The Cost Of Doing Business

JPMorgan is Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson's second-largest contributor over the last two-plus decades, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which analyzes campaign giving from companies' employees and their political action committees since 1989. The same is true for the committee's top Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby, and its second-ranking Democrat, Sen. Jack Reed.  (link below)

I have been arguing since way before it has become vogue in the media that the economy is a lot weaker than the Fed/Obama people would have us believe.  Especially when measured on a real, inflation-adjusted basis.  A big part of the GDP equation is retail sales/consumerism.  In fact, during the past decade, debt-fueled consumption has been 70% of the GDP in this country.  Pathetic if you ask me.   

Retail sales for May were reported today and they showed a decline vs. April.  More troubling, but consistent with the "report positive news then revise it downward the following month when no one is paying attention" policy our Government, April retail sales were revised to down .2% from the originally reported gain of .1%.   The credit-card fueled consumer bounce has died and another leg of the economy is broken:  LINK  See the pattern here:  a decline on a decline, month to month.

The big news of the day, and that which is nicely deflecting attention from our tanking economy and the ongoing collapse in Europe, is Jamie Dimon's testimony in front of the Senate Banking Committee on JP Morgan's massive derivatives loss.  For anyone who naively thinks that Jamie Dimon will be properly brought to justice, or that the Senate intends to take any action beyond publicly grilling the boozehound who runs JPM, you better read this:  LINK

Like most Americans, if you are too lazy or complacent to read about the truth, here's the Cliff Notes to that article:  JP Morgan owns the key players on the Senate Banking Committee (see the opening quote).  Here's a nice chart from zerohedge which details the big money beneficiaries in the Senate:  LINK

As you can see, and as I've been arguing for a long time, party affiliation makes no difference.  It's irrelevant.  "Show me the money" is what counts.  For all you liberals/Democrats who idolize Chuck Schumer, please take note that he's by far the biggest ankle-grabber for the Too Big To Fail Banks.

Bottom line:  democracy is dead and the big banks will continue to rape and pillage our system until it collapses.  Those monetary donations are nothing more than the cost of doing business for Wall Street.  If you ask me, the whores in Congress are selling out way too cheaply and anyone who thinks it makes a difference as to whether Romney or Obama is the next President is an idiot.  Obama has received a record amount of whore money from Wall Street and he had the nerve to campaign on a populist, I'm for the people platform.  Everyone forgot to nail him down on exactly who his "people" are.

Finally, I wanted to share a must-watch speech given in the European Parliament by Nigel Farage.  Mr. Farage is one of the UK representatives on the EP, which is the parliamentary body of the EU.  Mr. Farage is known (and hated by elitists) for his outspoken criticism of EU system policies which are being implemented in tragic failure to address systemic disaster in Europe - the same tragic policies and disasters we are experiencing in the U.S. 

Please watch this video and wonder how awesome it would be if the U.S. Congress had someone who had the balls to speak up like this - of course, any Congressman who preached the Truth would never get elected: