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Why the End of America is Closer than You Think

By
March 30, 2009
Civil unrest, Corruption, Depression, Economic Collapse, Survival, Theft
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by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

I recently moved to Ecuador. Not for a vacation. Not for a month or two. I moved to Ecuador for good, as a permanent resident. Upon hearing my plans for living in South America, many people who knew me in the States asked things like, “Well what about the stability of Ecuador as a nation?” To which I would respond, “Oh, you mean the stability of banks that don’t make loans and don’t invest in derivatives? You mean the stability of a nation where the population still has the courage to march in the streets and throw corrupt officials out of its capitol?”

These questions make Americans pause. Most tend to think of public demonstrations as signs of a political instability. But in fact, public demonstrations are a sign of a healthy Democratic process. And Democracy is alive and well in Ecuador (with the usual level of corruption you find in any democracy).

It is in America, where the sheeple have been terrorized into staying inside the boundaries of their little “protest zones,” that you find a fragile, unstable nation.

Through complacency and fear-mongering, most Americans have become cowards when it comes to political activism. They think emailing their Senator a few times a year is all that’s required to defend freedom and preserve a nation. Marching in the streets is seen as uncivilized… or even unpatriotic! The government agrees with this, too, now labeling anyone who protests in public a “potential terrorist” and targeting them for FBI investigations. (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C29…)

The multi-trillion-dollar theft scheme

In the mean time, while the sheeple of America are caught up in their hypnotic dreams of world domination, white-collar hoodlums in Washington D.C. and Wall Street are stealing everything!

The oft-repeated creation of $1 trillion in new money out of thin air by the Federal Reserve has made the U.S. dollar the laughing stock of the world. The leaders of the G20 nations have already decided to ditch the dollar and shift to other world reserve currencies, and China is now blatantly and publicly asking the U.S. put up some kind of collateral to back up future debt purchases, to which the U.S. says “Don’t worry about the debt. We’re good for it!”

And when $165 million in bonus money got paid to AIG employees, the tyrants in Washington demonstrated the true reach of their confiscatory punishment by enacting, within mere days, a 90% income tax rate on those bonuses. Sure, I agree those AIG executives deserve no bonus money, but the fact that the legislative branch of the U.S. government can reach out and hammer a targeted group of U.S. citizens with a retroactive 90% income tax rate should send shivers through any American that earns any income at all.

It has all taken on the caricature of a political circus. The perception around the world now is that America is not merely a land of the incompetent and the bankrupt; it’s also a land of fiscal buffoons and political puppets who have no real ability to save the crashing economy.

The Fed’s plan to increase the money supply 15-fold

But the real story starts to unfold when you realize the Federal Reserve is now hell bent on multiplying the U.S. money supply by a whopping fifteen times in 2009! This excellent article explains how this number is derived: http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/…

Now think about this: If the Federal Reserve increases the U.S. money supply by a factor of fifteen, that means your dollars will be worth only 1/15th the value they represent right now. So a loaf of bread that costs a dollar right now could cost $15 when all this extra money ripples through the system. (Which will obviously take a couple of years, but 2009 will be the beginning of it.)

This is called “hyperinflation.” We’re talking about a loss of over 93% of the purchasing power of the dollar. That, my friends, is called a collapse of the currency.

And once it starts, the floodgates will be opened and the tsunami of investors and nations offloading dollars will be catastrophic and irreversible. By the time it’s all done, the dollar might end up losing 99.9% of its value, and you can use greenbacks to light a fire or wipe your back side, as they will be useless for anything else.

Why America’s currency — and government — is headed for total collapse

That’s why I say America’s days are numbered. The America as we know it, at least. This repeated creation of trillions of dollars in new money by the Federal Reserve is the last great looting of the U.S. economy by the wealthy elite. The Titanic is sinking, and high officials have monopolized the life rafts, leaving everyone else to drown with the ship. And while they’re rowing away from the doomed vessel that’s taking on water, they shout back to the low-income workers clinging to the rails, “Don’t worry! The ship isn’t really sinking. It’s just ‘correcting!’”

The truth is that America IS sinking — and it’s not just the currency I’m talking about here: America’s criminal health care system has sickened the population and outlawed any real healing practices, too. Meanwhile, the FDA and FTC have attempted to destroy all knowledge of natural remedies that can prevent and cure disease, further compromising the future of the American People.

On the dollars-and-cents side, America’s economy is a fictitious mish-mash of corporations selling poisons to the people, and people buying junk they don’t need, and everybody paying through the nose for disease care services that ultimately provide no net benefit to the population.

America’s infrastructure is crumbling, its industries are already gutted, and its exports resemble third-world agricultural nations more than first-world developed nations. Its political leadership is, with very few exceptions, a band of diseased, ignorant influence peddlers who sell out their constituents at every opportunity.

Perhaps more importantly, America has abandoned the principle of law. Laws no longer matter in America because they are selectively enforced only against those who threaten powerful institutions or corporations. America is no longer a nation of freedom and justice for all. Rather, it is a nation of greed and profit for the few, followed by oppression and bankruptcy for everybody else.

What’s coming soon for America

Given these circumstances, it is not difficult to predict the demise of America as we know it. The U.S. dollar will eventually collapse or be abandoned. This could happen literally overnight, or it could take years, but make no mistake: The American people will not be forewarned of the collapse of the dollar. It will be a sudden, surprise announcement, and all the politicians and banking elitists who engineered the whole thing will pronounce their “shock” that such a thing could happen! “We could never have predicted this,” they will insist, even while the whole thing was actually engineered by the very same people.

One day, Americans will wake up and discover that all banks are on “bank holidays” (which means that someone in Washington is taking a holiday with your money while YOU can’t access it).

Within hours, the National Guard will roll into the cities of the United States, and Americans will find themselves penniless prisoners in their own country. Anyone who protests will be arrested or shot. Law will be dispensed at the end of military rifles, and the President will get on television and explain how this is all being done for YOUR benefit! It’s for your own safety and protection, didn’t you know?

From here, it’s difficult to say exactly what will unfold. We could see UN troops on U.S. soil, the IMF taking over the U.S. banking system, and the forced transition to a global currency. Other possibilities include the Balkanization of the formerly-united States of America, with regional nation-states declaring their own independence from Washington.

During this chaos, just-in-time delivery of food and products will grind to a halt. Store shelves will be emptied. A healthy economy of barter will immediately spring up to fill the void. Those who have things to trade (toilet paper, butter, salt, sugar, matches, gold, silver, food, fuel, etc.) will eat. Those who don’t will starve. Health will plummet and infectious disease will become a very real threat in many cities. The conventional medical system will, of course, be utterly useless and will run out of medicine within days or weeks.

This economic transition chaos will be short-lived, however, and from the ashes of economic turmoil will spring a new nation (or nations) of People who have finally awakened from their complacency. New governments will be forged, and the fields of economic ruin will be ripe for the planting and sprouting of new ideas from a new generation of visionary leaders.

In my related article called How to Create A Healthy, Wealthy, Abundant Nation from the Ashes of America’s Demise, I discuss some advanced ideas of how new nation states might structure themselves in a way that creates lasting health, wealth and abundance for its citizens. Read that story on the other network I write for. Just enter the title shown above in the search box of the other website (NN).

Why the End of America is Closer than You Think

By
March 30, 2009
Civil unrest, Corruption, Depression, Economic Collapse, Survival, Theft
Leave a Comment

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

I recently moved to Ecuador. Not for a vacation. Not for a month or two. I moved to Ecuador for good, as a permanent resident. Upon hearing my plans for living in South America, many people who knew me in the States asked things like, “Well what about the stability of Ecuador as a nation?” To which I would respond, “Oh, you mean the stability of banks that don’t make loans and don’t invest in derivatives? You mean the stability of a nation where the population still has the courage to march in the streets and throw corrupt officials out of its capitol?”

These questions make Americans pause. Most tend to think of public demonstrations as signs of a political instability. But in fact, public demonstrations are a sign of a healthy Democratic process. And Democracy is alive and well in Ecuador (with the usual level of corruption you find in any democracy).

It is in America, where the sheeple have been terrorized into staying inside the boundaries of their little “protest zones,” that you find a fragile, unstable nation.

Through complacency and fear-mongering, most Americans have become cowards when it comes to political activism. They think emailing their Senator a few times a year is all that’s required to defend freedom and preserve a nation. Marching in the streets is seen as uncivilized… or even unpatriotic! The government agrees with this, too, now labeling anyone who protests in public a “potential terrorist” and targeting them for FBI investigations. (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C29…)

The multi-trillion-dollar theft scheme

In the mean time, while the sheeple of America are caught up in their hypnotic dreams of world domination, white-collar hoodlums in Washington D.C. and Wall Street are stealing everything!

The oft-repeated creation of $1 trillion in new money out of thin air by the Federal Reserve has made the U.S. dollar the laughing stock of the world. The leaders of the G20 nations have already decided to ditch the dollar and shift to other world reserve currencies, and China is now blatantly and publicly asking the U.S. put up some kind of collateral to back up future debt purchases, to which the U.S. says “Don’t worry about the debt. We’re good for it!”

And when $165 million in bonus money got paid to AIG employees, the tyrants in Washington demonstrated the true reach of their confiscatory punishment by enacting, within mere days, a 90% income tax rate on those bonuses. Sure, I agree those AIG executives deserve no bonus money, but the fact that the legislative branch of the U.S. government can reach out and hammer a targeted group of U.S. citizens with a retroactive 90% income tax rate should send shivers through any American that earns any income at all.

It has all taken on the caricature of a political circus. The perception around the world now is that America is not merely a land of the incompetent and the bankrupt; it’s also a land of fiscal buffoons and political puppets who have no real ability to save the crashing economy.

The Fed’s plan to increase the money supply 15-fold

But the real story starts to unfold when you realize the Federal Reserve is now hell bent on multiplying the U.S. money supply by a whopping fifteen times in 2009! This excellent article explains how this number is derived: http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/…

Now think about this: If the Federal Reserve increases the U.S. money supply by a factor of fifteen, that means your dollars will be worth only 1/15th the value they represent right now. So a loaf of bread that costs a dollar right now could cost $15 when all this extra money ripples through the system. (Which will obviously take a couple of years, but 2009 will be the beginning of it.)

This is called “hyperinflation.” We’re talking about a loss of over 93% of the purchasing power of the dollar. That, my friends, is called a collapse of the currency.

And once it starts, the floodgates will be opened and the tsunami of investors and nations offloading dollars will be catastrophic and irreversible. By the time it’s all done, the dollar might end up losing 99.9% of its value, and you can use greenbacks to light a fire or wipe your back side, as they will be useless for anything else.

Why America’s currency — and government — is headed for total collapse

That’s why I say America’s days are numbered. The America as we know it, at least. This repeated creation of trillions of dollars in new money by the Federal Reserve is the last great looting of the U.S. economy by the wealthy elite. The Titanic is sinking, and high officials have monopolized the life rafts, leaving everyone else to drown with the ship. And while they’re rowing away from the doomed vessel that’s taking on water, they shout back to the low-income workers clinging to the rails, “Don’t worry! The ship isn’t really sinking. It’s just ‘correcting!’”

The truth is that America IS sinking — and it’s not just the currency I’m talking about here: America’s criminal health care system has sickened the population and outlawed any real healing practices, too. Meanwhile, the FDA and FTC have attempted to destroy all knowledge of natural remedies that can prevent and cure disease, further compromising the future of the American People.

On the dollars-and-cents side, America’s economy is a fictitious mish-mash of corporations selling poisons to the people, and people buying junk they don’t need, and everybody paying through the nose for disease care services that ultimately provide no net benefit to the population.

America’s infrastructure is crumbling, its industries are already gutted, and its exports resemble third-world agricultural nations more than first-world developed nations. Its political leadership is, with very few exceptions, a band of diseased, ignorant influence peddlers who sell out their constituents at every opportunity.

Perhaps more importantly, America has abandoned the principle of law. Laws no longer matter in America because they are selectively enforced only against those who threaten powerful institutions or corporations. America is no longer a nation of freedom and justice for all. Rather, it is a nation of greed and profit for the few, followed by oppression and bankruptcy for everybody else.

What’s coming soon for America

Given these circumstances, it is not difficult to predict the demise of America as we know it. The U.S. dollar will eventually collapse or be abandoned. This could happen literally overnight, or it could take years, but make no mistake: The American people will not be forewarned of the collapse of the dollar. It will be a sudden, surprise announcement, and all the politicians and banking elitists who engineered the whole thing will pronounce their “shock” that such a thing could happen! “We could never have predicted this,” they will insist, even while the whole thing was actually engineered by the very same people.

One day, Americans will wake up and discover that all banks are on “bank holidays” (which means that someone in Washington is taking a holiday with your money while YOU can’t access it).

Within hours, the National Guard will roll into the cities of the United States, and Americans will find themselves penniless prisoners in their own country. Anyone who protests will be arrested or shot. Law will be dispensed at the end of military rifles, and the President will get on television and explain how this is all being done for YOUR benefit! It’s for your own safety and protection, didn’t you know?

From here, it’s difficult to say exactly what will unfold. We could see UN troops on U.S. soil, the IMF taking over the U.S. banking system, and the forced transition to a global currency. Other possibilities include the Balkanization of the formerly-united States of America, with regional nation-states declaring their own independence from Washington.

During this chaos, just-in-time delivery of food and products will grind to a halt. Store shelves will be emptied. A healthy economy of barter will immediately spring up to fill the void. Those who have things to trade (toilet paper, butter, salt, sugar, matches, gold, silver, food, fuel, etc.) will eat. Those who don’t will starve. Health will plummet and infectious disease will become a very real threat in many cities. The conventional medical system will, of course, be utterly useless and will run out of medicine within days or weeks.

This economic transition chaos will be short-lived, however, and from the ashes of economic turmoil will spring a new nation (or nations) of People who have finally awakened from their complacency. New governments will be forged, and the fields of economic ruin will be ripe for the planting and sprouting of new ideas from a new generation of visionary leaders.

In my related article called How to Create A Healthy, Wealthy, Abundant Nation from the Ashes of America’s Demise, I discuss some advanced ideas of how new nation states might structure themselves in a way that creates lasting health, wealth and abundance for its citizens. Read that story on the other network I write for. Just enter the title shown above in the search box of the other website (NN).

Losing Paradise

By
March 23, 2009
Deception, Depression, Disinformation, Federal Reserve, Fraud, Subverting the U.S. Constitution, Theft
Leave a Comment


from Johnny Silver Bear

Get ready for a $10.00 cup of coffee, a $200.00 dinner, water bills that look like your electric bill, and electric bills that look like your mortgage payment. The value of coffee is not going up. The value of food is not going up. The value of water and electricity is not going up. The value of the dollar is going down. A ten-cent candy bar can still be had for a dime, providing that it’s a silver dime. If you are using Federal Reserve Notes, a ten-cent candy bar now costs $1.00, and it will soon cost $2.00.

I believe that the powers that be have employed their ability to invent money by using its corrupting influence to screw things up. They have, with the help of their bought and paid for accomplices, screwed it up so bad that it won’t be easily fixed. I have always believed their plan was to casually strip up of all our liberties before they pissed us off. They have been doing a pretty good job of stripping us of or freedoms and liberties for years, and no one seems to have minded very much. After all, they successfully debased our currency and pocketed the difference, entwined us in a mire of disputes all over the globe and managed to get the whole world pissed off at us, strapped us with untenable debt that will eventually enslave our offspring, dismantled the Bill of Rights through Patriot Acts One, Two, and soon to be Three, are currently scheming to rob us of our retirement by hijacking social security, and still we re-elect them. Apparently, they haven’t pissed us off enough for anyone to do anything about it.

Given the pandemic apathy, that addles the collective mindset of our nation, there is not much hope for a political solution. By the time the sheeple wake up and attempt to politically change things, it will be far to late. We are witnessing the decent of the Phoenix, and she’s going down in flames. I also believe that the Phoenix will rise from the flames and soar to new heights. Unfortunately I do not believe it will be anytime soon, and when it does, it will be under far different circumstances.

What can you do? Open your eyes. Identify, for yourself, the signs of the tyrannies of collectivism. The easiest way to identify a collectivist is to observe how he proposes to help those in need. If he advocates true charity (the giving of one’s own money) and freedom-of-choice to give or not to give, he is an individualist. If he advocates pseudo charity (the giving of other people’s money) and the use of taxation to coerce everyone to participate whether they choose to or not, he is a collectivist. The use of coercion for redistribution of wealth is the foundation of socialism, communism, Nazism, fascism, and all other variants of collectivism.

Protect yourself. Get ready now. Sell everything you don’t need. Accumulate gold and silver, (most especially silver). Invest in gold and silver mining issues. The day is soon coming when the people demand that precious metals regain their place in a Constitutionally sound economic system. Prepare to defend your Constitution, yourself and those you love.


Losing Paradise

By
March 23, 2009
Deception, Depression, Disinformation, Federal Reserve, Fraud, Subverting the U.S. Constitution, Theft
Leave a Comment


from Johnny Silver Bear

Get ready for a $10.00 cup of coffee, a $200.00 dinner, water bills that look like your electric bill, and electric bills that look like your mortgage payment. The value of coffee is not going up. The value of food is not going up. The value of water and electricity is not going up. The value of the dollar is going down. A ten-cent candy bar can still be had for a dime, providing that it’s a silver dime. If you are using Federal Reserve Notes, a ten-cent candy bar now costs $1.00, and it will soon cost $2.00.

I believe that the powers that be have employed their ability to invent money by using its corrupting influence to screw things up. They have, with the help of their bought and paid for accomplices, screwed it up so bad that it won’t be easily fixed. I have always believed their plan was to casually strip up of all our liberties before they pissed us off. They have been doing a pretty good job of stripping us of or freedoms and liberties for years, and no one seems to have minded very much. After all, they successfully debased our currency and pocketed the difference, entwined us in a mire of disputes all over the globe and managed to get the whole world pissed off at us, strapped us with untenable debt that will eventually enslave our offspring, dismantled the Bill of Rights through Patriot Acts One, Two, and soon to be Three, are currently scheming to rob us of our retirement by hijacking social security, and still we re-elect them. Apparently, they haven’t pissed us off enough for anyone to do anything about it.

Given the pandemic apathy, that addles the collective mindset of our nation, there is not much hope for a political solution. By the time the sheeple wake up and attempt to politically change things, it will be far to late. We are witnessing the decent of the Phoenix, and she’s going down in flames. I also believe that the Phoenix will rise from the flames and soar to new heights. Unfortunately I do not believe it will be anytime soon, and when it does, it will be under far different circumstances.

What can you do? Open your eyes. Identify, for yourself, the signs of the tyrannies of collectivism. The easiest way to identify a collectivist is to observe how he proposes to help those in need. If he advocates true charity (the giving of one’s own money) and freedom-of-choice to give or not to give, he is an individualist. If he advocates pseudo charity (the giving of other people’s money) and the use of taxation to coerce everyone to participate whether they choose to or not, he is a collectivist. The use of coercion for redistribution of wealth is the foundation of socialism, communism, Nazism, fascism, and all other variants of collectivism.

Protect yourself. Get ready now. Sell everything you don’t need. Accumulate gold and silver, (most especially silver). Invest in gold and silver mining issues. The day is soon coming when the people demand that precious metals regain their place in a Constitutionally sound economic system. Prepare to defend your Constitution, yourself and those you love.


Losing Paradise

By
March 23, 2009
Deception, Depression, Disinformation, Federal Reserve, Fraud, Subverting the U.S. Constitution, Theft
Leave a Comment


from Johnny Silver Bear

Get ready for a $10.00 cup of coffee, a $200.00 dinner, water bills that look like your electric bill, and electric bills that look like your mortgage payment. The value of coffee is not going up. The value of food is not going up. The value of water and electricity is not going up. The value of the dollar is going down. A ten-cent candy bar can still be had for a dime, providing that it’s a silver dime. If you are using Federal Reserve Notes, a ten-cent candy bar now costs $1.00, and it will soon cost $2.00.

I believe that the powers that be have employed their ability to invent money by using its corrupting influence to screw things up. They have, with the help of their bought and paid for accomplices, screwed it up so bad that it won’t be easily fixed. I have always believed their plan was to casually strip up of all our liberties before they pissed us off. They have been doing a pretty good job of stripping us of or freedoms and liberties for years, and no one seems to have minded very much. After all, they successfully debased our currency and pocketed the difference, entwined us in a mire of disputes all over the globe and managed to get the whole world pissed off at us, strapped us with untenable debt that will eventually enslave our offspring, dismantled the Bill of Rights through Patriot Acts One, Two, and soon to be Three, are currently scheming to rob us of our retirement by hijacking social security, and still we re-elect them. Apparently, they haven’t pissed us off enough for anyone to do anything about it.

Given the pandemic apathy, that addles the collective mindset of our nation, there is not much hope for a political solution. By the time the sheeple wake up and attempt to politically change things, it will be far to late. We are witnessing the decent of the Phoenix, and she’s going down in flames. I also believe that the Phoenix will rise from the flames and soar to new heights. Unfortunately I do not believe it will be anytime soon, and when it does, it will be under far different circumstances.

What can you do? Open your eyes. Identify, for yourself, the signs of the tyrannies of collectivism. The easiest way to identify a collectivist is to observe how he proposes to help those in need. If he advocates true charity (the giving of one’s own money) and freedom-of-choice to give or not to give, he is an individualist. If he advocates pseudo charity (the giving of other people’s money) and the use of taxation to coerce everyone to participate whether they choose to or not, he is a collectivist. The use of coercion for redistribution of wealth is the foundation of socialism, communism, Nazism, fascism, and all other variants of collectivism.

Protect yourself. Get ready now. Sell everything you don’t need. Accumulate gold and silver, (most especially silver). Invest in gold and silver mining issues. The day is soon coming when the people demand that precious metals regain their place in a Constitutionally sound economic system. Prepare to defend your Constitution, yourself and those you love.


The Collapse of America is Unavoidable

By
March 10, 2009
Civil unrest, Depression, Economic Collapse, Theft
Leave a Comment

America must work on starting a new economy and not restarting the old one or it will resemble the former Soviet Union, says author and blogger Dmitry Orlov.

When debt becomes so great that it cannot be paid back then bancruptcy occurs. The U.S. is on the edge of bankruptcy and trying to avoid the edge by increasing the debt increases the probability of bankruptcy.

Growth models of society are not sustainable and until they become sustainable, they will collapse over time.

Capitalism is a pyramid scheme built by those at the top of the pyramid with their full knowledge of the effect it was having on those at the bottom.

The Collapse of America is Unavoidable

By
March 10, 2009
Civil unrest, Depression, Economic Collapse, Theft
Leave a Comment

America must work on starting a new economy and not restarting the old one or it will resemble the former Soviet Union, says author and blogger Dmitry Orlov.

When debt becomes so great that it cannot be paid back then bancruptcy occurs. The U.S. is on the edge of bankruptcy and trying to avoid the edge by increasing the debt increases the probability of bankruptcy.

Growth models of society are not sustainable and until they become sustainable, they will collapse over time.

Capitalism is a pyramid scheme built by those at the top of the pyramid with their full knowledge of the effect it was having on those at the bottom.

Build the walls and take a stand, total collapse [of America] is soon at hand…

By
February 18, 2009
Civil unrest, Depression, Disinformation, Martial law
Leave a Comment

Bad News From America’s Top Spy


VIA Truthdig
by Chris Hedges

We have a remarkable ability to create our own monsters. A few decades of meddling in the Middle East with our Israeli doppelgänger and we get Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaida, the Iraqi resistance movement and a resurgent Taliban. Now we trash the world economy and destroy the ecosystem and sit back to watch our handiwork. Hints of our brave new world seeped out Thursday when Washington’s new director of national intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He warned that the deepening economic crisis posed perhaps our gravest threat to stability and national security. It could trigger, he said, a return to the “violent extremism” of the 1920s and 1930s.

It turns out that Wall Street, rather than Islamic jihad, has produced our most dangerous terrorists. You wouldn’t know this from the Obama administration, which seems hellbent on draining the blood out of the body politic and transfusing it into the corpse of our financial system. But by the time Barack Obama is done all we will be left with is a corpse—a corpse and no blood. And then what? We will see accelerated plant and retail closures, inflation, an epidemic of bankruptcies, new rounds of foreclosures, bread lines, unemployment surpassing the levels of the Great Depression and, as Blair fears, social upheaval.

The United Nations’ International Labor Organization estimates that some 50 million workers will lose their jobs worldwide this year. The collapse has already seen 3.6 million lost jobs in the United States. The International Monetary Fund’s prediction for global economic growth in 2009 is 0.5 percent—the worst since World War II. There are 2.3 million properties in the United States that received a default notice or were repossessed last year. And this number is set to rise in 2009, especially as vacant commercial real estate begins to be foreclosed. About 20,000 major global banks collapsed, were sold or were nationalized in 2008. There are an estimated 62,000 U.S. companies expected to shut down this year. Unemployment, when you add people no longer looking for jobs and part-time workers who cannot find full-time employment, is close to 14 percent.

And we have few tools left to dig our way out. The manufacturing sector in the United States has been destroyed by globalization. Consumers, thanks to credit card companies and easy lines of credit, are $14 trillion in debt. The government has pledged trillions toward the crisis, most of it borrowed or printed in the form of new money. It is borrowing trillions more to fund our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And no one states the obvious: We will never be able to pay these loans back. We are supposed to somehow spend our way out of the crisis and maintain our imperial project on credit. Let our kids worry about it. There is no coherent and realistic plan, one built around our severe limitations, to stanch the bleeding or ameliorate the mounting deprivations we will suffer as citizens. Contrast this with the national security state’s strategies to crush potential civil unrest and you get a glimpse of the future. It doesn’t look good.

“The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications,” Blair told the Senate. “The crisis has been ongoing for over a year, and economists are divided over whether and when we could hit bottom. Some even fear that the recession could further deepen and reach the level of the Great Depression. Of course, all of us recall the dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism.”

The specter of social unrest was raised at the U.S. Army War College in November in a monograph [click on Policypointers’ pdf link to see the report] titled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development.” The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse,” “purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” The “widespread civil violence,” the document said, “would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.”

“An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home,” it went on.

“Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance,” the document read.

In plain English, something bureaucrats and the military seem incapable of employing, this translates into the imposition of martial law and a de facto government being run out of the Department of Defense. They are considering it. So should you.

Adm. Blair warned the Senate that “roughly a quarter of the countries in the world have already experienced low-level instability such as government changes because of the current slowdown.” He noted that the “bulk of anti-state demonstrations” internationally have been seen in Europe and the former Soviet Union, but this did not mean they could not spread to the United States. He told the senators that the collapse of the global financial system is “likely to produce a wave of economic crises in emerging market nations over the next year.” He added that “much of Latin America, former Soviet Union states and sub-Saharan Africa lack sufficient cash reserves, access to international aid or credit, or other coping mechanism.”

“When those growth rates go down, my gut tells me that there are going to be problems coming out of that, and we’re looking for that,” he said. He referred to “statistical modeling” showing that “economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one to two year period.”

Blair articulated the newest narrative of fear. As the economic unraveling accelerates we will be told it is not the bearded Islamic extremists, although those in power will drag them out of the Halloween closet when they need to give us an exotic shock, but instead the domestic riffraff, environmentalists, anarchists, unions and enraged members of our dispossessed working class who threaten us. Crime, as it always does in times of turmoil, will grow. Those who oppose the iron fist of the state security apparatus will be lumped together in slick, corporate news reports with the growing criminal underclass.

The committee’s Republican vice chairman, Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri, not quite knowing what to make of Blair’s testimony, said he was concerned that Blair was making the “conditions in the country” and the global economic crisis “the primary focus of the intelligence community.”

The economic collapse has exposed the stupidity of our collective faith in a free market and the absurdity of an economy based on the goals of endless growth, consumption, borrowing and expansion. The ideology of unlimited growth failed to take into account the massive depletion of the world’s resources, from fossil fuels to clean water to fish stocks to erosion, as well as overpopulation, global warming and climate change. The huge international flows of unregulated capital have wrecked the global financial system. An overvalued dollar (which will soon deflate), wild tech, stock and housing financial bubbles, unchecked greed, the decimation of our manufacturing sector, the empowerment of an oligarchic class, the corruption of our political elite, the impoverishment of workers, a bloated military and defense budget and unrestrained credit binges have conspired to bring us down. The financial crisis will soon become a currency crisis. This second shock will threaten our financial viability. We let the market rule. Now we are paying for it.

The corporate thieves, those who insisted they be paid tens of millions of dollars because they were the best and the brightest, have been exposed as con artists. Our elected officials, along with the press, have been exposed as corrupt and spineless corporate lackeys. Our business schools and intellectual elite have been exposed as frauds. The age of the West has ended. Look to China. Laissez-faire capitalism has destroyed itself. It is time to dust off your copies of Marx.


America Has To Come To Grips With The Fact It Is Bankrupt

By
February 17, 2009
Depression, Economic Collapse, Federal Reserve, Looting the treasury, Rothschild banking empire
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From The International Forecaster

We have been fortunate enough to make some important calls over the past ten years. The top of the stock market in early April of 2000; the beginning of the gold bull market in June 2000; 9/11 in November ten months before it happened; the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars; the beginning of the real estate bubble; the top of that market in June of 2005; the beginning of the subprime fiasco in 2006 and the beginning of the commercial real estate freeze. We also forecast the terrible financial conditions facing states and the freezing up of insurance and the municipal bond market. We called the recession in February 2007 and told readers to get out of the market at 14,000. That’s with the exception of gold and silver and oil shares. The recession was right on schedule. The depression that began two weeks ago happened quicker than we had anticipated, but it is here and now.

We predicted a fall in consumption, which we estimate at 71% of GDP, a rise in savings, which is now 2.8%, and a fall in debt service not only in real estate, but also in loans and credit card loans. Massive losses continue probably some additional $40 trillion from just 9/08 to 12/09 alone in wealth destruction.

Those who follow and live off the Illuminist line favor a large, deep stimulus and if that doesn’t work than a bigger one in a year. What America needs is job growth, but that cannot happen in any meaningful way until we erect tariffs on goods and services. America has never been able too and will never be able to compete with cheap labor.

One of the solutions passed four years ago was the repatriation of profits from offshore tax havens by transnational Illuminist conglomerates. They returned $35 billion at a 5-1/4% tax rate instead of paying the normal 33%. Our Congress saw fit to reward their masters under the guise of creating jobs. Few if any jobs were created. It was just a giant money laundering exercise.

This solution is again running around Congress, only this time the amount is $550 billion at a 5% tax rate. A reward for the people who in part were responsible for the situation we now find ourselves in. We have a better idea. Let’s have legislation demanding the funds be repatriated and let’s charge normal taxation of 33% and force these ingrates to use the funds for job creation. We’d have taxes for our debt services and funds to get our nation underway again.

America has to come to grips with the fact it is bankrupt. We saw this in the early 1980s, and in the early 1990s and again in 2002-2003. Finally it is here again and moving bad assets off bank balance sheets isn’t going to work this time. This time the Illuminists have gone too far, and they are well aware of that. What we are experiencing has been done many times before in history and it has always been unsuccessful. The problem is that in the past these conspirators have been allowed to live on. This time it will be different.

The elitists have used the same destruction of capital in this depression as they did in the 1930s via a profligate, irresponsible monetary policy. That is endless and mindless increases of money and credit and zero interest rates. Falling interest rates usually cause a weaker dollar. The dollar has topped out of its rally and is making a slow downturn, which would have otherwise been quicker had not other major nations agreed to drop their rates to zero and increase money and credit as well. For the time being this cooperation is buying time for the international financial system and the dollar, but it is doomed to failure. The lowering of interest rates is not a cure for deflation, but poison for the economy and they reinforce deflation. It is interesting to note that under its Charter the Fed cannot be party to monetization of public debt under their charter, but they do so anyway, because Congress authorized it. That is the purchase of Treasury bonds in the open market and using them as collateral for its note and deposit liabilities after the fact. The bottom line is this forces capital to disappear into other investment avenues, such as gold. The dynamics of lower interest rates are continuing and totally injurious to the monetary structure. Throw in the bailouts and you’ve created a monster. That is why gold and silver is your only avenue of escape.

The point of no return was passed in June of 2002, and that is when the issuance of money and credit began to grow seriously. The result is the banking system is already in a state of collapse and the dollar is sure to follow. Looking back at monetary history we know that zero interest rates is pure insanity. The Fed, banking, and Wall Street know this and this helps us to conclude that none of this happed via incompetence or chance, but by deliberate intent.

In the early 1920s the Weimar Republic was hit by hyperinflation that lasted for several years. Germany, in moving into the 1930s, then experienced deflation.

We began deflation five years ago in 2004. That was kept under control with increases in money and credit. The Fed was joined about six months later by most central banks. The vast increases of money and credit continued along with monetization, so we should see the beginnings of hyperinflation soon. That should last at least 2-3 years. That will be followed by deflation and deeper depression. As the trillions in debt is liquidated it will be smothered by the hyperinflation and substantially higher gold and silver prices. The banking system has been broken. The dollar falls next versus other currencies and gold, then all currencies collapse versus gold.

What we are seeing in banking is no solution. The banks have to be purged and allowed to fail. Until that happens there will be no solution. Only a return to a gold standard can regain the confidence and trust of people worldwide. The concept of good and bad banks under present circumstances is ridiculous-moronic. The very concept is mad. Our situation is worse than in the 1930s or in the early 1990s in Scandinavia. The problem under our circumstances is that both banks are bad, because our currency is worthless without gold backing.

If we are correct, and we believe we are, the stimulus package and TARP, plus all the other bailouts are not going to work. This so-called solution is just more of the same, but more of it. When you stop to think of it how can a bankrupt nation with a fiat currency save a banking system that is bankrupt as well? The solution to this is a simple. Back the dollar with gold and set the official price at $2,000 an ounce, although it may be trading at $3,000 in the marketplace. The US Mint would then vastly increase the number of gold coins available for purchase. Of course if the treasury has little or no gold they cannot do this, and the whole system collapses. Otherwise, with gold backing, capital would flow to America. Such a currency would allow nominal interest rates and would draw users and prices would remain stable. Eventually all countries would do likewise, set a world gold standard, and tariffs that suited their circumstances. If a nation was short on gold or had none, they’d have to sell assets to others to accumulate gold.

If the forgoing is not adopted the world will continue to plunge into monetary chaos. Revolutions would take place as starvation and warfare stalked the land. We expect the worst, because no change has taken place in Washington. We have virtually the same purchased and compromised Congress. The President’s new advisors will bring about the same results we have seen over the past eight years. That is the grand push for a world currency and a world government. These are all the same characters along with banking and Wall Street that caused these problems in the first place and supposedly are finding solutions to our dilemma. In finality, if we do not take our government back from these evil, miscreants we are doomed. Your solution, as we have pointed out so often, is to prepare. Get rid of credit card debt. Purchase a water filter, freeze-dried and dehydrated foods, be able to defend your home and family, with extra assets buy gold and silver coins and shares. If you can, still try to save the system from within. If we cannot, you know what the alternative is.

Due to the pending stimulus package and another probably $2 trillion stimulus package in 2010, the bottom of the housing market won’t be hit until 2012 or even later. Moody’s has downgraded 2,446 different classes of RMBS, Residential Mortgage Backed Securities. ALT-A loans originated in the second half of 2007 will experience 25.5% losses of original balance, versus 23.9% of the first half of 2007 deals, 22.1% for the second half of 2006 and 17.1% for the first half of 2006 deals. The CDOs and SIVs are soon going to be written off and that could cost $2 trillion. It will take at least until 2017 to put a new credit system in place. It will take years beyond that for the Fed and the Treasury to sell off the toxic waste.

By the time next year’s stimulus package is unveiled, the Dow should be trading between 3,800 and 5,500. That is bad, but what is worse is that pension funds about 80% funded, will be 40% to 50% funded. We ask how do they pay the promised benefits? We don’t think they can and pensions could be cut 40 to 50 percent. We wrote about this six years ago and called it the pension bomb. On the municipal level the situation will be much worse. Some states, such as California, which is bankrupt, may not pay anything at all. Calpers and the other state fund are on the edge of insolvency.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s efforts to restore trust and confidence in our markets have fallen on deaf ears. We still do not know all of what he intends to do with $350 billion in TARP funds. What we do know for sure is that he wants to give financial firms as much of it as possible. He wants a repeat of TARP I, the theft of taxpayer funds to bail out his masters. His plan entails a price of $2.75 trillion and the ‘what he calls’ nationalization of the banking system, which in reality is the consolidation and further privatization of the banking system – a tight control by the privately owned Fed on as much of the banking system as possible.

The stimulus plan to create more debt to spend our way into prosperity is being passed simultaneously, as the decision on how TARP is to be spent.

First Mr. Geithner wants a $1 trillion “public private investment fund” to value so-called troubled assets, also known as toxic garbage. He wants to leverage Treasury funds of $100 billion up to $1 trillion in loans to consumers and businesses and that would require lenders who are loaned those funds to actually lend them, not hoard them as they are presently. $600 billion would go to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to insure more failing loans and to purchase CDOs and SIVs, plus $50 billion for foreclosure prevention by rewriting loans, so people will have lower payments so their loans won’t go into foreclosure. Plus, an expansion of SBA loans.

The wealthy of Wall Street and the City of London via this “public private investment fund” will cherry-pick the best loans for undervalued prices. They’ll be purchased for $0.10 to $0.30 on the dollar. Billionaires will then quickly become trillionaires. These will be the donors to our president the “friends of Barak,” FOB if you please. That leaves the rest of the real garbage to be held by the taxpayers. This is the price we have to pay to keep deadbeats in their homes. People who should have never had loans in the first place.

The current Geithner proposal for this $1 trillion “public private investment fund” is to guarantee that the value of the toxic waste will not fall below a designated floor value. The anointed FOB buyers will be indemnified against loss of any consequence. In other words the FOB’s get sweetheart deals. For this the taxpayers get nothing but the garbage. If these toxic assets fall below the floor price the public pays for it. It is a terrible deal for the American public. What should be done is that all these banks, brokers and industrial companies should be allowed to fail. All of the equity and unsecured debt should be wiped out and then they should be really nationalized. They can then be resold at a later date to new shareholders. The elitists and politicians do not want that because then they won’t be able to steal these companies.

These crooks are hiding the values of assets, some of which are totally worthless. If we have a bad bank all the garbage will come off the balance sheets of Goldman, Morgan, the other money center legacy banks, Wall Street, insurance companies, private equity dealers and corporate gamblers like GMAC and GE.

Geithner intends to buy these assets using our money at close to par (perhaps at 80%) and then rebill it to the private part of the private-public partnership at $0.15 on the dollar with a quarantee against loss. A deal made in hell.

This is why the Fed, banks and Wall Street want the mark-to-market accounting standards repealed. How can the insiders get huge bonuses and pay large dividends if the toxic waste is removed at its real value of $0.15 on the dollar? The postscript is no matter what they do it will be a disaster for taxpayers.

Each plan for the past 20 months has been a loser, because the people who created the disaster are the ones supposedly fixing it. You must keep in mind there is no intention to fix anything. It is to enrich the rich and destroy the system so that we can have a World Currency and One-World Government. The hopes of the public have been bashed many times. The return to normality hasn’t occurred in 20 months. If fact, the situation is much worse. The elitists have hit a stonewall. Few believe them anymore. There is no trust left.

There has been much talk by fane-stream media shills, economists and newsletter writers to the effect that deflationary forces have taken over our economy and that any impact from inflationary forces is behind us or is rapidly waning. Those that advocate this view either do not understand the end game of the Illuminati, or they are disinformation operatives for the US government and its Puppet Masters, the evil, megalomaniacal, satanic, trillionaire sociopaths who comprise our shadow government. The Fed has no intention of letting deflation take over until there is no possible way to stop it, which could take as long as two to three years from now. If deflation takes over, then America goes immediately bankrupt and the dollar is toast. That would end the gravy train of salaries, bonuses, dividends, commissions and spreads which are lining the pockets of the Puppet Masters and their henchmen, the forces of “Chaos,” who are now using taxpayer bailout money in substitution for profits which are no longer being generated by their transnational financial and corporate institutions which they have intentionally and malevolently bankrupted to collapse the world economy and to pave the way for world government.

To keep this gravy train going, re-inflation is on its way. It will be used to set up sucker-dupes around the world for the final sting operation whereby the elitists will bail out of “worthless paper” and assets that are denominated in such, using the proceeds to buy up real assets while everyone else is left holding the toilet paper called Federal Reserve notes, all the while thinking that we are in recovery and that the big “D” has been avoided. Most will not realize what is happening until it is too late because the transactions for the sting will be done out of view of the public and regulators via unregulated dark pools of liquidity and OTC derivative markets as the Big Sting Two is perpetrated against them. These morons will be chasing gold and silver as they suddenly skyrocket with little warning due to the huge transfers taking place outside of public view that will eventually be leaked to the general markets after the Illuminati have sated themselves on as many real assets as they can get their hands on. If you are not in when this happens, which could literally occur at any time from this point forward, the train will leave you slack-jawed at the station.


Build the walls and take a stand, total collapse [of America] is soon at hand…

By
February 17, 2009
Civil unrest, Depression, Disinformation, Martial law
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Bad News From America’s Top Spy


VIA Truthdig
by Chris Hedges

We have a remarkable ability to create our own monsters. A few decades of meddling in the Middle East with our Israeli doppelgänger and we get Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaida, the Iraqi resistance movement and a resurgent Taliban. Now we trash the world economy and destroy the ecosystem and sit back to watch our handiwork. Hints of our brave new world seeped out Thursday when Washington’s new director of national intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He warned that the deepening economic crisis posed perhaps our gravest threat to stability and national security. It could trigger, he said, a return to the “violent extremism” of the 1920s and 1930s.

It turns out that Wall Street, rather than Islamic jihad, has produced our most dangerous terrorists. You wouldn’t know this from the Obama administration, which seems hellbent on draining the blood out of the body politic and transfusing it into the corpse of our financial system. But by the time Barack Obama is done all we will be left with is a corpse—a corpse and no blood. And then what? We will see accelerated plant and retail closures, inflation, an epidemic of bankruptcies, new rounds of foreclosures, bread lines, unemployment surpassing the levels of the Great Depression and, as Blair fears, social upheaval.

The United Nations’ International Labor Organization estimates that some 50 million workers will lose their jobs worldwide this year. The collapse has already seen 3.6 million lost jobs in the United States. The International Monetary Fund’s prediction for global economic growth in 2009 is 0.5 percent—the worst since World War II. There are 2.3 million properties in the United States that received a default notice or were repossessed last year. And this number is set to rise in 2009, especially as vacant commercial real estate begins to be foreclosed. About 20,000 major global banks collapsed, were sold or were nationalized in 2008. There are an estimated 62,000 U.S. companies expected to shut down this year. Unemployment, when you add people no longer looking for jobs and part-time workers who cannot find full-time employment, is close to 14 percent.

And we have few tools left to dig our way out. The manufacturing sector in the United States has been destroyed by globalization. Consumers, thanks to credit card companies and easy lines of credit, are $14 trillion in debt. The government has pledged trillions toward the crisis, most of it borrowed or printed in the form of new money. It is borrowing trillions more to fund our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And no one states the obvious: We will never be able to pay these loans back. We are supposed to somehow spend our way out of the crisis and maintain our imperial project on credit. Let our kids worry about it. There is no coherent and realistic plan, one built around our severe limitations, to stanch the bleeding or ameliorate the mounting deprivations we will suffer as citizens. Contrast this with the national security state’s strategies to crush potential civil unrest and you get a glimpse of the future. It doesn’t look good.

“The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications,” Blair told the Senate. “The crisis has been ongoing for over a year, and economists are divided over whether and when we could hit bottom. Some even fear that the recession could further deepen and reach the level of the Great Depression. Of course, all of us recall the dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism.”

The specter of social unrest was raised at the U.S. Army War College in November in a monograph [click on Policypointers’ pdf link to see the report] titled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development.” The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse,” “purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” The “widespread civil violence,” the document said, “would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.”

“An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home,” it went on.

“Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance,” the document read.

In plain English, something bureaucrats and the military seem incapable of employing, this translates into the imposition of martial law and a de facto government being run out of the Department of Defense. They are considering it. So should you.

Adm. Blair warned the Senate that “roughly a quarter of the countries in the world have already experienced low-level instability such as government changes because of the current slowdown.” He noted that the “bulk of anti-state demonstrations” internationally have been seen in Europe and the former Soviet Union, but this did not mean they could not spread to the United States. He told the senators that the collapse of the global financial system is “likely to produce a wave of economic crises in emerging market nations over the next year.” He added that “much of Latin America, former Soviet Union states and sub-Saharan Africa lack sufficient cash reserves, access to international aid or credit, or other coping mechanism.”

“When those growth rates go down, my gut tells me that there are going to be problems coming out of that, and we’re looking for that,” he said. He referred to “statistical modeling” showing that “economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one to two year period.”

Blair articulated the newest narrative of fear. As the economic unraveling accelerates we will be told it is not the bearded Islamic extremists, although those in power will drag them out of the Halloween closet when they need to give us an exotic shock, but instead the domestic riffraff, environmentalists, anarchists, unions and enraged members of our dispossessed working class who threaten us. Crime, as it always does in times of turmoil, will grow. Those who oppose the iron fist of the state security apparatus will be lumped together in slick, corporate news reports with the growing criminal underclass.

The committee’s Republican vice chairman, Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri, not quite knowing what to make of Blair’s testimony, said he was concerned that Blair was making the “conditions in the country” and the global economic crisis “the primary focus of the intelligence community.”

The economic collapse has exposed the stupidity of our collective faith in a free market and the absurdity of an economy based on the goals of endless growth, consumption, borrowing and expansion. The ideology of unlimited growth failed to take into account the massive depletion of the world’s resources, from fossil fuels to clean water to fish stocks to erosion, as well as overpopulation, global warming and climate change. The huge international flows of unregulated capital have wrecked the global financial system. An overvalued dollar (which will soon deflate), wild tech, stock and housing financial bubbles, unchecked greed, the decimation of our manufacturing sector, the empowerment of an oligarchic class, the corruption of our political elite, the impoverishment of workers, a bloated military and defense budget and unrestrained credit binges have conspired to bring us down. The financial crisis will soon become a currency crisis. This second shock will threaten our financial viability. We let the market rule. Now we are paying for it.

The corporate thieves, those who insisted they be paid tens of millions of dollars because they were the best and the brightest, have been exposed as con artists. Our elected officials, along with the press, have been exposed as corrupt and spineless corporate lackeys. Our business schools and intellectual elite have been exposed as frauds. The age of the West has ended. Look to China. Laissez-faire capitalism has destroyed itself. It is time to dust off your copies of Marx.


America Has To Come To Grips With The Fact It Is Bankrupt

By
February 17, 2009
Depression, Economic Collapse, Federal Reserve, Looting the treasury, Rothschild banking empire
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From The International Forecaster

We have been fortunate enough to make some important calls over the past ten years. The top of the stock market in early April of 2000; the beginning of the gold bull market in June 2000; 9/11 in November ten months before it happened; the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars; the beginning of the real estate bubble; the top of that market in June of 2005; the beginning of the subprime fiasco in 2006 and the beginning of the commercial real estate freeze. We also forecast the terrible financial conditions facing states and the freezing up of insurance and the municipal bond market. We called the recession in February 2007 and told readers to get out of the market at 14,000. That’s with the exception of gold and silver and oil shares. The recession was right on schedule. The depression that began two weeks ago happened quicker than we had anticipated, but it is here and now.

We predicted a fall in consumption, which we estimate at 71% of GDP, a rise in savings, which is now 2.8%, and a fall in debt service not only in real estate, but also in loans and credit card loans. Massive losses continue probably some additional $40 trillion from just 9/08 to 12/09 alone in wealth destruction.

Those who follow and live off the Illuminist line favor a large, deep stimulus and if that doesn’t work than a bigger one in a year. What America needs is job growth, but that cannot happen in any meaningful way until we erect tariffs on goods and services. America has never been able too and will never be able to compete with cheap labor.

One of the solutions passed four years ago was the repatriation of profits from offshore tax havens by transnational Illuminist conglomerates. They returned $35 billion at a 5-1/4% tax rate instead of paying the normal 33%. Our Congress saw fit to reward their masters under the guise of creating jobs. Few if any jobs were created. It was just a giant money laundering exercise.

This solution is again running around Congress, only this time the amount is $550 billion at a 5% tax rate. A reward for the people who in part were responsible for the situation we now find ourselves in. We have a better idea. Let’s have legislation demanding the funds be repatriated and let’s charge normal taxation of 33% and force these ingrates to use the funds for job creation. We’d have taxes for our debt services and funds to get our nation underway again.

America has to come to grips with the fact it is bankrupt. We saw this in the early 1980s, and in the early 1990s and again in 2002-2003. Finally it is here again and moving bad assets off bank balance sheets isn’t going to work this time. This time the Illuminists have gone too far, and they are well aware of that. What we are experiencing has been done many times before in history and it has always been unsuccessful. The problem is that in the past these conspirators have been allowed to live on. This time it will be different.

The elitists have used the same destruction of capital in this depression as they did in the 1930s via a profligate, irresponsible monetary policy. That is endless and mindless increases of money and credit and zero interest rates. Falling interest rates usually cause a weaker dollar. The dollar has topped out of its rally and is making a slow downturn, which would have otherwise been quicker had not other major nations agreed to drop their rates to zero and increase money and credit as well. For the time being this cooperation is buying time for the international financial system and the dollar, but it is doomed to failure. The lowering of interest rates is not a cure for deflation, but poison for the economy and they reinforce deflation. It is interesting to note that under its Charter the Fed cannot be party to monetization of public debt under their charter, but they do so anyway, because Congress authorized it. That is the purchase of Treasury bonds in the open market and using them as collateral for its note and deposit liabilities after the fact. The bottom line is this forces capital to disappear into other investment avenues, such as gold. The dynamics of lower interest rates are continuing and totally injurious to the monetary structure. Throw in the bailouts and you’ve created a monster. That is why gold and silver is your only avenue of escape.

The point of no return was passed in June of 2002, and that is when the issuance of money and credit began to grow seriously. The result is the banking system is already in a state of collapse and the dollar is sure to follow. Looking back at monetary history we know that zero interest rates is pure insanity. The Fed, banking, and Wall Street know this and this helps us to conclude that none of this happed via incompetence or chance, but by deliberate intent.

In the early 1920s the Weimar Republic was hit by hyperinflation that lasted for several years. Germany, in moving into the 1930s, then experienced deflation.

We began deflation five years ago in 2004. That was kept under control with increases in money and credit. The Fed was joined about six months later by most central banks. The vast increases of money and credit continued along with monetization, so we should see the beginnings of hyperinflation soon. That should last at least 2-3 years. That will be followed by deflation and deeper depression. As the trillions in debt is liquidated it will be smothered by the hyperinflation and substantially higher gold and silver prices. The banking system has been broken. The dollar falls next versus other currencies and gold, then all currencies collapse versus gold.

What we are seeing in banking is no solution. The banks have to be purged and allowed to fail. Until that happens there will be no solution. Only a return to a gold standard can regain the confidence and trust of people worldwide. The concept of good and bad banks under present circumstances is ridiculous-moronic. The very concept is mad. Our situation is worse than in the 1930s or in the early 1990s in Scandinavia. The problem under our circumstances is that both banks are bad, because our currency is worthless without gold backing.

If we are correct, and we believe we are, the stimulus package and TARP, plus all the other bailouts are not going to work. This so-called solution is just more of the same, but more of it. When you stop to think of it how can a bankrupt nation with a fiat currency save a banking system that is bankrupt as well? The solution to this is a simple. Back the dollar with gold and set the official price at $2,000 an ounce, although it may be trading at $3,000 in the marketplace. The US Mint would then vastly increase the number of gold coins available for purchase. Of course if the treasury has little or no gold they cannot do this, and the whole system collapses. Otherwise, with gold backing, capital would flow to America. Such a currency would allow nominal interest rates and would draw users and prices would remain stable. Eventually all countries would do likewise, set a world gold standard, and tariffs that suited their circumstances. If a nation was short on gold or had none, they’d have to sell assets to others to accumulate gold.

If the forgoing is not adopted the world will continue to plunge into monetary chaos. Revolutions would take place as starvation and warfare stalked the land. We expect the worst, because no change has taken place in Washington. We have virtually the same purchased and compromised Congress. The President’s new advisors will bring about the same results we have seen over the past eight years. That is the grand push for a world currency and a world government. These are all the same characters along with banking and Wall Street that caused these problems in the first place and supposedly are finding solutions to our dilemma. In finality, if we do not take our government back from these evil, miscreants we are doomed. Your solution, as we have pointed out so often, is to prepare. Get rid of credit card debt. Purchase a water filter, freeze-dried and dehydrated foods, be able to defend your home and family, with extra assets buy gold and silver coins and shares. If you can, still try to save the system from within. If we cannot, you know what the alternative is.

Due to the pending stimulus package and another probably $2 trillion stimulus package in 2010, the bottom of the housing market won’t be hit until 2012 or even later. Moody’s has downgraded 2,446 different classes of RMBS, Residential Mortgage Backed Securities. ALT-A loans originated in the second half of 2007 will experience 25.5% losses of original balance, versus 23.9% of the first half of 2007 deals, 22.1% for the second half of 2006 and 17.1% for the first half of 2006 deals. The CDOs and SIVs are soon going to be written off and that could cost $2 trillion. It will take at least until 2017 to put a new credit system in place. It will take years beyond that for the Fed and the Treasury to sell off the toxic waste.

By the time next year’s stimulus package is unveiled, the Dow should be trading between 3,800 and 5,500. That is bad, but what is worse is that pension funds about 80% funded, will be 40% to 50% funded. We ask how do they pay the promised benefits? We don’t think they can and pensions could be cut 40 to 50 percent. We wrote about this six years ago and called it the pension bomb. On the municipal level the situation will be much worse. Some states, such as California, which is bankrupt, may not pay anything at all. Calpers and the other state fund are on the edge of insolvency.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s efforts to restore trust and confidence in our markets have fallen on deaf ears. We still do not know all of what he intends to do with $350 billion in TARP funds. What we do know for sure is that he wants to give financial firms as much of it as possible. He wants a repeat of TARP I, the theft of taxpayer funds to bail out his masters. His plan entails a price of $2.75 trillion and the ‘what he calls’ nationalization of the banking system, which in reality is the consolidation and further privatization of the banking system – a tight control by the privately owned Fed on as much of the banking system as possible.

The stimulus plan to create more debt to spend our way into prosperity is being passed simultaneously, as the decision on how TARP is to be spent.

First Mr. Geithner wants a $1 trillion “public private investment fund” to value so-called troubled assets, also known as toxic garbage. He wants to leverage Treasury funds of $100 billion up to $1 trillion in loans to consumers and businesses and that would require lenders who are loaned those funds to actually lend them, not hoard them as they are presently. $600 billion would go to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to insure more failing loans and to purchase CDOs and SIVs, plus $50 billion for foreclosure prevention by rewriting loans, so people will have lower payments so their loans won’t go into foreclosure. Plus, an expansion of SBA loans.

The wealthy of Wall Street and the City of London via this “public private investment fund” will cherry-pick the best loans for undervalued prices. They’ll be purchased for $0.10 to $0.30 on the dollar. Billionaires will then quickly become trillionaires. These will be the donors to our president the “friends of Barak,” FOB if you please. That leaves the rest of the real garbage to be held by the taxpayers. This is the price we have to pay to keep deadbeats in their homes. People who should have never had loans in the first place.

The current Geithner proposal for this $1 trillion “public private investment fund” is to guarantee that the value of the toxic waste will not fall below a designated floor value. The anointed FOB buyers will be indemnified against loss of any consequence. In other words the FOB’s get sweetheart deals. For this the taxpayers get nothing but the garbage. If these toxic assets fall below the floor price the public pays for it. It is a terrible deal for the American public. What should be done is that all these banks, brokers and industrial companies should be allowed to fail. All of the equity and unsecured debt should be wiped out and then they should be really nationalized. They can then be resold at a later date to new shareholders. The elitists and politicians do not want that because then they won’t be able to steal these companies.

These crooks are hiding the values of assets, some of which are totally worthless. If we have a bad bank all the garbage will come off the balance sheets of Goldman, Morgan, the other money center legacy banks, Wall Street, insurance companies, private equity dealers and corporate gamblers like GMAC and GE.

Geithner intends to buy these assets using our money at close to par (perhaps at 80%) and then rebill it to the private part of the private-public partnership at $0.15 on the dollar with a quarantee against loss. A deal made in hell.

This is why the Fed, banks and Wall Street want the mark-to-market accounting standards repealed. How can the insiders get huge bonuses and pay large dividends if the toxic waste is removed at its real value of $0.15 on the dollar? The postscript is no matter what they do it will be a disaster for taxpayers.

Each plan for the past 20 months has been a loser, because the people who created the disaster are the ones supposedly fixing it. You must keep in mind there is no intention to fix anything. It is to enrich the rich and destroy the system so that we can have a World Currency and One-World Government. The hopes of the public have been bashed many times. The return to normality hasn’t occurred in 20 months. If fact, the situation is much worse. The elitists have hit a stonewall. Few believe them anymore. There is no trust left.

There has been much talk by fane-stream media shills, economists and newsletter writers to the effect that deflationary forces have taken over our economy and that any impact from inflationary forces is behind us or is rapidly waning. Those that advocate this view either do not understand the end game of the Illuminati, or they are disinformation operatives for the US government and its Puppet Masters, the evil, megalomaniacal, satanic, trillionaire sociopaths who comprise our shadow government. The Fed has no intention of letting deflation take over until there is no possible way to stop it, which could take as long as two to three years from now. If deflation takes over, then America goes immediately bankrupt and the dollar is toast. That would end the gravy train of salaries, bonuses, dividends, commissions and spreads which are lining the pockets of the Puppet Masters and their henchmen, the forces of “Chaos,” who are now using taxpayer bailout money in substitution for profits which are no longer being generated by their transnational financial and corporate institutions which they have intentionally and malevolently bankrupted to collapse the world economy and to pave the way for world government.

To keep this gravy train going, re-inflation is on its way. It will be used to set up sucker-dupes around the world for the final sting operation whereby the elitists will bail out of “worthless paper” and assets that are denominated in such, using the proceeds to buy up real assets while everyone else is left holding the toilet paper called Federal Reserve notes, all the while thinking that we are in recovery and that the big “D” has been avoided. Most will not realize what is happening until it is too late because the transactions for the sting will be done out of view of the public and regulators via unregulated dark pools of liquidity and OTC derivative markets as the Big Sting Two is perpetrated against them. These morons will be chasing gold and silver as they suddenly skyrocket with little warning due to the huge transfers taking place outside of public view that will eventually be leaked to the general markets after the Illuminati have sated themselves on as many real assets as they can get their hands on. If you are not in when this happens, which could literally occur at any time from this point forward, the train will leave you slack-jawed at the station.


America Has To Come To Grips With The Fact It Is Bankrupt

By
February 17, 2009
Depression, Economic Collapse, Federal Reserve, Looting the treasury, Rothschild banking empire
Leave a Comment

From The International Forecaster

We have been fortunate enough to make some important calls over the past ten years. The top of the stock market in early April of 2000; the beginning of the gold bull market in June 2000; 9/11 in November ten months before it happened; the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars; the beginning of the real estate bubble; the top of that market in June of 2005; the beginning of the subprime fiasco in 2006 and the beginning of the commercial real estate freeze. We also forecast the terrible financial conditions facing states and the freezing up of insurance and the municipal bond market. We called the recession in February 2007 and told readers to get out of the market at 14,000. That’s with the exception of gold and silver and oil shares. The recession was right on schedule. The depression that began two weeks ago happened quicker than we had anticipated, but it is here and now.

We predicted a fall in consumption, which we estimate at 71% of GDP, a rise in savings, which is now 2.8%, and a fall in debt service not only in real estate, but also in loans and credit card loans. Massive losses continue probably some additional $40 trillion from just 9/08 to 12/09 alone in wealth destruction.

Those who follow and live off the Illuminist line favor a large, deep stimulus and if that doesn’t work than a bigger one in a year. What America needs is job growth, but that cannot happen in any meaningful way until we erect tariffs on goods and services. America has never been able too and will never be able to compete with cheap labor.

One of the solutions passed four years ago was the repatriation of profits from offshore tax havens by transnational Illuminist conglomerates. They returned $35 billion at a 5-1/4% tax rate instead of paying the normal 33%. Our Congress saw fit to reward their masters under the guise of creating jobs. Few if any jobs were created. It was just a giant money laundering exercise.

This solution is again running around Congress, only this time the amount is $550 billion at a 5% tax rate. A reward for the people who in part were responsible for the situation we now find ourselves in. We have a better idea. Let’s have legislation demanding the funds be repatriated and let’s charge normal taxation of 33% and force these ingrates to use the funds for job creation. We’d have taxes for our debt services and funds to get our nation underway again.

America has to come to grips with the fact it is bankrupt. We saw this in the early 1980s, and in the early 1990s and again in 2002-2003. Finally it is here again and moving bad assets off bank balance sheets isn’t going to work this time. This time the Illuminists have gone too far, and they are well aware of that. What we are experiencing has been done many times before in history and it has always been unsuccessful. The problem is that in the past these conspirators have been allowed to live on. This time it will be different.

The elitists have used the same destruction of capital in this depression as they did in the 1930s via a profligate, irresponsible monetary policy. That is endless and mindless increases of money and credit and zero interest rates. Falling interest rates usually cause a weaker dollar. The dollar has topped out of its rally and is making a slow downturn, which would have otherwise been quicker had not other major nations agreed to drop their rates to zero and increase money and credit as well. For the time being this cooperation is buying time for the international financial system and the dollar, but it is doomed to failure. The lowering of interest rates is not a cure for deflation, but poison for the economy and they reinforce deflation. It is interesting to note that under its Charter the Fed cannot be party to monetization of public debt under their charter, but they do so anyway, because Congress authorized it. That is the purchase of Treasury bonds in the open market and using them as collateral for its note and deposit liabilities after the fact. The bottom line is this forces capital to disappear into other investment avenues, such as gold. The dynamics of lower interest rates are continuing and totally injurious to the monetary structure. Throw in the bailouts and you’ve created a monster. That is why gold and silver is your only avenue of escape.

The point of no return was passed in June of 2002, and that is when the issuance of money and credit began to grow seriously. The result is the banking system is already in a state of collapse and the dollar is sure to follow. Looking back at monetary history we know that zero interest rates is pure insanity. The Fed, banking, and Wall Street know this and this helps us to conclude that none of this happed via incompetence or chance, but by deliberate intent.

In the early 1920s the Weimar Republic was hit by hyperinflation that lasted for several years. Germany, in moving into the 1930s, then experienced deflation.

We began deflation five years ago in 2004. That was kept under control with increases in money and credit. The Fed was joined about six months later by most central banks. The vast increases of money and credit continued along with monetization, so we should see the beginnings of hyperinflation soon. That should last at least 2-3 years. That will be followed by deflation and deeper depression. As the trillions in debt is liquidated it will be smothered by the hyperinflation and substantially higher gold and silver prices. The banking system has been broken. The dollar falls next versus other currencies and gold, then all currencies collapse versus gold.

What we are seeing in banking is no solution. The banks have to be purged and allowed to fail. Until that happens there will be no solution. Only a return to a gold standard can regain the confidence and trust of people worldwide. The concept of good and bad banks under present circumstances is ridiculous-moronic. The very concept is mad. Our situation is worse than in the 1930s or in the early 1990s in Scandinavia. The problem under our circumstances is that both banks are bad, because our currency is worthless without gold backing.

If we are correct, and we believe we are, the stimulus package and TARP, plus all the other bailouts are not going to work. This so-called solution is just more of the same, but more of it. When you stop to think of it how can a bankrupt nation with a fiat currency save a banking system that is bankrupt as well? The solution to this is a simple. Back the dollar with gold and set the official price at $2,000 an ounce, although it may be trading at $3,000 in the marketplace. The US Mint would then vastly increase the number of gold coins available for purchase. Of course if the treasury has little or no gold they cannot do this, and the whole system collapses. Otherwise, with gold backing, capital would flow to America. Such a currency would allow nominal interest rates and would draw users and prices would remain stable. Eventually all countries would do likewise, set a world gold standard, and tariffs that suited their circumstances. If a nation was short on gold or had none, they’d have to sell assets to others to accumulate gold.

If the forgoing is not adopted the world will continue to plunge into monetary chaos. Revolutions would take place as starvation and warfare stalked the land. We expect the worst, because no change has taken place in Washington. We have virtually the same purchased and compromised Congress. The President’s new advisors will bring about the same results we have seen over the past eight years. That is the grand push for a world currency and a world government. These are all the same characters along with banking and Wall Street that caused these problems in the first place and supposedly are finding solutions to our dilemma. In finality, if we do not take our government back from these evil, miscreants we are doomed. Your solution, as we have pointed out so often, is to prepare. Get rid of credit card debt. Purchase a water filter, freeze-dried and dehydrated foods, be able to defend your home and family, with extra assets buy gold and silver coins and shares. If you can, still try to save the system from within. If we cannot, you know what the alternative is.

Due to the pending stimulus package and another probably $2 trillion stimulus package in 2010, the bottom of the housing market won’t be hit until 2012 or even later. Moody’s has downgraded 2,446 different classes of RMBS, Residential Mortgage Backed Securities. ALT-A loans originated in the second half of 2007 will experience 25.5% losses of original balance, versus 23.9% of the first half of 2007 deals, 22.1% for the second half of 2006 and 17.1% for the first half of 2006 deals. The CDOs and SIVs are soon going to be written off and that could cost $2 trillion. It will take at least until 2017 to put a new credit system in place. It will take years beyond that for the Fed and the Treasury to sell off the toxic waste.

By the time next year’s stimulus package is unveiled, the Dow should be trading between 3,800 and 5,500. That is bad, but what is worse is that pension funds about 80% funded, will be 40% to 50% funded. We ask how do they pay the promised benefits? We don’t think they can and pensions could be cut 40 to 50 percent. We wrote about this six years ago and called it the pension bomb. On the municipal level the situation will be much worse. Some states, such as California, which is bankrupt, may not pay anything at all. Calpers and the other state fund are on the edge of insolvency.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s efforts to restore trust and confidence in our markets have fallen on deaf ears. We still do not know all of what he intends to do with $350 billion in TARP funds. What we do know for sure is that he wants to give financial firms as much of it as possible. He wants a repeat of TARP I, the theft of taxpayer funds to bail out his masters. His plan entails a price of $2.75 trillion and the ‘what he calls’ nationalization of the banking system, which in reality is the consolidation and further privatization of the banking system – a tight control by the privately owned Fed on as much of the banking system as possible.

The stimulus plan to create more debt to spend our way into prosperity is being passed simultaneously, as the decision on how TARP is to be spent.

First Mr. Geithner wants a $1 trillion “public private investment fund” to value so-called troubled assets, also known as toxic garbage. He wants to leverage Treasury funds of $100 billion up to $1 trillion in loans to consumers and businesses and that would require lenders who are loaned those funds to actually lend them, not hoard them as they are presently. $600 billion would go to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to insure more failing loans and to purchase CDOs and SIVs, plus $50 billion for foreclosure prevention by rewriting loans, so people will have lower payments so their loans won’t go into foreclosure. Plus, an expansion of SBA loans.

The wealthy of Wall Street and the City of London via this “public private investment fund” will cherry-pick the best loans for undervalued prices. They’ll be purchased for $0.10 to $0.30 on the dollar. Billionaires will then quickly become trillionaires. These will be the donors to our president the “friends of Barak,” FOB if you please. That leaves the rest of the real garbage to be held by the taxpayers. This is the price we have to pay to keep deadbeats in their homes. People who should have never had loans in the first place.

The current Geithner proposal for this $1 trillion “public private investment fund” is to guarantee that the value of the toxic waste will not fall below a designated floor value. The anointed FOB buyers will be indemnified against loss of any consequence. In other words the FOB’s get sweetheart deals. For this the taxpayers get nothing but the garbage. If these toxic assets fall below the floor price the public pays for it. It is a terrible deal for the American public. What should be done is that all these banks, brokers and industrial companies should be allowed to fail. All of the equity and unsecured debt should be wiped out and then they should be really nationalized. They can then be resold at a later date to new shareholders. The elitists and politicians do not want that because then they won’t be able to steal these companies.

These crooks are hiding the values of assets, some of which are totally worthless. If we have a bad bank all the garbage will come off the balance sheets of Goldman, Morgan, the other money center legacy banks, Wall Street, insurance companies, private equity dealers and corporate gamblers like GMAC and GE.

Geithner intends to buy these assets using our money at close to par (perhaps at 80%) and then rebill it to the private part of the private-public partnership at $0.15 on the dollar with a quarantee against loss. A deal made in hell.

This is why the Fed, banks and Wall Street want the mark-to-market accounting standards repealed. How can the insiders get huge bonuses and pay large dividends if the toxic waste is removed at its real value of $0.15 on the dollar? The postscript is no matter what they do it will be a disaster for taxpayers.

Each plan for the past 20 months has been a loser, because the people who created the disaster are the ones supposedly fixing it. You must keep in mind there is no intention to fix anything. It is to enrich the rich and destroy the system so that we can have a World Currency and One-World Government. The hopes of the public have been bashed many times. The return to normality hasn’t occurred in 20 months. If fact, the situation is much worse. The elitists have hit a stonewall. Few believe them anymore. There is no trust left.

There has been much talk by fane-stream media shills, economists and newsletter writers to the effect that deflationary forces have taken over our economy and that any impact from inflationary forces is behind us or is rapidly waning. Those that advocate this view either do not understand the end game of the Illuminati, or they are disinformation operatives for the US government and its Puppet Masters, the evil, megalomaniacal, satanic, trillionaire sociopaths who comprise our shadow government. The Fed has no intention of letting deflation take over until there is no possible way to stop it, which could take as long as two to three years from now. If deflation takes over, then America goes immediately bankrupt and the dollar is toast. That would end the gravy train of salaries, bonuses, dividends, commissions and spreads which are lining the pockets of the Puppet Masters and their henchmen, the forces of “Chaos,” who are now using taxpayer bailout money in substitution for profits which are no longer being generated by their transnational financial and corporate institutions which they have intentionally and malevolently bankrupted to collapse the world economy and to pave the way for world government.

To keep this gravy train going, re-inflation is on its way. It will be used to set up sucker-dupes around the world for the final sting operation whereby the elitists will bail out of “worthless paper” and assets that are denominated in such, using the proceeds to buy up real assets while everyone else is left holding the toilet paper called Federal Reserve notes, all the while thinking that we are in recovery and that the big “D” has been avoided. Most will not realize what is happening until it is too late because the transactions for the sting will be done out of view of the public and regulators via unregulated dark pools of liquidity and OTC derivative markets as the Big Sting Two is perpetrated against them. These morons will be chasing gold and silver as they suddenly skyrocket with little warning due to the huge transfers taking place outside of public view that will eventually be leaked to the general markets after the Illuminati have sated themselves on as many real assets as they can get their hands on. If you are not in when this happens, which could literally occur at any time from this point forward, the train will leave you slack-jawed at the station.


European Economic Collapse… the ball is rolling

By
February 15, 2009
Civil unrest, Depression, Economic Collapse, Federal Reserve
Leave a Comment

Via Times Online

Patrick Hosking: On the money


div#related-article-links p a, div#related-article-links p a:visited {
color:#06c;
}

Jon Moulton, the private equity chief, warned a City lunch this week that he
feared serious civil unrest. There was, he said, a 25 per cent chance of one
of the 15 member countries of the eurozone pulling out of the currency club.
That, he said, would be a catastrophic shock leading to a “far greater
financial crisis” than the current one.

The mind boggles at a financial crisis far worse than the current one. Is such
a thing possible? Even with this one, it may already be too late to prevent
social unrest, especially in Britain, which is tipped to be one of the
worst-hit countries economically.

The spectacle of bankers continuing to award themselves bonuses while taking
taxpayer support is feeding an extraordinary public rage and a fierce sense
of injustice. With 40,000 people losing their jobs each month, it is a
recipe for trouble, come the traditional rioting months of the summer.

It won’t be bankers being lynched, of course, but small shopkeepers in
inner-city areas having their windows smashed and their stock looted. The
only surprise is there haven’t already been antibanker demonstrations in
Threadneedle Street – secretly cheered on by 99 per cent of Middle England.

The seething sense of unfairness is almost palpable. The view that a small
elite not only caused the crisis, but continues to profit at the expense of
everyone else, is near universal. Gordon Brown’s promise of no rewards for
failure in state-supported banks is looking ever more threadbare. We now
know that Peter Cummings, the highest-paid person on the HBOS board, headed
a division responsible for £7 billion of losses last year, yet he was still
given a reported £660,000 payoff when he left in early January clutching his

£6 million pension pot.

The suggestion by Lord Myners, the City minister, that some bankers simply
have no sense of the broader society around them is getting harder to
refute. To be preparing to pay out billions of pounds in discretionary
bonuses over the next few weeks suggests an ignorance of the public mood and
a single-mindedness bordering on sociopathic.

All this may be a bit of a side show for Sir Victor Blank and Eric Daniels,
chairman and chief executive, respectively, as they try to stop the water
slopping over the gunwales of the combined Lloyds/HBOS. Yesterday’s
bombshell was grave for the bank, dispiriting for taxpayers and damaging to
the chief executive. The timing is acutely awkward, coming just 48 hours
after he appeared before the Commons Treasury Select Committee. MPs might
have pressed him rather harder if they had known what was just around the
corner.

The £10 billion loss at HBOS is humiliating enough, but the admission that the
losses are £1.6 billion worse than when shareholders were asked to approve
the deal in November is worse. Lloyds got HBOS to sweeten the terms twice.
With hindsight it still wasn’t enough. Mr Daniels admitted to Parliament
this week that he was not able to conduct as much due diligence as in a
normal deal. His shareholders and UK taxpayers are now paying a heavy price
for that failure.

The 32 per cent slump in the Lloyds share price yesterday speaks volumes about
the market’s fears. Although Lloyds insists its balance sheet is still
strong, the need for additional capital will be back on the agenda. If
HBOS’s corporate loans could have soured by £1.6 billion in the space of
just a month, its surplus capital cushion could quickly be wiped out. That
could lead to full nationalization eventually.

Lloyds says that one of the reasons for the losses was the more conservative
methodology it uses for gauging potential loan losses. That comes close to
suggesting the old HBOS board was somewhat less than conservative itself. If
the reputation of the old guard at HBOS, including Gordon Brown’s former
favourite Sir James Crosby, is capable of sinking any lower in the public
estimation, it will now be doing so.

European Economic Collapse… the ball is rolling

By
February 15, 2009
Civil unrest, Depression, Economic Collapse, Federal Reserve
Leave a Comment

Via Times Online

Patrick Hosking: On the money


div#related-article-links p a, div#related-article-links p a:visited {
color:#06c;
}

Jon Moulton, the private equity chief, warned a City lunch this week that he
feared serious civil unrest. There was, he said, a 25 per cent chance of one
of the 15 member countries of the eurozone pulling out of the currency club.
That, he said, would be a catastrophic shock leading to a “far greater
financial crisis” than the current one.

The mind boggles at a financial crisis far worse than the current one. Is such
a thing possible? Even with this one, it may already be too late to prevent
social unrest, especially in Britain, which is tipped to be one of the
worst-hit countries economically.

The spectacle of bankers continuing to award themselves bonuses while taking
taxpayer support is feeding an extraordinary public rage and a fierce sense
of injustice. With 40,000 people losing their jobs each month, it is a
recipe for trouble, come the traditional rioting months of the summer.

It won’t be bankers being lynched, of course, but small shopkeepers in
inner-city areas having their windows smashed and their stock looted. The
only surprise is there haven’t already been antibanker demonstrations in
Threadneedle Street – secretly cheered on by 99 per cent of Middle England.

The seething sense of unfairness is almost palpable. The view that a small
elite not only caused the crisis, but continues to profit at the expense of
everyone else, is near universal. Gordon Brown’s promise of no rewards for
failure in state-supported banks is looking ever more threadbare. We now
know that Peter Cummings, the highest-paid person on the HBOS board, headed
a division responsible for £7 billion of losses last year, yet he was still
given a reported £660,000 payoff when he left in early January clutching his

£6 million pension pot.

The suggestion by Lord Myners, the City minister, that some bankers simply
have no sense of the broader society around them is getting harder to
refute. To be preparing to pay out billions of pounds in discretionary
bonuses over the next few weeks suggests an ignorance of the public mood and
a single-mindedness bordering on sociopathic.

All this may be a bit of a side show for Sir Victor Blank and Eric Daniels,
chairman and chief executive, respectively, as they try to stop the water
slopping over the gunwales of the combined Lloyds/HBOS. Yesterday’s
bombshell was grave for the bank, dispiriting for taxpayers and damaging to
the chief executive. The timing is acutely awkward, coming just 48 hours
after he appeared before the Commons Treasury Select Committee. MPs might
have pressed him rather harder if they had known what was just around the
corner.

The £10 billion loss at HBOS is humiliating enough, but the admission that the
losses are £1.6 billion worse than when shareholders were asked to approve
the deal in November is worse. Lloyds got HBOS to sweeten the terms twice.
With hindsight it still wasn’t enough. Mr Daniels admitted to Parliament
this week that he was not able to conduct as much due diligence as in a
normal deal. His shareholders and UK taxpayers are now paying a heavy price
for that failure.

The 32 per cent slump in the Lloyds share price yesterday speaks volumes about
the market’s fears. Although Lloyds insists its balance sheet is still
strong, the need for additional capital will be back on the agenda. If
HBOS’s corporate loans could have soured by £1.6 billion in the space of
just a month, its surplus capital cushion could quickly be wiped out. That
could lead to full nationalization eventually.

Lloyds says that one of the reasons for the losses was the more conservative
methodology it uses for gauging potential loan losses. That comes close to
suggesting the old HBOS board was somewhat less than conservative itself. If
the reputation of the old guard at HBOS, including Gordon Brown’s former
favourite Sir James Crosby, is capable of sinking any lower in the public
estimation, it will now be doing so.

Lives Have Been Destroyed by the Federal Government

By
February 11, 2009
Depression, Federal Reserve, Theft
Leave a Comment

By Mark R. Crovelli

February 10, 2009 - One of the hardest things to deal with in the current economic depression is the disgusting hypocrisy of the U.S. congress, the new president, and the members of the Federal Reserve System. It is one thing to be told, as we all are, that we must hand over fat wads of our hard-earned money to these warmongering and thieving snakes or face jail terms, but one feels a whole new level of revulsion when these people make statements to the effect that they, and they alone, are in a position to “save the economy” by “creating jobs.” These statements are made by people who have done virtually everything in their power to destroy the American economy over the last few decades, but who have now proclaimed themselves to be our saviors. Only the most naïve and unlearned among us could possibly be falling for the idea that a bunch of self-serving politicians, bureaucrats and bankers are going to “save” us from problems they have caused.

On its face, the idea that politicians, bureaucrats, and bankers could “save” the economy is laughable. These are people, after all, who live exclusively at our expense. That is, these are people whose entire livelihoods are dependent upon taking money away from productive people and spending it on themselves and their favorite wasteful projects. It’s true that they do not all share the same ideas about how to spend the money they take from us. Some prefer to use it to blow up innocent people in foreign lands, while others simply want to take our hard-earned money without our consent and hand it over to other people. The bankers, on the other hand, merely content themselves with printing vast amounts of new money out of thin air that they either hand over to the Treasury Department, or gift to their other banker-buddies to lend out at a profit at our expense. Nevertheless, it should be crystal clear that these people do not actually produce anything themselves (except the bankers, who are very skilled counterfeiters of money). They take money from us through taxation and inflation, (and threaten us with severe punishments if we refuse to obey), and then spend every last penny of it – and more – on war, socialized boondoggles, and welfare. These are the people who would have us believe that they can “save” the economy? How exactly would they accomplish such a thing? More taxes, more idiotic socialized projects, more war, and more newly-printed green paper? Do these actions really seem likely to produce a vibrant and healthy economy, or do they seem more like the actions undertaken by the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.?

They would also very much like for us to believe that they are the only people in the world capable of “creating jobs” in the United States. A more ridiculous idea would be hard to find. Again, these people are only in the business of taking money from productive people, and either wasting it entirely (e.g., war), keeping it themselves, or giving it to other people (e.g., entitlement programs, foreign aid, and paychecks for bureaucrats). As such, any actions undertaken by these people will necessarily depend for funding upon those who are forced to pay taxes; namely, the increasingly-dwindling group of productive people who have not yet lost their jobs in the private sector. Does it really seem possible that this sort of parasitism on the productive people of the United States really can create jobs that produce the things that people actually want? If socialized job creation is the only way out of this economic quagmire, as the politicians would have us believe, then why don’t they socialize the entire economy? If it were indeed the case that the federal government can “create” productive jobs better than the private sector, then why don’t they take over all aspects of the American economy, and we can all live happily ever-after in a brave, new, socialized America where everyone is enslaved, I mean employed, by the State.

And don’t think for a moment that the politicians and bureaucrats are themselves going to help the productive people shoulder this onerous tax burden. On the contrary, politicians and bureaucrats do not actually pay taxes. As Murray Rothbard has noted in this regard:

“If a bureaucrat receives a salary of $5,000 a year and pays $1,000 in ‘taxes’ to the government, it is quite obvious that he is simply receiving a salary of $4,000 and pays no taxes at all. The heads of the government have simply chosen a complex and misleading accounting device to make it appear that he pays taxes in the same way as any other men making the same income. The UN’s arrangement, whereby all its employees are exempt from any income taxation, is far more candid.”

Hence, while Mr. Obama is fond of telling us that “we” are going to have to get out of this recession together, what he really means is that those of us who are employed in productive private lines of work in this country are going to have to hand over more and more of our hard-earned money to those people in this country who pay no taxes at all; namely, men like Mr. Obama himself and the rest of the fat, parasitic political and bureaucratic class that infests this country.

Some of the more shameless of the political class in this country, or their academic lackeys, have even tried to convince us that the trillions of dollars they are wasting in Iraq and Afghanistan are going to help us get out of this depression. They have been taking our money and blowing it up in these two dreadfully poor countries year after year, and they would like for us to believe that this senseless destruction of wealth is going to make us richer. Often known as “Military Keynesians,” this group is perhaps more aptly described as the “kill ourselves rich” crowd. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that neither you nor I are made better off when the federal government steals our money, hands it over to Lockheed Martin to purchase bombs, and then uses those bombs to blow up Pakistani civilians. The only people who benefit from this forceful expropriation of our money and indifferent murder are the merchants of death occupying lucrative posts at Lockheed, Blackwater and the Pentagon.

What the political and bureaucratic classes are actually accomplishing very well, however, is creating a veritable army of angry men whose lives have been destroyed by the federal government. Many have lost their jobs, thanks to the collapse of the largest artificial economic boom in American history – a boom that was directly caused by the actions of the federal government and the Fed. In addition, thanks to years of merciless and ceaseless money creation by the Fed, this army of men has found that their savings purchase fewer and fewer goods over time. This depreciation of the dollar will inexorably increase astronomically over the next few years as the massive amount of new money the Fed and treasury have already jointly printed, and are planning to print over the coming months and years, floods the system.

This army of angry men has very little to be optimistic about in the near future. At best, they might be able to keep their present jobs in the private sector – shouldering a heavier and heavier portion of the tax burden that funds the congress and president’s wars and socialization schemes, while the value of their savings continues to erode into dust. Those who have lost their jobs might be permitted to work on Mr. Obama’s “public works” projects, and thereby become virtual slaves to the whims of the political and bureaucratic classes. Many others will simply find it easier to start sucking at the state’s teat in the form of unemployment insurance or food stamps, et cetera, and thereby lose all respect for themselves. One thing is certain for every member of this army of angry men, though; every single one of them will now find it very difficult, if not impossible, to carve out a living for himself, on his own terms, and without being at the complete mercy of politicians, bureaucrats, and bankers he has never even met. The age of the independent, responsible, and free American citizen is now dead.

The hour is fast approaching when each and every one of us will have to decide for ourselves whether we will try to fight this devastating government machine, or join it.

Mark R. Crovelli [send him mail] writes from Denver, Colorado.

Lives Have Been Destroyed by the Federal Government

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February 10, 2009
Depression, Federal Reserve, Theft
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By Mark R. Crovelli

February 10, 2009 - One of the hardest things to deal with in the current economic depression is the disgusting hypocrisy of the U.S. congress, the new president, and the members of the Federal Reserve System. It is one thing to be told, as we all are, that we must hand over fat wads of our hard-earned money to these warmongering and thieving snakes or face jail terms, but one feels a whole new level of revulsion when these people make statements to the effect that they, and they alone, are in a position to “save the economy” by “creating jobs.” These statements are made by people who have done virtually everything in their power to destroy the American economy over the last few decades, but who have now proclaimed themselves to be our saviors. Only the most naïve and unlearned among us could possibly be falling for the idea that a bunch of self-serving politicians, bureaucrats and bankers are going to “save” us from problems they have caused.

On its face, the idea that politicians, bureaucrats, and bankers could “save” the economy is laughable. These are people, after all, who live exclusively at our expense. That is, these are people whose entire livelihoods are dependent upon taking money away from productive people and spending it on themselves and their favorite wasteful projects. It’s true that they do not all share the same ideas about how to spend the money they take from us. Some prefer to use it to blow up innocent people in foreign lands, while others simply want to take our hard-earned money without our consent and hand it over to other people. The bankers, on the other hand, merely content themselves with printing vast amounts of new money out of thin air that they either hand over to the Treasury Department, or gift to their other banker-buddies to lend out at a profit at our expense. Nevertheless, it should be crystal clear that these people do not actually produce anything themselves (except the bankers, who are very skilled counterfeiters of money). They take money from us through taxation and inflation, (and threaten us with severe punishments if we refuse to obey), and then spend every last penny of it – and more – on war, socialized boondoggles, and welfare. These are the people who would have us believe that they can “save” the economy? How exactly would they accomplish such a thing? More taxes, more idiotic socialized projects, more war, and more newly-printed green paper? Do these actions really seem likely to produce a vibrant and healthy economy, or do they seem more like the actions undertaken by the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.?

They would also very much like for us to believe that they are the only people in the world capable of “creating jobs” in the United States. A more ridiculous idea would be hard to find. Again, these people are only in the business of taking money from productive people, and either wasting it entirely (e.g., war), keeping it themselves, or giving it to other people (e.g., entitlement programs, foreign aid, and paychecks for bureaucrats). As such, any actions undertaken by these people will necessarily depend for funding upon those who are forced to pay taxes; namely, the increasingly-dwindling group of productive people who have not yet lost their jobs in the private sector. Does it really seem possible that this sort of parasitism on the productive people of the United States really can create jobs that produce the things that people actually want? If socialized job creation is the only way out of this economic quagmire, as the politicians would have us believe, then why don’t they socialize the entire economy? If it were indeed the case that the federal government can “create” productive jobs better than the private sector, then why don’t they take over all aspects of the American economy, and we can all live happily ever-after in a brave, new, socialized America where everyone is enslaved, I mean employed, by the State.

And don’t think for a moment that the politicians and bureaucrats are themselves going to help the productive people shoulder this onerous tax burden. On the contrary, politicians and bureaucrats do not actually pay taxes. As Murray Rothbard has noted in this regard:

“If a bureaucrat receives a salary of $5,000 a year and pays $1,000 in ‘taxes’ to the government, it is quite obvious that he is simply receiving a salary of $4,000 and pays no taxes at all. The heads of the government have simply chosen a complex and misleading accounting device to make it appear that he pays taxes in the same way as any other men making the same income. The UN’s arrangement, whereby all its employees are exempt from any income taxation, is far more candid.”

Hence, while Mr. Obama is fond of telling us that “we” are going to have to get out of this recession together, what he really means is that those of us who are employed in productive private lines of work in this country are going to have to hand over more and more of our hard-earned money to those people in this country who pay no taxes at all; namely, men like Mr. Obama himself and the rest of the fat, parasitic political and bureaucratic class that infests this country.

Some of the more shameless of the political class in this country, or their academic lackeys, have even tried to convince us that the trillions of dollars they are wasting in Iraq and Afghanistan are going to help us get out of this depression. They have been taking our money and blowing it up in these two dreadfully poor countries year after year, and they would like for us to believe that this senseless destruction of wealth is going to make us richer. Often known as “Military Keynesians,” this group is perhaps more aptly described as the “kill ourselves rich” crowd. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that neither you nor I are made better off when the federal government steals our money, hands it over to Lockheed Martin to purchase bombs, and then uses those bombs to blow up Pakistani civilians. The only people who benefit from this forceful expropriation of our money and indifferent murder are the merchants of death occupying lucrative posts at Lockheed, Blackwater and the Pentagon.

What the political and bureaucratic classes are actually accomplishing very well, however, is creating a veritable army of angry men whose lives have been destroyed by the federal government. Many have lost their jobs, thanks to the collapse of the largest artificial economic boom in American history – a boom that was directly caused by the actions of the federal government and the Fed. In addition, thanks to years of merciless and ceaseless money creation by the Fed, this army of men has found that their savings purchase fewer and fewer goods over time. This depreciation of the dollar will inexorably increase astronomically over the next few years as the massive amount of new money the Fed and treasury have already jointly printed, and are planning to print over the coming months and years, floods the system.

This army of angry men has very little to be optimistic about in the near future. At best, they might be able to keep their present jobs in the private sector – shouldering a heavier and heavier portion of the tax burden that funds the congress and president’s wars and socialization schemes, while the value of their savings continues to erode into dust. Those who have lost their jobs might be permitted to work on Mr. Obama’s “public works” projects, and thereby become virtual slaves to the whims of the political and bureaucratic classes. Many others will simply find it easier to start sucking at the state’s teat in the form of unemployment insurance or food stamps, et cetera, and thereby lose all respect for themselves. One thing is certain for every member of this army of angry men, though; every single one of them will now find it very difficult, if not impossible, to carve out a living for himself, on his own terms, and without being at the complete mercy of politicians, bureaucrats, and bankers he has never even met. The age of the independent, responsible, and free American citizen is now dead.

The hour is fast approaching when each and every one of us will have to decide for ourselves whether we will try to fight this devastating government machine, or join it.

Mark R. Crovelli [send him mail] writes from Denver, Colorado.