.5 trillion overhang is by its very nature exceedingly unstable. More... |
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Why No One Won a Pulitzer for Financial Reporting Amidst the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression (if not ever) and the biggest Ponzi scheme ever, (the real estate-banking Ponzi scheme) not one of the 65 Pulitzer Prizes was awarded for coverage of the events surrounding the “financial crisis.” Ironically, the media has yet to identify this crisis as the biggest Ponzi scheme ever, confirming their incompetence. Today, America’s mainstream media machine is primarily owned by a small group of men. And they don’t just own television networks or newspapers. They own television networks AND newspapers AND radio stations. This is why you get the same bull regardless where you turn. This carefully guarded control has created a very dangerous form of censorship that few realize because America’s media industry puts out the same messages and rarely allows an open platform for the exchange of opposing viewpoints by credible experts. I know this from first-hand experience. More.... |
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Report Shows Bonuses Paid by Bailed-Out Banks The Wall Street millionaire club had nearly 5,000 members in 2008. At least 4,793 bankers and traders were paid more than $1 million in bonuses last year even as profits at the biggest banks dwindled and they accepted tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, according to a report released on Thursday by the New York attorney general’s office. Wall Street bonuses have come under intense scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators who say they believe that freewheeling pay practices contributed to the financial crisis. Banks have long paid their executives bonuses to supplement smaller salaries, but governance experts say that the nine-figure payouts during Wall Street’s worst year in decades shows the link between pay and performance has been frayed. More.... |
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The Dark Years are here The money printing phase is normally the last stage of an empire before it collapses and this is where the US is now. The US dollar became the reserve currency of the world when the US was strong economically. But as the US economy started to weaken in the 1960-70’s the US government found a much better method for maintaining a strong economy. It started to print paper that it sold to other nations or exchanged for goods and services. For almost 50 years this has been the most clever way ever devised of maintaining the living standards of an economically deteriorating nation without even having to spend any resources on building an empire. It is a Ponzi scheme which has worked for several decades but slowly the world is now waking up to the fact that they are holding worthless paper printed by the US Government. With the escalation of money printing markets will be flooded with government paper which nobody wants, leaving governments to buy its own junk. The two countries with the worst problems are the UK and the US and their precarious situation will emerge first. Within the next few months rating agencies are likely to downgrade both countries’ debt. This will lead to the value of the treasury bonds and gilts collapsing and interest rates quickly moving up into the teens. The higher rates will make the financing costs of the debt to up exponentially leading to more money printing and higher interest rates. This is the “perfect” vicious circle that will end in a hyperinflationary depression. More..... |
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Mass Layoffs: The Continuing Devastation A mass layoff is likely to take place in one town. They are not individual layoffs spread across several plants or regions. They are likely to hit one plant. The company shuts down a division. It finds that the entire output of a plant or a division is no longer profitable. When this happens, the loss of income is concentrated in one geographical area. This hits housing harder than if the layoffs had been spread across several plants located in different towns. Without warning, every fired person must scramble to get a job. The local market finds it costly to absorb all of them at once. The obvious response of employers is to offer a lower salary without fringe benefits. The job-seekers are not in a position to negotiate. They have bills to pay. One of these bills is the monthly mortgage. It is a large share of the household budget. The family will resist skipping this payment. But, if they are facing a mortgage that is now larger than the market value of the home, they are tempted to stop paying. More... |
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Three United States Gold Scenarios, Fort Knox, Fort Hocks or Fort Shocks For 72 years, the building at the intersection of Bullion Boulevard and Gold Vault Road in Fort Knox, Kentucky has symbolized the financial strength of the United States of America. The United States Bullion Depository, better known as Fort Knox, is said to contain 147.3 million troy ounces of gold, over half the nation’s total reported gold bullion holdings of 261.5 million troy ounces. The remaining 114 million ounces are said to be stored at the Denver and Philadelphia Mints, the West Point Bullion Depository, and the San Francisco Assay Office. Assuming a price of $1,000 / ounce, the nation’s gold is worth $261.5 billion. If the metal is actually there, it represents the largest sovereign stockpile of gold bullion in the world. However, the gold holdings of the U.S. have not been audited in more than 50 years. One reason given for the lack of an audit is that it would be “too expensive” to conduct one. An audit would cost a few million dollars, at most, so using cost as a reason for not performing it strains belief when placed in the context of the country’s Fiscal Year 2009 deficit of $2,000,000,000,000.00+, and federal debt of $11,600,000,000,000.00+. It is curious that one of the few places within the government where costs appear to be of concern relates to an audit of the one, true monetary asset possessed by the American people. More... |
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Evolving Economic Crisis: Review of Market Trends Probably more than 50% of workers will stop funding 401(k)’s, IRA’s and Roth’s. Twenty-five percent of companies are suspending 401(k)’s and that number will grow. That will have a devastating affect on the stock and bond markets. Again, get out of all stocks except gold and silver shares and Canadian Treasuries. Get out of corporate bonds. Interest rates will rise over the next two years. Get rid of cash value life insurance policies and annuities. No CDs of any kind. Unemployment has doubled in seven months from 7 to 14 million. In the previous eight years, due to free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing, we lost 5 million jobs. We are calling U6 unemployment at 20.5%. Officially it is 16.5%. Even the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University says real unemployment is 18.2%. Our President is just realizing that he is presiding over the bankruptcy of the US. In order to bring this to a halt he would have to cut mandatory programs that underline the welfare state, which makes up 60% of the budget. We see no chance of that happening. That means in the next three years the Treasury will go broke. Once the insolvency occurs welfare, Social Security and Medicare will end along with many other programs. Imperial America will cease to exist. Those occupations in Japan, South Korea, Europe, Iraq, Afghanistan and hundreds of other bases, will end, unable to be financed. The burden will be too much to any longer bare. More.... |
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Why I Would Manipulate Silver, IF Goldman Sachs has admitted that they have a computer program that can be used to manipulate markets. “The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways” For over ten years, www.GATA.org has gathered information and admissions from central bankers and major bullion banks that the price of gold on the world market is manipulated lower than it should be. Well, one more admission is close enough for me to be counted as one more proof. First, they have those "manipulation trading programs" admitted by Goldman Sachs. Second, their positions are so large, that those who are short, ARE the market, and I'm sure they use their computer programs to only sell "just enough" to move the market price nearly at will. Third, they know their own clients' books, and stop losses, and can run the price of silver to trigger those stop losses to take over client long positions, so their clients lose money. More... For more information on COMEX manipulation, Ted Butler has been following this issue for years. His website will provide you with more excellent information on how our markets are not what they appear to be and how our regulators have failed us. |
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Fiat Money in Death Throes Make no mistake about it: in this credit collapse we are witnessing the death throes of
irredeemable currency. In vain have governments and their client banks tried, for hundreds of
years, to graft this repulsive and degenerate bastard on the living organism of society. The result
was always the same: the healthy organism rejected the unnatural implant in its own good time.
The present episode is no different from earlier ones except, perhaps, in the degree of the
conceitedness of the perpetrators, and in their contempt for the native intelligence of man. |
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America: ‘Sold Out’ for $5.2 Billion! The country is in financial crisis and instead of the financial oligarchy being broken up to permit essential reform they are continuing to use their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed immediately to pull the economy out of its nosedive. Moreover, our legislators seem unwilling to act against these powerful financiers opting instead to succumb to their power and influence and continue to give them what they deem to be in their best interest instead of that of the taxpayers’. Rosenfield goes one step further in claiming that the Money Industry has, in fact, bought control of the American political system and, in the process, betrayed America’s trust in them. They are still in control and there is no end in sight. America’s economic system is where it is today because gambling became the financial sector’s principal preoccupation. The pile of chips grew so big that the Money Industry displaced real businesses that provided real goods, services and jobs. If we are to see the meaningful regulation we need, Congress must adopt the view that Wall Street has no legitimate seat at the table. With Wall Street having destroyed the system that enriched its high flyers, and plunged the global economy into deep recession, it’s time for Congress to tell Wall Street that its political investments have also gone bad. This time, legislating must be to control Wall Street, not further Wall Street’s control. More... |
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Bankers Are Scared. Are You? There have been some major bank failures and a few dozen local bank failures. The FDIC has depleted its reserves of T-bills. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury have subsidized these liquidations. The losses continue anyway. Commercial real estate is plummeting, and will produce hundreds of billions of dollars in losses for commercial banks. The residential housing market continues to plummet, with waves of mortgage re-sets scheduled for 2010 and 2011. There is end in sight. But the FED has kept the largest banks, now gutted, from going under. It has done this by doubling its balance sheet. This balance sheet serves as legal reserves for commercial banks. Because commercial bankers are petrified, they are not lending to the general public. They are lending to the FED. More... |
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Economic Policymakers Have Created A Perfect Storm
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Grand Theft Auto: How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GM When a company goes bankrupt, everyone takes a hit: fair or not, workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get fragments of what's left. That's the law. What workers don't lose are their pensions (including old-age health funds) already taken from their wages and held in their name. But not this time. Steve Rattner (the new "car czar") has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi. Here's the scheme: Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replace by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM's stock - or 25%. Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well ... just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock. Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada - $6 billion right now and in cash - from a company that can't pay for auto parts or worker eye exams. This is dangerous business: The Rattner plan opens the floodgate to every politically-connected or down-on-their-luck company seeking to drain health care retirement funds. Pensions are wiped away and two connected banks don't even get a haircut? How come Citi and Morgan aren't asked, like workers and other creditors, to take stock in GM? With GM's last dying dimes about to fall into one pocket, and the Obama Treasury in his other pocket, Morgan's Jamie Dimon is correct in saying that the last twelve months will prove to be the bank's "finest year ever." More.... |
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Government and Financial Institutions Controlled by Evil Men, When the banking cartel succeeded in creating the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913, control of money in the United States was put into the hands of bankers whose sole purpose is to enrich themselves at the expense of the citizens of the country. Their relentless printing of money has resulted in the dollar losing 96% of its value since 1913. The printing of dollars has allowed politicians to spend money today and make unfunded commitments decades into the future. The systematic inflation created by the Federal Reserve is immoral as it impoverishes the middle class and senior citizens for the benefit of bankers, the elite rich and entrenched politicians. Much of the moral decay in our nation can be traced to the manipulation of money in the last 8 decades. The elite will make the case that we live in a modern world with modern standards, based on modern thought. They use the media to manipulate the masses into believing that evil is actually good. As the citizens of the country allow this to happen, the hangman’s scaffold grows ever larger. Our parents taught us right from wrong. It is black and white. Only those in power want the world to be bathed in shades of grey. This allows them to commit fraud, manipulate public opinion, utilize leverage to make risky bets with taxpayer funds, and use wealth and power to secure more wealth and power. The unelected bureaucrats in the back pocket of the banking cartel designed a bailout plan that attempts to keep the evil bankers in control of our economy. More.... |
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Death Watch
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Dangerous Unintended Consequences:
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Conspiracy at Bank of America?
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The Financial War Against Iceland
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Bill Moyers Interview with William Black
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America's Financial Oligarchy Is Still in Control
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Dangerous Unintended Consequences
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The Big Takeover
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Profits & Power From THE SCANDAL Beneath The Scandal
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Successful parasites do not kill their hosts
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The Issue: The New Depression
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Reforming the Global Financial System by Flushing Out the Parasites
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The Banking Crisis, What Really Happened from 2001 to 2007
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Criminal Banks and Brokers Continue To Ply Their Trade
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February 24, 2009
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February 23, 2009
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February 21, 2009
In less than two months, regulators have seized 14 banks. Experts think many more banks will collapse before the financial crisis is over.For six consecutive weeks, industry regulators have seized control of a bank after the market closed on Friday, bringing the total number of failed banks so far this year to 14. To put that into perspective, 25 banks failed in 2008, suggesting that the rate of failures is quickening as the economic crisis deepens. At the current rate, nearly 100 institutions -- with a combined $50 billion in assets will collapse by year's end. |
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February 5, 2009
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January 29, 2009
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January 28, 2009
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January 10, 2009
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Disclaimer: Nothing contained anywhere on this site constitutes advice or recommendations on any type of investments. This information is provided for people to read and be aware of our economic, social, political, media, and judicial environment. Any actions taken or purchases of any type investment are at the sole discretion of the reader. Any opinions in the articles are those of the writer(s) themselves and not necessarily those of endtheillusion.com. In our effort to promote a many viewpoints, we select articles from a wide range of writers. |
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Allegedly, as much as $1.2 billion in customer funds have been "misplaced" which would appear to be clearly against the law. Customer funds are supposedly sacred in the brokerage/bank/etc. business. Should one of these custodians of investor funds go belly up because a proprietary trade (where the firm is supposedly risking its own capital) went wrong, then the customers should not be on the hook. 
It's musical chairs, and sooner or later the music is going to stop. Greece looks like it will be the first one standing, or in this case, falling down. Portugal could be next, or Spain, or Italy. Greece has more than $1.26 trillion (1 trillion euros) of public sector debt outstanding. Do you think that a real default isn't going to crush a lot of banks? Wake up. And if you think that Greece defaulting (or even forcing a 50% haircut on private investors, that would be banks, folks) wouldn't spill over into other countries and across the globe... wake up.
We live in an increasingly degraded country. Our politics are degraded and a laughing stock to the world. Our military is demoralized and degraded with soldiers urinating on dead civilians and awaiting deployment orders for the next illegal intervention. Our education system has been degraded with standards falling and pervasive defunding. Our transportation system, ditto.
"Do you know who makes money?" challenges Bernard Lietaer, Belgian professor at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The answer turns out to be simple. The answer is unexpectedly simple, though it does have a chicken-and-egg quality: Whoever is in power in a society, creates its money. If you want to know who is in power, look for the money-maker.
There is a sense that from here on, anything goes. The politicians will do whatever they find convenient, because there is no longer anything to stop them – not an electorate that is jealous of its freedoms and certainly not the Constitution, which is now just a playhouse for judicial imagineering. No one can know what's coming next from the government and the financial system it has fostered, but for many of us there is an awful suspicion that we are not going to like it.
Exactly ten years ago Argentina suffered a full-scale financial and governmental collapse. That was the end-result of over a decade of doing exactly what the IMF, international bankers, rating agencies and global "experts" told us to do. 
Here is the smoking gun. Days after the MF Global bankruptcy was filed, and a vast array of deliveries in silver were expunged. The silver vault inventory tells the story of the crime. JPMorgan simply converted what should have been MF Global client silver into JPM licensed vaults. Review the timeline. MF Global declared bankruptcy on October 31st. About a week later the CME began reporting that 1.4 million ounces of Registered silver was unaccounted for and unavailable for delivery, including 627,182 ounces from non-cartel banks. About 7 to 10 days afterwards, JPMorgan suddenly reported a deposit of 613,738 ounces into Eligible vaults. Exactly seven days later, JPMorgan adjusted this silver into Registered vaults. JPMorgan had not seen one significant silver deposit in months prior to this bountiful day. Great work on the part of the 
In a fresh sign of bankster desperation, we recently learned that they have pushed lease rates for gold to the lowest, negative level in history – i.e. they are paying people more money to "borrow" their gold than at any other time. We know this is a sign of desperation, because back in the real world, buyers are paying premiums near record-highs to buy their (real) gold.
On November 27, Bloomberg News reported the results of its successful case to force the Federal Reserve to reveal the lending details of its 2008-09 bank bailout. Bloomberg reported that by March 2009, the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion in below-market loans and guarantees to rescuing the financial system; and that these nearly interest-free loans came without strings attached. 
A national effort to reclaim vacant properties has one of the country's largest lenders scrambling.
So what does Draghi (head of the European Central Bank) want? He wants his ministers to control national budgets, he wants more money diverted from working people into an over-bloated financial system, he wants his own appointments in positions of power (ie–check Italy and Greece's new "technocratic" governments), he wants to dictate economic policy, he wants to abolish the welfare state and the social safety net, he wants to keep Europe in a permanent state of Depression ("austerity measures") so more of the Euro Zones's wealth flows to the 1 percent at the top.
What you are about to read should absolutely astound you. During the last financial crisis, the Federal Reserve secretly conducted the biggest bailout in the history of the world, and the Fed fought in court for several years to keep it a secret. Do you remember the TARP bailout? The American people were absolutely outraged that the federal government spent 700 billion dollars bailing out the "too big to fail" banks. Well, that bailout was pocket change compared to what the Federal Reserve did. As you will see documented below, the Federal Reserve actually handed more than 16 trillion dollars in nearly interest-free money to the "too big to fail" banks between 2007 and 2010. So have you heard about this on the nightly news? Probably not.
The Eurozone debt crisis has replaced the U.S. financial crisis as the disaster du jour. But make no mistake: U.S. taxpayers will be paying the tab for the U.S. crisis for years.
If Germany's creditworthiness is in doubt, how can Germany be expected to bail out other countries? Evidence that Germany's failed bond auction was orchestrated is provided by troubled Italy's successful bond auction two days later.
The purpose of this paper is to highlight how hegemonic American economic doctrine has infected global economics in creating a surreal plutocratic corporatocracy, or in other words, what's black is white, what's up is down, what's safe is risky, you get the idea!
Let me start with the nexus of power and money in this country. That nexus resides exactly where Wall Street and Washington intersect. Each serves the other and the middle-class be damned. You see, the "revolving door" metaphor that's so often used to describe the relationship between Wall Street and Washington isn't exactly accurate. 
We have been exploring the zombification of the US economy. Major industries – finance, health, education and defense – have been taken over by zombies, parasites whose real interest is to transfer wealth to themselves, from the part of the economy that remains productive.
Popular outrage forced Bank of America Corp. to drop the idea of a $5-a-month debit card fee. Now imagine what that outrage could achieve if it were let loose across the financial industry.
There are more than 1,000 US military bases dotting the globe. To be specific, the most accurate count is 1,077. Unless it's 1,088. Or, if you count differently, 1,169. Or even 1,180. Actually, the number might even be higher. Nobody knows for sure.
Monetary reform is the critical missing element needed to move humanity back from the brink of economic destruction and nuclear disaster, away from a future dominated by fraud, ugliness and warfare, toward a world of justice and beauty.
One of the greatest detriments to job creation in the US is the overseas income deferral law. This unbelievable gift to transnational corporations is at the heart of free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing. Presently these corporations are sitting on $2.2 trillion in untaxed profits, which is costing the American taxpayer almost $800 billion in lost tax revenue if like in 2006 they are allowed to bring the funds back at 5-1/4% taxation. Those conglomerates want to bring those funds back into the US tax free, which means $1 trillion in lost taxes, taking advantage of the current financial situation in the US. 
So the question is, do we turn over less of our money if we pay in cash as opposed to using plastic? And why? 
As reality finally hits the financial elite, they start turning on each other. Finally, after trillions in fraudulent activity, trillions in bailouts, trillions in printed money, billions in political bribing and billions in bonuses, the criminal cartel members on Wall Street are beginning to get what they deserve. As the Eurozone is coming apart at the seams and as the US economy grinds to a halt, the financial elite are starting to turn on each other. The lawsuits are piling up fast. 
Wall Street is at it again in 2010, after paying out all-time record bonuses last year. The top six banks alone are on track to pay out $143 billion in bonuses and compensation this year, more than enough money to fill the entire $130 billion budget gap for every state in the country for FY 2011. $143 billion could create 3.6 million jobs if pumped directly into the economy. With just half of the money, the banks could reset the principals and interest rates on all underwater mortgages in the country to market rates, pumping $73 billion into the national economy.
"There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner," says hedge fund legend Mark Mobius, "because we haven't solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis." We're raising our alert status for the next financial crisis. We already raised it last week after spreads on U.S. credit default swaps started blowing out. We raised it again after seeing the remarks of Mr. Mobius, chief of the $50 billion emerging markets desk at Templeton Asset Management.
Quite simply, the world's debt hole is deeper than any reasonable person can comprehend. It is difficult to define, and it is not terribly easy to write about - really it's more of a concept than something that you can actually sink your teeth into. You won't see an abundance of stories or editorials on this topic; in fact the financial media avoids the global debt situation like the plague for good reason. Sure, they talk about chunks of it, but almost never in total. However, with your indulgence, it is the purpose of this piece to bring us all a bit closer to not just understanding how dangerous things have become to all of us personally, but more importantly to frame the problem in terms of history and scale.
Technically the title of this post is wrong: the truth is that nobody could possibly know or predict what a bank run would looks like in details suffice to say that it would have terminal and devastating results on the global economy. One needs only remember what happened when the Reserve Fund broke the buck and the $3 billion money market industry was at risk of unwinding (for those who do not, Paul Kanjorski does a 
It is absurd to believe that the Pentagon and White House would spend $10 billion a month just to hunt down a handful of terrorists ensconced in the mountains of Afghanistan . So what is the war in Afghanistan about? The Taliban have never engaged in any terrorist act against the territorial United States or its overseas presence. The Taliban have always maintained their fight was for the expulsion of foreign forces occupying Afghanistan . Hence the Taliban is not part of any "international terrorist network". If the US war in Afghanistan is not about defeating terrorism, then why the massive expenditure of funds and manpower for over a decade?
The term Black Swan, generally it refers to the extreme oddity that passes through view, shows up on the radar, the extreme warning signal being dire, but is largely ignored by the masses, regarded as the exception or outlier event. THE BLACK SWAN HAS BECOME THE NATIONAL BIRD!! When a few black swans appear, the alert analysts pay heed and express their warnings. When an armada of black swans appear, the message is clear. A systemic failure is in progress, and the important foundations are crumbling.
As the financial world breathed a collective sigh of relief as the Greek Parliament voted to impose further austerity measures on the people of Greece, I wondered aloud to no one in particular how many times we'd have to see this movie before people finally realize that this crisis is a permanent one. 
In the last three years, at least 100 direct questions have come to my INBOX or telephone, asking what solution might come. My answer has been consistent, that no solution is even pursued. The objective is not remedy, but rather retained power by the banksters. Any meaningful remedy must begin with a foundation of liquidated failed insolvent big US banks. That will never happen, since they hold the power over the USGovt and control the USDollar printing press. We are witnessing moral hazard over the top, the acceptance of the most dangerous risk. The entire concept of Too Big To Fail for banks ensures no serious attempt to deal with the problems, no meaningful policy to encourage recovery, and a sinking toward systemic failure. The business model leads always to a climax of ruin.
A "protection racket" is where a group of people puts you at risk of disaster and then generously offers to sell you protection against that very risk, usually at a very high price. 
The talking points of the super rich, which are pounded into the brains of slumbering Americans, are they pay all the taxes, create all the jobs, create all the wealth, and drive innovation. The facts say otherwise. The super rich aren't creators, they are destroyers. The top 0.1% richest Americans didn't get rich by creating new companies and letting their entrepreneurial talents shine. These 152,000 people, with an average income of $5.6 million per year are overwhelmingly executives at large corporations, banks, law firms, and real estate firms. These people account for 68% of the richest of the rich. Entrepreneurial creators and producers account for less than 10% of the richest Americans. The executives that make up the 68% are masters of creating debt, wealth for themselves by peddling debt to the middle class, and creating jobs in China and India by outsourcing U.S. jobs.
Generations of politicians from both parties have failed to stem the country's rising trade deficit. That's the real reason jobs keep disappearing and workers' living standards keep dropping. Washington is obsessed with the budget deficit. It's all that lawmakers can talk about. The hysteria is such that they can't even agree on raising the ceiling on the national debt.
The U.S. economic and systemic-solvency crises of the last four years only have been precursors to the coming Great Collapse: a hyperinflationary great depression. Such will encompass a complete collapse in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar; a collapse in the normal stream of U.S. commercial and economic activity; a collapse in the U.S. financial system as we know it; and a likely realignment of the U.S. political environment. Outside timing on the hyperinflation remains 2014, but there is strong risk of the currency catastrophe beginning to unfold in the months ahead. It may be starting to unfold as we go to press in March 2011, but moving into a full blown hyperinflation could take months to a year, beyond the onset, depending on the developing global view of the dollar and reactions of the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve.
What if I told you that the financial crisis could be explained in just two words? Would you believe me?
Ever since the Great Recession shook the foundations of the U.S. economy, President Obama has been promising recovery. Evidence of this recovery, we were told, was manifested in the massive post-bailout profits corporations made. Soon enough, the President assured us, these corporations would tire of hoarding mountains of cash and start a hiring bonanza, followed by raising wages and benefits. It was either wishful thinking or conscious deception. The recent stock market meltdown has squashed any hope of a corporate-led recovery. 
Germany is therefore always interested in buying gold, especially at a low price, which the IMF is unquely placed to facilitate and organize. Methods used by the IMF feature the issuance - or printing - of its own near-money Special Drawing Rights, and the swapping of these for central bank gold from "assisted countries". The aided country will, through IMF magic, report an increase - not a decrease - in its central bank holdings despite the physical gold being transported out of the country. The official logic is that raised amounts of theoretical-only gold in its central banks vaults will stem speculation against the national currency, as part of the economic healing process. When this produces new economic strength, the central bank can buy back the gold it swapped for SDRs, using these to exchange for dollars, euro, yen, British pounds or Swiss Francs and cover its trade deficit crisis, budget crisis, or other transitional economic stress during "IMF adjustment". 
The combination of $trillion bond fraud, dependence on inflating home equity for economic development, oversized cars, oil dependence, constant market intervention, insolvent banks, insolvent homes, outsourced industry, endless war, budget deadlock amidst runaway deficits, raided US gold treasury, mammoth future benefit obligations, and handing over the keys at USDept Treasury to Goldman Sachs has left the United States to fend off systemic failure. The creeping price inflation that stems from USFed hyper monetary inflation and total ignorance on basics of capitalism like business formation have left the US vulnerable to disorder and chaos. The chaos in fact grows with the passage of time and the ruin of money, against a background of a cruel middle class squeeze. With one citizen in seven on food stamps and over 22% of the population jobless, the sunset of the American Empire is well along. The banker oligarchs are gradually killing the nation, its democracy, and its wealth engines during a sustained strangulation process.
Some economists might be worried about a double-dip recession, but a large number of Americans have an even worse scenario in mind. 
The silence is deafening. While the rest of the nation is heading back toward a double dip, Washington continues to obsess about future budget deficits. Why?
For a decade I have warned that US corporations, pressed by Wall Street and large retailers such as Wal-Mart, to move offshore their production for US consumer markets, were simultaneously moving offshore US GDP, US tax base, US consumer income, and irreplaceable career opportunities for American citizens.
Despite the denial chorus of the same politicians, financiers, and economists who told us prior to 2008 that our financial sector was fine, the American public is increasingly aware of the truth: American manufacturing is in a state of deep crisis.
It is not easy to destroy the greatest empire in the history of mankind. The 20th Century was the American Century, but as with all empires, the combination of hubris, monetary debasement, imperial overreach and delusional overconfidence have set in motion the inevitable downfall of the American Empire. Without Federal Reserve intervention in the financial markets since September 2008, the biggest banks in the world would have entered bankruptcy liquidation. The U.S. economy would have experienced a 10% to 20% fall in GDP. The unemployment rate would have soared above 15%. The stock market would have fallen 70%. Wealthy bondholders and stockholders would have seen their wealth cut in half. Incumbent politicians would have all been thrown out of office. The richest Americans, constituting the ruling class, would have borne the brunt of the pain.
Supplying people with needed products or services is not any vendor's goal; extracting profit is. That's why bankers won't accept the furniture mentioned in the first paragraph of this piece as collateral. Furthermore the entire American commercial code centralizes this purpose and protects the rights of vendors to engage in it. That's why in a commercial bankruptcy, the bankrupt company's assets go first to commercial and last to human creditors. It's why companies can sell you products that don't work but you can't buy products with checks that don't work. You can't even buy products that don't work with checks that don't work. It's why the Fed exists and why bankers and companies get bailouts but people don't. It's also why no banker will ever go to jail for the fraud committed in the housing collapse and the foreclosure scandals. What most people view as fraudulent activity is, in fact, what America does, and what America does is done for the sake of money, not for the sake of people. It's why the maxim is let the buyer, not the vendor, beware. But if the economy were designed equitably, no one would need to beware. Buyers are told to beware because even the legal system recognizes that the economy cheats. In fact, if questioning the practices of bankers were allowed, the entire basis of the "American way of life" would be called into question, and the legal system cannot allow it. 
We are past the point of no return, thanks to the Super-Rich. Yes, Super-Rich Capitalists will fight to the death. But destiny is trapped in our DNA, historians warn, and will not change. America is run by these short-term thinkers. They never learn the lessons of history. They do not want you to know that their capitalism is self-destructive, that capitalism's cycle is in a suicidal end game, that their "mutant capitalism," as Bogle calls it, is destroying the very soul of America's democracy. 
2 out of 3 corporations pay no federal taxes. Some of the biggest tax evaders include Exxon, Verizon, Bank of America, Boeing, CitiGroup, among others. These corporate executives sit there with their "patriotic" flags on their lapels, while they scheme how to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, cut deals to ship American jobs overseas, and setup tax havens in the Caribbean. Is it any wonder that the rest of the country is mired in this economic misery while they prosper? 
U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization's effect on the U.S. economy.
Are you an American employee? If so, today's column will likely offend you. If you'd rather not be offended, read no further. If you continue and then complain, I'm sorry, but that simply proves you're, well, stupid. But then again, stupidity plays a large role in today's topic.
The storyline that has been sold to the public by the Federal government, Wall Street, and the corporate mainstream media over the last two years is the economy is recovering and the banking system has recovered from its near death experience in 2008. Wall Street profits in 2009 & 2010 totaled approximately $80 billion. The stock market has risen almost 100% since the March 2009 lows. Wall Street CEOs were so impressed by this fantastic performance they dished out $43 billion in bonuses over the two year period to their thousands of Harvard MBA paper pushers. It is amazing that an industry that was effectively insolvent in October 2008 has made such a spectacular miraculous recovery. The truth is recovery is simple when you control the politicians and regulators, and own the organization that prints the money.
One seldom mentioned fact by western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank of Libya is 100% State Owned. The world's globalist financiers and market manipulators do not like it and would continue to their on-going effort to dethrone Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi, bringing an end to Libya as independent nation.
By acting together to fulfill these pledges we will bring the world economy out of recession and prevent a crisis like this from recurring in the future. We are committed to take all necessary actions to restore the normal flow of credit through the financial system and ensure the soundness of systemically important institutions, implementing our policies in line with the agreed G20 framework for restoring lending and repairing the financial sector. We have agreed to support a general SDR (Special Drawing Rights) allocation which will inject $250bn into the world economy and increase global liquidity.– G20 Communiqué, London, April 2, 2009
A point to never lose sight of in the last two weeks is that the USGovt manages a monetary nuclear reactor that is also in core meltdown, with USTreasury Bonds as the fuel rods whose radiation has a USDollar odor. The accelerating piles of debt and money have been routinely spread systematically in a grand complicated coordinated reaction, the core of which is the United States. Watch for any interruption to the massive flow of funds into the reactor, which the G-7 central bankers were keenly aware of last week, but without mention. As with all asset bubbles, the required funds grow exponentially to maintain the asset bubble, here the USTreasury Bond. The reactor cannot lose its flow, or else a meltdown occurs. 
Nobody wants to say it, but a major reason corporations are not creating many jobs and expanding in the United States is the increasing systemic risk being created by Washington.
Once upon a time, as my colleague Tom Ferguson explained to me, English insurers discovered that scoundrels would buy insurance on ships they didn't own and then leak voyage details to the French navy, so they could collect. Guess who sells most municipal bonds? Many of the same people who'll be betting on their failure now. See a problem here? If you don't own the underlying asset, then credit default swaps are simply gambling. So what we are talking about is an extension of casinos to every state and city in America. The European Union is finally moving on these vultures. But not us, it seems.
Over time, I have explained how various activities in the gold and silver markets are not the signs of normal free market trading. Invariably, these abnormal trading tactics result in suppressing gold and silver prices.
The 2008 financial crisis was an "avoidable" disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a federal inquiry. 
What could cause an economic collapse in 2011? Well, unfortunately there are quite a few "nightmare scenarios" that could plunge the entire globe into another massive financial crisis. The United States, Japan and most of the nations in Europe are absolutely drowning in debt. The Federal Reserve continues to play reckless games with the U.S. dollar. The price of oil is skyrocketing and the global price of food just hit a new record high. Food riots are already breaking out all over the world. Meanwhile, the rampant fraud and corruption going on in world financial markets is starting to be exposed and the whole house of cards could come crashing down at any time. Most Americans have no idea that a horrific economic collapse could happen at literally any time. There is no way that all of this debt and all of this financial corruption is sustainable. At some point we are going to reach a moment of "total system failure".
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the Federal Reserve – through its proxy money centre banks – has taken complete control of the interest rate complex enabling them to arbitrarily price capital at or near zero. This has only been possible with accommodation of the ruling elite who mutually benefit from these policies.
Dear Mr. President and members of Congress:
The U.S. government is insolvent. Who says so? Timothy F. Geithner, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.
What if the greatest scam ever perpetrated was blatantly exposed, and the US media didn't cover it? Does that mean the scam could keep going? That's what we are about to find out.
One of the biggest risks to the world's financial health is the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market. It's complex, it's unregulated, and it ought to be of concern to world leaders that its notional value is 20 times the size of the world economy. But traders rule the roost -- and as much as risk managers and regulators might want to limit that risk, they lack the power or knowledge to do so..jpg)
We are witnessing by far the most colossal level of fraud and theft in world history. The devastating effects from this heist will be felt for many decades. Rather than the real perpetrators of the global collapse being held accountable, they have been rewarded for their crimes through tax payer bailouts, accounting trickery and a collapse in interest rates, all of which has allowed Wall Street to pay out higher bonuses than even prior to the collapse. 
The Chinese really must think the American strategy and behavior to be braindead and self-destructive. The US helped them assemble a manufacturing industry, replaced US income with debt, and finally faces the Grim Reaper in a national episode of systemic failure. The US leadership is as stupid and mindless as the population is driven by compulsive consumption over the cliff, as the nation faces ruin. The Jackass warning has been for five years that the Chinese experiment would end in tragedy, and that when a preponderance of USTreasury debt is owned by foreigners, especially a single foreign nation, the Untied States will lose its sovereignty. 
The Federal Reserve, under orders from Congress, today named the counterparties of about 21,000 transactions from $3.3 trillion in aid provided to stem the worst financial panic since the Great Depression. 
Instead of vitally needed stimulus, Washington and European governments dictate austerity. The pretext of deficit reduction is being used to transfer more wealth to those already with too much, plus the usual canard over the urgency to save national banking systems. 
The backdrop has turned dire on several front simultaneously. The great millstone around the USEconomy's neck continues to drag it down. CoreLogic reported 2.1 million units have created a swamp in Shadow inventory of the housing market. That equates to 23 months inventory, whereas normal is 7 months.
Most companies have laid off as many workers as they dare too and will lay off more as revenues continue to fall. Investors believe that $600 billions in QE2 will make things lots better. The economy, again, is not being targeted. What is being targeted again is the financial sector, particularly the stock market. Those who own the Fed and those within that system must be saved. The market has to be saved because if it is not the last vestiges of personal wealth will disappear. If that happens the middle class and retirees will go ballistic and into panic.
A category 5 financial hurricane is bearing down on us and the eye of the storm is headed for the US. While the whole world will be affected by it, the worst effects by far will be experienced by the overstretched debt-wracked countries such as Britain and the US, which are parasitic service economies with little manufacturing capacity that nurture the mistaken belief that the rest of the world will continue sending them cheap goods produced by real labor in exchange for electronically created worthless credits and IOU's including junk such as Treasuries in perpetuity. Tough luck when the Chinese decide to supply their own needy people with the goods they manufacture - no more massive Wal-Mart boats laden with cheap goodies cruising the high seas to the US. Where are Americans going to get the goods from then? - it's difficult to buy domestically manufactured goods if there are no factories at home. 
This article was accepted as evidence and published by the British Parliament, House of Commons, Treasury Committee.
According to a recent news item, not widely circulated, after more than 90 years of slavery, on October 3, 2010, Germany made the final payment for its World War I debt. This event is highly symbolic. It gives me great pleasure to be one of the first to congratulate you, literally hours after the German people were finally freed from debt slavery.
It is interesting to watch Wall Street defy reality. This is a scene we've observed since the early 1960s, the effect of debt on the economy and the nation and in turn on its currency. The result of the profligacy over all those years is the biggest bull market in history in gold and silver. As we write gold is toying with $1,300 and silver with $21.50. Each day a new high is reached in spite of a pending options expiration and the perpetual market rigging and manipulation by the US government. 
If you've never heard of a "Cram Down", you are about to get a first hand lesson on the receiving end of the biggest one in history. The words "Cram Down" used to be reserved for companies in bankruptcy or smaller venture backed companies that run out of cash and are recapitalized by "cramming down" the equity held by existing shareholders. The only other alternative to closing the doors is to reorganize the ownership structure to attract new capital and keep it in business. Those who don't have the money to play in the next round -- i.e. don't have a money printing press -- will get wiped out . Having personally experienced a number of these unpleasant affairs in various businesses, you are definitely better off giving than receiving a Cram Down. 
While we're waiting for the Calvary to swoop down from Washington and save us – something that could take a while – we might consider setting up some state-owned banks. The Bank of North Dakota, currently the country's only state-owned bank, is very stable and very profitable, returning a 26% dividend to the state. A bank of that sort could be an attractive investment for all those state and local rainy day funds, pension funds and other local government funds looking for greater returns from the low-risk investments allowed by their legislative mandates. We need to set up some banks that serve the needs of the real economy rather than those of Wall Street bankers, brokers and their super-rich clients for yet more bonuses, bailouts and paper profits. State-owned banks could fill the role the Wall Street banks have declined to fill, providing an effective credit engine for state and local economies. 
"Nice middle class you got here," said Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. "It would be a shame if something happened to it." 
At first glance, this would seem like a rather silly, stupid and pointless question. Why, the average person would answer, the American people own it. Or rather, if one had to get more technical, the American government, which is in turn, being a Republic, owned by the people, one in the same. 
Wall Street and Washington hacks scattered throughout America's media monopoly continue to mislead the public, with debates about a double-dip recession as if this terminology has legitimacy. Understand that anyone who uses this bogus term has NO CREDIBILITY, as I have previously discussed. 
These policies are not working for the 9.6% of Americans who are out of work, nor for the over16% underemployed. They are not working for nearly 3 million Americans who have declared bankruptcy in the last two years, or the 40 million currently on food stamps. Nearly 1 in 6 Americans depend on those and other government anti-poverty programs such as Medicaid and unemployment benefits. As more Americans are added to the unemployment rolls, the tax base from which to hand out their benefits is shrinking. Still, businesses are being taxed and regulated out of the market, adding to the problem. What solutions are put forth? More government spending - even as each citizen's portion of the public debt is over $43,000 and expected to increase by $250,000 over the next 40 years. 
Readers of my articles will recall that I have warned as far back as December 2006, that the global banks will collapse when the Financial Tsunami hits the global economy in 2007. And as they say, the rest is history.
History is being made. The American public has never been no nervous, perhaps fearful of something dreadful and imminent. The global monetary system is crumbling. The typical stimulus has failed to jumpstart the USEconomy. The 20 months of near 0% short-term official interest rate has failed to revive the moribund US housing market.
Official spokesperson for the wealthy Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle who "earned" $146 billion over the last decade while shareholders received a negative 45% return on their investment, has announced a dramatic cutback in his lifestyle. He has voluntarily agreed to reduce his compensation to $145.5 billion over the next decade while cutting back on his yacht racing from 4 days per week to 3 days per week. The impact on the San Jose economy could be devastating.
IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation's public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That's a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation's wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase. 
Pouring money into the private banking system has only fixed the economy for bankers and the wealthy; it has not done much to address either the fundamental problem of unemployment or the debt trap so many Americans find themselves in. 
As horrific as the gulf environmental catastrophe is, an even more intractable and cataclysmic disaster may be looming. The yet unknowable costs associated with clean-up, litigation and compensation damages due to arguably the world's worst environmental tragedy, may be in the process of triggering a credit event by British Petroleum (BP) that will be equally devastating to global over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. The potential contagion may eventually show that Lehman Bros. and Bear Stearns were simply early warning signals of the devastation lurking and continuing to grow unchecked in the $615T OTC Derivatives market.
What is the invisible force that's suddenly gutting the housing market, driving consumer confidence into a sinkhole, and killing the recovery that Washington was so avidly touting just a few months ago? 
How does one decrease the cost of labor in America? 
Well, we had another flash Crash yesterday, just like the one on May 6, 2010. The only difference is, this time the stocks in question went up instead of down.
Do you remember swaps, those frequently risky and opaque derivatives that nearly brought down the global economy in 2008? They're used for insurance and for gambling, but despite having a notional value estimated at $450 trillion, some of the most dangerous swaps remain totally unregulated, even two years after the financial crisis.
Day after day, bankers have been paraded before Congressional committees regarding their role in the financial crisis which brought the financial system to the edge of the abyss on September 18,2008. Every one has claimed that they were not responsible in any way for the disaster. They blame once in a lifetime circumstances that no one could have anticipated. It was a perfect storm and they had no way of knowing. These Harvard MBA Wall Street geniuses, who collected compensation in excess of $100 million each before the collapse, had no idea what was going on within their own firms. Ignorance and stupidity is no excuse for losing a trillion dollars. 
Hats off to the Wall Street financial syndicate. They arranged a 1000-point stock market descent precisely on the day (May 6th) the Financial Regulatory bill had a key provision being scripted for auditing the US Federal Reserve. The US Senators blinked, watered down the provision, and will force an audit but only for certain TARP-related events. At least it is a foot in the door to the corrupted halls. The Flash Crash, as it is known, has turned the US stock market even more into a round robin competitive backyard for Wall Street firms, where 73% of the NYSE trading volume used to be derived from their computer program trades. Figure even more now. The US stock market has become the butt of jokes. Miraculous recoveries after 3:30pm are standard these days, like Tuesday. 
Wall Street's captains of industry and top policymakers in Washington are often the same people. A lot of them get rich by playing for both teams.