Read that quote a few times to let the full force of the absurdity of it sink in. It actually took me a few minutes get over the glaring and pathetic grammatical error. I'm guessing there wasn't a teleprompter set up in front of the El Hefe when he was snuggled up on that couch with the group of cackling moronic ladies of "The View." There's a lot of questions that still persist about exactly who Barack is and where that rock is from under which he crawled into politics, but for now don't let your kids see that statement from the President unless you intend to give them a grammar lesson.JP Morgan is one of the best managed banks there is. Jamie Dimon, the head of it, is one of the smartest bankers we got. - Barack Obama on "The View," May 14, 2012
As far as being a "best" managed bank, I guess that could be the case if you overlook the hundreds of billions of taxpayer money that has been used to keep JP Morgan from collapsing. And I guess that could be the case if JP Morgan was not currently embroiled in several Government investigations that will ultimately result in tens of billions of settlement payments.
Currently the Justice Department has six ongoing investigations of JP Morgan. You can read about them here: LINK. And I'm sure there would be several SEC investigations into JP Morgan's accounting fraud if Obama's newly appointed head of the SEC - Mary Jo White - wasn't one of JP Morgan's chief defense litigators before she was plucked from Debevoise Plimpton in order to make sure that JP Morgan has a solid line of defense inside the Government.
And I guess you could say that JP Morgan did a great job avoiding a much bigger settlement payment related to its extremely fraudulent mortgage activities when it appeared as if the bank would skate away with an $11 billion settlement - a mere fraction of the money it made during the housing boom and bust. But now there's complications surrounding that potential settlement and the number could grow even bigger.
Taking all of this in to account - and again, overlooking Obama's inability to use proper English - I'm not really sure how he can possibly conclude that JP Morgan is "best" managed - or even well-managed. And is Jamie Dimon smart? I dunno. You give me a couple hundred billion in taxpayer money and freedom from any fear of criminal prosecution and I'll do things with that money to create profitability would make make me look like a financial Einstein.
I know one thing we can conclude with 100% certainty is that JP Morgan pays Barack Obama very well to speak highly of the firm. If you watch this video - which was sent to me by a reader who produced it - you'll see that JP Morgan has been Obama's 4th largest money donor and the #1 bank donor:
The beast named Jamie Dimon, of whom President Obama speaks so glowingly, is a liar, perjurer, criminal and, worst of all, a taxpayer thief.
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/images/sp_en_6.gif)
Have We Reached Peak Federal Reserve?
ReplyDeleteAs the Fed-induced asset bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate follow the inevitable Supernova track to implosion, that we've reached Peak Federal Reserve will be obvious--in hindsight.
Billionaires and political lackeys alike have been falling all over themselves in the rush to praise the Federal Reserve's unprecedented monetary intervention since 2008. That billionaires and political hacks, apparatchiks and toadies cannot laud the Fed's Cargo Cult enough is no surprise: the billionaires and the government that feeds them both gained handsomely from the Fed's policies:
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct13/peak-Fed10-13.html
Knee-Slapper: Ex-NSA/CIA chief Hayden jokes of putting Snowden on kill list
ReplyDeleteCIA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden should be on a hit list rather than a list of names recently nominated for a Prize for Freedom of Thought. That was a joke made by former NSA director Michael Hayden. But his humor has sparked a wave of criticism. He told RT’s Marina Portnaya he was misunderstood.
http://youtu.be/4mjm02PMNCY
Any chance one of the cackling morons asked who "we" is?
ReplyDeleteLOL - "who be 'we,' bitch?"
DeleteAs much as those of us who truly understand the true facts of what has gotten us into this mess would like to have these people properly judged and sentenced for their crimes of theft, fraud and treason and then executed, I would much prefer that once convicted for their crimes against this nation and the world that they be put into dark cells and provided just enough sustenance and recreation and made to watch videos of the destruction they have caused to make the remaining days of their lives as miserable as possible so they will have to feel at least an iota of the misery they have inflicted on the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteobama(spelled with lower case 'O' on purpose) is an intellectual with no common sense. The guy has been over his head since day one. The people that voted him in don't know anything except, he will be better because he's not George Bush. This entire sham has been orchestrated in order to bust America and eliminate the middle class. Just read agenda 21 available online. America is being brought down in order to create global economic parity. What we will end up with are two teir societies of haves and have nots. Make sure you have some P.M.'s in your portfolio. Soon your wealth will be measured in ounces, not dollars.
ReplyDeleteHaving PM is important however what does it say on the masthead of this web-site?
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong I am fully aware of the situation(s) that have caused our currency to be treated like toilet paper however you ever wonder why there is no consequences for those actions?
It's called power and control. Without those two things the system ceases to exist. I have my own stash of pm and not located at my home but I don't have too much because if it truly comes to that you are on a limited time-frame, at best, to use it. Forty years of prolific spending tied to absolutely nothing is going to have and end game, of that I am certain.
But back to power and control. End game mentality suggests that a lack of control means no power. The people who control the money game have not spent this amount of time amassing power and control to watch it vanish into chaos overnight. At some point they will have no choice, events will consume the foundation of that power and control. If that is allowed to happen....and that is a BIG if, do you really think they will want to deal with another sub-set of the rapidly diminishing middle-class? Specifically I speak to the growing number of hard metal owners, there are enough out there now that it would create an entirely different set of socio-economic rules and class.
It's an end-game for a reason. It takes a long time to occur. Thinking that just because you have hard currency you are safe and ready for it to happen just shows the short-sighted beliefs that got all of us into this problem in the first place. This is a game of musical chairs however 95% of us will not have a chair regardless of steps taken to minimize the impact of the coming financial storm.
One point about this fantasy-land driven economy is that the same people that rely on credit cards, debit cards, electronic banking, etc will be the same people looking for the person who stands out in the crowd after the first one or two hiccups before the real event horizon happens. Don't be that person.
I agree that PM's are not a panacea. The metals are at best are an insurance policy that "if" we have a currency collapse. That being said I also agree that the "powers that be" are not going to roll over and just go away. The first attempt to preserve their monopoly will be manufactured events say like Syria. If control by force fails, a negotiaion involving the east , ie. BRIC nations will ensue. Better to keep some control then none at all. The insurance of p.m.'s allows you some way of particapating when fiat currency will most likely be revalued. The debts of all western nations are so huge that default and or revalueation is eventual certanty. As for a time line, who knows 6 months or 5 years ? I'm living everyday to the fullest but remain highly aware of what is evolving around us. All the best to you and yours.
DeleteYou'll find this pretty funny:
ReplyDeleteMatt Taibbi and Sam Seder Skewer JP Morgan’s Dimon & CNBC’s Bubblehead Maria Bartiromo
tinyurl.com/pu6goro
-- Eric Dubin
Hank Greenberg’s narcissistic and deluded defense of Jamie Dimon
DeleteThis Hank Greenberg column in the Journal on Tuesday is more shameless than your average WSJ op-ed. And that’s saying something.
Greenberg, whose too-big-to-fail company played a critical role—perhaps the critical role—in goosing the housing bubble by acting as a sort of dump for Wall Street’s mortgage-securities risk, comes to the defense of JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, who’s been getting buried lately under a slew of fines, investigations, and settlements for fraud by his bank. Greenberg thinks Dimon is being persecuted like Eliot Spitzer supposedly persecuted him in the mid-aughts.
And Greenberg has a case of oligarch empathy for Dimon—the kind that allows him to once again, despite all the evidence, claim to have been wrongly martyred (emphasis mine):
Displaying an astonishing lack of knowledge of the insurance industry, Mr. Spitzer, by threatening to criminally indict the company, succeeded in separating the industry’s most accomplished group of executives from a company that insured virtually every business sector across 130 countries. The replacement management took steps that made AIG vulnerable to the world-wide financial collapse of 2008. That provided a set of federal regulators with the opportunity to seize tens of billions of dollars from AIG’s shareholders.
Nearly all of Mr. Spitzer’s original allegations of accounting irregularities have been discarded or quietly dismissed by him and his successors. The remaining claims—on which no damages are sought—involve the accounting for reinsurance transactions that were not material to AIG. The real scandal, of course, is the fact that the attorney general brought this lawsuit and continues to prosecute it even today.
Bust out your hip waders. It’s deep here.
But poor Hank Greenberg’s clean as a whistle, don’t you know? Just ask his pal Maria Bartiromo, who also can’t stomach the idea that Jamie Dimon’s cash-generating machine is corrupt and that he should be fired, despite its ever-longer list of wrongdoing and alleged wrongdoing.
Greenberg’s deeply deluded. Which, of course, makes him right at home on the WSJ edit page and on CNBC.
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/hank_greenberg_deploys_deluded.php
Would Anonymous care to enlarge on the comments about hard metal owners being a new social class and needing new rules Also the "standing out from the crowd "? Thanks in advance.
ReplyDeleteThanks Anonymous. PMs give some comfort but best to keep a low profile and take care when it's time to realise their new value. All the best and good luck.
DeleteJust for the record, over the past couple of weeks I have been receiving an unusually large number of hostile comments. I don't mind a little hostility and comments with opposing views, and I always try to post everything that is submitted. I had to put the "moderator" on several years ago when someone from Boulder, CO - of all places - started freely posting malicious attacks on me and my family.
ReplyDeleteAt any rate, I post as much as I can as long as the comments contain some modicum of value and are not full of rhetoric, venon, hatred or malicious personal attacks. In addition, while I do not intend this comment section to be a debate forum and I don't have time to engage in lengthy debate, I welcome commenters who want to debate amongst each other and will post all debate comments that are within my wide boundaries of discretion.
Having said all of that, I do believe that the spike in hostile comments directed at me and at the precious metals sector - as well as the shooting event in DC and the guy setting himself on fire in DC and the motorcycle/car beating in NYC - reflects the fact that the population at large is starting heat up to a point of boiling over.
Let's hope that the citizens of this country stop "turning the other cheek" and start resisting the increasingly blatant and pervasive corruption in NYC and DC that reaches all the way into the Oval Office.
Nobody remembers WD Gann today in chasing after the latest bunch of self-serving 'experts' out there peddling their wares.
ReplyDeleteThis guy here says we are days away from a shocking breakout of inflation (amount not specified, but he uses commodity prices) based on Gann's 60-year cycle.
He also uses his own price indexes put together from inputting newspaper and magazine legacy data going back generations.
supposedly this rise will run into about April/2014.
vid is only a few minutes, a few days old & a preview of his much longer 60 min vid Oct 3. has GSCI index charts & his own proprietary indexes.
http://www.gannglobal.com/historic-trading-range-in-commodities-resolves/
The “Hyper-meritocracy” – an Oxymoron Led by Criminal Morons
ReplyDeleteThis column was prompted by William Galston’s review of Tyler Cowen’s new book Average is Over. Galston’s column worries about the huge, permanent underclass that Cowen envisions will grow in the United States. I write to challenge Cowen’s assumption that winners will prevail through a process of “hyper-meritocracy.” Cowen’s embrace of Social Darwinism assumes that the winners have a selective advantage that arises from “merit” – which Cowen conflates with the ability to create wealth. This is passing strange as we are still suffering from an orgy of wealth destruction led by the “winners.” The people who grew wealthiest were often the people must responsible for the largest destruction of wealth in history. In this first column I show that it is the most anti-meritocratic system. We do not live in a “winner-take-all” Nation. We increasingly live in a “cheater-take-all” system.
The large Enron-era frauds were all accounting control frauds.
Worse, when cheaters prosper market forces become perverse because of the “Gresham’s” dynamic in which bad ethics drives good ethics out of the markets and professions.
George Akerlof explained this in his most famous article on “Lemons” in 1970.
“[D]ishonest dealings tend to drive honest dealings out of the market. The cost of dishonesty, therefore, lies not only in the amount by which the purchaser is cheated; the cost also must include the loss incurred from driving legitimate business out of existence.”
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/10/hyper-meritocracy-oxymoron-led-criminal-morons.html
This is the problem..
So Obama has said his own version of "You're doin' a heck of a job Brownie."
ReplyDeleteI'm just suprised it took this long to come out (or maybe I wasn't looking as hard as I could have)
Stupid is as stupid does, just look at Congress (but only do so on an empty stomach)
There Is No Shutdown … For Non-essential Federal Employees, Only Citizens
ReplyDeleteWhat is this horrid government shutdown I keep reading about? It isn’t for Federal employees, since the House passed legislation paying all non-essential Federal employees that were furloughed for their missed time. (I President Obama signs it, that is).
Stated differently. Non-essential Federal employees received a taxpayer-funded vacation.
The government shutdown is a way for the Administration and Senate to punish Americans for Republicans not rubber-stamping the funding of Obamacare.
John Nolte has created a list of unnecessary shutdowns.
http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com/2013/10/06/there-is-no-shutdown-for-non-essential-federal-employees-only-citizens/
As found in Truthingold > " Bernanke, who holds economics degrees from Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and led the Federal Reserve through the biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression, told the Senate Banking Committee in July that “nobody really understands gold prices and I don’t pretend to really understand them either.”
ReplyDeleteThat is because Bernanke chooses not to understand the price of physical gold based on the fact that it is the greatest threat (next to physical silver) to the phony concept which helps keep a few very wealthy and in charge and the rest of us enslaved.
The instrument used for enslavement is the U.S. dollar , and yes , the emperor has no clothes !
Forget the Shutdown! US Economy About to Hit the Vortex of a Structural Trap
ReplyDelete"In this paper we develop the concept of structural trap, where the interplay of long-term economic development incentives, politics, and demographics results in economies being unable to efficiently reallocate capital from low- to high-return uses. The resulting macroeconomic picture looks like a liquidity trap -- low GDP growth and deflation despite extreme monetary easing. But the optimal policy responses are very different and mistaking them could lead to perverse results. The key difference between a liquidity trap and a structural one is the role of politics."
An economy is deemed to be structurally trapped when capital gets “trapped” in unproductive uses in unproductive industries on unproductive balance sheets. This trapped capital is not allowed to flow into economically optimal productive uses because of the role of politics and the tendency for government to artificially prop up unproductive industry due to the politically connected corporate executives. There is probably no better example than TARP and the Fed’s quantitative easing program.
"The presence of a structural trap not only makes the traditional solution harder (need higher inflation), it may make it impossible absent a currency crash. The reason is, the nature of a structural trap is such that it makes the creation of credible inflation expectations impossible. Deflation is the result of massive excess capacity, and economic agents know this. Unless the excess capacity is eliminated, no credible inflation expectation can be created. Extreme monetary ease without excess capacity reduction perpetuates deflation, because it prevents restructuring from happening."
Read more: http://www.minyanville.com/business-news/markets/articles/structural-trap-liquidity-trap-tarp-the/10/7/2013/id/52103#ixzz2h3EqU2Gz
World's One-Time Largest FX Hedge Fund On Verge Of Shutdown
ReplyDeleteThe sad but inevitable conclusion follows:
According to two people familiar with the situation, FX Concepts is in the process of liquidating its hedge funds and laid off most employees in recent weeks.
Sadly as more and more HFT algos move from the barren wasteland that is now stocks to dominate FX trading, yet another old-school, carbon-based investor is pulling out, meaning all those ridiculous moves we have grown to know and loathe in stocks land are about to dominate FX. The only problem is that 1000 pip moves in FX are not quite as easy to undo as a flash crash taking down any one individual stock, ETF or index to 0 or alternatively sending it to infinity.
The good news: the circus that are capital markets under Ben Bernanke is about to get that much funnier.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-07/worlds-one-time-largest-fx-hedge-fund-verge-shutdown
Paul Singer: The "Trapped, Harmful" Fed "Revels In The Role Of Atlas, Holding Up The World"
ReplyDeleteSinger observes that in discussing positioning for the future with investors in his fund, entities that cumulatively control "trillions in assets", nobody is positioned for inflation. His extrapolation is that the smallest change in behavior or perception - such as in May, June 2013 - when a slight change in perception that the "game of money printing was not accelerating" snowballed into a massive rate selloff, the result of which was that in September the Fed had to retract the very thing that it had leaked it would engage in, namely the Taper.
Crisis of fiat money
Next, Singer discusses about what is fundamentally at flaw - the current unsustainable monetary system - which itself is broken courtesy of what is now rampant, runaway currency debasement. The reason for the is that as a result of the terminal breakage of fiat's links with hard assets following Nixon's shuttering of the gold-dollar convertibility, "and after that it fell to central bankers, to the Fed, to maintain the demeanor, the policies, the words to give an impression of sobriety. And in the absence of any discipline in the numbers, because there is no discipline in the printing of the USD, that impression of sobriety is all that is standing between the holders of dollars and long-term holders of claims in dollars or any currency, and the oblivion of the purchasing power of their wealth."
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-07/paul-singer-trapped-harmful-fed-revels-role-atlas-holding-world-itself
Professor Antal E. Fekete - Interview - Max Keiser
ReplyDeleteIn @ 13:00 of the second half, Max interviews Professor Antal E. Fekete of FeketeResearch.com about Fed induced hyper-deflation and why the American Austrians were wrong to predict that quantitative easing would cause inflation.
http://goldsilver.com/video/professor-antal-e-fekete-interview-max-keiser/
Gold (the US insane asylum) looting, denial and the breakdown crisis
ReplyDeletePublished on Oct 6, 2013
I talk about the reason for buying gold.. Tools such as Obama-care are going to be used to steal savings on a massive scale.
http://youtu.be/6mZzXXVntT0
Tavakoli’s Law of Sovereign Bailouts
ReplyDeleteStructured finance in the form of Brady Bonds, named for U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicolas Brady, mitigated what otherwise would have been a horrific write-down for U.S. banks. For example, Mexico owed $20 billion. Half was forgiven. A zero coupon U.S. Treasury bond trading at around $2 billion secured a bond’s $10 billion face value, and Mexico agreed to service the interest payments.
None of this required banks to get any smarter or better disciplined. Ongoing taxpayer subsidies and fantasy accounting keep the U.S. banking system alive. Remember Tavakoli’s Law of Sovereign Bailouts:
“Never call bad debt bad debt—at least not in public. “Restructure” bad loans to good loans by lending bad debtors more money. Then bad debtors can pay interest on bad loans, and banks won’t have to admit loans are impaired and increase reserves. [When substantial haircuts are involved, the party/s with the most clout will determine the size of the haircut and they will decide when that occurs.] This type of restructuring is a bailout that protects the egos, status, and bonuses of banking executives and their cronies. Done properly you will transfer wealth from lower classes to the upper classes, preferably executives in the global banking industry.”
If you’re a sovereign debtor, you may want to do something more prudent for your country, and you might be some sort of crazy idealist who thinks the truth actually matters. But remember. If you break Tavakoli’s Law of Sovereign Bailouts, banks and their water-carriers at the IMF and World Bank will cut all your credit lines. They’ll cut you until you stop screaming and shut up. All bailouts will be done on their schedule and in their own way to minimize the impact on banks in countries with the most clout.
http://www.tavakolistructuredfinance.com/2013/10/structured-finance-sovereign-debt-gold/
Veterans Arrested at Vietnam Memorial in NYC
ReplyDeleteThe following is a powerful, touching and very well done video that includes veterans of various wars, ranging from World War II to Vietnam as well as some of our recent imperial adventures. It is entirely clear that this is no stunt, but rather a heartfelt and genuine expression of grief and disillusionment from Americans who have seen the pain and suffering of war up close, and who clearly continue to experience much sadness many years later.
As expected, Mayor Bloomberg’s storm-troopers did as told and arrested these folks (many of whom are elderly) shortly after the 10pm curfew.
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/10/08/video-of-the-day-veterans-arrested-at-vietnam-memorial-in-nyc/
"Game Over", so to speak. The dark times are here in America. You are on your own. The federal-state-local governments are broke. No more benefits for hungry children, homeless veterans and civilians. No more full-time employment with benefit packages. Stagnating wages and income inequality are the norm. But Hey! Let's cut taxes.
ReplyDeleteAusterity means that Capital will now be allowed to flow uninhibited through the United States of America. National Parks and forests will be privatized or sold off to financiers. America's national museums-normally offered free of charge to the public-will be privatized and admission fees instituted. Public schools are for sale. Art is for sale. People are for sale. The infrastructure is for sale.
Just take a look at the plight of Detroit, Michigan right here in the good old USA. You are looking at the future of America.
To paraphrase a line from Total Recall, "Your life is just a dream."
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/08-10-2013/125844-time_to_suffer-0/