Archive for the ‘Banksters and Gangsters’ Category
Extremism Watch: Secret Obama Trade Agreement Would Allow Foreign Corporations to Avoid U.S. Laws
In order to secure a new international trade agreement with Pacific nations, the Obama administration appears willing to grant foreign corporations the power to avoid U.S. laws. This revelation came in the form of a leaked document posted online by Citizens Trade Campaign. The material came from negotiations to establish a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact and its authenticity verified by Public Citizen. According to the Huffington Post, which also reviewed the document, foreign corporations operating within the U.S. could disregard certain domestic requirements and regulations by appealing to an international tribunal—that would have the power to overrule American law. http://www.blacklistednews.com/Globalization%3A_Secret_Obama_Trade_Agreement_Would_Allow_Foreign_Corporations_to_Avoid_U.S._Laws/20032/0/38/38/Y/M.html
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The Economic Collapse is Not a Single Event
Many people hype “the coming economic collapse” as if it is some kind of big summer Hollywood blockbuster. Many people out there write about it as if it is something that will happen in a single day or over a few weeks and that it will suddenly change how the entire world functions. But that is not how the financial world works. The financial world is like a game of chess – very slow and methodical. Yes, there are times when things happen very quickly (like back in 2008), but even that crisis played out over a number of months. Sadly, most Americans are not used to thinking in terms of months or years. These days, most Americans have the attention span of a goldfish and most Americans have been trained to expect instant gratification. They are simply not accustomed to being patient and to wait for things. Well, despite what you may have read, the economic collapse is not going to be a single event. http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-economic-collapse-is-not-a-single-event
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The Fed’s Secret Phone Menu
America’s privately owned central bank is an enchanted world, to be sure, where shadow systems do not officially exist, where blatant manipulation of the stock market is denied, and where global bankers get preferential treatment of all their needs. In this shadow system, democracy, accountability and transparency do not exist. Within the innermost ring of power, democracy is merely the necessary illusion maintained for the psychological benefit of the easily distracted debt-serfs. As long as they believe in democracy, social mobility and the supremacy of American might, they are happy to while away their time playing or watching mindless games. It’s the perfect setup for easy control. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-feds-secret-phone-menu
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Do The Parasitic Elite Pay Any Taxes?
If we understand the difference between parasitic wealth and real value/wealth creation, we can properly align the tax structure to reality: the tax on authentic wealth creation should be low, to encourage wealth creation and the employment (broad-based wealth creation) generated by legitimate value creation. We must also understand that the Central State now protects and enables parasitic skimming as the primary function of the nation’s financial system. Thus the entire financial system is parasitic on the wealth of the nation. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-do-parasitic-elite-pay-any-taxes
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Modern Day Fairy Tale of 3 Economic Wizards (Except It’s True)
The average non-wizard, living in the real world, with an education level beyond 2nd grade, would quickly see the ridiculousness of making money go worthless. However, at the highest political levels, there is virtually no demand for common sense, and shockingly high demand for voodoo wizardry. http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/06/modern-day-economic-fairy-tale-except.html
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By Incentivizing Debt, Washington Has Guaranteed Debt-Serfdom and Stagnation
Incentivize debt, and you end up relying on debt as a sustitute for productivity and income. Increase debt, and there’s not enough income left for productive investments that might boost income. Incentivize debt via making interest tax deductible, and you create a self-reinforcing feedback of a rising share of declining income being devoted to interest payments. With demand and borrowing both suppressed by debt-serfdom, demand for housing, goods and services declines. Borrowing more to consume simply speeds the cycle of rising interest and falling net incomes. Incentivize debt and you create multiple overlapping death spirals. We are seeing the death-spirals play out in a fractal manner, from households to nations to entire regions. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-incentivizing-debt-weve-guaranteed-debt-serfdom-and-stagnation
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Banks Are An Endangered Species
In the long run, all the hullabaloo about the various global banking crises is just hot air. The old establishment banks — the ones that have been bailed out this week in Spain, and in 2008 in America — are unnecessary middlemen. This is because of the ludicrous spreads from which they profit. They borrow from central banks and from depositors at absurdly low rates of interest (that’s what ZIRP is all about) and lend at vastly higher rates. What useful function does it serve? At one time, banks generated value by being wise lenders, lending to businesses that they determined would add value. Today they prefer gamble up even bigger profits in the zero-sum derivatives casino and shadow banking whorehouse, requiring frequent bailouts when such schemes go awry. They are dinosaurs that offer no real value to their shareholders, their customers, or to society. And for all their claims of systemic importance, for all the bailouts, all the whining, all the pontification they are gradually being sidelined by other forms of intermediation, specifically peer-to-peer lending wherein lenders and borrowers are matched directly often via the internet. The lender gets interest, the borrower pays interest, but because there is no middleman taking a (huge) cut both rates are more favourable — the borrower pays less interest, the lender receives more interest. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/banks-are-endangered-species
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Is Capitalism Incompatible With Democracy?
Capitalism can be subverted by either an Elite or the majority. Marx traced out how Capital (wealth) naturally consolidates into monopolies or cartels (shared monopolies). These concentrations of wealth then buy political influence via campaign contributions, armies of lobbyists and the full spectrum of cronyism: sweetheart deals, envelopes of cash, revolving doors between the cartels and their regulators, plum jobs for lazy nephews and so on. This base corruption of the Central State, which is now the dominant force in the economy, allows Elites to change the rules rather than accept failure (also known as losses). Thus we have Crony Capitalism: profits are private and yours to keep, losses are transferred to the taxpaying public. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-capitalism-incompatible-democracy?tw_p=twt
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Collapse At Hand
Ever since the beginning of the financial crisis and quantitative easing, the question has been before us: How can the Federal Reserve maintain zero interest rates for banks and negative real interest rates for savers and bond holders when the US government is adding $1.5 trillion to the national debt every year via its budget deficits? Not long ago the Fed announced that it was going to continue this policy for another 2 or 3 years. Indeed, the Fed is locked into the policy. Without the artificially low interest rates, the debt service on the national debt would be so large that it would raise questions about the US Treasury’s credit rating and the viability of the dollar, and the trillions of dollars in Interest Rate Swaps and other derivatives would come unglued. In other words, financial deregulation leading to Wall Street’s gambles, the US government’s decision to bail out the banks and to keep them afloat, and the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy have put the economic future of the US and its currency in an untenable and dangerous position. It will not be possible to continue to flood the bond markets with $1.5 trillion in new issues each year when the interest rate on the bonds is less than the rate of inflation. Everyone who purchases a Treasury bond is purchasing a depreciating asset. Moreover, the capital risk of investing in Treasuries is very high. The low interest rate means that the price paid for the bond is very high. A rise in interest rates, which must come sooner or later, will collapse the price of the bonds and inflict capital losses on bond holders, both domestic and foreign. The question is: when is sooner or later? http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/06/05/collapse-at-hand/
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SEC: Taking on Big Firms is ‘Tempting,’ But We Prefer Picking on Little Guys
If you want to see a perfect example of how completely broken our regulatory system is, look no further than a speech that Daniel Gallagher, one of the S.E.C.’s commissioners, recently gave in Denver, Colorado. It’s a speech whose full lunacy is hard to grasp without some background. It’s by now been well-established that the S.E.C.’s performance in policing Wall Street before, after, and during the crash has been comically inept. It would be putting it generously to say that the top cop on the financial services beat has demonstrated particular incompetence with regard to investigations of high-profile targets at powerhouse banks and financial companies. A less generous interpretation would be that the agency is simply too afraid, too unwilling, or too corrupt to take on the really dangerous animals in this particular jungle. The S.E.C.’s failure to make even one case against a high-ranking executive involved in the mass frauds leading to the 2008 crash – compare this to the comparatively much smaller and less serious S&L crisis twenty years earlier, when the government made 1,100 criminal cases and sent 800 bank officials to jail – became so conspicuous that by the end of last year, the “No prosecutions of top figures” idea became an accepted meme in mainstream news media coverage of the economic crisis. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/sec-taking-on-big-firms-is-tempting-but-we-prefer-whaling-on-little-guys-20120530#ixzz1wPlczJdY
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The 21st Century Plantations — Reservations of the United States of Insanity
Institutional ‘education’ in this nation is overwhelmingly nothing more than a veneer of mythology and half-truths constantly reinforced by the lies, distortions, and omissions by those who own and control the corporate-stream ‘news’ media. ‘Democracy’ in this nation, in real terms, means dictatorship by the tiny corporate elite; embodied in the slimy machinations of both the Democrat and Republican parties. The so-called election process, particularly on the national level, is a complete and shameless farce. In reality, the majority of people of all colors in the United States are well trained Pavlovian slaves, who have been systemically ingrained to salivate and perform self-destructive tricks at the ringing of the euphemistic corporate/military bells of endless government and media propaganda. Without fail, the every four year corporate ‘election’ cycle rings the bell, and the majority of mental slaves retreat to their respective Democrat and Republican party mental/political plantations and reservations; repeating yet again another cyclical tour de force of salivating insanity. The shame of it all is that it does not have to be this way. http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-21st-Century-Plantatio-by-Larry-Pinkney-120529-332.html
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Growth in the National Debt
The one inescapable drag on the economy and every American taxpayer or government dependant is the interest obligation paid on the national debt. Indebtedness is nothing new to this country, but the inability to service the public debt stretches over the last half century. This trend is so disturbing that politicians spend every waking hour avoiding the consequences of the ultimate outcome, the demise of the currency. The reserve currency status that has allowed for effortless deficit spending has a day of reckoning. The final collapse of the global empire and superpower will smell more of financial evaporation than of a military defeat. http://www.batr.org/negotium/053012.html
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The Big Print is Coming
Those that know me understand clear as crystal that I don’t approve of massive money printing. I think it is theft, plain and simple, and represents an egregiously deceptive manner of transferring wealth from the poor to the wealthy and from the productive to parasitic financial oligarchs. That being said, the world we live in is being led by a bunch of crooked banksters and the Central Planners that do their bidding. At the top of the Central Planning global ponzi pyramid, is our very own Federal Reserve, headed by master Keynesian magician, the Wizard of Eccles, Ben Bernanke. For the vast majority of 2012, the Federal Reserve has been playing a very, very dangerous game. This game has been to pretend that they will not be printing any more money in an attempt to get commodity prices down as low as possible before they proceed with the inevitable. While they have done this on a smaller scale many times in the past, this particular game of chicken has in my opinion gone dangerously wrong. You see, ever since the 2008 debacle the Fed has been quite aggressive and more or less “ahead of the curve” when it has come to feeding new liquidity into the system…until now. http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2012/05/24/the-big-print-is-coming/
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Money Center Banks
Is it possible to save the international financial system from its own greed and high risk betting patterns? From all empirical evidence and from the best business advice available, chasing the debt bubble in an attempt to make computer-generated returns is a fool*s mission. Presently, profits clear depositing banks because governments devalue their currencies and pump fresh liquidity that add to the balance sheets of money-centered banks, to keep them solvent by increasing accumulative debt. Breaking up the oversized behemoths because whales are feeding on a red tide of poison is the rational response to continued excess. Simply put, governments are forfeiting their sovereignty to banking ministers who are beholden to the fractional reserve central banking model. http://www.etherzone.com/2012/sart052112.shtml
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More Than 30 Blocks Of Gray and Decay
The only new buildings along this stretch of highway further emphasize what is seemingly important to our society. There are numerous architecturally grand bank branches dominating this highway. There is a beautiful new building housing the Social Security Administration for this area. This is where the obese, depressed and unemployable flock to sign up for the SSDI gravy train. And lastly there are a few medical facilities that are top notch. It seems that banks, government and medicine are doing just fine. But what do they produce? I think this is a reflection of why this area has deteriorated over time. Industries that made things left this area and left this country. Small businesses were overwhelmed by mega-corporations who cared only about next quarter earnings. They met these earnings targets, set by Wall Street, by shipping the good paying blue collar jobs that supported these communities overseas. The middle class families living here saw their wages stagnate or decline. Wives were forced into the workforce to just keep their households afloat financially. The family unit suffered, with children raised by strangers or left to fend for themselves. This is where the Wall Street maggots stepped in and sold these middle class families on the illusion of faux wealth built on a pyramid of credit card debt, auto loans, and mortgage debt. Who got wealthy? Not the families living in these fading neighborhoods. The bankers got rich and continue to flaunt their wealth by paying themselves obscene levels of compensation, buying off politicians, gutting our economy and opening fancy new outlets. An economy built upon manufacturing, production, and value added work results in rising wages and a thriving community. An economy built upon debt attracts consumer consumption outlets that add no value and result in declining wages, government dependency and a dying community. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-more-30-blocks-grey-decay
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How Our Demented Capitalist System Made America Insane
When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki’s pregnancy, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony. “At times when the page is turning,” Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote in “Castle to Castle,” “when History brings all the nuts together, opens its Epic Dance Halls! hats and heads in the whirlwind! Panties overboard!” http://www.alternet.org/environment/155213?page=entire
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Congress Has Millions in JP Morgan as Blackout Over $5 Billion-Plus in Losses Continues
As the media blackout for the reasons behind a now estimated $5 billion loss at JP Morgan Chase continues, Open Secrets learns Congress has millions invested in the firm. http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/05/20/medias-dumbfoundedness-jpmorgan-loss-explained-135841/
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Iceland, a Country That Wants to Punish the Bankers Responsible for the Crisis
Since 2008 the vast majority of the Western population dream about saying “no” to the banks, but no one has dared to do so. No one except the Icelanders, who have carried out a peaceful revolution that has managed not only to overthrow a government and draft a new constitution, but also seeks to jail those responsible for the country’s economic debacle. http://pressenza.com/npermalink/icelandx-a-country-that-wants-to-punish-the-bankers-responsible-for-the-crisis
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The $2 Billion Loss By J.P. Morgan is Just a Preview of the Coming Collapse of the Derivatives Market
When news broke of a 2 billion dollar trading loss by JP Morgan, much of the financial world was absolutely stunned. But the truth is that this is just the beginning. This is just a very small preview of what is going to happen when we see the collapse of the worldwide derivatives market. When most Americans think of Wall Street, they think of a bunch of stuffy bankers trading stocks and bonds. But over the past couple of decades it has evolved into much more than that. Today, Wall Street is the biggest casino in the entire world. http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-2-billion-dollar-loss-by-jpmorgan-is-just-a-preview-of-the-coming-collapse-of-the-derivatives-market
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Six Months Left — Can They Do It?
I have to hand it to the Central Planners. They are good. Really, really good. Of course, they are battling a crippled opponent considering so much of America consists of lobotomized sheeple, but nevertheless to be able to steal so much from many people with such blatant and simplistic methods and not be widely discovered is an act of devious brilliance. The reason I say this now is because ever since last fall TPTB have changed tactics and totally taken over the markets and with it shoved many people into what is best described as a trance. The people know something is very wrong. They know they are getting poorer; that life is getting harder, yet the television and the markets have cloaked a blanket of sedation upon their minds. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/mike-krieger-six-months-left%E2%80%A6-can-they-do-it
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Resist by Boycotting Your Bank
The Money Power’s goals are obvious. It is not just the massive multi trillion wealth transfer that is under way. It is about bringing the West down a few notches. The US seems strong with a nominal $30,000 per capita GDP, but when the dollar devalues against the Brazilian Real and the Chinese Yuan, things will quickly look different. It will also be the end cheap raw materials. The reason this crisis exists is because the banks, politicians, the media and economists are colluding in fooling the many into believing we need banks for our money supply. Most of them probably even believe this is true themselves. They say we need the banks, because otherwise the real economy would have no money to trade with. All this is complete and utter rubbish, of course. If banks can create credit, then anybody can. That’s just common sense. Just imagine: we are led to believe that we need to cough up trillions just to have a means of exchange that is completely paper/computer based, i.e., almost free of cost. http://www.henrymakow.com/take_your_money_out_of_the_ban.html
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Real Politics Must be in the Streets: The Constitutional Crimes of Barack Obama
As we slog towards another vapid, largely meaningless exercise in pretend democracy with the selection of a new president and Congress this November, it is time to make it clear that the current president, elected four years ago by so many people with such inflated expectations four years ago (myself included, as I had hoped, vainly it turned out, that those who elected him would then press him to act in progressive ways), is not only a betrayer of those hopes, but is a serial violator of his oath of office. He is, in truth, a war criminal easily the equal of his predecessor, George W. Bush, and perhaps even of Bush’s regent, former Vice President Dick Cheney. Let me count the ways. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31227.htm
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Big vs. Small Bank Loans
If your Main Street business needs capital and seeks a loan, your prospects are slim to none. It is evident that the real economy has never recovered from the collapse of the financial system. TARP was a temporary rescue of the large money center banks. For the local community banks, the massive give away has strings attached and penalties to be paid. Not much consolation for a small business endeavor that is desperate for cash and an improved business environment. http://www.batr.org/negotium/050212.html
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What is the Consequence of Printing Money That Nobody Wants?
Stagflation– the utterly painful combination of stagnating growth and steep inflation that marked the 1970s– and will be the natural side effect of extended central bank quantitative easing during a period of widespread deleveraging. In other words, stagflation is the consequence of printing money that nobody wants. Moreover, an outbreak of serious stagflation will decimate conventionally managed debt and equity portfolios. And given that most people invest with the crowd, with conventional investments or conventionally managed portfolios, stagflation will wipe the savings and livelihoods from untold masses. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-what-consequence-printing-money-nobody-wants
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Wells Fargo Insiders Detail Foreclosure Fraud Practices: ‘It’s Exactly Like An Assembly Line’
That Wells Fargo has fraudulently processed mortgage documents using a process called robo-signing has been evident for nearly two years, since scandal enveloped the mortgage industry in 2010. That it kept doing it even after the scandal broke has been known for months. http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/907008/wells_fargo_insiders_detail_foreclosure_fraud_practices%3A_%27it%27s_exactly_like_an_assembly_line%27/
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Americans Can’t Wait For Their Tax Refunds — to Immediately File For Bankruptcy
In yet another sad reflection on the state of the Schrodinger-economy, USA Today notes that over 200,000 households will use their tax rebate this year to pay for (drum roll please) a bankruptcy filing and associated legal fees. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/americans-cant-wait-their-tax-refunds-immediately-file-bankruptcy
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You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet – Part 3
Thus far the older generations have refused to yield. They demand promises made be promises kept. The Boomers did not save enough to sustain themselves during their retirement. Many are entirely reliant upon Social Security and Medicare as their only savings and health insurance. Generation X is caught between aging parents and indebted jobless children. The Millenials are saddled with $1 trillion of student loan debt and few decent job opportunities. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-you-aint-seen-nothing-yet-part-3
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How Americans Have Gotten Played — Over and Over and Over Again
In the twelve hapless years of the present millennium, we have looked on as three great bubbles of consensus vanity have inflated and burst, each with consequences more dire than the last. First there was the “New Economy,” a millennial fever dream predicated on the twin ideas of a people’s stock market and an eternal silicon prosperity; it collapsed eventually under the weight of its own fatuousness. Second was the war in Iraq, an endeavor whose launch depended for its success on the turpitude of virtually every class of elite in Washington, particularly the tough-minded men of the media; an enterprise that destroyed the country it aimed to save and that helped to bankrupt our nation as well. And then, Wall Street blew up the global economy. Empowered by bank deregulation and regulatory capture, Wall Street enlisted those tough-minded men of the media again to sell the world on the idea that financial innovations were making the global economy more stable by the minute. Central banks puffed an asset bubble like the world had never seen before, even if every journalist worth his byline was obliged to deny its existence until it was too late. http://www.alternet.org/visions/154735
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Gangster Banks Keep Winning Public Business — Why?
Bid-rigging is an old-school crime of machine pols and gangsters. In the old days, it was parceling out garbage collection or construction contracts to each of the proverbial five mafia families, who would patiently pantomime real bids for government contracts. They would take turns “winning” the state’s business with artificially low bids, guided by a corrupted insider who usually took a bribe to rig the auction. In modern times, it’s the same thing, except that it’s banks now doing the pantomiming. Here a circle of organized crooks (read: banks) gets together, parcels out territories so that each party gets to “win” business in certain areas, and then they all get together and agree to a rigged bid system. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/gangster-banks-keep-winning-public-business-why-20120322
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Goldman Sachs: Making Money by Stealing It
Money power in private hands and democracy can’t co-exist. Wall Street crooks transformed America into an unprecedented money making racket. Goldman symbolizes master of the universe of financial manipulation (Reuters April 16, 2011) It’s been involved in nearly all financial scandals since the 19th century. It makes money the old-fashioned way, through market manipulation, the scamming of investors, bribing political Washington, having its executives in top administration posts, and getting open-ended low or no interest rate bailouts when needed. It’s business model and culture assure billions of bonus dollars for company officials, complicit traders, and others on the take. Compared to Goldman, Bernie Madoff was small-time. http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29823
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J.P. Morgan Chase’s Ugly Family Secrets Revealed
The Cliff’s Notes version of the story goes something like this: Late in 2009, Chase’s credit card services division sold a parcel of nearly $200 million worth of credit card judgments to a debt collector at a discount. This common practice in the credit-card industry is a little like a bookie selling the outstanding debts of his delinquent gamblers to a leg-breaker for 25 cents on the dollar. If the leg-breaker gets half the delinquents to pay, the deal works out for both sides — the bookie gets 25 percent of money he wasn’t going to collect, and the leg-breaker makes a 100 percent profit. In the case of credit cards, of course, you’re selling the debts to collection agents, not leg-breakers, but aside from that unpleasantly minor distinction the process is the same. The most valuable kinds of sales in this world are sales of credit card judgments, in other words accounts in which the debtor has already been successfully brought to court. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/j-p-morgan-chases-ugly-family-secrets-revealed-20120313
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Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs
Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&smid=fb-share.
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Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail
The bank has defrauded everyone from investors and insurers to homeowners and the unemployed. So why does the government keep bailing it out? http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/bank-of-america-too-crooked-to-fail-20120314
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Money From Nothing — A Primer on Fake Wealth Creation and Its Implications
What is fraud except creating “value” from nothing and passing it off as something? Frauds interlink and grow upon each other. Our debt-based money system serves as the fraud foundation. In our debt-based money system, debt must grow in order to create money. Therefore, there is no way to pay off aggregate debt with available money. More money must be lent into the system to make the payments for old debts. This causes overall debt to expand as new money for actual people (vs. banks) always arrives at interest and compounds exponentially. This process is called financialization. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-money-nothin-primer-fake-wealth-creation-and-its-implications-part-1
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Enjoy The Central Bank Party While It Lasts
Central banks are printing money all over the world. New names have been given to what is really an age old phenomenon. Desperate governments have traditionally debased their currencies when they have no other way of financing their deficits. Quantitative easing, LTRO, Fed/ECB swaps, whatever. A new technocratic lexicon has been invented to cover what is really a time honored expedient of debasement and paper money printing. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-enjoy-central-bank-party-while-it-lasts
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Readying the Greek Corpse for Burial
Greece is being systematically raped, pillaged and destroyed. Bankers demand it. What they want, they get, no matter the human toll and economic ruin. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/03/01/readying-the-greek-corpse-for-burial/
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Greece: The Epicenter of Global Pillage
Predatory bankers make serial killers look good by comparison. Their business model creates crises to facilitate grand theft, financial terrorism, and debt entrapment. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/02/22/greece-the-epicenter-of-global-pillage/
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Wall Street’s Secret Spy Center, Run For the 1% by the NYPD
On September 25, 2011, just eight days after the Occupy Wall Street protests began in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, the much acclaimed CBS News program, 60 Minutes, aired a fawning look at the thousands of surveillance cameras affixed to buildings and lampposts throughout New York City. The cameras feed live images of people going about their everyday lives to a $150 million computer center equipped with artificial intelligence to integrate and analyze the daily habits of what are, for the most part, law-abiding Americans. The thrust of the 60 Minutes program was the fine job of counter terrorism being done by the NYPD and its Commissioner, Raymond Kelly. It was a triumph in public relations for a police department about to go on an assault spree – pepper spraying and punching peaceful protestors; kicking, ramming and arresting journalists attempting to cover the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. On air, the reporter, Scott Pelley, said the surveillance center was “housed in a secret location,” as one would expect of a real counter terrorism program — as opposed to a program to simply quash dissent. Mr. Pelley also said the program was run by the NYPD. As it turns out, neither of those assertions were accurate. The New York Times, the worldwide news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), Wired Magazine, the New York City Council had all previously reported the location of the supposedly super secret counter terrorism center on their public web sites: 55 Broadway in the bowels of the financial district. What was a secret about the operation, and not reported by 60 Minutes to its viewers, despite being well aware of the facts, is that the center is jointly staffed and operated by the NYPD along with the largest Wall Street firms – the same firms under investigation in 50 states for mortgage and foreclosure fraud and widely credited with causing the Nation’s economic collapse. The Wall Street firms that were involuntarily bailed out by the 99% are now policing the 99%. http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/06/wall-streets-secret-spy-center-run-for-the-1-by-nypd/
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Terrorist (Noun): Anyone Who Disagrees With the Government
There are two key social control myths in America: one, that everyone is equal before the law, and two, that similar fundamental opportunities are available to all. Using the Socratic method, let’s see if these hypotheses are true or false. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-social-fractals-and-corruption-america
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Manifest Destiny Derailed: Treason from Within
It is a shameful fact that luminaries can and do lie about their nefarious, subversive activity in markets which “are” the very foundations of our monetary system. They do so ‘wrapped in the flag’ so-to-speak. They lie to the press and they premeditatedly lie under oath to Congress – and they do so with impunity. They lie because they do not want the notoriety that accompanies being the authors of a system of false values which have undermined free market capitalism. They don’t act alone – they act in concert with their vassals – fellow conspirators in banking, government and media – who help project the appearance of authenticity on arbitrarily contrived, often counter-intuitive, market outcomes. It is the assignment of false values – and the Iron Curtain of lies and deceit maintaining them – in our increasingly inter-dependent, global markets, which is at the root of our global economic malaise. This is also the root cause of the growing global resentment toward the Anglo-American Banking Axis. http://www.larsschall.com/2012/01/31/manifest-destiny-derailed-treason-from-within/
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Iran, Gold and Oil — The Banksters’ Next War
Where is gets so confusing for the casual observer is that any discussion that deems to be critical of Israel is a taboo discussion in polite company. Well, when it comes to addressing the impending prospects of a major conflict in the Middle East, the linkage between the deciding influences in American policy that coincide with a greater Israel objective, is silenced in the old-line press and media. Therefore, the key element to explore is the relationship of Zionist interests with the fundamental preservation of the paper currency imperium of Federal Reserve notes as the medium of payment for oil. http://batr.org/view/012912.html
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Banks and Nation-States Are the Walking Dead
We now inhabit not a land of zombie banks, but zombie states. This is the financial system of the walking dead. Governments, in their current form, will not exist in the very near future… and neither will their currencies… not in this form (it will all-out collapse or massive devaluation and at least a gold backing) very soon. That’s why we pay little attention to these sideshows — the U.S. Government and its witches coven of Ratings Agencies playing chicken with the Eurozone, upping the ante to push the Euro over the edge and squeeze a few more years into the US dollar as the world reserve currency. It’s all a game of emperor has no clothes at this point. If you allow yourself to get caught up in the parade and circuses of it all you might get fooled into believing this system is sustainable. http://lewrockwell.com/berwick/berwick29.1.html
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Obama and Geithner: Government, Enron-Style
The notion that what Wall Street firms did was merely unethical and not illegal is not just mistaken but preposterous: most everyone who works in the financial services industry understands that fraud right now is not just pervasive but epidemic, with many of the biggest banks committing entire departments to the routine commission of fraud and perjury – every single one of the major banks, for instance, devotes significant manpower to robosigning affidavits for foreclosures and credit card judgments, acts which are openly and inarguably criminal. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/obama-and-geithner-government-enron-style-20111220
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Bank Of America Dumps $75 Trillion in Derivatives on U.S. Taxpayers With Federal Approval
Even if we net out the notional value of the derivatives involved, down to the net potential obligation, the amount is so large that the United States could not hope to pay it off without a major dollar devaluation, if a major contingency actually occurred and a large part of the derivatives were triggered. But, if such an event ever occurs, Bank of America’s derivatives counter-parties will, as usual, be made whole, while the American people suffer. http://seekingalpha.com/article/301260-bank-of-america-dumps-75-trillion-in-derivatives-on-u-s-taxpayers-with-federal-approval
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Americans’ Net Worth Plummets as Corporations Stockpile Cash
Americans’ wealth last summer suffered its biggest quarterly loss in more than two years as stocks, pension funds and home values lost value. At the same time, corporations raised their cash stockpiles to record levels. http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_19497443
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The Economic Solutions Of Vampires
The vampire bat is a horrifying pig-nosed wart of a creature which feasts in a manner that, believe it or not, is a rather familiar scene to those of us who closely study alternative economics. After erratically flittering about in the sinking evening sky, it targets the warmth of a sleeping farm animal and latches onto it with its claws. Carefully, it inserts a fang into a vein dense region of the creature’s body, and laps away at the blood. Normally, the oblivious livestock are completely unaware and helpless to the attack. The tiny parasite does not inflict an immediately mortal blow to its host, but over time, disease and physical debilitation result. The vampire has destroyed the animal, and, pathetically, the animal has no idea. Just as in nature, the economic world has its own bloodsucking vermin in the form of banking elites which are a wretched drain on the whole of the human race. Without their vicious and predatory presence, I envision a world so rapturously above and beyond what we wallow in today that it is impossible to describe. The disgust many feel when considering the virulent feeding habits of the common mosquito or the slithering leech does nothing to compare to the utter gut churning revulsion I feel when studying the financial habits of banks like the Federal Reserve and the “too big to fails”. They are without a doubt the most malignant form of social cancer imaginable. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-economic-solutions-vampires
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Jon Corzine, MF Global, and Unaccountability
Jon Corzine
Fast forward to the current MF Global flameout. Abelow shifted to Corzine’s Chief Operating Officer. And not only did Corzine ratchet up the ante on ways to really piss off farmers, but after several days of engaging in verbal dodge ball with Congress, this ‘thorough and exacting boss’ maintained his Forest Gump type cloak of secrecy regarding the stolen $1.2 billion of his customers’ segregated money. After days of political-reality TV, we knew nothing more about its evaporation. Corzine and his stewards, Abelow and Chief Financial Officer, Henri Steenkamp, executed a perfect chorus of ‘I don’t recalls’, ‘I didn’t intends’ and ‘the butler did its’. For the most part, testimony from the various regulators didn’t shed additional light on the ‘missing’ funds either (everyone’s extremely sorry and deep in search mode) but they did reveal extreme, pass-the-blame incompetence, in the spirit of AIG. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-jon-corzine-mf-global-and-unaccountability
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Bankers are the Dictators of the West
How come the BBC and CNN and – oh, dear, even al-Jazeera – treat these criminal communities as unquestionable institutions of power? Why no investigations – Inside Job started along the path – into these scandalous double-dealers? It reminds me so much of the equally craven way that so many American reporters cover the Middle East, eerily avoiding any direct criticism of Israel, abetted by an army of pro-Likud lobbyists to explain to viewers why American “peacemaking” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be trusted, why the good guys are “moderates”, the bad guys “terrorists”. The Arabs have at least begun to shrug off this nonsense. But when the Wall Street protesters do the same, they become “anarchists”, the social “terrorists” of American streets who dare to demand that the Bernankes and Geithners should face the same kind of trial as Hosni Mubarak. We in the West – our governments – have created our dictators. But, unlike the Arabs, we can’t touch them. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/11-0
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Money is Fleeing the U.S. Financial System
They (investors) have been moving money dramatically from New York. You don’t want your money at a place that’s trading right now. It’s just crazy. What’s going on around the world, everybody is really concerned at practically every level and now we have MF Global, which is bringing into question the validity of the U.S. financial system. http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/12/13_KWN_Special_-_Money_is_Fleeing_the_US_Financial_System.html
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Americans, You Are Now Bailing Out Europe
Repeating a lie often doesn’t make it true. Yet the world’s political leaders and financiers constantly refer to cancerous, unpayable debt as a “liquidity crisis.” Enough with the lies. http://www.thestreet.com/story/11327460/1/americans-you-are-now-bailing-out-europe.html
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Have You Heard About the $16 Trillion Bailout the Federal Reserve Handed to the Too Big to Fail Banks?
The Federal Reserve building in Cesspool, D.C.
What you are about to read should absolutely astound you. http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/have-you-heard-about-the-16-trillion-dollar-bailout-the-federal-reserve-handed-to-the-too-big-to-fail-banks
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Unleashing The Future
By laboring under a “debt as natural/moral law” delusion, world economies are trying to essentially drain the sea of international debt by bailing the sea into the boats of national economies and on to the backs of productive citizens. This approach is not working; that sea of international debt is growing beyond control due to its colossal size coupled with compound interest. We know that national austerity cannot come close to solving this predicament, so why are we pretending? The truth is we, the regular citizens, are not pretending. We have to live the reality of increasing debt and diminished material opportunity. It is powerful leaders and the financially rich and influential who have covered their eyes to distance themselves from the consequences of their own collapsed designs. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-unleashing-future-advancing-prosperity-through-debt-forgiveness-part-3
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Wall Street Is Already Occupied
The financial industry has strayed far from being an intermediary between companies that want to raise capital so they can sell people things they want. Instead, it is a machine to enrich itself, fleecing customers and exacerbating inequality. When it goes off the rails, it impoverishes the rest of us. When the crises come, as they inevitably do, banks hold the economy hostage, warning that they will shoot us in the head if we don’t bail them out. http://www.propublica.org/thetrade/item/on-wall-street-some-insiders-express-quiet-outrage
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Italy Stitched Up by Central Bankers – Hit With New Loan Sharking Rates
As the old adage goes, “He who has the gold makes the rules.” In this new era of euro bailouts and banker-induced austerity measures, there can be only one true winner. Led by its unelected gray technocrat and central banking stooge, ‘Super Mario’ Monti, the Italian people have been summarily marched down the economic plank with a blindfold on. Greece has also been put under forced banker-led administration, as avuncular technocrat Lucas Papademos it presented to Greeks as the man who will restore ‘national unity’. The truth behind these high-powered banking clerks is something much more insidious. http://www.infowars.com/italy-stitched-up-by-central-bankers-hit-with-new-loan-sharking-rates/
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Goldman Sachs Has Taken Over
Germany, which has been browbeaten since its defeat in World War II, has been made constitutionally incapable of strong leadership. Any sign of German leadership is quickly quelled by dredging up remembrances of the Third Reich. As a consequence, Germany has been pushed into an European Union that intends to destroy the political sovereignty of the member governments, just as Abe Lincoln destroyed the sovereignty of the American states. Who will rule the New Europe? Obviously, the private European banks and Goldman Sachs. http://www.themoneyparty.org/main/?p=3134#more-3134
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Here You Go: It’s Over
CNBC is reporting that there are now clients running out of the markets entirely because they do not believe their customer funds are safe. That’s the end of it. The belief that there are more MF Globals has now taken hold. The thieves have pushed it too far and now we’ve got the start of a global liquidity run, and with good reason. The authorities both in the regulatory side and on the prosecutorial side have refused to put a stop to the thievery and now the risk factors have turned into realized risk. http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2011/11/here-you-go-its-over.html
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The Equality Racket
Our mainstream media have discovered a new issue: inequality in America. The gap between the wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of the nation is wide and growing wider. http://www.vdare.com/articles/the-equality-racket
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From 9/11 to World War III:Towards the Construction of a Global Fascist State
America has not gone wild in the Middle East, drunk with power and hungry for loot. The world is not threatened by American hegemony. Rather, a much darker, and more powerful force is directing events to its own satisfaction. Let’s call it the International Banking Regime, (IBR). America has been under the occupation of this regime since December 23, 1913. Ever since then America has been the target of a silent economic, political, military, cultural, and spiritual war. The financial assassins of the IBR have used media deception, financial depressions, and usurious debt to turn America into its biggest colony and most treasured resource. With America under its wing, the IBR has been able to wage a total war on the planet, the end result of which can be considered the last geographical, political and economic conquest: a global fascist state. http://disquietreservations.blogspot.com/2011/11/from-911-to-world-war-iiitowards_08.html
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Financial Cancer: Washington’s Financial System Is Intrinsically Fraudulent and Unstable
Two frequent contributors provided fresh insights into why the current global financial system will implode: it is intrinsically fraudulent and acts as a financial cancer, evading the “immune system” of regulation and perfecting its ability to exploit and loot the last remaining pockets of low-risk capital. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-financial-cancer-our-financial-system-intrinsically-fraudulent-and-unstable
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Western Democracy: A Farce And A Sham
If you need more evidence of this mythical creature called “Western democracy,” consider that Western governments are no longer accountable to law. Contrast, for example, the sexual harassment charges that are plaguing US presidential candidate Herman Cain’s campaign with the pass given to high government officials who clearly violated statutory law. What follows is not a defense of Cain. I take no position on the charges. The real point is different. In America the only thing that can ruin a politician is his interest in sex. A politician, for example, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, B. Omama, cannot be ruined by violating United States and international law or by treating the US Constitution as a “mere scrap of paper.” Bush and Cheney can take America to wars based entirely on lies and orchestrated deceptions. They can commit war crimes, murdering large numbers of civilians in the cause of “the war on terror,” itself a hoax. They can violate US and international laws against torture simply “because the president said so.” They can throw away habeas corpus, the constitutional requirement that a person cannot be imprisoned without evidence presented to a court. They can deny the right to an attorney. They can violate the law and spy on Americans without obtaining warrants. They can send due process to hell. In fact, they can do whatever they want just like Hitler’s Gestapo and Stalin’s secret police. But if they show undue interest in a woman or proposition a woman, they are dead meat. http://www.infowars.com/western-democracy-a-farce-and-a-sham/
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Throwing Ever More Money at Global Financial Problems
Americans and others have been sold a bill of goods concerning US supremacy in the business and financial worlds, which means they have been propagandized since WWII. It is beyond the capability of most Americans to understand that they have been sold one lie after another and they bought it hook, line and sinker. Even if they discover the truth making seminal changes is very difficult. Thus, you can have 70% of people over 65 years old that have discovered the truth that are generally incapable of acting on it. The 25% of these retirees that have investable funds are frozen in the headlights and few make the necessary changes to hold on to their assets. If their assets remained static inflation is destroying their purchasing power year after year. Some will switch into gold and silver related assets, but very few. Good people who have led exemplary lives could lose most of their assets if they do not make changes. Once the system goes down there will be no way back. Ask the people who didn’t listen in 1929. http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekly/Throwing_Ever_More_Money_At_World_Financial_Problems
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The Second Gilded Age
Writer Mark Twain coined the phrase “the Gilded Age” to describe that period of rapid growth, a time when the dazzling exterior of American life actually concealed mass unemployment, poverty and a society ripped in two. Economists and political scientists believe the US has entered a new Gilded Age, a period of systematic inequality dominated by a new class of super-rich. The only difference is that, this time around, the super-rich are hedge fund managers and financial magnates instead of oil and rail barons. http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,793896,00.html
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Europe Wallows in Unsolveable Problems
Central banks are accommodators to keep their system going, because if the elitists lose control of the financial systems they lose their power and wealth. That in part is why no effort has been made to restore economies. These extraordinary measures have for the moment kept US, UK and European economies from falling off a cliff, but that game cannot be played indefinitely. http://dprogram.net/2011/10/27/europe-wallows-in-insolveable-problems-bob-chapman/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
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Totally Corrupt America
Last March I reviewed Matt Taibbi’s important book Griftopia, an entertaining account of the through-going financial fraud that gave us the financial crisis. Taibbi shows that the US “superpower” can match any third world backwater in the magnitude of greed and fraud that is endemic in business and government. I would not be surprised if Taibbi’s book motivated the more aware participants of Occupy Wall Street. Taibbi’s Griftopia was published last year. This year Henry Holt publishers have provided us with Gretchen Morgenson and Joshur Rosner’s Reckless Endangerment. Morgenson and Rosner tell the story again, but with less drama and provocation. Possibly, it might be more acceptable to those gullible Americans who wrap themselves in the flag and refuse to believe that their country could ever knowingly do anything that is wrong. http://www.prisonplanet.com/reckless-endangerment-totally-corrupt-america.html
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Goldman Execs Stay Fat and Happy
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein
Today’s Goldman Sachs earning reports provides a valuable lesson on how things really work inside Wall Street’s largest investment houses. Goldman Sachs had an awful three months, losing $428 million in the third quarter of 2011, and yet it continued to shovel billions into the bonus pool it will share with its employees at year’s end. Through the first nine months of 2011, Goldman set aside $10 billion in its compensation fund. If Goldman’s 30,000 employees split that bounty evenly, that would work out to $333,000 per person – plus the billions more Goldman will no doubt set aside in the last few months of the year. http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/7980-goldman-execs-stay-fat-and-happy
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The Big Wall Street Banks Are Already Trying to Buy the 2012 Election
We are never going to restore legitimacy to our political system until we get the money out of politics. Typically, in federal elections the candidate that raises the most money wins about 90 percent of the time. In 2008, Barack Obama raised almost twice as much money as John McCain did. 3 of the top 7 donors to Obama’s campaign were big Wall Street banks (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup). Now Wall Street is doing it again. http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-big-wall-street-banks-are-already-trying-to-buy-the-2012-election
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The Age of Bank Failures
The EU can’t save all the banks, but that is not going to stop them from printing money to pick and prop up winners. As we all know, every bank cannot be a winner. The problem is so big that European banks are allowed to lie about the value of their assets to project the image of solvency. The same is true for American banks. When European banks start failing, there is no way U.S. banks will be able to avoid being sucked into a vortex of default. http://usawatchdog.com/the-age-of-bank-failures/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+UsaWatchdog+%28Greg+Hunter%E2%80%99s+USAWatchdog%29
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When Confidence Leaves the System It Could All Come Apart
If you give up liberty for safety you are doomed and that is where the US economy is headed. It will provide retarded growth and persistently high and higher unemployment. The quest for safety in US Treasuries will prove to be a deception, as the economy continues its degenerative process and inflation not only negates the returns but also guarantees 10% losses. As an aside, this process allows the Fed and government to stay in control and forces you to play their game. That is why they continually attack gold, silver and commodities. They want to make them as unattractive as possible, as an alternative safe investment. What the Fed and other central banks won’t admit to you is that the foundation of the current monetary system is crumbling and these are last-ditch moves and all the insiders know this. That is why the looting of the system has risen to a new level and these elitists involved could care less that you know what they are doing. http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekly/When_Confidence_Leaves_The_System_It_Could_All_Come_Apart
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The Federal Reserve is a Cache of Stolen Assets
The American Revolution, in no small part, was a repudiation of the central banking tyranny exported to the New World by the Bank of England. Few legacies have grown more despotic than the consequences of living under the rule of fractional reserve banking. Many good willed conservatives understand that the system is imploding. Some envision a second American Revolution that expels the remnant Tories that have hijacked our Federalism separation of powers form of government. http://www.batr.org/totalitariancollectivism/100911.html
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Why Iceland Should Be in the News But Isn’t
An Italian radio program’s story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a stunning example of how little our media tells us about the rest of the world. Americans may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion. As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example. Here’s why. http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2011/08/25/why-iceland-shold-be-in-the-news-but-is-not/
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Incredible Speech By Wall Street Protester ‘End The Fed’
This young man knows what he’s talking about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFz1VVXsWRU&feature=player_embedded
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Proof Banksters Are Running Scared
JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. Yves Smith correctly sees this as JPMorgan buying extra protection. http://lewrockwell.com/wenzel/wenzel132.html
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Recent Gold Takedown a Form of Economic Warfare
The takedown of gold and silver markets over the past two weeks signified a new milestone in corruption, brazenness, arrogance and it reveals the level of evil control behind our government. http://theinternationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekly/Recent_Gold_Takedown_A_Form_of_Economic_Warfare
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Max Keiser: Time to Mace Jamie Dimon in the Face
Jamie Dimon
The first 3 minutes are outstanding. Max and Stacy ask why Wall Street protesters are maced in the face for merely walking on the sidewalk, while JP Morgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon can throw a tirade in the face of regulators and foreign central bankers without being pepper-sprayed. http://dailybail.com/home/max-keiser-time-to-mace-jamie-dimon-in-the-face.html
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The Economy is on The Ropes and Going Down
The Fundamental Issue is this: you can’t solve a problem rooted in too much debt with more debt. It just doesn’t pencil out. Yet we now see that both Europe and the US are busily conceding to banker demands and coming up with all manner of fancy schemes to hide the fact that what is happening is simply that old debt is being replaced with new debt. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-economy-ropes-and-going-down
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BBC Speechless As Trader Tells Truth: ‘The Collapse Is Coming and Goldman Sachs Rules The World’
In an interview on BBC News this morning that left the hosts gob-smacked (google it… it is the BBC after all), Alessio Rastani outlines in a mere three-and-a-half-minutes what we all know and most ignore. While the whole interview is worth watching, the money shot for us was “This economic crisis is like a cancer, if you just wait and wait hoping it is going to go away, just like a cancer it is going to grow and it will be too late!”. While he dreams of recessions, sees Goldman ruling the world, and urges people to prepare, it is hard to disagree with much (or actually anything) of what he says and obviously interventions and machinations means we will have days like this (in Silver for instance), there is only one endgame here and we hope there is less hopeful euphoria (and more preparedness) as we pull back the curtain further and further. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/bbc-speechless-trader-tells-truth-collapse-comingand-goldman-rules-world
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The Federal Debt As Criminal Scam, The Federal Reserve As Criminal Syndicate
The Federal Reserve is a criminal syndicate buying debt that the government eagerly creates and sells for spending money that dumps the debt on us civilians. What perplexes me is that the scam is so simple and all the intellectuals either don’t get it or are handcuffed by mega-corporate media owners. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-federal-debt-criminal-scam-federal-reserve-criminal-syndicate
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Economist Calls Entitlements a Massive Ponzi Scheme and Says U.S. is Actually $211 Trillion in Debt
In an interview with NPR, former Reagan economic adviser Laurence Kotlikoff said the U.S.’s “true indebtedness” amounts to $211 trillion. That’s more than 15 times the $14 trillion official figure. http://www.businessinsider.com/economist-says-us-is-actually-211-million-in-debt-2011-8
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CEOs Earned More Than Companies’ Tax Bills
Twenty-five of the best-paid chief executive officers in the U.S. earned more in salary and other compensation in 2010 than their companies’ federal income tax expenses as disclosed in public filings, according to a report by the Institute for Policy Studies. The Washington-based nonprofit group’s report, released today, examined 100 publicly traded U.S. corporations with the highest-paid CEOs. It found that companies whose CEOs’ compensation exceeded reported tax expense in 2010 had average global profits of $1.9 billion. Companies in this group, according to the report, included Cablevision Systems Corp., EBay Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., Boeing Co. and Dow Chemical Co. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-31/ceos-earned-more-than-their-companies-tax-bills-study-finds.html
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A Conspiracy of Counterfeiters
Schooled economists such as Rogoff, Krugman and Bernanke know how to shelter their wealth from the ravages of inflation – and even to get rich. But what about widows whose husbands leave a nest egg of savings in cash and bonds? What are they supposed to do as the value of their savings is wiped out at 4, 5 or 6 percent a year – or whatever annual rate of ruin the Rogoffs and the Krugmans decide upon? This is not only an economic issue but a moral issue. To inflate a currency is to steal the money citizens have earned and saved and entrusted their government to protect. Any government that betrays that trust and steals that wealth is not only unworthy of support. It is worthy of being overthrown. http://lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan183.html
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A Monetary Maze From Which There is No Easy Escape
Market manipulation cannot detract from the fact that gold is now again the world reserve currency, which will outlast all the criminal machinations of governments and central banks. Just be patient and you will see what we mean. http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekly/A_Monetary_Maze_From_Which_There_Is_No_Easy_Escape
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Iceland’s Ongoing Revolution
An Italian radio program’s story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a stunning example of how little our media tells us about the rest of the world. We may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion. As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example. Here’s why. http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-news/3057-a-story-missing-from-our-media-icelands-on-going-revolution.html
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Real People Say “Screw You” to the Markets
Don’t even try to “invest” in this market folks, and if you decide to trade, realize that you’re playing in a rigged casino and the entire force of the government is not only behind rigging the casino but explicitly endorses and permits the rigging to go on and continue, despite being fully-aware of it. Remember, “Wall Street is Main Street” to them – and if that means your retirement and investments get destroyed that’s just fine provided that big buildings in downtown Manhatten continue to be infested by the thieves guild that pumps tithes into campaign coffers. Oh, if you think that liquidity was bad, you should have seen it on the release of the speech. There were double-digit bid and offers up and down the stack, and the collapse of about 1% you saw was a direct consequence of an illiquid market. So was the subsequent ramp job, roughly 2% in minutes. This chainsaw is more than happy to cut your arms and legs off with both sides of the bar. Make sure you thank Congress and our wonderful “President”, all of whom are far more interested in making sure that the banksters simply rob you blind than anything else when it comes to the economy. http://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=193037
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Obama Goes All Out For Dirty Banker Deal
A power play is underway in the foreclosure arena, according to the New York Times. Eric Schneiderman and President Barack Obama. On the one side is Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General, who is conducting his own investigation into the era of securitizations – the practice of chopping up assets like mortgages and converting them into saleable securities – that led up to the financial crisis of 2007-2008. On the other side is the Obama administration, the banks, and all the other state attorneys general. This second camp has cooked up a deal that would allow the banks to walk away with just a seriously discounted fine from a generation of fraud that led to millions of people losing their homes. The idea behind this federally-guided “settlement” is to concentrate and centralize all the legal exposure accrued by this generation of grotesque banker corruption in one place, put one single price tag on it that everyone can live with, and then stuff the details into a titanium canister before shooting it into deep space. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/08/25-0
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Gangster Watch: Pelosi’s Net Worth Triples Just in Last Two Years
It’s nice to know someone is prospering during the ‘Obama years’. The rest of us are watching our home values and retirement investments plummet. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reported a minimum net worth for 2010 that was more than 50 percent higher than the prior year, according to personal financial disclosure forms made public by the Clerk of the House on Wednesday. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) also saw a healthy growth in his minimum net worth, but the total change in his case is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, while Pelosi’s is in the millions. http://www.bluegrasspundit.com/2011/08/nancy-pelosi-reported-net-worth-triples.html
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Bank of America Executive to Rick Perry: ‘We’ll Help You Out’
After all the speculation that Rick Perry’s threats against Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke would hurt his relationship with Wall Street, at least one banker is pledging his company’s support. WGIR New Hampshire Radio’s Paul Westcott captures this clip of an unknown individual telling the Texas governor at a “Politics & Eggs” event in New Hampshire: “I’m from Bank of America and we’ll help you out.” The event was sponsored by The New England Council, the region’s lobbying association in Washington, and the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, though it is entirely unclear what this man’s position is within the company. Mitt Romney has so far been the favorite of Wall Street donors among the GOP candidates this cycle, but a move toward Rick Perry would certainly be significant. http://www.businessinsider.com/banker-to-rick-perry-im-from-bank-of-america-and-well-help-you-out-2011-8
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Feral Capitalism Hits the Streets
The problem is that we live in a society where capitalism itself has become rampantly feral. Feral politicians cheat on their expenses, feral bankers plunder the public purse for all its worth, CEOs, hedge fund operators and private equity geniuses loot the world of wealth, telephone and credit card companies load mysterious charges on everyone’s bills, shopkeepers price gouge, and, at the drop of a hat swindlers and scam artists get to practice three-card monte right up into the highest echelons of the corporate and political world. A political economy of mass dispossession, of predatory practices to the point of daylight robbery, particularly of the poor and the vulnerable, the unsophisticated and the legally unprotected, has become the order of the day. Does anyone believe it is possible to find an honest capitalist, an honest banker, an honest politician, an honest shopkeeper or an honest police commissioner any more? Yes, they do exist. But only as a minority that everyone else regards as stupid. Get smart. Get easy profits. Defraud and steal! The odds of getting caught are low. And in any case there are plenty of ways to shield personal wealth from the costs of corporate malfeasance. http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=5207
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Diary of a Fed Announcement, and Why Silver is About to Go Nuclear
I think we all knew yesterday’s Fed announcement was of DIRE IMPORTANCE to TPTB, directly following a record Dow decline and near parabolic gold surge that broke every Cartel capping tool devised (although they made up for it by sitting on silver). Anyone with half a brain knew what the announcement would be, and it should be crystal clear that NOTHING they say has a chance in hell of EVER helping the economy. Yet, the clueless media hyped the decision as if the fate of America depended on it, as they have done with EVERY Fed meeting for the past three years, EACH of which has produced the IDENTICAL result! http://babybulltwits.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/ranting-andy-a-world-gone-mad%E2%80%90diary-of-a-fed-announcement-and-why-silver-is-about-to-go-nuclear/
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Helter Skelter — ‘Gentlemen, Start Your Engines’
Even gold and silver ETFs which are either un-backed or where the backing is questionable (and we all knowwhich ones) could come to grief. Look at Eric Sprott’s gold and silver ETFs which are trading at premiumsof 2.1% and 19.4%, respectively. Investors believe that Eric Sprott is an honest man and his funds reallydo own the gold and silver bullion they claim. Other funds trade at a discount.While Bernanke may not be quite as stupid as he sounds, it’s important to realize that many powerfulbankers and politicians, and the more powerful people behind them, are far from stupid. You would benaïve if you didn’t believe that the end game is as obvious to them as it is to us. The most powerful of thesepeople are long-term planners and skilled at turning crises to their own advantage. Indeed, the modusoperandi, used time and time again, is best summarized as:PROBLEM, REACTION, SOLUTION. http://www.scribd.com/doc/61942106/TRReport24
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Here Comes TARP 2: Bank Of America Implodes
With Bank of America investors finally realizing it is game over for the company as a going concern, at this point there are just two options for Brian Moynihan: the spin off of CFC as a bad bank, backstopped by the Fed, or, well, Chapter 11, which for a bank is essentially liquidation. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/here-comes-tarp-2-bank-america-implodes-687-bac-cds-20-260-bps-bankruptcy-contemplated
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Bankers Gone Wild — How the U.S. Government Helped Wall Street Gang-Rape America’s Middle Class
Unlike the economic system of value instituted by the Founding Fathers, the Federal Reserve System is a debt-based economy. All money, whether issued through the government, or by member banks to the public, is the result of a loan from that Private Central Bank. And therein lies the trap, because the moment that first Federal Reserve Note went into circulation, more money is owed to the banking system than actually exists! The debt can never be paid off. The system perpetuates only so long as an ever-larger group of new borrowers can be found to create new money to pay the interest on the old money. That is what makes it a pyramid. More money is created out of thin air in response to a loan, but the total debt still exceeds the total money supply. That is why the government and media always talk about the “growth” of the economy. “Growth” may sound like a good thing to the unenlightened, but in a debt-based economy, “growth” means “nation and its people deeper in debt-slavery”. And because it is a pyramid, if the economy does not grow, that is, if more new debt cannot be created to service the interest on the old debt, the pyramid collapses, which is what is happening now. http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/wildbankers.php
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The Debt Crisis is a Trojan Horse to Cause the Fall of America
The long transformation of America from a relatively free society into a full-fledged, technocratic police state is now complete. President Barack Obama and political leaders from both major parties are getting ready to completely turn over America’s sovereignty to the traitorous private banking cartel and multinational corporations. http://www.infowars.com/the-debt-crisis-is-a-trojan-horse-to-cause-the-fall-of-america/
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The Double Standard of American Banking and Federal Reserve Policy
While the American public is starring at a government that is more like an improv act in Chicago, the banking system continues to hide toxic assets from the view of the public. An odd economic dance is taking place. While the public is being beaten over the head about spending within its limits we have a shadow banking system that seems to have no debt limits at all. While many Americans are losing their homes to foreclosure, are filing bankruptcy because of credit card debt, or face having to deal with massive amounts of student loans you have the Federal Reserve expanding its balance sheet all with complete media silence. Why is there no spectacle here? Where is the scrutiny for the banks? The problem of course is that the Fed is mainly concerned with protecting the wealth of the small financial elites. After all, we have the grand J.P. Morgan as one of the masterminds behind this hub of banking power. As we continue down this circus, the even bigger absurdity of the Federal Reserve practices continues unquestioned in popular media. http://www.mybudget360.com/no-debt-ceiling-for-federal-reserve-double-standard-american-banking-fiscal-financial-policy/
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Apple Now Has More Cash Than the U.S. Government
Here’s something to keep in mind as you follow this evening’s congressional debate over the debt ceiling. According to the latest daily statement from the U.S. Treasury, the government had an operating cash balance of $73.8 billion at the end of the day yesterday. Apple’s last earnings report (PDF here) showed that the company had $76.2 billion in cash and marketable securities at the end of June. In other words, the world’s largest tech company has more cash than the world’s largest sovereign government. http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-has-more-cash-on-hand-than-the-us-government-2011-7
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This is What a Collapsing Ponzi Scheme Looks Like: Housing Market Headed Off a Cliff as a Shocking 10.8 Million Mortgages at Risk of Default
The Atlantic explains this shadow inventory chart: “What’s happening to the homes of all those defaulted borrowers that we hear about? Many of those properties are a part of so-called shadow inventory. This is the sort of limbo between when a home’s loan defaults and when the property is put on the market for purchase. The increase shown above is staggering. The shaded area shows mortgages more than 12 months delinquent or in foreclosure (darker blue) and those seized by the bank (lighter blue).” Obviously this is going to significantly drive home prices further down, as I reported a few weeks ago, 28% of U.S. homeowners already owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth. A recent survey by Fannie Mae found that 27% of American homeowners are considering walking away from their mortgage. A perfect storm is brewing. As prices continue to drop, with 10 million now at risk of default, a strategic default movement could devastate the “too big to fail” banks that caused this mess in the first place. http://daviddegraw.org/2011/07/this-is-what-a-collasping-ponzi-scheme-looks-like-housing-market-headed-off-a-cliff-as-a-shocking-10-8-million-mortgages-at-risk-of-default/
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The Political Theater and the Debt Ceiling Crisis: Are We Being Had?
So what might be going on? One possibility is that the political theater is operating to bring about otherwise politically impossible cuts in the social safety net. If the drama continues to the absolute deadline without a deal, Obama, who perhaps favors cutting the safety net as much as do the Republicans, would have to accept the Republican package in order that the troops are not cut off from supplies, Social Security checks can continue to go out, and the dollar be saved. Having opposed the Republicans to the last minute, Obama can say that he had no other recourse. http://www.activistpost.com/2011/07/political-theater-and-debt-ceiling.html
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Depression 2.0 Watch — Austerity is Coming to the U.S.
Today it’s the U.S. Postal Service closing down 3700 additional offices. Tomorrow it will be Social Security, Medicare and so on and so forth. Last week we saw that the Federal Reserve has spent $16 trillion on bailouts thus far this crisis. The debt ceiling debate is being used as we speak as the first tool to make ordinary Americans pay for this. It’s no different from what’s going on in Athens and Dublin, and soon Lisbon, Madrid and Rome. The MO of the political/financial system that holds all the levers in our societies is based on a wealth transfer going one way, and a debt transfer going the other. http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/07/july-26-2011-austerity-is-coming-to-usa.html
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Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts
The first ever GAO(Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage earlier this morning. What was revealed in the audit was startling: $16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. http://www.countercurrents.org/bailout240711.htm
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An Economy Destroyed Thanks to Washington
The U.S. economy is in a deepening recession from which recovery is not possible, because American middle class jobs in manufacturing and professional services have been offshored and given to foreigners. U.S. GDP, consumer purchasing power, and tax base have been handed over to China, India, and Indonesia in order that Wall Street, shareholders, and corporate CEOs can earn more. When the goods and services produced offshore come back into America, they arrive as imports. The trade balance worsens, the U.S. dollar declines further in exchange value, and prices rise for Americans, whose incomes are stagnant or falling.This is economic destruction. It always occurs when an oligarchy seizes control of a government. The short-run profits of the powerful are maximized at the expense of the viability of the economy. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28654.htm
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Two Former Social Security Officials Admit the System is Not Much Different From a Ponzi Scheme
And the time is not far away when it will all come crashing down on the banksters and gangsters behind it. http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=15789
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In order to secure a new international trade agreement with Pacific nations, the Obama administration appears willing to grant foreign corporations the power to avoid U.S. laws. This revelation came in the form of a leaked document posted online by Citizens Trade Campaign. The material came from negotiations to establish a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact and its authenticity verified by Public Citizen. According to the Huffington Post, which also reviewed the document, foreign corporations operating within the U.S. could disregard certain domestic requirements and regulations by appealing to an international tribunal—that would have the power to overrule American law. http://www.blacklistednews.com/Globalization%3A_Secret_Obama_Trade_Agreement_Would_Allow_Foreign_Corporations_to_Avoid_U.S._Laws/20032/0/38/38/Y/M.html
