"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
- John Swinton, who was the guest of honour at a banquet, a journalist on the New York Times, in 1880.
This is a bombshell.though somewhat dated. Kind of heavy political stuff for this site, though. Frankly, I'm kind of surprised. And yet, blackmail, murder are but the substance of politiks. Why do you think Jim Willie lives in Costa Rica? Thought about relocating,Dave ?, along with record numbers of others American expatriates. i certainly am. might as well take advantage of the Denver real estate bubble.
BANGALORE/NEW DELHI: The government will soon ask all its employees to stop using Google's Gmail for official communication, a move intended to increase security of confidential government information after revelations of widespread cyber-spying by the US.
A senior official in the ministry of communications and information technology said the government plans to send a formal notification to nearly 5 lakh employees barring them from email service providers such as Gmail that have their servers in the US, and instead asking them to stick to the official email service provided by India's National Informatics Centre.
"Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside. Currently, we are looking to address this in the government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data," said J Satyanarayana, secretary in the department of electronics and information technology."
America Totally Discredited — Paul Craig Roberts August 30, 2013 |
America Totally Discredited
Paul Craig Roberts
A foolish President Obama and moronic Secretary of State Kerry have handed the United States government its worst diplomatic defeat in history and destroyed the credibility of the Office of the President, the Department of State, and the entire executive branch. All are exposed as a collection of third-rate liars.
Intoxicated with hubris from past successful lies and deceptions used to destroy Iraq and Libya, Obama thought the US “superpower,” the “exceptional” and “indispensable” country, could pull it off again, this time in Syria.
But the rest of the world has learned to avoid Washington’s rush to war when there is no evidence. A foolish Obama was pushed far out on the limb by an incompetent and untrustworthy National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, and the pack of neoconservatives that support her, and the British Parliament cut the limb off.
What kind of fool would put himself in that vulnerable position?
The long-term abuse of the US dollar’s reserve currency role by the Federal Reserve and US Treasury, the never-ending issuance of new debt and printing of dollars to finance it, the focus of US economic policy on bailing out the “banks too big to fail” regardless of the adverse impact on domestic and world economies and holders of US Treasury debt, the awaiting political crisis of the unresolved deficit and debt ceiling limit that will greet Congress’ return to Washington in September, collapsing job opportunities and a sinking economy all together present the government in Washington with a crisis that is too large for the available intelligence, knowledge, and courage to master.
When the proverbial hits the fan, the incompetent and corrupt Federal Reserve and the incompetent and corrupt US Treasury will have no more credibility than Obama and John Kerry.
LARRY SUMMERS GAMBLED & LOST $1.8 BILLION OF HARVARD’S MONEY – IMAGINE HOW MUCH HE CAN LOSE AS FED CHAIRMAN
The thought of this asswipe being the most powerful man on earth should scare the living shit out of every thinking person in America. That narrows it down to a few thousand TBP readers. His awful administration of Harvard from 2001 to 2006 lost the school $1.8 billion of school operating funds as he gambled on interest rate swaps and lost. It’s nice to know he has such a fine grasp on interest rates. He will be controlling them for the world in a few short months.
This guy’s resume is like a freaking train wreck. He was one of the architects of repealing Glass Steagall with his butt buddies Bob Rubin and Alan Greenspan. He single-handedly stopped Brooksley Born from putting any regulation into effect over the burgeoning derivatives market in the early 1990s. Thank God letting Wall Street banks combine with investment firms and then allowing them to issue a quadrillion dollars worth of derivatives of mass destruction didn’t have any adverse consequences on our economy.
This is the same boob who was the architect of the $800 billion Obama Porkulus Program, Cash for Clunkers, and the first time home buyer bullshit credit. He is a Keynesian disciple and is more beholden to the Wall Street criminals than Bernanke or Greenspan ever were. The dude was worth $400,000 in the mid 1990′s and now has a net worth as high as $31 million. Since he left the Obama Whitehouse he has been getting paid big bucks by insolvent Too Big to Trust Citigroup. Him and Bobby Rubin must sit up in the executive dining room eating aborted fetus souffle and laughing about all the good old times.
LLCs Offer Secrecy To Foreign Criminal Groups That Want To Launder Money Through Miami Real Estate
South Florida Business Journal:
Alvaro Lopez Tardon needed to launder tens of millions of dollars in proceeds from selling thousands of kilograms of cocaine trafficked from South America to Europe, so he turned to Miami condos, federal authorities say.
Lopez Tardon, the alleged leader of the Los Miami drug gang from Spain, is facing a trial in Miami on charges of laundering $26.4 million in drug money into real and personal property here. Among the items were 14 condo units bought from 2001 through 2006. All but two were purchased directly from developers – including four units in The Mark on Brickell and seven units in One Miami – all affiliates of The Related Group. Most were held in limited liability companies (LLCs), including a penthouse unit at South Beach’s Continuum, where Lopez Tardon resided.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with LLCs, which are common in real estate, but a Business Journal investigation has found they create an easy way to launder money. A typical scenario: Ill-gotten cash is put in a foreign bank, an LLC is formed to buy property and the money is supplied in a cashier’s check or wired in for a cash closing.
The Miami Association of Realtors says lawyers and title agents – not developers – are the ones that are supposed to ensure sources of funds are legitimate.
Some experts, however, worry that cash deals in general are creating a new condo bubble.
Precious Metals Will Rise as the Economic Recovery Disintegrates
So, now that it looks like we have reached the top of the housing-rental market, the big players are getting out by packaging garbage and selling it to poor unworthy slobs. Not only are these big players selling at the top, they will more than likely be shorting these RBS- Rental Backed Securities all way down to the bottom.
Funny how markets never seem to learn from past mistakes.
By Zhang Jie, Deputy editor of "Global Finance", expert specially engaged by China Gold Association.
China suffered from gold lease in the past
World gold leasing started in the 1980s, when the gold price rose to over 800 US$ per ounce. Gold leasing at that time effectively combated the price of gold. More strategically, the gold price affected national creditworthiness. A lower gold price suppressed the Soviet Union and China after 1989 when they were sanctioned by the West, in addition to the sanctions imposed on South Africa for apartheid. As all three were heavily dependent on gold to import necessities, the gold price had become a protection for foreign credit in these countries. In the 1990s, the introduction of gold leasing effectively lowered the price of gold. Low gold and oil prices have caused great difficulties for China, the former Soviet Union and South Africa who were in dire need of foreign currencies. As a result, these countries had to sell resources or core assets very cheaply, which now have to be bought back more expensively. The West thus gained extensively by suppressing gold prices.
Gold credit is even more critical in today’s world where risk of global crises, war and conflicts increases. If a global full-scale conflict were to develop, the globalised financial system would collapse and trust in national currencies would vanish completely. Only liquid assets, of which the best liquid asset is gold, can establish trust between nations. Consequently, the trust in gold will become critical; gold can become a powerful weapon in the world credit game. Crude oil and other commodities that are difficult to store can't be used as trust equivalents. Gold being the leading candidate is inevitable, thus led to gold leasing becoming the tool and mean of the world credit game.
Gold leasing to control credit
If the Fed were to engage in gold leasing, the lessee is the key in this process. In the bull market during the past several years, gold leasing agencies which shorted gold may incurred huge losses. Although these losses exist, we don't see them because it's possible for entities such as Lehman Brothers to manipulate their accounts. However, it is unlikely for the Fed to be involved directly in the shorting of gold reserves and manipulation of accounts, but it is entirely possible for the Fed to engage in gold leasing on a huge scale, and the related lessee could thus bear a huge loss. If the loss is exposed, even a large institution could collapse. This could create a crisis as bad as the one caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Germany and the IMF should see the signs of such a crisis that would have a serious impact on the creditworthiness of countries and agencies.
"Everyone got used to the largest officially announced U.S. national debt of 16 trillion dollars. Moreover, despite the dire predictions, the global economy seems to be more or less stable, and recently liberal media have been happily reporting GDP growth in the United States and the European Union. However, it is not all that great.
Let's start with statistics. A number of researchers have conducted studies that indicate that the official U.S. statistics in nearly all areas - from unemployment to price fluctuations - is blatantly distorted and paints a positive picture that is very different from the reality.
the U.S. is in a state of a default.
The fact that this assumption is not far from the truth is evidenced by the situation in American cities. Hundreds of cities are not able to pay their bills and fulfill social obligations. According to the World Bank, this may lead to their bankruptcy, putting the country on the brink of a sovereign default in the next three years.
As of August 1, 2013, 12 U.S. cities have declared themselves bankrupt and insolvent. Nearly 350 small and medium-sized cities in the country and 113 municipal districts of large cities, particularly New York, are close to doing that. In mid-July, the City Hall of the former automotive capital of the United States Detroit has filed for bankruptcy. The city's debt amounts to 18 billion, of which 9.2 billion are pensions and medical.
The overall deficit of the pension fund in the U.S. is $2.7 trillion, or 17 percent of GDP. The lack of money in the pension fund, for example, in Illinois is 2.5 times the amount of annual tax revenues, Connecticut - 1.9, Kentucky - 1.4 times.
The largest bankrupt city is currently Stockton, California, with 300,000 thousand residents. The situation in this city can show what will happen to other cities dealing with financial difficulties. The police department was cut by half, and the streets got filled with homeless, drug dealers and gangs of drunk teenagers. This year, 56 murders were recorded in the city, while in New York with the 15 million residents 414 such crimes were registered.
Meanwhile, Stockton, like another bankrupt city of San Bernardino, is located in the richest state of California. What can be said about other states when Los Angeles has a budget deficit of $238 million and prospects of a default in the next year?"
As a matter of fact, the obligation to balance the books is not cast in concrete but rather semi-cast in concrete in the sense that under certain circumstances it may even be permissible to go into the red. For example, there is this whole issue of the spread. The spread is mathematically liked to a financial speculation instrument, namely the Credit default swap. The credit default swap markets are very dangerous because they are not at all transparent and are subject to a kind of oligopolistic system whereby a handful of financial multinationals handle the vast majority of the transactions and the ones gathering the data are private companies linked to these oligopolists. So you could well land up with a bunch of “kings of the spread”, in other words guys with financial tools and very little money actually manipulating the perception of risk, which is precisely what the spread is, via the perceived risk, which is the measure of the CDS since the CDS is like an insurance in the event of payment default. A credit default swap is something that you purchase, just like a car insurance policy or a fire and theft policy on your home, but then you look into it a little more and discover that even if you don’t own any bunds or PTPs, you can nevertheless trade in credit default swaps. These are known as naked credit default swaps. So you can do some major speculation and this is not prohibited, also because the European Union recently began investigating this Credit Default Swap oligopoly. But these are all issues that are not being addressed and are instead delegated to technical experts who tend to have conflicts of interest, typically bankers, while the man in the street never sees what is actually going on! We must somehow break these down and you must also help me with how to represent these things otherwise in the end the citizen goes the way of the Roman who watches the Haruspex gutting the victim and pulling out the entrails, and then saying “in my opinion the harvest was good”. How can you do that? Oh, I was the one that pulled out the entrails! That is the art of haruspicy. The strange thing is that when it comes to too many economic and financial issues, we never dig deeper to establish the whys and wherefores of certain phenomena.
Financial literacy from the very bottom up I am President of Assotag, an association of financial and economic consultants that work with the Italian prosecution service and the courts. As Assotag, a few months ago we launched an initiative regarding the transparency of financial derivatives so any citizen or organisation is free to approach us and ask for help, free of charge, to analyse and assess the derivatives that their municipality, region or province have taken up. Even the municipalities, regions and provinces themselves have taken an interest in this initiative as a way in which to obtain an independent assessment of what they are holding. One of the first to make use of this service was one of the Rome Meetups, which shows that there is a certain awareness within the more active organisations of the need to understand how these things work. Indeed, just last week the Head Librarian of a small town here in Lombardy asked me to participate in a series of seminars aimed at providing an understanding of economic terms. This is indeed very necessary and this is an appeal to all our citizens to take an interest and to try to understand economic terms because this is essentially a new kind of literacy that is required for democracy.
I think you will like this video. It is an Dutch Iranian guy who calls the NSA to ask if they would be so kind to send him his lost email since they have all....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qrlDGhoI1Q
Sometimes it is good to laugh about it a bit as well...
Detroit Billionaires Get Arena Help as Bankrupt City Suffers
At the 1997 groundbreaking for a 40,000-seat ballpark for Major League Baseball’s Detroit Tigers, Michigan Governor John Engler said the stadium would symbolize the city’s renewal.
Ford Motor Co. (F) Chairman William Clay Ford Jr., whose family owns the National Football League’s Lions, said in 1999 that his new 65,000-seat dome would “showcase the city’s turnaround.”
Now that Detroit has become the biggest U.S. municipality to declare bankruptcy, it’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s turn to tout a comeback spurred by a stadium for a suburban fan base financed with help from city taxpayers. Snyder approved a plan to put public money toward a $450 million downtown arena on behalf of the the National Hockey League’s Red Wings and their billionaire owners.
The 18,000-seat complex and a planned $200 million private development nearby would transform a blighted area into one with apartments, offices, restaurants and shops, says Snyder, who controls the city through an appointed manager. Critics call the plan a giveaway to Mike Ilitch, owner of the Red Wings, the Tigers and the Little Caesar’s pizza chain.
“It’s going to be very tough, in my opinion, to make the case that the city of Detroit should go into bankruptcy so they can simply go in and just raid pensions or give money to the Red Wings,” said the Rev. Charles Williams II, senior pastor at Historic King Solomon Baptist Church in the city. Hockeytown Agonistes
Yet six days after the Detroit’s filing, an arm of state’s economic development corporation gave preliminary approval to sell $450 million in tax-exempt bonds to finance a 650,000-square-foot facility to replace Joe Louis Arena, the home of the Red Wings since 1979.
Bipartisan Scorn
However, the state still must take money from programs to make up for cash benefiting the Iliches, said Shikha Dalmia, a senior analyst for the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation, which describes itself as a public-policy think tank promoting free-market economics.
“The left should be crying bloody murder,” Dalmia said. “Why are you diverting money that’s meant for Detroit school children to this guy’s pocket? And the right should be crying about crony capitalism. They could easily have passed another state law which allowed this money to go to fighting crime, or a bazillion other things.”
Obama Has Decided That It Is Safer To Buy Congress Than To Go It Alone — Paul Craig Roberts September 1, 2013 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: craig roberts, | Print This Article Print This Article
Obama Has Decided That It Is Safer To Buy Congress Than To Go It Alone
Paul Craig Roberts
While still claiming dictatorial powers to start a war on his own authority, Obama put his unilateral attack on Syria on hold when he received a letter from more than 160 members of the House of Representatives reminding him that to take the country to war without congressional approval is an impeachable offense and when he saw that no country that could serve as cover for a war crime, not even the puppet British government and the NATO puppet states, would support America’s announced military aggression against Syria.
Obama got away with attacking Libya without an OK from Congress, because he used Washington’s NATO puppets and not US military forces. That ploy let Obama claim that the US was not directly involved.
Now that the lack of cover and the challenge from Congress has caused the would-be tyrant Obama to put on hold his attack on Syria, what can we expect?
Start?.......been that way for alot of us since 2002....it all began with the repo. process in Oct. of 2002, need to "fund" coming war etc.
You have my permission to use the LFSDOUCHE..... as several of my contacts have suggested a wider dist.
I'm a low radar guy....written for a few blogs you are aware of. I don't feel need to project any longer as its the same old song and dance my friend. BTW, I know you know where I live generally but that really all any of my contacts/partners know too.
Keep up the good work, You sound at same point I was at in 2008.....Keep going we need people like you.
Noting a New York Times report that supporting the middle class is being advocated as a policy objective for the Federal Reserve and its new chairman, the New York Sun today makes an editorial observation that is wonderfully ironic in the Keynesian climate of Washington. That is, the middle class in the United States did better not when really smart people were in charge of money creation on a day-to-day basis but when the dollar was defined quite primitively by gold. The Sun's editorial is headlined "The Class-Backed Dollar" and it's posted here:
The span labeled middle class America were years when society was “without extremes of wealth or poverty, a society of broadly shared prosperity, partly because strong unions, a high minimum wage, and a progressive tax system helped limit inequality.” But the odd thing about it — about Mr. Krugman’s column — is that he fails to mention one other feature of the period. The dollar was defined as a matter of law through most of the period as being a 35th of an ounce of gold. Mr. Krugman’s chart shows the American middle class period running from the 1930s right up until the early 1970s. What brought that era to an end? Well stub our toe if it wasn’t the beginning of the period of fiat money. This is the period in which Congress stopped defining the dollar in terms of gold and turned to the concept of fiat money, when the dollar was whatever the Federal Reserve said it was and was, in any event, convertible into but another piece of government issued scrip.
Incredible Tweets from John McCain on Libya and Syria from 2009 and 2011
Earlier today I called John McCain a weapon of mass destruction on Twitter. Little did I know that just moments later he would be caught playing a game of poker on his iPhone during the Senate’s hearing on launching missiles at Syria.
Bill Black: The New York Times is Wowed that Obama’s Six Rubinites Support Larry Summers
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posed from New Economic Perspectives
The Obama administration, for reasons that pass all understanding, has been running a campaign of leaks disparaging one of Obama’s few senior female appointees, Janet Yellen. Her high crimes include not being a protégée Bob Rubin and doing exceptionally well in economic forecasting. Rubin wants the job of Fed Chair to go to his top protégée, Larry Summers. Yellen, as Vice Chair of the Fed stands in the way of Rubin’s ambitions. (Rubin is too toxic to take the Chair directly.) The administration has been leaking primarily to the New York Times’ Binyamin Applebaum. His latest article contains this remarkable statement, without analysis.
“[T]he president’s top economic advisers uniformly support the selection of Mr. Summers. They regard him as a creative thinker and an experienced crisis manager, qualities they value in particular because they expect the Fed may confront difficult choices as it begins to retreat from its six-year-old stimulus campaign.”
The obvious question, except to the NYT, is who the “president’s top economic advisers” are who “uniformly support the selection of Mr. Summers”? There are six such advisers:
1. Gene Sperling (Director, National Economic Counsel) 2. Jason Furman (Chairman, CEA) 3. James Stock (Member, CEA) 4. Jacob Lew (Treasury) 5. Penny Pritzker (Commerce) 6. Sylvia Mathews Burwell (OMB)
Each of Obama’s top economic advisers is a Rubinite. Sperling is one of Rubin and Summers’ closest allies. Furman’s prior job was running the Hamilton Project – created by Rubin to propagate his ideas. Stock is a Rubinite, a colleague of Summers, and the co-author of the article that infamously coined the term “The Great Moderation” (Ben Bernanke popularized, but did not invent, their phrase.) Some “moderation” – to state the case gently he missed the most important economic developments in modern history. Jacob Lew and Furman share the characteristic of being Rubinites and leading architects and proponents of the “Grand Betrayal” (the effort to inflict austerity and cuts in the safety net). Pritzker is a national disgrace. She connected then Senator Obama with Rubin. Her appointment prompted extremely pointed criticisms.
Special report: We all thought Libya had moved on – it has, but into lawlessness and ruin
Libya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi
A little under two years ago, Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, urged British businessmen to begin “packing their suitcases” and to fly to Libya to share in the reconstruction of the country and exploit an anticipated boom in natural resources.
Yet now Libya has almost entirely stopped producing oil as the government loses control of much of the country to militia fighters.
Mutinying security men have taken over oil ports on the Mediterranean and are seeking to sell crude oil on the black market. Ali Zeidan, Libya’s Prime Minister, has threatened to “bomb from the air and the sea” any oil tanker trying to pick up the illicit oil from the oil terminal guards, who are mostly former rebels who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and have been on strike over low pay and alleged government corruption since July.
As world attention focused on the coup in Egypt and the poison gas attack in Syria over the past two months, Libya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi two years ago. Government authority is disintegrating in all parts of the country putting in doubt claims by American, British and French politicians that Nato’s military action in Libya in 2011 was an outstanding example of a successful foreign military intervention which should be repeated in Syria.
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
ReplyDeleteIf I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
- John Swinton, who was the guest of honour at a banquet, a journalist on the New York Times, in 1880.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Swinton_%28journalist%29
This is a bombshell.though somewhat dated. Kind of heavy political stuff for this site, though. Frankly, I'm kind of surprised. And yet, blackmail, murder are but the substance of politiks. Why do you think Jim Willie lives in Costa Rica? Thought about relocating,Dave ?, along with record numbers of others American expatriates. i certainly am. might as well take advantage of the Denver real estate bubble.
ReplyDeleteBANGALORE/NEW DELHI: The government will soon ask all its employees to stop using Google's Gmail for official communication, a move intended to increase security of confidential government information after revelations of widespread cyber-spying by the US.
ReplyDeleteA senior official in the ministry of communications and information technology said the government plans to send a formal notification to nearly 5 lakh employees barring them from email service providers such as Gmail that have their servers in the US, and instead asking them to stick to the official email service provided by India's National Informatics Centre.
"Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside. Currently, we are looking to address this in the government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data," said J Satyanarayana, secretary in the department of electronics and information technology."
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/cyber-spying-fallout-govt-may-restrict-usage-of-googles-gmail-for-employees/articleshow/22149593.cms
That chick is HOT!!!
ReplyDeleteAmerica Totally Discredited — Paul Craig Roberts
ReplyDeleteAugust 30, 2013 |
America Totally Discredited
Paul Craig Roberts
A foolish President Obama and moronic Secretary of State Kerry have handed the United States government its worst diplomatic defeat in history and destroyed the credibility of the Office of the President, the Department of State, and the entire executive branch. All are exposed as a collection of third-rate liars.
Intoxicated with hubris from past successful lies and deceptions used to destroy Iraq and Libya, Obama thought the US “superpower,” the “exceptional” and “indispensable” country, could pull it off again, this time in Syria.
But the rest of the world has learned to avoid Washington’s rush to war when there is no evidence. A foolish Obama was pushed far out on the limb by an incompetent and untrustworthy National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, and the pack of neoconservatives that support her, and the British Parliament cut the limb off.
What kind of fool would put himself in that vulnerable position?
The long-term abuse of the US dollar’s reserve currency role by the Federal Reserve and US Treasury, the never-ending issuance of new debt and printing of dollars to finance it, the focus of US economic policy on bailing out the “banks too big to fail” regardless of the adverse impact on domestic and world economies and holders of US Treasury debt, the awaiting political crisis of the unresolved deficit and debt ceiling limit that will greet Congress’ return to Washington in September, collapsing job opportunities and a sinking economy all together present the government in Washington with a crisis that is too large for the available intelligence, knowledge, and courage to master.
When the proverbial hits the fan, the incompetent and corrupt Federal Reserve and the incompetent and corrupt US Treasury will have no more credibility than Obama and John Kerry.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/08/30/america-totally-discredited-paul-craig-roberts/
LARRY SUMMERS GAMBLED & LOST $1.8 BILLION OF HARVARD’S MONEY – IMAGINE HOW MUCH HE CAN LOSE AS FED CHAIRMAN
ReplyDeleteThe thought of this asswipe being the most powerful man on earth should scare the living shit out of every thinking person in America. That narrows it down to a few thousand TBP readers. His awful administration of Harvard from 2001 to 2006 lost the school $1.8 billion of school operating funds as he gambled on interest rate swaps and lost. It’s nice to know he has such a fine grasp on interest rates. He will be controlling them for the world in a few short months.
This guy’s resume is like a freaking train wreck. He was one of the architects of repealing Glass Steagall with his butt buddies Bob Rubin and Alan Greenspan. He single-handedly stopped Brooksley Born from putting any regulation into effect over the burgeoning derivatives market in the early 1990s. Thank God letting Wall Street banks combine with investment firms and then allowing them to issue a quadrillion dollars worth of derivatives of mass destruction didn’t have any adverse consequences on our economy.
This is the same boob who was the architect of the $800 billion Obama Porkulus Program, Cash for Clunkers, and the first time home buyer bullshit credit. He is a Keynesian disciple and is more beholden to the Wall Street criminals than Bernanke or Greenspan ever were. The dude was worth $400,000 in the mid 1990′s and now has a net worth as high as $31 million. Since he left the Obama Whitehouse he has been getting paid big bucks by insolvent Too Big to Trust Citigroup. Him and Bobby Rubin must sit up in the executive dining room eating aborted fetus souffle and laughing about all the good old times.
http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=59911
LLCs Offer Secrecy To Foreign Criminal Groups That Want To Launder Money Through Miami Real Estate
ReplyDeleteSouth Florida Business Journal:
Alvaro Lopez Tardon needed to launder tens of millions of dollars in proceeds from selling thousands of kilograms of cocaine trafficked from South America to Europe, so he turned to Miami condos, federal authorities say.
Lopez Tardon, the alleged leader of the Los Miami drug gang from Spain, is facing a trial in Miami on charges of laundering $26.4 million in drug money into real and personal property here. Among the items were 14 condo units bought from 2001 through 2006. All but two were purchased directly from developers – including four units in The Mark on Brickell and seven units in One Miami – all affiliates of The Related Group. Most were held in limited liability companies (LLCs), including a penthouse unit at South Beach’s Continuum, where Lopez Tardon resided.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with LLCs, which are common in real estate, but a Business Journal investigation has found they create an easy way to launder money. A typical scenario: Ill-gotten cash is put in a foreign bank, an LLC is formed to buy property and the money is supplied in a cashier’s check or wired in for a cash closing.
The Miami Association of Realtors says lawyers and title agents – not developers – are the ones that are supposed to ensure sources of funds are legitimate.
Some experts, however, worry that cash deals in general are creating a new condo bubble.
http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/print-edition/2013/08/30/llcs-offer-secrecy-to-foreign-criminal.html
I doubt this is the only market or kind of illicit funds being laundered....
Precious Metals Will Rise as the Economic Recovery Disintegrates
ReplyDeleteSo, now that it looks like we have reached the top of the housing-rental market, the big players are getting out by packaging garbage and selling it to poor unworthy slobs. Not only are these big players selling at the top, they will more than likely be shorting these RBS- Rental Backed Securities all way down to the bottom.
Funny how markets never seem to learn from past mistakes.
http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/steve-angelo/precious-metals-rise-economic-recovery-disintegrates
Advantage of a "black puppet" president
ReplyDeletePublished on Aug 31, 2013
The brilliance of having a "black puppet president" is that you can elect him without the risk that he will ever be impeached.
http://youtu.be/DsB2Yvvu53w
Gold Leasing Is A Tool For The Global Credit Game
ReplyDeleteBy Zhang Jie, Deputy editor of "Global Finance", expert specially engaged by China Gold Association.
China suffered from gold lease in the past
World gold leasing started in the 1980s, when the gold price rose to over 800 US$ per ounce. Gold leasing at that time effectively combated the price of gold. More strategically, the gold price affected national creditworthiness. A lower gold price suppressed the Soviet Union and China after 1989 when they were sanctioned by the West, in addition to the sanctions imposed on South Africa for apartheid. As all three were heavily dependent on gold to import necessities, the gold price had become a protection for foreign credit in these countries.
In the 1990s, the introduction of gold leasing effectively lowered the price of gold. Low gold and oil prices have caused great difficulties for China, the former Soviet Union and South Africa who were in dire need of foreign currencies. As a result, these countries had to sell resources or core assets very cheaply, which now have to be bought back more expensively. The West thus gained extensively by suppressing gold prices.
Gold credit is even more critical in today’s world where risk of global crises, war and conflicts increases. If a global full-scale conflict were to develop, the globalised financial system would collapse and trust in national currencies would vanish completely. Only liquid assets, of which the best liquid asset is gold, can establish trust between nations. Consequently, the trust in gold will become critical; gold can become a powerful weapon in the world credit game. Crude oil and other commodities that are difficult to store can't be used as trust equivalents. Gold being the leading candidate is inevitable, thus led to gold leasing becoming the tool and mean of the world credit game.
Gold leasing to control credit
If the Fed were to engage in gold leasing, the lessee is the key in this process. In the bull market during the past several years, gold leasing agencies which shorted gold may incurred huge losses. Although these losses exist, we don't see them because it's possible for entities such as Lehman Brothers to manipulate their accounts. However, it is unlikely for the Fed to be involved directly in the shorting of gold reserves and manipulation of accounts, but it is entirely possible for the Fed to engage in gold leasing on a huge scale, and the related lessee could thus bear a huge loss. If the loss is exposed, even a large institution could collapse. This could create a crisis as bad as the one caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Germany and the IMF should see the signs of such a crisis that would have a serious impact on the creditworthiness of countries and agencies.
http://koosjansen.blogspot.nl/2013/08/gold-leasing-is-tool-for-global-credit.html
old but better translation................
"Everyone got used to the largest officially announced U.S. national debt of 16 trillion dollars. Moreover, despite the dire predictions, the global economy seems to be more or less stable, and recently liberal media have been happily reporting GDP growth in the United States and the European Union. However, it is not all that great.
ReplyDeleteLet's start with statistics. A number of researchers have conducted studies that indicate that the official U.S. statistics in nearly all areas - from unemployment to price fluctuations - is blatantly distorted and paints a positive picture that is very different from the reality.
the U.S. is in a state of a default.
The fact that this assumption is not far from the truth is evidenced by the situation in American cities. Hundreds of cities are not able to pay their bills and fulfill social obligations. According to the World Bank, this may lead to their bankruptcy, putting the country on the brink of a sovereign default in the next three years.
As of August 1, 2013, 12 U.S. cities have declared themselves bankrupt and insolvent. Nearly 350 small and medium-sized cities in the country and 113 municipal districts of large cities, particularly New York, are close to doing that. In mid-July, the City Hall of the former automotive capital of the United States Detroit has filed for bankruptcy. The city's debt amounts to 18 billion, of which 9.2 billion are pensions and medical.
The overall deficit of the pension fund in the U.S. is $2.7 trillion, or 17 percent of GDP. The lack of money in the pension fund, for example, in Illinois is 2.5 times the amount of annual tax revenues, Connecticut - 1.9, Kentucky - 1.4 times.
The largest bankrupt city is currently Stockton, California, with 300,000 thousand residents. The situation in this city can show what will happen to other cities dealing with financial difficulties. The police department was cut by half, and the streets got filled with homeless, drug dealers and gangs of drunk teenagers. This year, 56 murders were recorded in the city, while in New York with the 15 million residents 414 such crimes were registered.
Meanwhile, Stockton, like another bankrupt city of San Bernardino, is located in the richest state of California. What can be said about other states when Los Angeles has a budget deficit of $238 million and prospects of a default in the next year?"
http://english.pravda.ru/business/finance/22-08-2013/125468-usa_national_debt-0/
Passaparola - the nonexistent recovery
ReplyDeleteAs a matter of fact, the obligation to balance the books is not cast in concrete but rather semi-cast in concrete in the sense that under certain circumstances it may even be permissible to go into the red.
For example, there is this whole issue of the spread. The spread is mathematically liked to a financial speculation instrument, namely the Credit default swap. The credit default swap markets are very dangerous because they are not at all transparent and are subject to a kind of oligopolistic system whereby a handful of financial multinationals handle the vast majority of the transactions and the ones gathering the data are private companies linked to these oligopolists.
So you could well land up with a bunch of “kings of the spread”, in other words guys with financial tools and very little money actually manipulating the perception of risk, which is precisely what the spread is, via the perceived risk, which is the measure of the CDS since the CDS is like an insurance in the event of payment default.
A credit default swap is something that you purchase, just like a car insurance policy or a fire and theft policy on your home, but then you look into it a little more and discover that even if you don’t own any bunds or PTPs, you can nevertheless trade in credit default swaps. These are known as naked credit default swaps.
So you can do some major speculation and this is not prohibited, also because the European Union recently began investigating this Credit Default Swap oligopoly.
But these are all issues that are not being addressed and are instead delegated to technical experts who tend to have conflicts of interest, typically bankers, while the man in the street never sees what is actually going on! We must somehow break these down and you must also help me with how to represent these things otherwise in the end the citizen goes the way of the Roman who watches the Haruspex gutting the victim and pulling out the entrails, and then saying “in my opinion the harvest was good”.
How can you do that? Oh, I was the one that pulled out the entrails! That is the art of haruspicy.
The strange thing is that when it comes to too many economic and financial issues, we never dig deeper to establish the whys and wherefores of certain phenomena.
Financial literacy from the very bottom up
I am President of Assotag, an association of financial and economic consultants that work with the Italian prosecution service and the courts. As Assotag, a few months ago we launched an initiative regarding the transparency of financial derivatives so any citizen or organisation is free to approach us and ask for help, free of charge, to analyse and assess the derivatives that their municipality, region or province have taken up. Even the municipalities, regions and provinces themselves have taken an interest in this initiative as a way in which to obtain an independent assessment of what they are holding. One of the first to make use of this service was one of the Rome Meetups, which shows that there is a certain awareness within the more active organisations of the need to understand how these things work. Indeed, just last week the Head Librarian of a small town here in Lombardy asked me to participate in a series of seminars aimed at providing an understanding of economic terms.
This is indeed very necessary and this is an appeal to all our citizens to take an interest and to try to understand economic terms because this is essentially a new kind of literacy that is required for democracy.
http://www.beppegrillo.it/en/2013/08/passaparola_the_nonexistent_re_1.html
Hi Dave,
ReplyDeleteI think you will like this video. It is an Dutch Iranian guy who calls the NSA to ask if they would be so kind to send him his lost email since they have all....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qrlDGhoI1Q
Sometimes it is good to laugh about it a bit as well...
Detroit Billionaires Get Arena Help as Bankrupt City Suffers
ReplyDeleteAt the 1997 groundbreaking for a 40,000-seat ballpark for Major League Baseball’s Detroit Tigers, Michigan Governor John Engler said the stadium would symbolize the city’s renewal.
Ford Motor Co. (F) Chairman William Clay Ford Jr., whose family owns the National Football League’s Lions, said in 1999 that his new 65,000-seat dome would “showcase the city’s turnaround.”
Now that Detroit has become the biggest U.S. municipality to declare bankruptcy, it’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s turn to tout a comeback spurred by a stadium for a suburban fan base financed with help from city taxpayers. Snyder approved a plan to put public money toward a $450 million downtown arena on behalf of the the National Hockey League’s Red Wings and their billionaire owners.
The 18,000-seat complex and a planned $200 million private development nearby would transform a blighted area into one with apartments, offices, restaurants and shops, says Snyder, who controls the city through an appointed manager. Critics call the plan a giveaway to Mike Ilitch, owner of the Red Wings, the Tigers and the Little Caesar’s pizza chain.
“It’s going to be very tough, in my opinion, to make the case that the city of Detroit should go into bankruptcy so they can simply go in and just raid pensions or give money to the Red Wings,” said the Rev. Charles Williams II, senior pastor at Historic King Solomon Baptist Church in the city.
Hockeytown Agonistes
Yet six days after the Detroit’s filing, an arm of state’s economic development corporation gave preliminary approval to sell $450 million in tax-exempt bonds to finance a 650,000-square-foot facility to replace Joe Louis Arena, the home of the Red Wings since 1979.
Bipartisan Scorn
However, the state still must take money from programs to make up for cash benefiting the Iliches, said Shikha Dalmia, a senior analyst for the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation, which describes itself as a public-policy think tank promoting free-market economics.
“The left should be crying bloody murder,” Dalmia said. “Why are you diverting money that’s meant for Detroit school children to this guy’s pocket? And the right should be crying about crony capitalism. They could easily have passed another state law which allowed this money to go to fighting crime, or a bazillion other things.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-03/detroit-billionaires-get-hockey-arena-as-bankrupt-city-suffers.html
Obama Has Decided That It Is Safer To Buy Congress Than To Go It Alone — Paul Craig Roberts
ReplyDeleteSeptember 1, 2013 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: craig roberts, | Print This Article Print This Article
Obama Has Decided That It Is Safer To Buy Congress Than To Go It Alone
Paul Craig Roberts
While still claiming dictatorial powers to start a war on his own authority, Obama put his unilateral attack on Syria on hold when he received a letter from more than 160 members of the House of Representatives reminding him that to take the country to war without congressional approval is an impeachable offense and when he saw that no country that could serve as cover for a war crime, not even the puppet British government and the NATO puppet states, would support America’s announced military aggression against Syria.
Obama got away with attacking Libya without an OK from Congress, because he used Washington’s NATO puppets and not US military forces. That ploy let Obama claim that the US was not directly involved.
Now that the lack of cover and the challenge from Congress has caused the would-be tyrant Obama to put on hold his attack on Syria, what can we expect?
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/09/01/obama-has-decided-that-it-is-safer-to-buy-congress-than-to-go-it-alone-paul-craig-roberts/
dave-
ReplyDeleteStart?.......been that way for alot of us since 2002....it all began with the repo. process in Oct. of 2002, need to "fund" coming war etc.
You have my permission to use the LFSDOUCHE..... as several of my contacts have suggested a wider dist.
I'm a low radar guy....written for a few blogs you are aware of. I don't feel need to project any longer as its the same old song and dance my friend. BTW, I know you know where I live generally but that really all any of my contacts/partners know too.
Keep up the good work, You sound at same point I was at in 2008.....Keep going we need people like you.
New York Sun: The class-backed dollar
ReplyDeleteNoting a New York Times report that supporting the middle class is being advocated as a policy objective for the Federal Reserve and its new chairman, the New York Sun today makes an editorial observation that is wonderfully ironic in the Keynesian climate of Washington. That is, the middle class in the United States did better not when really smart people were in charge of money creation on a day-to-day basis but when the dollar was defined quite primitively by gold. The Sun's editorial is headlined "The Class-Backed Dollar" and it's posted here:
The span labeled middle class America were years when society was “without extremes of wealth or poverty, a society of broadly shared prosperity, partly because strong unions, a high minimum wage, and a progressive tax system helped limit inequality.” But the odd thing about it — about Mr. Krugman’s column — is that he fails to mention one other feature of the period. The dollar was defined as a matter of law through most of the period as being a 35th of an ounce of gold. Mr. Krugman’s chart shows the American middle class period running from the 1930s right up until the early 1970s.
What brought that era to an end? Well stub our toe if it wasn’t the beginning of the period of fiat money. This is the period in which Congress stopped defining the dollar in terms of gold and turned to the concept of fiat money, when the dollar was whatever the Federal Reserve said it was and was, in any event, convertible into but another piece of government issued scrip.
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-class-backed-dollar/88395/
http://www.gata.org/node/12972
Incredible Tweets from John McCain on Libya and Syria from 2009 and 2011
ReplyDeleteEarlier today I called John McCain a weapon of mass destruction on Twitter. Little did I know that just moments later he would be caught playing a game of poker on his iPhone during the Senate’s hearing on launching missiles at Syria.
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/09/03/incredible-tweets-from-john-mccain-on-libya-and-syria-from-2009-and-2011/
Bill Black: The New York Times is Wowed that Obama’s Six Rubinites Support Larry Summers
ReplyDeleteBy Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posed from New Economic Perspectives
The Obama administration, for reasons that pass all understanding, has been running a campaign of leaks disparaging one of Obama’s few senior female appointees, Janet Yellen. Her high crimes include not being a protégée Bob Rubin and doing exceptionally well in economic forecasting. Rubin wants the job of Fed Chair to go to his top protégée, Larry Summers. Yellen, as Vice Chair of the Fed stands in the way of Rubin’s ambitions. (Rubin is too toxic to take the Chair directly.) The administration has been leaking primarily to the New York Times’ Binyamin Applebaum. His latest article contains this remarkable statement, without analysis.
“[T]he president’s top economic advisers uniformly support the selection of Mr. Summers. They regard him as a creative thinker and an experienced crisis manager, qualities they value in particular because they expect the Fed may confront difficult choices as it begins to retreat from its six-year-old stimulus campaign.”
The obvious question, except to the NYT, is who the “president’s top economic advisers” are who “uniformly support the selection of Mr. Summers”? There are six such advisers:
1. Gene Sperling (Director, National Economic Counsel)
2. Jason Furman (Chairman, CEA)
3. James Stock (Member, CEA)
4. Jacob Lew (Treasury)
5. Penny Pritzker (Commerce)
6. Sylvia Mathews Burwell (OMB)
Each of Obama’s top economic advisers is a Rubinite. Sperling is one of Rubin and Summers’ closest allies. Furman’s prior job was running the Hamilton Project – created by Rubin to propagate his ideas. Stock is a Rubinite, a colleague of Summers, and the co-author of the article that infamously coined the term “The Great Moderation” (Ben Bernanke popularized, but did not invent, their phrase.) Some “moderation” – to state the case gently he missed the most important economic developments in modern history. Jacob Lew and Furman share the characteristic of being Rubinites and leading architects and proponents of the “Grand Betrayal” (the effort to inflict austerity and cuts in the safety net). Pritzker is a national disgrace. She connected then Senator Obama with Rubin. Her appointment prompted extremely pointed criticisms.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/09/bill-black-the-new-york-times-is-wowed-that-obamas-six-rubinites-support-larry-summers.html
Special report: We all thought Libya had moved on – it has, but into lawlessness and ruin
ReplyDeleteLibya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi
A little under two years ago, Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, urged British businessmen to begin “packing their suitcases” and to fly to Libya to share in the reconstruction of the country and exploit an anticipated boom in natural resources.
Yet now Libya has almost entirely stopped producing oil as the government loses control of much of the country to militia fighters.
Mutinying security men have taken over oil ports on the Mediterranean and are seeking to sell crude oil on the black market. Ali Zeidan, Libya’s Prime Minister, has threatened to “bomb from the air and the sea” any oil tanker trying to pick up the illicit oil from the oil terminal guards, who are mostly former rebels who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and have been on strike over low pay and alleged government corruption since July.
As world attention focused on the coup in Egypt and the poison gas attack in Syria over the past two months, Libya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi two years ago. Government authority is disintegrating in all parts of the country putting in doubt claims by American, British and French politicians that Nato’s military action in Libya in 2011 was an outstanding example of a successful foreign military intervention which should be repeated in Syria.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/special-report-we-all-thought-libya-had-moved-on--it-has-but-into-lawlessness-and-ruin-8797041.html