ECONOMY

 

   

 

 

 
 

 


  • Eropean Open Internet Under Immient Threat
  • Death of Internet

 

 

 

Eustace Mullins - Secrets of The Federal Reserve (FULL)

 

 

Fantastic presentation by the late great Eustace Mullins about the Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Eustace Mullins is arguable the best researcher of esoteric topics.

 

December 12th 2011


 

 

What Does the Fed Know That We Don’t?

Graham Summers

 

 

The whole thing smells fishy to me. Aside from the fact that the Fed clearly leaked its intentions as early as Monday night (hence the reason stocks rallied while credit markets weakened), there’s something peculiar about the fact the Fed chose to do this at the end of November.

Why November 30? Why not today or Tuesday?

I think the answer is that the Fed stepped in to help its institutional investor/ hedge fund buddies. November was a horrible month for this crowd. And with Bank of America approaching $5 per share (a level which would require many institutions to liquidate due to regulations), the Fed was also helping out its favorite insolvent bank as well.

 

December 5th 2011


 

 

'60 Minutes' Blows The Lid Off Congressional Insider Trading

 

 

Members of Congress can legally make trades on non-public information they obtain during their official duties, CBS News' '60 Minutes' reported on Sunday night.

Branded 'honest graft,' lawmakers can use market-moving information that they learn in congressional committees to trade on the stock market — actions that likely would carry stiff jail and civil penalties if they did not hold public office.

In one example, Steve Kroft reports that Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), now the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, bet against the market in the days before the 2008 financial crisis hit — after getting 'apocalyptic briefings' from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

 

November 18th 2011


 

 

The Bank of England, Gold, and Libya



As an investor in bullion, there’s something you should know about this Libya business. You’re not going to hear about it on the BBC and in my opinion, it is being held from you on purpose. It is something you should know and you can see its immediate effect in the price of gold.

Since the close of play on the 8th of August ‘til the am fix today ( 25th August, 2011), gold has risen from £1035.601 per troy ounce to an all time high of £1139.55 and back down to £1049.59. This is an upwards shift of 10% and then downwards by virtually the same – that’s a lot of movement for 13 trading days! So you have to ask “why did this happen and how does it affect me?” because your money is in this deal and it is your responsibility to know. That’s why.


August 26th 2011|

 

 
 
MSNBC - Wall Street Is Behind High Food-Oil Prices Thats Causing Arab Instability
 
 

Decades of autocratic government and a lack of free elections are, of course, the main drivers of the political upheaval in Egypt. But did the sinking dollar and skyrocketing food prices trigger the massive unrest now occurring in Egypt — or the greater Arab world for that matter?

In addition to Egypt, the people have taken to the streets to varying degrees in Algeria, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, and Yemen. Local food riots have even broken out in rural China and other Asian locales.

While the mainstream media focuses on the political aspects of this turmoil, they are overlooking the impact of rising inflation, driven mainly by record food prices. For example, former Bush advisor Dan Senor notes that Egypt is the world's largest wheat importer. Yet because of skyrocketing prices, Egyptian inflation is now over 10 percent, while some experts estimate that Egyptian food inflation has risen as much as 20 percent.
So I have to ask this tough question: Is Ben Bernanke's ultra-easy QE2 money pump-priming partially to blame?
Commodities are priced in dollars, and the Federal Reserve has been overproducing dollars for more than two years. Consequently, emerging markets throughout the world — and the food sector in particular — are suffering from rising inflation
.

 

April 26th 2011|


 

 

War lobby won $700 billion budget boost, wants MORE as collapse looms'

 

 

April 17th 2011|


 

 

US spending problem

 

 

Even though US spends more money on military than any other country - six times more than China, for instance, and close to 50 percent of the spending world-wide. It seems to be the "elephant in the room" when it comes to budget cuts. But with three wars ending up costing billions of dollars, is that going to change? RT's Kristine Frazao takes a look.

 

April 17th 2011


 

 

Portugal defaults, America on the waiting list?

 

 

Following sovereign debt crises in Greece and Ireland, the Prime Minister of Portugal asked the European Union for a bailout on Wednesday. With the United States' deficit causing coast-to-coast panic, can we learn from what's happening overseas? The Market Ticker's Karl Denniger says that the story is far from over.

 

April 8th 2011


 

 

 

The Link Between War And Big Finance

 

Americans are recognizing the link between the military-industrial complex and the Wall Street oligarchs—a connection that goes back to the beginning of the modern U.S. empire. Banks have always profited from warbecause the debt created by banks results in ongoing war profit for big finance; and because wars have been used to open countries to U.S. corporate and banking interests. Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan wrote: “the large banking interests were deeply interested in the world war because of the wide opportunities for large profits.”

Many historians now recognize that a hidden history for U.S. entry into World War I was to protect U.S. investors. U.S. commercial interests had invested heavily in European alliesbefore the war: “ By 1915, American neutrality was being criticized as bankers and merchants began to loan money and offer credits to the warring parties, although the Central Powers received far less. Between 1915 and April 1917, the Allies received 85 times the amount loaned to Germany.” The total dollars loaned to all Allied borrowers during this period was $2,581,300,000. The bankers saw that if Germany won, their loans to European allies would not be repaid. The leading U.S. banker of the era, J.P. Morgan and his associates did everything they could to push the United States into the waron the side of England and France. Morgan said: “We agreed that we should do all that was lawfully in our power to help the Allies win the war as soon as possible.” President Woodrow Wilson, who campaigned saying he would keep the United States out of war, seems to have entered the war to protect U.S. banks’ investments in Europe.

 

April 8th 2011


 

 

 

World energy crunch as nuclear and oil both go wrong

 

Libya's civil war has cut global crude supply by 1.1m barrels per day (bpd), eroding Opec's spare capacity to a wafer-thin margin of 2m bpd, if Goldman Sachs is correct.

Now events in the Gulf have turned dangerous after Saudi Arabia sent troops into Bahrain to help the Sunni monarchy crush largely Shi'ite dissent, risking a showdown with Iran.

Russia's finance minister Alexei Kudrin warned on Wednesday that the confluence of events in Japan and the Mid-East could push oil to $200 a barrel in a "short-lived" spike, which would snuff out global recovery.

While there has been no loss of oil output in the Gulf so far, the violent crackdown in Manama on Wednesday left four people dead and risks inflaming the volatile geopolitics of the region. The rout of protesters encamped at the Pearl roundabout had echoes of China's Tiananmen massacre.

 

March 18th 2011|


 

 

Should We Be Alarmed That The Biggest Bond Fund In The World Has Dumped All Of Their U.S. Treasury Bonds?

 

"Bill Gross, the manager of the biggest bond fund (click here) in the world, has forgotten more about bonds than most of us will ever learn. That is why the big move that PIMCO has just made is so unsettling. At one time PIMCO held more U.S. government debt than any other bond fund on the globe, but now news has come out that they have gotten rid of all their U.S. government-related securities.

"So should we be alarmed?

"For months Gross has been warning that the bull market in bonds is coming to an end, and now it looks like he is putting his words into actions. Gross has often publicly decried the rampant government spending that has been going on over the last several years, and apparently he has seen enough.

"He is taking his ball and he is going home. This really is a stunning move by PIMCO. Gross must really believe that something fundamental has shifted. Gross didn't get to where he is today by being stupid. But so far world financial markets are taking this news in stride. Nobody seems all that alarmed that the largest bond fund in the world has dumped all of their U.S. Treasuries. But with world financial markets in such a state of chaos right now, shouldn't we all take note when one of the biggest players in the game makes such a bold move?

March 15th 2011|


 

 

 

Libya’s Hidden Wealth May Be Next Battle

 

As the battle for Libya rages on, the struggle over control of the country’s sovereign wealth fund and its $70 billion in assets has just begun

With a sizable pot of ready cash and stakes in a few elite European companies — including the British publisher Pearson and the Italian soccer club Juventus — the fund served as an emphatic calling card for its founder, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, a son of the Libyan ruler who was once regarded as the reformer in the family.

Established in 2006, the fund was used by Mr. Qaddafi in an effort to make the case that Libya was ready to open itself to the West. It helped draw into Mr. Qaddafi’s orbit a range of powerful figures, including the Rothschild family, Prince Andrew of Britain, the former European trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, the cream of corporate society in Italy and the American private equity investors Stephen A. Schwarzman of Blackstone and David M. Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group.

 

 

March 6th 2011|


 

 

Debt, Debt, Debt – 15 Facts About U.S. Government Finances That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

 
 

If your family started spending nearly twice as much as it brought in every single year, how long do you think it would be before your family was completely and totally broke? Well, that is essentially what the federal government is doing. The U.S. government is so deep in debt at this point that it is hard to even try to describe it. Where do you even begin? Trying to put the vastness of U.S. government debt into words is kind of like trying to describe a great work of art by Michelangelo to a blind person. This year the U.S. government is going to go 1.645 trillion more dollars into debt. How can one possibly accurately convey just how large that amount of money really is? If you went out today and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you over 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars. Who can even comprehend such an amount? The U.S. government has mismanaged our finances so badly that it is hard to believe. We have sold our children and our grandchildren into perpetual debt slavery and not that many people really seem very upset about it. It is as if most of the nation is in a massive state of denial.

 

 

March 6th 2011|


 

 

Wall Street prospers, Main Street suffers

 

 

March 4th 2011


 

 
 

Dictators and their sons: Col Gaddafi's billionaire children

 

Britain has announced that the assets of the dictator and his family have been frozen, and the Treasury has created a special unit to trace the multi-billion pound assets they are thought to have squirrelled away in investments in the city. For years, though, that fortune helped the Gaddafi family win friends and influence across the world.

Saif al-Islam, the suave, western-educated second son of the Libyandictator, was the best known of the sons.

Seen as the natural successor to his father before the wave of protests across the north African nation, the 38 year old Saif al-Islam presented himself as a reformer. He was welcomed in the West as the acceptable face of the regime, and claims the Duke of York, Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair among his "good friends".

In 1995, he received his degree in architecture and engineering at Tripoli's al-Fateh University, and then went on to obtain a management degree from the International Business School in Vienna before gaining a doctorate at Britain's London School of Economics (LSE).

 

 

March 4th 2011


 

 
 

Oil spike to spoil US economy bubble

 
 
 
 

March 1th 2011| Tags: | Headline news | Occult Agenda | Blackwater XE | FEMA |Big Brother | Site Index


 

 

 

The Essence Of The Banking Industry...
 
 
 
February 27h 2011

 
 

Plan B: Cut Benefits To Bankers 

 
 
February 18h 2011|

 

The US bank and the secret plan to destroy WikiLeaks

 

The computer hackers' collective Anonymous has uncovered a proposal by a consortium of private contractors to attack and discredit WikiLeaks.

Last week Anonymous volunteers broke into the servers of HB Gary Federal, a security company that sells investigative services to companies, and posted thousands of the firm's emails on to the internet.

The attack was in revenge for claims by the company's chief executive Aaron Barr that he had successfully infiltrated the shadowy cyber protest network and discovered details of its leadership and structure.

Hacktivists, journalists and bloggers have since pored over the emails and discovered what appears to be a proposal that was intended to be pitched to the Bank of America to sabotage WikiLeaks and discredit journalists who are sympathetic to the whistle-blowing website.

 
February 17h 2011|

 
 

How Big is the U.S. Debt?

 
 
 
February 17h 2011

 
 

Greece slams IMF-EU interference

 

The European Union and the International Monetary Fund have been accused of interfering in Greece's domestic affairs after demanding asset sales to ease the country's debt burden.


Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou accused the EU and the IMF of practicing “unacceptable behavior,” on Saturday.

On Friday EU and IMF inspectors, along with European Central Bank experts had been monitoring Greece's implementation of a bailout plan which saved Athens from bankruptcy, AFP reported.

After finding revenue shortfall and reform processes being at risk in a quarterly audit, the three bodies demanded that Athens should act towards reforms at a faster pace and sell more public assets, a 50-billion-euro asset sale being among the demands. Papandreou complained of the three inspecting bodies to IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

 

 
February 14th 2011

 
 

Pentagon Reports Billions of Dollars in Contractor Fraud

 
 

The Pentagon paid hundreds of billions of dollars to defense contractors engaged in criminal or civil fraud -- in some cases paying the companies after they were convicted, according to a new Defense Department report.

At least 91 contractors holding contracts worth $270 billion were the subjects of civil fraud judgments -- and in some cases criminal fraud convictions as well, many of which resulted in fines, suspensions or debarments. Even so, Defense Department contracting officers still assigned $4.9 billion worth of work with these companies after the fraud was uncovered, the report said.

The contractors identified in the
report include such blue-chip entities as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Pratt & Whitney, IBM and even the Yale medical school.

 

 
February 5th 2011

 

CorporateLand

 
 
February 5th 2011|

 
 
 

THE EGYPTIAN TINDERBOX: HOW BANKS AND INVESTORS ARE STARVING THE THIRD WORLD

 
 

“What for a poor man is a crust, for a rich man is a securitized asset class.”
--Futures trader Ann Berg, quoted in the
UK Guardian

Underlying the sudden, volatile uprising in Egypt and Tunisia is a growing global crisis sparked by soaring food prices and unemployment. The Associated Press reports that roughly 40 percent of Egyptians struggle along at the World Bank-set poverty level of under $2 per day. Analysts estimate that food price inflation in Egypt is currently at an unsustainable 17 percent yearly. In poorer countries, as much as 60 to 80 percent of people's incomes go for food, compared to just 10 to 20 percent in industrial countries. An increase of a dollar or so in the cost of a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread for Americans can mean starvation for people in Egypt and other poor countries.

 

February 5th 2011|

 
 

Bank of England chief Mervyn King: standard of living to plunge at fastest rate since 1920s

 

Families will see their disposable income eaten up as they “pay the inevitable price” for the financial crisis, Mervyn King warned.

With wages failing to keep pace with rising inflation, workers’ take- home pay will end the year worth the same as in 2005 — the most prolonged fall in living standards for more than 80 years, he claimed.

Mr King issued the warning in a speech in Newcastle upon Tyne after official figures showed that gross domestic product fell by 0.5 per cent during the final three months last year. The Government blamed the unexpected reduction — the first since the third quarter of 2009 — on the freezing weather that paralysed much of the country last month.

But there were fears that the country was poised to slip back into recession, defined as two successive quarters of negative growth. Economists said the situation was “an absolute disaster”. 

 
January 27th 2011  

 

 
 

"THE GOVERNMENT IS LYING ABOUT THE AMOUNT OF DEBT" 9-19-2010

 
 
 
 
January 26th 2011  

 

 

Which Of The Currencies Of The World Is Going To Crash First?

 

Last year was an absolutely fascinating time for world currency markets.  The yen, the dollar and the euro all took their turns in the spotlight.  Each experienced wild swings at various times, but the overall theme that we saw was that faith in paper currencies is dying.  The biggest reason for this is the horrific sovereign debt crisis that has swept the globe.  The United States, Japan and a whole host of European nations are all drowning in debt.  The U.S. and Japan are both steamrolling toward insolvency, and several European nations would have already defaulted on their debts if they had not been bailed out.  So which of the major currencies of the world is going to crash first?  Will one (or more) of the big currencies fall before the end of 2011?  Once one major currency collapses will the rest start to fall like dominoes?  The truth is that the world has never seen a sovereign debt crisis of this magnitude in all of human history.  Almost the entire globe is drowning in a sea of red ink and it has brought us right to the brink of financial disaster.
 

January 22th 2011  

 

 

War for the People; Profit for the Bankers

 

The Federal Reserve has helped underwrite continued American military expenditures, even after the World Wars. As of 2009, "Defense" accounts for 23% of all American Federal spending. And therefore, the gargantuan size of the American Federal debt is related to the continuation of American military interventions abroad.

If we assume that such systems are primarily instruments of war, can we also infer that the World Wars could have been prevented in their absence.
Most of us naively assume that the Federal Reserve only underwrote the American war effort. This is not the case. In World War II, the Lend-Lease program was used to ship supplies worth $759 billion
to other countries involved in the war.

Some of these countries, such as Soviet Union and China, cannot be considered belligerents. Even more bewildering is the fact that the inflated dollars churned out by the Federal Reserve managed to find their way into Nazi Germany, through American private "investments."

 

January 12th 2011 

 
 

Banks given go-ahead to pay unlimited bonuses

 

Britain's banks have been given the go-ahead to pay unlimited bonuses, drawing to a close a two-year political battle to rein in the City.

After months in which a series of government ministers of all parties have threatened a toughening in the stance over City bonuses, Downing Street said the government did not intend to intervene in the pay of the UK's top bankers.

Ministers are instead hoping for a face-saving deal in which the banks agree to lending targets and improve the way they disclose their pay deals. One of the options being discussed is releasing information on the five highest paid individuals at each bank.

"We've made a broad statement which is about the need to see some restraint and some responsibility from the banks, but we are not going to set bonus pools for individual banks," the prime minister's spokesman said.

 
January 12th 2011 

 

The American Dream By The Provocateur Network

 

 

 January  8th 2011 


 

 

BANKERS GONE WILD - HOW THE US GOVERNMENT HELPED WALL STREET GANG-RAPE AMERICA'S MIDDLE CLASS

 

The original thirteen colonies printed their own currency, and it worked very well at empowering commerce and turning the young America into a powerful growing economy, free of the poverty and unemployment that even then crippled London. But the bankers of Europe, long used to private banks issuing the public currencies, were horrified by the
American approach and saw it as a threat to their deeply cherished religious belief that the gods intended for the bankers to have all the wealth of the world. So, the Bank of England lobbied King George III to impose the Currency Act on the colonies, which forbade the colonies to use their own money and required them to borrow their lawful tender from the Bank of England, at interest.
 

 

January  8th 2011 


 

 

At Least 10 States Have Introduced Gold Coins-As-Currency Bills

 

 

Legislators in at least ten states have introduced bills in the past few years to allow state commerce to be conducted with gold and silver.

As we reported, Georgia state Rep. Bobby Franklin (R) recently reintroducedlegislation to force his state to conduct all monetary transactions with U.S. gold or silver coins -- including the payment of taxes.

The Georgia bill has a long way to go before become law -- but it's by no means the only state that's considering a future in gold. Lawmakers inMontana, Missouri, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Utah, and Washingtonhave proposed legislation, mostly in 2009, to include gold and silver in its accepted currency forms.

 

January  8th 2011 


 

 

Argentina and the IMF - Michel Chossudovsky on The Corbett Report

 

 

January  7th 2011 


 

 

Economic Hitmen

 

 

January  7th 2011 


 

 

IMF Plan For 2011 - Webster Tarpley.

 

 

January  3th 2011 


 


 

Wall Street Gets What It Wants as Government Obliges

 

 

December 31h 2010  |


 

 

Corporate America's Plan to Loot Our Pensions
Latest Battle in Decades-Long Assault on the Middle Class


The severe economic crisis, now in its fourth year, is being used to batter the remnants of the social welfare state. Having decimated aid to the poor over the last 30 years, especially in the United States, the economic and political elite are now intent on strangling middle-class benefits, namely state-provided pensions, health care and education.

The initial neoliberal assault under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher reorganized the capitalist economy and hammered private-sector unions into submission. This was accomplished by putting labor back into competition with itself by off-shoring industrial production, through deregulation and with frontal assaults on labor rights, organizing and solidarity.

 

December 25th 2010  


 

 

The Boys Behind Gold & Silver

 

 

December 24th 2010  


 

 

Fresh humiliation for eurozone as China says it will bail out debt-ridden nations

 

China has said it is willing to bail out debt-ridden countries in the euro zone using its $2.7trillion overseas investment fund.

In a fresh humiliation for Europe, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiang Yu said it was one of the most important areas for China's foreign exchange investments.

The country has already approached struggling European countries with financial aid, including offering to buy Greece's debt in October and promising to buy $4billion of Portuguese government debt.

Today Portugal had its credit rating downgraded by the Fitch Ratings agency amid mounting concerns over the country's ability to raise money in the markets to finance its hefty borrowings.

Fitch said it was reducing its rating on the country's debt by one notch to A+ from AA- and warned that further downgrades may be in the offing by maintaining its negative outlook


December 24th 2010


 

 

Foreclosures on People Who Never Missed a Payment

 

 

December 22th 2010  


 

 

Raping The Taxpayer Once Again - Goldman Earns $55.7 Million From Build America Fees

 

 Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, has made $55.7 million from the sale of $36.4 billion of Build America Bonds, about a third of the fees it earned from its municipal business, it said in response to queries from Iowa Senator Charles Grassley.

The effort to underwrite the federally subsidized municipal bonds is “highly competitive” with “over 10 major firms” vying for the business, Goldman Chairman Lloyd Blankfein wrote in a letter dated March 1 to the top Republican on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. Grassley said in a letter to Blankfein last month that he is “concerned that American taxpayers are subsidizing larger underwriting fees for Wall Street investment banks.”

Congress created the Build America Bond program last year as part of the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in an effort to revive the $2.8 trillion municipal bond market. The U.S. Treasury pays 35 percent of the interest cost if states and local governments sell the taxable securities for their capital projects instead of tax-exempt debt.

 

December 23th 2010  


 

 

Jim Corr: Top-down engineered financial crash designed to take over Europe

 

 

December 20th 2010


 

 

 

Vatican Bank hit by financial scandal... again

 

This is no ordinary bank. The ATMs are in Latin, priests use a private entrance, and a life-sized portrait of Pope Benedict XVI hangs on the wall. Nevertheless, l'Istituto per le Opere di Religione (the Institute for Religious Works) is a bank, and it is under harsh new scrutiny, including money-laundering allegations that led police to seize €23m (£19.5m) in Vatican assets in September. Critics say the case shows that the "Vatican Bank" has never shed its penchant for secrecy and scandal.

The Vatican calls the seizure of assets a "misunderstanding" and expresses optimism that it will be cleared up quickly. But court documents show that prosecutors say the Vatican Bank deliberately flouted anti-laundering laws "with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital". The documents also reveal investigators' suspicions that clergy may have acted as fronts for corrupt businessmen and the Mafia. The documents pinpoint two transactions that have not been reported: one in 2009 involving the use of a false name, and another in 2010 in which the Vatican Bank withdrew €650,000 from an Italian bank account but ignored bank requests to disclose where the money was headed.

 

December 20th 2010


 

 

9 TRILLION Dollars Missing from Federal Reserve,Fed Inspector General Can't Explain

 

 

December 14th 2010


 

 

Gold and Silver Recap: Silver Price to $50?

 

Usually we start this column with some guff about gold.  And then after talking mostly about gold we may hit the other metals.  Let’s face it, gold is usually the most exciting metal there is.  If the world collapses about us, we will be using gold as the currency that helps us rebuild civilization.  And after all, what could be more exciting than that.

But the real action has been in the silver market.  Not all up, it must be said as silver took a real pounding on some days, but there’s some real excitement that J.P. Morgan may be about to bite it on silver.

 

December 13th 2010


 

 

Wall Street gorges on record bonuses

 

 

December 11th 2010


 

 

What's behind the 2010 gold rush?

 

In the 19th century, San Francisco's citizens couldn't read about the gold rush happening little more than 200 miles from their city.

Most who worked for the local newspaper had dashed to the fields in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, where James W Marshall had unearthed a nugget in a riverbed in January 1848.

Rapid waves of immigration followed by ship and across the Midwest, with about 80,000 people braving the threat of cholera to make the journey in wagons. 

Less than a month after Marshall's find and a few hundred miles further south, a defeated Mexican government signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending a two-year war with its northern neighbour and ceding swathes of territory to the US.

"The discovery of gold was little short of a revolution and came as California became American," explains Malcolm Rohrbough, author of Days of Gold: The Californian Gold Rush and the American Nation. "People were celebrating."  

 

December 6th 2010  


 

 

Massive Monetization: The Failure of the International Financial System

 

The price of commodities, particularly food and petroleum products, will be higher in the coming year, which will strain budgets more than ever for those who still have jobs. Unemployment will not get appreciably better and government debt will rise. Government is talking about raising the Social Security retirement age by three years, freezing payments and offering government guaranteed annuities in exchange for those of you that do have retirement plans. Two-thirds of those in and about to retire have only Social Security for 50% of their income. The money collected since 1935 is all gone, having been spent by past politicians. In fact, if you put all present and future commitments together you have a debt of $105 trillion.

 

December 5th 2010  


 

 

Federal Reserve May Be `Central Bank of the World' After UBS, Barclays Aid

 

Federal Reserve data showing UBS AG and Barclays Plc ranked among the top users of $3.3 trillion from emergency programs is stoking debate on whether U.S. regulators bear responsibility for aiding other nations’ banks.

UBS was the biggest borrower under the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, with $74.5 billion overall, more than twice as much as Citigroup Inc., the top U.S. bank recipient, according to the data released yesterday. London-based Barclays Plc took the biggest single amount under another program that made overnight loans, when it got $47.9 billion on Sept. 18, 2008.

“We’re talking about huge sums of money going to bail out large foreign banks,” said Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent who wrote the provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that required the Fed disclosures. “Has the Federal Reserve become the central bank of the world? I think that is a question that needs to be examined.”

 

December 4th 2010


 
 

Tarpley: US using Korea to make money

 

 

Ncvember 27th 2010  

 
 

China, Russia quit dollar

 

St. Petersburg, Russia - China and Russia have decided to renounce the US dollar and resort to using their own currencies for bilateral trade, Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announced late on Tuesday. Chinese experts said the move reflected closer relations between Beijing and Moscow and is not aimed at challenging the dollar, but to protect their domestic economies.

"About trade settlement, we have decided to use our own currencies," Putin said at a joint news conference with Wen in St. Petersburg.

The two countries were accustomed to using other currencies, especially the dollar, for bilateral trade. Since the financial crisis, however, high-ranking officials on both sides began to explore other possibilities.

 

Ncvember 25th 2010  

 
 
 

The world's major industrialized and emerging nations have gathered in South Korea for a two-day summit, with their eyes firmly focused on fixing problems that continue to thwart a return to global growth. Whereas the G-20 group had managed resolute togetherness during the darkest days of the financial crisis, the mood ahead of the Seoul summit has been fractious.

Ahead of the meeting negotiators have struggled to come up with a closing statement that all the leaders can agree on. In the runup to the summit many of Washington's G-20 partners, particularly Germany, had voiced irritation at the move by the Federal Reserve to pump $600 billion (€437 billion) of new money into the American economy.

The US, for its part, is most concerned with the continuing low value of the Chinese currency, the yuan, which it claims gives Beijing an unfair advantage on the export market. But a US proposal to limit trade surpluses to 4 percent of gross domestic product was flatly rejected by Germany, the world's second largest exporter after China

 

Ncvember 13th 2010 


 

 

 

There is no possibility of agreement at the upcoming G20 summit because the U.S. is declaring financial war on other countries, believes American economist Michael Hudson.

The U.S. has been pushing China to revalue its currency – at a time when Washington has been pumping billions of dollars into its economy – a move viewed by other countries as an attempt to deliberately weaken the greenback.

The issue of exchange rates is expected to be one of the toughest discussion points at the G20 summit in South Korea later this week.

Michael Hudson, a renowned economist and Wall Street financial analyst and advisor, says the meeting in Seoul will not bring an end to global currency wars.

 

Ncvember 11th 2010  


 

 

Finance Has Become a New Form of Warfare

 

The Federal Reserve will pump $600 billion more into the US economy and keep interest rates at historical low levels. The short-term impact of the Fed’s move, known as quantitative easing, has been a jump in stock prices across the globe. Many nations, however, have accused the United States of waging a currency war by devaluing the dollar. We speak to former Wall Street economist and University of Missouri professor Michael Hudson. "The object of warfare is to take over a country’s land, raw materials and assets, and grab them," Hudson says. "In the past, that used to be done militarily by invading them. But today you can do it financially simply by creating credit, which is what the Federal Reserve has done."

 

Ncvember 9th 2010

 

 

Even Greenspan Admits that Moral Hazard and Fraud are the Main Problems

 

Even Alan Greenspan is confirming what William Black, James Galbraith, Joseph Stiglitz, George Akerlof and many other economists and financial experts have been saying for a long time: the economy cannot recover if fraud is not prosecuted and if the big banks know that government will bail them out every time they get in trouble.

Specifically, Greenspan said today in a panel discussion at a Fed conference in Jekyll Island, Georgia (where the plans to form the Fed were originally hatched):

 

 

Ncvember 8th 2010  


 

 

PLUNDER: THE CRIME OF OUR TIME

 

 

 

Ncvember 2th 2010 

 

 

Where Is the Money!
 

For the last ten years we have all been involved in trying to figure out the combination lock that has been used to hide this thousand-year old crime. Every American who was not part of the elite-club has been one of the victims in the world's most heinous crime: A crime so vast that it includes mass-murder, extortion, treason, and of course torture. Despite the scale of this crime it has been hiding in plain sight for the entire time; because its key facilitators are those at the top of the political food-chain and their client-owners who are supposedly "in-charge" of everything. At the end of the day it all comes down to ­ 'What happened to all that Money.'

 

 

Ncvember 1th 2010  |

 

 

Cloudy G20: Smog of US-China currency war blurs perspective

 

 

Ncvember 13th 2010  |


 

 

Federal Reserve is a Ponzi scheme, an inside job

 

 

 

October 27h 2010  

 

 

Tarpley: US exports depression to China

 

 

Ifyou look at the global economy and take a look at growth, China is in the lead and in some cases is leaving the world in the dust. Is China to blame for the recession in the United States and has the US declared economic warfare? Maybe it is time for America to take a page out of China's playbook for economic success. Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar and Investigative journalist Webster Tarpley join RT's Kristine Frazao to discuss the world's economy and Chinas place in it. 

 

October 24h 2010  


 

 
 

The Associated Press reported today that the Vatican expressed "astonishment" when an Italian court rejected the release of Vatican bank funds seized by authorities for failing to comply with international money laundering laws.
Prosecutors claim that the $30 million seizure that occurred last month is due to non-disclosure of the transfer destination of large sums of money.  Although the Vatican bank -- Institute for Works of Religion -- vows that it is working within international banking rules, the prosecutor found "exactly the opposite" was true. The AP reported

 

 

 

October 23h 2010

 

 

Mortgages Were Fraudulently Pledged to Multiple Buyers at the Same Time

 

 

October 20h 2010  

 

 
America Inc: Corporate interests run US government

 

 

A new Gallop poll indicated Americans feel the US government has too much power, yet there is very little public outrage. While in France the people are taking to the streets rioting.

Americans are currently more passive and complacent, but that could be changing.

As the pension funds are taxed, as part of the pension funds are seized, as the social security cost of living increase is cut, as all of this happens we are seeing more and more people demonstrate and protest,” said radio host Alex Jones.

 

He argued that the people should not only fear the government, but the corporate machine the fuels it.

The federal government is the consortium of tyranny, through which the Fortune 100 that control the government are looting and robbing our nation,” he said. “We’re just going through this same process of corporate corruption running rampant and I think you will see more and more Americans hitting the streets.”

Jones also pointed out that gun sales in America have hit record highs. He argued that Americans are arming themselves to fight government tyranny.

It takes a long time to rouse us, the sleeping giant,” said Jones. “But once the Americans people start rolling it’s going to be very very serious and I’m trying to avert armed conflict in this country. Even TIME Magazine has the headline; ‘Will Federal Reserve cause civil war’.”

Source RT,COM

 

October 21h 2010  

 

 

 

The Wall Street investors, which include Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase & Co., have purchased from local governments the right to collect delinquent taxes on several hundred thousand properties, many in distressed housing markets, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund has found.

In many cases, the banks and hedge funds created new companies to do their bidding. They gave the companies obscure, even whimsical names and used post office boxes as their addresses, masking Wall Street’s dominant new role as a surrogate tax collector.

 

October 20h 2010  

 
 
Max Keiser: Dollar to be buried way before 2018
 
 

World's major powers including China and Russia don't want to 'finance' American military adventures anymore. That's the view of Max Keiser, finance critic and former stockbroker. He says China and Russia are interested in collapsing the US economy by rejecting the dollar.

 

October 19h 2010  

 

 

 

American officials used to lecture other countries about their economic failings and tell them that they needed to emulate the U.S. model. The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, in particular, led to a lot of self-satisfied moralizing. Thus, in 2000, Lawrence Summers, then the Treasury secretary, declared that the keys to avoiding financial crisis were “well-capitalized and supervised banks, effective corporate governance and bankruptcy codes, and credible means of contract enforcement.” By implication, these were things the Asians lacked but we had

 

October 18h 2010  

 

 

 

This is Sickening!  ALL OF THOSE Were Most Likely Based on FRAUD BY THE BANKS!  THIS HAS GOT TO STOP!  People can NOT keep being Thrown out of their Homes and out on the street!  The banks are doing the largest transfer of wealth ever in History by STEALING!  They are Literally STEALING FROM THE PEOPLE - THE INVESTORS and DEFRAUDING THE STATES!

PLEASE STAND UP - ANYONE IN TROUBLE WITH THEIR MORTGAGE AND AT RISK OF FORECLOSURE - FIGHT IT - TODAY!!  STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS!  DO NOT ALLOW THE FRAUD OF BANKS TO TAKE THE ROOF FROM OVER YOUR HEAD!
HOPEFULLY HELP ON A NATIONAL LEVEL IS ON IT'S WAY!  (Some things are being worked on!)


 

October 15th 2010  


 
 
Gold mania sweeps financial markets

 

 

October 14th 2010  

 

 

Ben Bernanke Money Printing Ends Up as Wall Street Bonuses

 

WSJ is reporting that bonuses on Wall Street this year are expected to be around $144 billion. How big is that relative to the overall economy?
ZeroHedge cranked out the numbers and it is 8% of the total money supply (as measured by M1). Got that? Investment bankers will control 8% of the entire money supply once bonuses are paid.
Now, there is nothing wrong with bankers earning good change as a result of dealmaking, but a good portion of the bonuses are the result of money being shoveled to bankers by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Where's Bernanke getting the money to shovel to Wall Street? Why he is just printing it, that's what he does.

 

October 13th 2010

 

 

US Banks Fake Documents to Rush Foreclosures

 

Major US banks systematically faked documents in order to speed up foreclosures for hundreds of thousands of homeowners, a mounting body of evidence shows. It appears likely that federal and state laws were broken in the process.

The scandal speaks both to the dimensions of the social crisis and the criminality of the big banks. The immediate cause of the mortgage lenders’ rampant cheating on foreclosure paperwork is the tidal wave of families ruined by the economic crisis—a crisis itself set into motion by the banks’ predatory lending practices. The goal was to get people out of their homes as efficiently and ruthlessly as possible, skating over legal requirements relating to documentation.

Politicians

 

October 11th 2010  


 

 

SERCO - The Corporate Dictatorship

 

 

October 5th 2010

 

 

How High Will Gold Gold This Fall?

 

The gold price has been hitting ever-new records over the past couple weeks, now closing in on the $1,300 mark. Some gold followers are saying this is extremely bullish for the near-term price since it broke so decisively through its June 28th high of $1,261. If they’re right, how high might this particular surge go?
While the endgame for gold is far off in my opinion, it’s worth looking at short-term surges, especially if you’re trying to determine to buy at a particular level. Plus, it’s just darn fun.

 

October  2th 2010


 

 

Money transfers could face anti-terrorism scrutiny

 

The Obama administration wants to require U.S. banks to report all electronic money transfers into and out of the country, a dramatic expansion in efforts to counter terrorist financing and money laundering

Officials say the information would help them spot the sort of transfers that helped finance the al-Qaeda hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They say the expanded financial data would allow anti-terrorist agencies to better understand normal money-flow patterns so they can spot abnormal activity.

 

 

 

September 29th 2010

 

 

 

The move toward a cashless society is accelerating in Sweden as plastic payments become the norm and various government officials, unions, and high-profile Swedes push for a ban on cash, supposedly to reduce robberies. But opposition to the proposal is mounting as well.

Swedish buses have already stopped accepting cash after a series of robberies. Commuters must now pay at a separate store before getting on the bus, or use a cell phone. The next targets for the anti-cash movement are banks and retailers.

When asked about a retail cash ban, Swedish Work Environment Authority (Arbetsmiljverket) boss Mikael Sjberg refused to rule out the possibility. "It just depends on how risky the situation is. We have very extensive possibilities to explore," he told a Swedish labor union publication cited by TheLocal.se, an English news service in Sweden.

 

September 24th 2010

 

 

 

Readers are well aware, that when it comes to big picture economic topics, one of our favorite themes is the gradual disintegration of Shadow Banking (discussed previously in detail hereand here). The main reason for this is that the shadow banking system, while materially larger than traditional bank liabilities ($17 vs $13 trillion), is collapsing at a whopping $4 trillion a year annualized rate. What this implies for credit money, and for the Fed's limited reaction arsenal is hopefully all too clear. Yet as we have a habit of jumping into slightly advanced topics, here is an informative introductory post written by Dave Friedman of Wall St. Cheat Sheet (the first of three) covering some of the fundamentals of this arguably most critical for the great deflation/hyperinflation debate topic

 

September 24th 2010

 

 
Tarpley: 'US tries to destroy Euro'

 

 

China's ownership of the United States government debt has dropped to the lowest level in at least a year, Treasury data showed, in a sign Beijing is increasingly keen to diversify out of US bonds. Webster Tarpley says that China is diversifying and has moved onto the Euro and Yen. He adds that the US was trying to shift the depression onto Europe, trying to destroy the Euro with a speculative attack on Greece, Spain, Portugal, etc.

 

September 8th 2010

 

 

US-Europe scandal may paralyze IMF

 

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) may lose its board of directors amid the escalatingscandal between the United States and Europe over the ways to reform this financial institution. The scandal came as a bombshell, while IMF’s spokesman Gerry Rice said there was nothing to worry about.  

It all started with Europe’s refusal to give some of its 9 seats in the 24-member board of the International Monetary Fund to emerging markets.  It should be noted that the fund’s lending capacity is distributed in compliance with the members’ voting power. Naturally, the European board, which has been dominating since the IMF was founded, will not yield power and thus sabotage the decision made by the leaders of last year’s G20 summit in Pittsburg

 

August 30th 2010

 

 

 

The real unemployment rate is about 20 percent. Foreclosures continue at a near-record pace with one million foreclosures predicted for 2010. We still have two pointless and unending wars despite Obama’s phony “withdrawal” from Iraq, which left 50,000 troops there. Americans are looking at a major tax increase beginning on January 1st 2011 as the Bush tax cuts expire. Illegal aliens are rapidly driving California toward bankruptcy, and millions of Americans will soon be forced to buy overpriced health insurance (or pay a yearly fine) thanks to the Obamacare mandate at a time when consumers need to be spending MORE money since the economy is 70 percent consumer driven. Now, what could cap off the total destruction of the American economy? I know! A STOCK MARKET CRASH!

 

August 27th 2010

 

 
Money As Debt

 

 

August 27th 2010

 

 

US economy enters double dip recession

 

 

August 26th 2010  

 

 

 

The credit crisis appears to have sobered up Wall Street in more ways than one.

A review of drug-test data compiled by drug testing firm Sterling Infosystems Inc., shows that cocaine is losing its favor among investment professionals. What drug is their choice? Marijuana.

Last year, cocaine showed up in 7% of the positive tests at Wall Street firms, down from 16% in 2007, according to Sterling, a New York-based firm that screens about 5,900 employees a year for some 270 finance shops.

 

August 21th 2010


 

 

Wall Street rules the American people

 

 

August 16th 2010

 

 
Stock Market Tremors, Fed Pessimism, US Payments Deficit Presage Dollar Disintegration After Failure of US-UK Blitzkrieg Against Euro; Wall Street In Flight Forward Towards Iran War, Oil Price Spike To Prop Up Greenback
 
 

August 13th 2010  

 

 
If you work to earn money you need to watch this

 

 

August 13th 2010

 

 

Who repealed the Glass-Steagall Act?

 

 

The Glass Steagall Act President Roosevelt signed into law was repealed. See who swept aside the banking firewall protections on the 12th of November 1999.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, is an act of the 106th United States Congress (1999-2001), signed into law by President Clinton which repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, opening up the market among banking companies, securities companies and insurance companies. The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and/or an insurance company.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allowed commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms and insurance companies to consolidate
.

 

August 9th 2010  

 

 

You surely didn't think that the governing elites would let this economic crisis pass without pushing some cockamamie scheme for control. Well, here is the cloud no bigger than a man's hand, a revival of a 60-year-old idea of a global paper currency to fix what ails us.

The IMF study that calls for this is by Reza Moghadam of the Strategy, Policy, and Review Department, "in collaboration with the Finance, Legal, Monetary and Capital Markets, Research and Statistics Departments, and consultation with the Area Departments." In other words, this paper shouldn't be ignored.

It's a long-term plan, but the plan has the unmistakable stamp of Keynes: "A global currency, bancor, issued by a global central bank would be designed as a stable store of value that is not tied exclusively to the conditions of any particular economy.... The global central bank could serve as a lender of last resort, providing needed systemic liquidity in the event of adverse shocks and more automatically than at present."

 

August 7th 2010  

 

 
PETE STARK: - The Federal Government can do most anything in this country

 

 

August 4th 2010  


 

 

Perspectives of Moral Political Economy

 

 

July  28th, 2010


 

 
 

The news that a mystery bank has just pawned the family jewels gave traders a jolt – nervous about the sudden transfer of almost 20pc of the world's annual gold production and the possibility of a sell-off.

In a tiny footnote in its annual report, the bank disclosed its unusually large holding of gold, compared with nothing the year before. The disclosure was a large factor in the correction of the gold price this week, which fell below $1,200 for the first time in more than a month.
 

July  14th, 2010 


 

 

 

Recently we were again witness to three gold market takedowns. The first was engineered just prior to and into gold and silver options expiration. Then prior to the ETF GLD gold option expiry and the last manipulative attack commenced just prior to the dreadful unemployment housing and inventory statistics. This sort of action began in 1988 with the signing of the Executive Order by President Ronald Reagan entitled the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets,” ostensibly created to neutralize events such as the October 1987 collapse of the US stock market. Needless to say, that was not the real intention of the creation of such an order. As it has turned out the Treasury and the N.Y. Fed manipulates markets 24/7 worldwide, and they have a particular interest in the suppression of gold and silver prices; they being the antitheist of the US dollar. It should be noted that there were several times that the US Treasury and the privately owned Fed manipulated gold and silver prior to August 1988. We have found in 50 plus years of tracing this manipulative activity by the US government that it happens over and over again. There is no doubt in our minds that a great deal of what is done by government in gold and silver is done by the commercials, who privy to inside information go along for the ride. In the options operation prices are driven down for Comex options as well as GLD options, so that they expire out of the money and as well the perpetrators can cover some of their short positions. This is not difficult to execute, because other traders see what is going on and they get involved as well making the tasks easier.

 

July  10th, 2010 


 
 

 
Carbon Currency: A New Beginning for Technocracy?