Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Edward Snowden: "This country is worth dying for"

Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.  - Edward Snowden
Since the mainstream media, as directed by the Government and corporate entities who control the flow of news, is smearing Edward Snowden as a traitor and are flooding all of the news outlets with outright lies, I wanted to publish a follow-up open Q&A held by The Guardian  and Glenn Greenwald.  I've posted some of the most "piercing" answers from Snowden, including this one about Obama, which summarizes exactly what went through my mind about Obama after his first 100 days:
 Obama's campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge.
 Here's a sample of some other quotes from Snowden, with the link to the Q&A at the end:

"I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash."

[Note:  think about the potential for the abuse of private information for political purposes by the Party in the White House with access to all this information.  Think about how J. Edgar Hoover or Nixon would have abused this.  Oh wait, the IRS under Obama has been abusing this, as has the Justice Department/Eric Holder]

"Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history."

"due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as "incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications"

And his coup de grace:
it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.
 Here's the article:  LINK

FYI, one of the ranking Congressional Republicans smeared Snowden as being a high school drop-out.  That's incorrect.  He does in fact have a GED. However, here's a sampling of some famous  high school dropouts:

Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein (later returned), John D. Rockefeller, Walt Disney, Colonel Sanders, Charles Dickens (one of my favorite authors), Ray Kroc (McDonald's).

41 comments:

  1. Washington Is Insane

    Paul Craig Roberts

    In the 21st century the two hundred year-old propaganda that the American people control their government has been completely shattered. Both the Bush and Obama regimes have made it unmistakenly clear that the American people don’t even influence, much less control, the government. As far as Washington is concerned, the people are nothing but chaff in the wind.

    http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/06/17/washington-is-insane-paul-craig-roberts/

    ReplyDelete
  2. And a tremendous list of notables with BK's could be added to that!

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  3. If Snowden is considered a traitor, when what about our elected leaders who over the decades years have gotten us to this financial condition and maybe, maybe have given away the 8000 tonnes of gold (maybe Snowden should have tapped into those files to see whats happening).

    Personally I would rather see profiling at airports and for nsa and start getting away from PC and spend time and money on where the problems and more than probably cause are. And that does not mean every Tom, Dick or Mohamed.

    Willie Sutton would never have robbed a lemonade stand. You focus on where the action is likely to be.

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  4. Macro swings in markets are confounding even the veterans.

    Stan Druckenmiller, a one-time chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management, says that investing is becoming harder for him, “because the importance of my skills is receding”. According to an interview with Goldman Sachs GS -0.12% on Zerohedge, Druckenmiller, who famously “broke the Bank of England” with George Soros when they shorted British pound sterling in 1992, said:

    “My strength is economic forecasting, but that only works in free markets, when markets are smarter than people. That’s how I started. I watched the stock market, how equities reacted to change in levels of economic activity and I could understand how price signals worked and how to forecast them. Today, all these price signals are compromised and I’m seriously questioning whether I have any competitive advantage left.”
    http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/06/18/stan-druckenmiller-do-i-have-any-competitive-advantage-left/

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  5. Edward Snowden is “Heroic” Says David Stockman
    He tells Aaron Task in the accompanying video that Edward Snowden, the former CIA contractor who disclosed the NSA surveillance program, is “heroic” and “has done a great service to alert everybody in this country about the absurd lengths to which all of this has gone, to the degree to which the Constitution itself is imperiled.”

    Stockman says he was not aware of the NSA surveillance program, which he sees as an extremely overzealous response to actual security risks.

    “In one recent month 93 billion communications were surveilled or looked at in some form or another,” says Stockman. “I think there are a couple of hundred jihadists in the world of maybe a couple of thousand at most.”
    "The Patriot Act needs to be repealed. The national security apparatus needs to be dramatically shrunk. We need to get back to the idea that if you’re going to interfere in private communications you need a warrant with specific reasons."
    http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/edward-snowden-heroic-says-david-stockman-150758788.html?

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  6. Iranian Rial Currency Targeted For Destruction

    Effective July 1st, the United States has authorized new sanctions directly targeting the already-devalued Iranian rial with penalties for transacting or holding the currency outside of Iran. This represents the first time that the U.S. has focused specifically on the Iranian monetary unit itself and the ninth set of sanctions President Barack Obama has imposed against Iran.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/06/17/government-of-worlds-reserve-currency-targets-iranian-rial/

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  7. Sadly a hero like Snowden is tarred and feathered by a traitorous government and media......

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  8. SEC Uses HFT Firm-Designed Tool To Find That HFT Doesn't Cause Flash Crashes

    Just when one thought the SEC has hit rock bottom in stupidity, corruption and porn-addiction terms, to paraphrase the beloved Dennis Gartman, it whips out a shovel and starts digging.

    Today's case in point: a report by the agency that Mary Schapiro made into Wall Street's punching bag (and whose legacy her Morgan Stanley-friendly replacement is set to perpetuate) according to which "unexplained rapid price drops in single stocks have generally been triggered by human error, not nefarious trading activity or high-speed trading algorithms gone wild, an official at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Tuesday."

    Not HFT-driven flash crashes you say? Reuters reports:

    "What we are seeing is the result of sloppiness, combined with a lack of checks and balances," Greg Berman [formerly of RiskMetrics] said at a Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association conference. "In this day and age, there should be no excuse for these types of mistakes, especially considering the significant negative impact that these events have on investor confidence."



    Most rapid price spikes are caused by old fashioned human mistakes, such as "fat finger" errors, where a trader may accidentally add an extra zero to an order, or by portfolio managers accidentally requesting a large order be immediately executed rather than meted out in a managed flow, Berman said.



    "Contrary to public speculation, these types of events do not seem to triggered by proprietary high-speed algorithms, by robots gone wild, or by excessive order cancellations."

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-18/sec-uses-hft-firm-designed-tool-find-hft-doesnt-cause-flash-crashes

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  9. Dave, do you know why the open interests of gold and silver diverge? The open interest of gold keeps sliding but that of silver keeps increasing.

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  10. We've turned into a house of ill repute. We need more Snowden's, bottom line MSM get you're collective heads out of your asses. I understand a Job is a job, without a free Country there is no job.

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  11. I notice that the account holders in Citibank are gearing up to bail out the silver market. I wonder if the account holders in Citibank have noticed. i draw your attention to two extracts:

    Jim Willie - "My best German source told me that D-Bank is going into failure very very soon.....Barclay's, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank -- all gonna die in a huge round that will eclipse Lehman & Fannie & AIG it will be global watch a Japanese bank join them post this if you wish."

    Bix Weir - "The past few years of silver smashing has been all about letting JP Morgan extract themselves from that Silver short hot potato. That’s why the CFTC has not filed charges against them (yet) for silver manipulation. That’s why the banking cabal has sat on the price of silver this whole time. That’s why Citibank added $7.5B in OTC silver shorts."

    So Citibank not a player in silver has just gone short $7.5B before a "bail in" through an OTC derivative, which of course are not part of the bail ins but the cause. Can't bail in a two way contract no, no, no. But can suddenly decide to diversify out of your normal f/x business into silver just before you go belly up. All we need is for confirmation that Barclay's Bank, Deutsch Bank and Bank of Tokyo have diversified their risk portfolio's into OTC silver shorts and we have a pattern emerging.

    Notice how these banks are all Rothschild f/x banks which dominate the Western f/x markets. Barclay's, Deutsche, Citibank so the addition to this list has to be the Bank of Tokyo which dominates in this market. Bank of Tokyo has the added advantage of having a huge deposit base in the US so the Japs can get a double big wet bite out of the American public.

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    Replies
    1. Bix Weir...holy crap, dude.

      I'm fairly certain that individual sits on his rooftop daily, naked with the exception of a Cape, a Sword and a Cockring on, waiting for the Rapture.

      Take what that crazy SOB says with a big chunk of Kosher Salt.

      Delete
  12. what's peculiar is our President has spent time discussing how better we are than waterboarding, but not droning I guess.

    We stand for rights-yet we are intruding more than ever.
    Bit by bit, piece by piece.

    I'll pay my money and take my chances.

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  13. "When I think back on all the crap I learned in High School, it's a wonder I can think at all."

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  14. "A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand." - Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957)

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  15. An open letter from the Turkish Hayat TV, to be closed down because it broadcasted Taksim


    Hayat TV to close down

    Hayat TV, a progressive Turkish TV channel of the working people, the youth, women and the intellectuals is facing closure.

    We believe this is a blow to people’s freedom of information.

    The decision for the closure is made by the broadcasting regulator RTÜK, Radio & Television High Commission with the pretext that Hayat TV has no licence.

    This is not true.

    Hayat TV has been broadcasting since 21 March 2007 by ofcom license via TURKSAT satellite. But a recent change in broadcasting rules via TURKSAT requires broadcasters to obtain a RTÜK license to be able to broadcast via satellite.

    Our application for a RTÜK license has been submitted and pending for a decision. We have taken all the necessary steps and RTÜK agreed that we could carry on broadcasting as it is until a RTÜK license is granted.

    However, RTÜK is now making an arbitrary decision to close down our channel because of, we believe, our broadcast of recent protests in Istanbul and across Turkey.

    http://blogs.euobserver.com/debeuf/2013/06/13/an-open-letter-from-the-turkish-hayat-tv-to-be-closed-down-because-it-broadcasted-taksim/

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  16. Loved the comment about Snowden being referd to as a traitor by Dickless cheney as "one of the highest honors you can bestow on someone" That's Priceless. I would like to refer to all these politicians criticizing this hero as "scum" but I wouldn't want to insult the colonies of bacteria inhabiting the rim of my toilet bowl.
    Living in the NYC metro area We're privied to hearing Peter King's blathering and ramblings probably more than most and it's absoulutely amazing how much fear mongering comes out of this mans pie hole.

    Ken

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  17. Junk Soup: UBS Unloaded Rotten Securities on Leipzig

    An investigation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has revealed for the first time the methods with which the Swiss investment bank UBS sought to palm off bad debt securities on German municipalities. It succeeded in Leipzig.

    The American banker couldn’t even pronounce the name of his German client when he appeared for the interview on the morning of Sept. 20, 2012: Kommunale Wasserwerke Leipzig, quite a tongue twister for a Wall Street man. But it wouldn’t make much difference, he reasoned, because hardly anyone in America was likely to have heard of it before.

    By the afternoon of the next day, after undergoing 12 hours of questioning by the American financial regulatory agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), John Simon* knew he was mistaken. SEC enforcement division lawyer Andrew H. Feller was in fact very well informed, after having read through emails and call logs, and he knew whom Simon had met in New York, London and South Africa. The SEC attorney could even pronounce the name of the city of Leipzig’s water utility relatively well.

    Feller had spent two years investigating the methods Simon had used to develop risky deals involving water treatment plants in the eastern German state of Saxony for UBS, a major Swiss bank. In the end, Leipzig faced potential losses of €300 million ($400 million), joining the ranks of many German municipalities that had lost vast sums of money in complex Wall Street deals.
    Were City Managers Duped?

    Until now, it was widely felt that local politicians and the managers of their municipal operations often had only themselves to blame. With a mixture of naïveté and greed, they had bought financial products of which they understood neither the names nor the risks they were taking by making those investments.

    It is now emerging that international bankers developed aggressive strategies to dispose of toxic securities by selling them to German municipalities. It appears the banks deliberately targeted inexperienced provincial managers and sold them bad deals from which only the banks could profit.
    http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/probe-shows-how-ubs-targeted-junk-securities-at-german-cities-a-906176.html

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  18. I too would like to know why the gold and silver o/i is diverging...
    Any thoughts?

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    Replies
    1. I am still holding out of the thesis that the longs in silver are really the Chinese government. It could only be a sovereign who could withstand so much pain and still remain in the silver game. China at one time (around 1990) had in excess of 300 million oz of silver stored away. It is quite logical that the Chinese secretly loaned their hoard to the USA as the American above ground silver was running out.
      One answer - Harvey Organ.

      It is also possible that China (like Germany) are asking for their metal back and the USA said no. Thus they are trying to get their metal back by waiting patiently and standing for as much silver as they can on each major delivery month at both the Comex and at the LBMA.

      China went along with the scheme because they really wanted gold at lower prices, knowing full well the USA was manipulating precious metals lower. China, in order to become the new reserve currency of the world, would need to purchase as much gold as they could to satisfy their populace as well as increase official reserves. The plan may have worked quite well for them.

      Delete
  19. Undeniably, the question of where is inflation depends on which inflation one is looking for and the time span for measuring it. If one considers airfares cross the Atlantic, then prices have risen by more than 100% since 2011. If one is interested in the same airfares during the past three months, then the rate of increase is very small.

    Where is inflation?

    Likewise, if one is interested in crude oil prices since early 2009, then the overall increase is 133%; if one is interested in the rate of increase of crude oil prices for the past year, then it is 16%. Similarly, if one is interested in the price of soybeans since early 2009, then it is 72%; for the past year, it is 9.3%. For corn, the overall price increase since 2009 is 66%, and 9% for the past year.

    If we omit groupings and use money, which buys every product and service, as a measure of inflation, then the rate of growth of US M1 money supply has been 12% in the past year.

    Where is growth? The answer is totally disappointing. Trillions of dollars in new money and near-zero interest rates combined with trillions of dollars in fiscal deficits failed to bring about economic growth. Average real growth in the US during 2009-2012 was 0.8% per year; in the euro-zone a negative 0.4% per year; and in Japan 0.15% per year.

    The spectacular stock market boom underway is fueled purely by the Fed's massive money printing and has no connect to the real economy; the average return on stocks at about 20% a year is pure redistribution of wealth as it far exceeds the real return of the economy at about 0.8% a year.

    The dismal growth performance shows the deep inefficiencies of the Fed's policies. A simple truth is growth and employment need real capital; Fed's money printing and near-zero interest rates have not made real capital more abundant. Will the fall in real per capita income be reversed through more of the Fed's money creation? This is what is promised by the Fed. Money creation is a panacea to all diseases and is the path to economic prosperity, says the US Federal Reserve. So then must be looting and counterfeiting.

    A central banker can be as arrogant as they come and as obstinate as an ass. The Fed will keep printing trillions of dollars and forcing near-zero interest rates till the end of the world. The question of "where is inflation?" will have the usual answer: there is none.

    Undeclared inflation will encourage borrowers to step up their borrowing. Borrowers are favored by near-zero interest rates, high true inflation, and by defaulting as usual on monumental loans. It is a free for all: grab as much as you can. As has become fully admitted, the Fed will buy all failing loans. It is wealth redistribution via the Fed's money printing.


    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GECON-01-190613.html

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  20. "What Is Bernanke So Afraid Of?"

    On CNBC and all the channels that cover business, we have person after person after person, buy side, sell side, upside, downside:

    How is the economy? Economy is great.
    What about stocks? You got to buy them.
    What if they break? You have to buy the dips.
    What's wrong with the economy? I don't hear these people saying anything is wrong with the economy.

    So what's wrong, Ben? Why can't we get out of crisis management mode?



    There's always going to be something.

    ...

    Why don't these people kick the tires?

    They take a press release from the Federal Reserve and they think it was written by God.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-19/rick-santelli-rages-what-bernanke-so-afraid

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  21. State Launches inaugural Nevada Housing Stability Index
    Posted: Jun 19, 2013 8:41 AM PST Updated: Jun 19, 2013 8:41 AM PST

    From the State of Nevada Department of Business & Industry:

    The Department of Business and Industry has released its inaugural Nevada Housing Stability Index report for the first quarter of 2013. The index is intended to monitor the overall health of the statewide Nevada housing market and provide a barometer of market stability.

    The index, developed by Applied Analysis, will be published quarterly and is funded by the Housing and Data Index Project, a joint initiative of the Department of Business and Industry and the Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies at UNLV.

    The index is comprised of 12 independent components such as underwater loan percentages, housing turnover rates, affordability ratios and foreclosure volumes. Each measure is weighted based on relevance and importance to the overall market's performance. The individual components and composite index is assigned a grade based on a 4.0 grade point average (GPA), with a "C" grade representing average quality.

    First quarter findings:
    • Stability in the market continued to improve from the prior year trending from a D grade in 2012 to a D+.
    • Concerns about stability remain given that the state leads the nation in both price appreciation and mortgage holder delinquency.
    • Areas experiencing the greatest level of improvement on a year-over-year basis include foreclosure volumes, distressed sales volumes and differential between new and resale closing prices.
    • With only 1.3 months of effective inventory, general availability in the market is trending negatively. Combined with elevated foreclosure inventory, upward pressure on pricing may be unsustainable.
    • Nearly 6 in 10 closings are taking place with cash buyers.

    The Nevada Housing Stability Index can be downloaded from the Department's website at business.nv.gov/News_Media/Publications

    [A lot of us here know we went the other direction: from a D to a F-. We know that there is a housing bubble cause homes are being sold $190,000 more than they are worth. There's a condo section nearby - upstair/downstair condo "slim boxes" with 10 or more to a row. Only worth $40,000 but are going for $150,000. Didn't know compress cardboard was worth so much.]

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  22. The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis
    It's long been suspected that ratings agencies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's helped trigger the meltdown. A new trove of embarrassing documents shows how they did it

    What about the ratings agencies?

    That's what "they" always say about the financial crisis and the teeming rat's nest of corruption it left behind. Everybody else got plenty of blame: the greed-fattened banks, the sleeping regulators, the unscrupulous mortgage hucksters like spray-tanned Countrywide ex-CEO Angelo Mozilo.

    But what about the ratings agencies? Isn't it true that almost none of the fraud that's swallowed Wall Street in the past decade could have taken place without companies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's rubber-stamping it? Aren't they guilty, too?

    Man, are they ever. And a lot more than even the least generous of us suspected.

    Thanks to a mountain of evidence gathered for a pair of major lawsuits, documents that for the most part have never been seen by the general public, we now know that the nation's two top ratings companies, Moody's and S&P, have for many years been shameless tools for the banks, willing to give just about anything a high rating in exchange for cash.

    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-last-mystery-of-the-financial-crisis-20130619?print=true

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  23. Dave, do you think our politicians have brains? What's the point of keeping gold and silver prices artificially low? If you keep the prices artificially low, you need to supply a lot of physical to satisfy the demand. Alasdair Macleod's article tells us that western government are supplying a lot of gold now. Don't they worry that one day their vaults will be empty? To be honest, I have some shorts on silver because I don't think I can fight the trend. However, I wonder what's the purpose of these desperate attacks?

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    Replies
    1. Here's the deal - I hope a lot of readers/commenters see this:

      JP Morgan is net long gold on the Comex and probably net long silver. It's the first time in 13 years this has occurred. There's a reason for it. A long-time Wall Street colleague of mine and I both believe they are getting long for themselves AND for the purposes of attempting to replace as much of the leased Fed/ECB gold as possible. Silver is self-explanatory (3x beta to gold).

      The point here is that they will shake the tree as hard as they can to buy as much gold as they can before the market forces the metals higher. When the metals start to move, they will move quickly and they will leave everyone not in them already in the dust.

      I am not unique to this view. John Hathaway, William Kaye, James Turk all believe the same. Also, for the record, Gartman is lifting his leg on gold but he did not sell down his position yesterday.

      Delete
    2. The bigger, more frightening question to contemplate is, why all of a sudden has JPM decided to get long the metals now? What's coming at us in the system?

      All I can say is that it has to be a lot worse than what hit in 2008.

      Delete
    3. Hi Dave, Just watched Greg Hunters interview with Aftershock author Bob Wiedemer. I hope you will see this and watch,according to Wiedemer gold gets to $6-$7K.

      http://usawatchdog.com/

      Delete
  24. Pictures From a Monetization

    Granted, the printing is not yet showing up as a pure monetary inflation, but primarily as asset bubbles in financial paper and selective items subject to secular monopoly market and speculative pressure: certain categories of consumer good, medicine, health care, financial fees, perks and bonuses, high end housing and collectibles, and political contributions by large organizations and the one percent for example.

    That is because of the 'trickle down' approach of money distribution which the Fed, and the their partners in the government, are pursuing. It manifests in the declining velocity of money, slack aggregate demand, and the stagnant median wage. It has some of the appearance of financial feudalism in which capital substitutes for land.

    The games being played in the markets are apparent, heavy-handed, and beneath contempt, operating under the rationale of a 'necessary perception management.' Necessary for whom? It is officially sanctioned theft, pure and simple, however one wishes to rationalize it. The 'new normal' is really the new awful, with a decidedly oligarchic taint.

    Please be aware that all the two line charts below are using two scales, one on the left for monetary base and one on the right for the other. The purpose here was to show how the monetary base compares in change, even if the change is not linear, or one for one.

    The Fed will not stop expanding its monetary base anytime soon. The economy is on life support.

    They can monetize all the private and public debt that they can, but it will not have a positive effect until that money reaches the real economy. For now it is flowing heavily to support a corrupt financial system that has not been reformed, to sustain speculation, and to further enrich those who made outsized gains during the credit bubble.

    The government is as culpable and more than the Fed in this. This applies to the Congress, the Administration, and the regulators.
    http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2013/06/pictures-from-monetization.html

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  25. Alas, My "Foreign Affairs" Review of Alan Blinder's Superb "After the Music Stopped" is a "Premium Article"

    Despite its many virtues, however, the book paints an overly optimistic portrait of the state of the U.S. economy. “More than four years after Lehman Brothers went under,” Blinder writes, “policy makers are still nursing a frail economy back to health.” But the U.S. economy is worse than “frail,” and there are few signs that it is being nursed “back to health.” Most economists claim at least one silver lining in the economic downturn: that it was not as bad as the Great Depression. Up until recently, I agreed; I even took to calling the episode “the Lesser Depression.” I now suspect that I was wrong. Compare the ongoing crisis to the Great Depression, and there is hardly anything “lesser” about it. The European economy today stands in a worse position compared to 2007 than it did in 1935 compared to 1929, when the Great Depression began. And it looks as if the U.S. economy, when all is said and done, will have faced certainly one lost decade, and perhaps even two.
    The U.S. economy has enjoyed a recovery only in the sense that conditions have not gotten worse.

    http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/06/alas-my-foreign-affairs-review-of-alan-blinders-superb-after-the-music-stopped-is-a-premium-article.html

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  26. Noam Chomsky: Obama Is ‘Running Biggest Terrorist Operation That Exists’

    Continuing his streak of fiercely criticizing President Obama’s foreign policy and civil liberties record, pre-eminent left-wing scholar Noam Chomsky told GRITtv that this administration is “dedicated to increasing terrorism” throughout the world via its own “terrorist” drone strikes in foreign lands.

    Speaking with GRITtv host Laura Flanders about the National Security Agency snooping scandal, Chomsky remarked that “the Obama administration is dedicated to increasing terrorism; it’s doing it all over the world.”

    He continued: “Obama is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists, maybe in history: the drone assassination campaigns, which are just part of it [...] All of these operations, they are terror operations.” Drone strikes are “terror” because, Chomsky said, the attacks have the effect of “terrorizing” locals.”

    “You are generating more terrorist operations,” Chomsky pointedly said. “People have a reaction” when they lose a loved one to an American drone strike, he added. “They don’t say, ‘Fine, I don’t care if my cousin was murdered.’ They become what we call terrorists. This is completely understood from the highest level.”

    http://www.mediaite.com/tv/noam-chomsky-obama-is-running-biggest-terrorist-operation-that-exists/

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  27. “Criminal” Paper Derivative Selling Used To Crush Gold Market


    Barron: “I’ve done some calling around to key contacts around the world regarding this gold and silver smash, and again it has to do entirely with the paper market, with options, and with large entities utilizing derivatives.

    What’s being done here is criminal, but there won’t be any investigation by the SEC, CFTC or the powers that be because they are sanctioning it. King World News often talks about a ‘War going on in the gold and silver markets,’ and people should remember that this is in fact a war. It’s a war to destroy the psychology of people invested in this sector. To destroy them mentally....


    http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/6/21_Criminal_Paper_Derivative_Selling_Used_To_Crush_Gold_Market.html

    It's the new improved version of Room 101.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Michael JacksonFriday, 21 June, 2013

    Assessing Deflation Risks for the U.S. Economy

    "Despite multiple rounds of quantitative easing (QE), the U.S. inflation rate has been plunging, with growth in the headline PCE deflator having dropped to a reading never seen outside a recessionary context. It is now at just 0.7%, well below the Fed's official 2% target announced in January 2012. Earlier, the Fed's unofficial focus was on core PCE inflation, which has now dropped to the lowest reading on record.

    Meanwhile, inflation expectations have also declined, falling back to levels last seen well before the launch of “QEternity.” Even though Fed Chairman Bernanke suggested “tapering” could begin by year-end, for now QE is continuing unabated."

    http://www.businesscycle.com/ecri-reports-indexes/report-summary-details/economic-cycle-research-assessing-deflation-risks-for-the-u-s-economy

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  29. Obama called "war criminal" & "hypocrite of the century" in Irish Parliament

    http://youtu.be/QIMucHfUMyg

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  30. By now we all know that specific groups were selected by the IRS for “additional scrutiny” based on their potential, imagined or actual political leanings.

    There are a boatload of questions still out there.

    - Sarah Hall Ingram was in charge of the non-profit office at the IRS during the 2009 to 2012 timeframe.

    - her bonuses were SO large (over $25k) during 2010 to 2012 that these bonuses are REQUIRED BY LAW to be approved by the President.

    - the IRS IG started their investigation sometime around June 2012.

    - Ingram was moved to the Office in charge of the IRS Obamacare enforcement.

    - we don’t know when she was moved, but we do know this:

    – the fall guy that was forced to resign as the head of the non-profit office took the position May 8 2013. That is not a misprint. He had been in office 6 days when the report was released. Granted he was deputy during the 2010 to 2012 timeframe , but he was not in charge like she was.

    When did she move? Who moved her? Why was she given these large bonuses? What is the criteria for bonuses?

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  31. One has to love it as this "High School dropout" makes all the doctorates look like the fools they are.

    GO SNOWDEN!

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  32. World Bank Corruption Deceit and Greed

    Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to John Taylor in 1816: “And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

    The World Bank was constructed to lend money to the developing countries of the world. It was designed to help put an end to world poverty. A whistleblower by the name of Karen Hudes, former Chief Council for the World Bank for 12 years, claims the organization is filled with corruption, deceit, and greed.

    Ms. Hudes says that the World Bank, in collusion with major banking institutions all over the world, is funneling the money to unscrupulous individuals, as well as to the executives of the bank itself. The bulk of funds never reaches the people for which it is intended.

    Ms. Hudes, a lawyer herself, witnessed securities fraud. Full disclosure of 180 billion dollars-worth of bonds was never made to investors. It was her job to ensure financial statements for investors were accurate. She followed the corporate ladder, and reported her findings to the audit committee. When she received no response, she took her information to the U.S. Treasury Department. Once again, she was ignored. When she went to the United States Congress, Senator Richard Luger, Republican from Indiana, sent three letters to the World Bank, asking them not to fire her. The promptly fired her.

    She says that it became obvious to her that Congress had no knowledge of the World Bank’s operations. Three additional Congressmen asked the General Accounting Office, the GAO, to investigate.

    She says she was attempting to unveil a massive cover-up, that went all the way to Congress, and included 188 ministers of finance around the world. She claims the result of all the corruption will be a currency war.

    Ms. Hudes says there are several World Bank whistleblowers, including the United Kingdom, Mexico, India, and Ethiopia, and that they are all reporting the same information. The institution is corrupt from top to bottom.

    She was asked by Abby Martin of ‘RT’ if she had gone to the financial publications. Ms. Hudes said she had, but she discovered they were owned by one major conglomerate, which includes nearly all the financial institutions in the world. She stated that the aim of the Banking community is to control the people of the world and their finances.

    She told of the ‘Federal Institute of Technology, in Zurich, Switzerland, where three mathematicians looked at corporate data from 43,000 trans-national companies. Through complicated maneuvers, they increased their financial power 10 fold, and own 40 percent of the assets of all companies traded on the financial markets of the world, and 60 percent of the earnings yearly. In many countries, the money being printed has no value.

    Ms. Martin said these institutions are obviously laundering money, and hiding much of it in ‘offshore’ accounts. There is no oversight for most of the institutions, including the World Bank, and that they control geopolitics by controlling many of the world’s governments.

    http://guardianlv.com/2013/06/world-bank-corruption-deceit-and-greed/

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  33. The NYU Scandal Has the Same Cast of Characters as NYSE-Grasso-Gate

    Three well known figures on Wall Street find themselves entangled in NYU’s mortgage-gate, exactly one decade after their roles were scrutinized in the biggest New York Stock Exchange scandal since the Senate hearings of the early 1930s exposed the shady dealings of its members.

    In 2003, Wall Street super-lawyer, Martin Lipton, was advising his friend, Richard (Dick) Grasso, CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, on a massive compensation plan while simultaneously serving as counsel to the Stock Exchange’s committee on governance and as Chairman of its Legal Advisory Committee.

    Joining Lipton in the unpleasant public spotlight was Kenneth Langone, Chair of the Exchange’s Compensation Committee, which had awarded Grasso $130 million in compensation and benefits for the three-year period of 2000 through 2002. That sum represented 99 percent of the Exchange’s net income for those three years according to then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in a court filing.

    Members of the Compensation Committee included executives of the very firms regulated by the Exchange who had excellent reasons to want to curry favors with Grasso. Laurence D. Fink, CEO of the money management firm, BlackRock, was one of the members of the Compensation Committee. At the time this was playing out, the New York Stock Exchange was a not-for-profit institution subsidized by the taxpayer.

    A few days before Labor Day in 2003 (timed to dampen media reaction), the Board of the Exchange issued a press release indicating it had paid a lump sum of $139.5 million to Grasso. Shortly thereafter, the Board learned that Grasso was owed another $48 million under his 2003 contract, which Lipton, according to an internal review, said “had been earned by Grasso and was legally his.”

    http://wallstreetonparade.com/2013/06/the-nyu-scandal-has-the-same-cast-of-characters-as-nyse-grasso-gate/

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  34. Inside Anglo: the secret recordings
    Exclusive: Tapes reveal the lies and deception that led to the bank bailout

    Paul Williams Special Correspondent – 24 June 2013
    TAPE RECORDINGS from inside doomed Anglo Irish Bank reveal for the first time how the bank's top executives lied to the Government about the true extent of losses at the institution.

    The astonishing tapes show senior manager John Bowe, who had been involved in negotiations with the Central Bank, laughing and joking as he tells another senior manager, Peter Fitzgerald, how Anglo was luring the State into giving it billions of euro.

    Mr Fitzgerald had not been involved in the negotiations with the Central Bank and has confirmed he was unaware of any strategy or intention to mislead the authorities. Mr Bowe, in a statement last night, categorically denied that he had misled the Central Bank.

    The audio recordings are from the bank's own internal telephone system and date from the heart of the financial crisis that brought the State to its knees in September 2008.

    Anglo itself was within days of complete meltdown – and in the years ahead would eat up €30bn of taxpayer money. Mr Bowe speaks about how the State had been asked for €7bn to bail out Anglo – but Anglo's negotiators knew all along this was not enough to save the bank.

    The plan was that once the State began the flow of money, it would be unable to stop.

    Mr Bowe is asked by Mr Fitzgerald how they had come up with the figure of €7bn. He laughs as he is taped saying: "Just, as Drummer (then-CEO David Drumm) would say, 'picked it out of my arse'.

    http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/inside-anglo-the-secret-recordings-29366837.html

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  35. "He Was A Real Journalist And He's IN PRISON Because Of Our Constitutional Law Professor President

    http://youtu.be/C1VKttS7qlQ

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  36. In 2008, candidate Obama decreed that…

    “often
    the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in
    government is an existing government employee committed to public
    integrity and willing to speak out,” and he hailed whistleblowing as:

    “acts
    of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often
    save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled as they
    have been during the Bush administration.”

    ReplyDelete