The Warning Signs

What If The Government Takes Over Wikipedia?

2012-01-18T14:51:00.000-06:00

article by: Gongalo Lira

As most people know, Wikipedia will go offline on Wednesday—in protest over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). The Financial Times has a brief but fairly comprehensive overview of what’s going on here.

A lot of people online—myself included—are against both SOPA and PIPA. And for one, I fully support what Wikipedia is trying to do: Shut itself down—the sixth most visited website on the planet—and thereby get those 234 million daily users to read its statement opposing SOPA and PIPA.

Knowing the editorial judiciousness of Jimmy Wales and the Wikipedia team, I have no doubt that, one, their opposition has been carefully thought through; and two, this unprecedented step of shutting down the site is extraordinarily serious—and thus emphasizes how seriously Wales and his team take the measures in SOPA and PIPA.

In other words, Wales and his team aren’t fucking around—this is a big deal.

But I couldn’t help wondering: The U.S. government must also recognize that this isn’t a temperamental teenager throwing hissy-fit—Wikipedia is seriously respected in the online community. Wikipedia’s shut-down is a big black eye to SOPA and PIPA—and to the people who are pushing it, especially Barack Obama’s White House.

So what if the U.S. government were to decide to take over Wikipedia? Prevent it from going offline? With the excuse that they’re taking it over and keeping it online “for the good of the American people”?

Let’s face it, Wikipedia is incredibly important to the Internet. Most of us go to Wikipedia first, if a quick Google search doesn’t get us the info that we need. And whenever we want to get the skinny on something complicated, Wikipedia is often the only place we go to.

Thus we are all particularly dependent on Wikipedia: It shapes our knowledge base much more profoundly than we either realize, or would probably like to admit. The fact that it doesn’t advertise, and depends instead on donations alone, gives it even more credibility, and to our eyes makes it that much more trustworthy.

But Wikipedia is an incredibly small, incredibly fragile operation. It’s yearly budget is less than $20 million per year—nothing, when compared to, say, the bailout of Citi.

Just as it declared Citi, BofA, Goldman and JPMorgan “Systemically Important Financial Institutions”, what’s to stop the U.S. government from declaring Wikipedia a “Systemically Important Website”?

And rather than throwing money at them, what’s to stop the government from revoking Wikipedia’s non-profit status? Declaring it a for-profit—and then using the IRS, say, to take it over? Or better yet, prevent it from shutting down by delaring it “Educationally Essential Website”—and putting it under the aegis of the Education Department? Take it over “for the good of the country”? And then maybe start shading and editing the various Wikipedia entries in order to give a “more balanced version of events”?

“Paranoid”, you say? Well, it’s not paranoia if they’re really coming after you.

Famously, Senator Joe Lieberman brought out security, terrorism, and all the other bugaboos when he argued for the U.S. government to have the ability to shut down the Internet—infamously concluding with the line that, “China, the government, can disconnect its Internet—we need to have that here too.”

State control of the Internet: That’s what Sen. Lieberman meant when he said, We need to have that here too. There’s really no other way to interpret what he said.

What if Lieberman or someone of his delicate sensibilities were to say something like, “Wikipedia is a Systemically Important Website. So we need to be able to take it over—for the protection of the American people and to stop them from being ‘misinformed’.”

Don’t think it can happen? Paranoid, am I?

Then why are Jimmy Wales and his team at Wikipedia shutting themselves down for a day? For kicks?

Or because they think that this is real?

Will Hunting Got It, Why Don't Most Americans

2012-01-12T21:32:00.000-06:00

I was watching the movie Good Will Hunting this evening and having not seen the movie since it was released I had forgotten about the following scene of the movie. Looking back I am amazed that this scene actually made it into the movie. The two minutes of dialog in this scene speak volumes about US foreign policies.

Are We Seeing The Build Up To World War III?

2012-01-12T12:32:00.001-06:00

article by Craig Hasten

I hope the American people are paying close attention to the what is going on around the globe recently. After 21 years of war in the Middle East it looks like The United States is setting the stage for the next conflict. It was announced yesterday that the CVN 70 Carl Vinson battle group entered the Arabian Sea off the Straits of Hormuz joining the CVN 74 John Stennis battle group which has been in the area for the past two months.

Now riddle me this!

With Obama calling an end to the Iraq, war paired with his recent announcement of defense budget cuts, why such a build up of firepower off the coast of Iran? The answer lies in the fact that Washington knows that Iran has no intention of halting its nuclear program which will give Obama the green light to force an oil embargo on Iran. Iran has already stated many times that if an oil embargo is placed against their country then they will close the Strait of Hormuz. I have no doubt that they will try to close the Strait but with their limited naval capabilities even they know that any such attempt would be futile. The US has made it public that they will not stand for the vital shipping lane to be closed by Iran and would use force to re-open it.

Now here is my question.

Would it really take the firepower of two US carrier battle groups to defeat the Iranian navy and re-open the Strait of Hormuz? One would hardly think so given the size and capabilities of the Iranian navy.

I would like to point out one interesting observation. In August of 1990 the US sent two aircraft carrier battle groups to the Persian Gulf when Iraq invaded Kuwait and their oilfields. The US knew it would be going to war with Iraq and felt like two aircraft carrier battle groups would be the required amount of force (along with the build up of ground troops) that would be needed to complete the job.

Does it appear that history is about to repeat itself?

I don't feel that what is going on with Iran has anything at all to do with their nuclear program, but as always, it's about the control of oil.

This time around I feel that it isn't just going to be the US and a few other tiny allies against a sovereign middle eastern country. This time around it is looking like all the major world players will be showing up for this one. This is starting to have the markings of a good old fashioned World War.

The Romney Con

2012-01-11T10:04:00.001-06:00

As we start to see the race for the White House heat up I find myself wondering what happened to the desire that everyone felt for "Change" three years ago. It quickly became obvious to those that voted for him that Obama had no intentions to delivering his promise of "Hope and Change" that got him elected in 2008. Never before had we seen such support for a candidate that simply promised two things, "Hope and Change".

Sadly, it looks like the American people who cried out for a change from the business as usual politics are being led down the same path again.

Mitt Romney who has broke out in the polls lately is no different than Obama except that he has chosen to hitch his wagon to the Republican party. Romney is nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing. The American people need to wake up and see Romney for who he really is, just another politician who is filling his war chest with Wall Street money.

If America is looking for a president who will turn this country around and get us back onto the path of prosperity this is not the man to do the job. All one needs to do is look into his past and see how he destroyed every American company that he took over during his time at Bain Capital. I promise you that Mitt Romney will treat this country no different than he did every company that he took over during his time with Bain. For Romney it is all about the money, greed and power.

Please take a minute to watch this short video to see who the real Mitt Romney is.

Penn State; My Final Loss Of Faith

2011-11-22T15:15:00.001-06:00

By Thomas L. Day

I’m 31, an Iraq war veteran, a Penn State graduate, a Catholic, a native of State College, acquaintance of Jerry Sandusky’s, and a product of his Second Mile foundation.

And I have fully lost faith in the leadership of my parents’ generation.

Penn State football coach Joe Paterno arrives home Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011, in State College, Pa. (Matt Rourke - AP)
(Read Day’s follow up to this post in his chat Monday with readers here. )

I was never harmed by Sandusky, but I could have been. When I was 15, my mother, then looking for a little direction for her teenage son, introduced me to the Second Mile’s Friend Fitness program. It was a program resembling Big Brother, Big Sister with a weekly exercise regimen.

Instead of Sandusky’s care, I was sent to a group of adults, many of whom were in their 20s. They took me from a C-student to the University of Chicago, where I’m a master’s student now. They took the football team’s waterboy and made a 101st Airborne Division soldier.

I was one of the lucky ones. My experience with Second Mile was a good one. I should feel fortunate, blessed even, that I was never harmed. Yet instead this week has left me deeply shaken, wondering what will come of the foundation, the university, and the community that made me into a man.

One thing I know for certain: A leader must emerge from Happy Valley to tie our community together again, and it won’t come from our parents’ generation.

They have failed us, over and over and over again.

I speak not specifically of our parents -- I have two loving ones -- but of the public leaders our parents’ generation has produced. With the demise of my own community’s two most revered leaders, Sandusky and Joe Paterno, I have decided to continue to respect my elders, but to politely tell them, “Out of my way.”

They have had their time to lead. Time’s up. I’m tired of waiting for them to live up to obligations.

Think of the world our parents’ generation inherited. They inherited a country of boundless economic prosperity and the highest admiration overseas, produced by the hands of their mothers and fathers. They were safe. For most, they were endowed opportunities to succeed, to prosper, and build on their parents’ work.

For those of us in our 20s and early 30s, this is not the world we are inheriting.

We looked to Washington to lead us after September 11th. I remember telling my college roommates, in a spate of emotion, that I was thinking of enlisting in the military in the days after the attacks. I expected legions of us -- at the orders of our leader -- to do the same. But nobody asked us. Instead we were told to go shopping.

The times following September 11th called for leadership, not reckless, gluttonous tax cuts. But our leaders then, as now, seemed more concerned with flattery. Then -House Majority Leader and now-convicted felon Tom Delay told us, “nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes.” Not exactly Churchillian stuff.

Those of us who did enlist were ordered into Iraq on the promise of being “greeted as liberators,” in the words of our then-vice president. Several thousand of us are dead from that false promise.

We looked for leadership from our churches, and were told to fight not poverty or injustice, but gay marriage. In the Catholic Church, we were told to blame the media, not the abusive priests, not the bishops, not the Vatican, for making us feel that our church has failed us in its sex abuse scandal and cover-up.

Our parents’ generation has balked at the tough decisions required to preserve our country’s sacred entitlements, leaving us to clean up the mess. They let the infrastructure built with their fathers’ hands crumble like a stale cookie. They downgraded our nation’s credit rating. They seem content to hand us a debt exceeding the size of our entire economy, rather than brave a fight against the fortunate and entrenched interests on K Street and Wall Street.

Now we are asking for jobs and are being told we aren’t good enough, to the tune of 3.3 million unemployed workers between the ages of 25 and 34.

This failure of a generation is as true in the halls of Congress as it is at Penn State.
Perhaps the most vivid illustration this week of our leaderless culture came with the riots in State College that followed Paterno’s dismissal. The display resembled Lord of the Flies. Without revered figures from the older generation to lead them, thousands of students at one of the country’s best state universities acted like children home alone.

This week the world found the very worst of human nature in my idyllic Central Pennsylvania home. I found that a man my community had anointed a teacher and nurturer of children, instead reportedly had them hiding in his basement. The anger and humiliation were more than I could bear. I can’t wait for my parents’ generation’s Joshua any longer. They’ve lost my faith.

Thomas Day is a graduate student at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

Epic Failure: The Supercommittee Was A Super Joke

2011-11-22T11:30:00.002-06:00

article from: The Economic Collapse

Does anyone need any additional evidence that our political system is completely broken? The bipartisan congressional supercommittee that was given two months to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts over the next decade has failed to reach an agreement. It is an epic failure and a national embarrassment. The truth is that they never even came close to an agreement. In fact, as you will read below, the two sides on the panel have been barely even talking to each other. In the end, the supercommittee was a super joke. Meanwhile, the U.S. national debt has passed the 15 trillion dollar mark and we are facing trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. We are heading directly for a national financial disaster, and our "leaders" seem powerless to do anything about it.

According to the supercommittee's rules, any plan would have had to have been submitted to the Congressional Budget Office by Monday in order to give the CBO 48 hours to analyze how much the plan would reduce budget deficits over the coming decade.

When the supercommittee was announced, it made headlines all over the world, but now it is ending with a whimper.

The supercommittee was never a good idea in the first place, but you would have thought that they could have come up with something over the course of two months.
But instead all they are giving us are a whole bunch of excuses and a whole lot of hot air.

What a joke.

Is it really that difficult to come up with $1.2 trillion in cuts over a decade?

It isn't as if they would even be cutting very deeply. $1.2 trillion in cuts would not even cut the budget by $150 billion a year. We would still be talking about trillion dollar deficits way into the future.

But instead of agreeing to some token cuts, they have chosen to do nothing and to blame each other.

So now $1.2 trillion in "automatic budget cuts" will go into effect starting in 2013. But even that $1.2 trillion figure contains a lot of "fuzzy math". For example, it includes $169 billion in "projected savings" from "reduced interest costs" on the national debt.

I would love to see how they came up with that figure.

In any event, the truth is that none of these numbers really matter at all.

Why?

None of the budget cuts go into effect until after the 2012 election. That means that this Congress can vote to repeal the automatic cuts well before then.

Some in Congress are already pushing for this. For example, U.S. Senator John McCain said the following recently....

"It's something we passed. We can reverse it."

Or, even more likely, once the new president and the new Congress are elected in 2012 they will almost certainly choose to abandon this agreement.

When it comes to politics, the only thing that matters is what happens before the next election.

All of this talk of future cuts is just an illusion. When the next president and the next Congress come to power, they will want to do their own thing.

So after all of the huffing and puffing over the last couple of years, what has actually been accomplished as far as reducing our horrific budget deficits?

Not much at all.

We racked up a $1.3 trillion budget deficit during the fiscal year that just ended, and this fiscal year we will be somewhere in the same neighborhood.

We have been living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and at some point all of this is going to end very, very badly.

The total amount of debt in this country (government, business and consumer) has been rising much, much faster than our national income has. If you don't believe this, just check out this chart.

In particular, government debt is totally out of control. When Barack Obama first took office, the national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars.

It is now over 15 trillion dollars.

We are in debt up to our eyeballs and we desperately need our leaders to do something about it.

But according to a recent Politico article, the members of the supercommittee haven't even been talking to each other....

The supercommittee last met Nov. 1 – three weeks ago! It was a public hearing featuring a history lesson, “Overview of Previous Debt Proposals,” with Alan Simpson, Erskine Bowles, Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin. The last PRIVATE meeting was Oct. 26. You might as well stop reading right there: The 12 members (6 House, 6 Senate; 6 R, 6 D) were never going to strike a bargain, grand or otherwise, if they weren’t talking to each other. Yes, we get that real deal-making occurs in small groups. But there never WAS a functioning supercommittee: There was Republican posturing and Democratic posturing, with some side conversations across the aisle.

Can you believe that?

Could it really be true that they have not met since November 1st?

Is Congress really that much of a joke?

According to Real Clear Politics, the approval rating for Congress is sitting at about 12 percent right now.

After this, it may get even lower.

Instead of working on a solution to our problems, the members of the supercommittee have been busy going on television and telling us who to blame.

The following is a short exceprt from a recent article in the Washington Post....

Republicans on the supercommittee held a conference call Saturday morning, and aides said members from both parties continued to talk by phone. But neither side was predicting a last-minute breakthrough. Instead, seven panel members booked appearances on the Sunday talk shows, as both sides readied their best arguments for why the other is at fault.

Our politicians are obsessed with finding someone else to blame and with getting ready for the next election.

Meanwhile, the ship is going down and people are starting to panic.

And this is not going to look good to the rest of the world at all. There is a very real risk that one of the other major credit rating agencies will decide to downgrade U.S. debt.

The second downgrade of debt is often more important than the first. When the first downgrade happened, U.S. debt still had a AAA rating from the other two major credit rating agencies.

But after another downgrade, the average credit rating of U.S. debt will be less than AAA. That will mean that U.S. debt will no longer be a cash proxy. A lot of transactions that take place right now in the financial world would not be able to happen if that takes place.

So what do our leaders need to do?

Well, the truth is that we should recognize that they are in a really, really tough position. Decades of nightmarish decisions have left us out of good options under our current financial system.

The reality is that members of Congress are damned if they do and they are damned if they don't.

This is what I mean - if we don't deal with our national debt now, everyone agrees that a massive day of reckoning is coming down the road. Greece is an example of what happens when debt catches up with a nation.

However, if we did cut the federal budget very deeply right now, it would almost certainly bring on a huge economic contraction.

Right now, insane federal spending is one of the only things keeping this economy afloat. If you were to suddenly pull half a trillion dollars (or more) of federal spending out of the economy, it would have a devastating impact.

A lot of people out there correctly argue for a huge reduction in federal spending, but they greatly underestimate the amount of pain that it would cause.

Let there be no doubt, all of this federal debt has enabled us to enjoy a "false prosperity" for several decades, and when we dramatically cut back on spending a lot of that "false prosperity" is going to disappear.

Our "real economy" is rapidly being gutted and America is becoming poorer as a nation every single day. One way that we have been making up the difference is by going into almost unbelievable amounts of government debt. When the government debt bubble pops, the pain is going to be enormous.

If you do not believe this right now, you will believe it soon enough.

Not that we should keep going into huge amounts of debt.

Every dollar that we "borrow" is actually being stolen from our children and our grandchildren.

In fact, that is what Thomas Jefferson believed. According to Jefferson, when the federal government borrows money in one generation which must be paid back by future generations it is equivalent to stealing....

And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

We have got to stop stealing from future generations. If they get the chance, they will curse us for what we have done to them.

Anyone out there that supports our current system of running endless budget deficits is supporting a horrific crime against our children and our grandchildren.

But once again, we all need to clearly understand that when the borrowed money stops flowing out of Washington D.C., our economy is going to get much worse.

Are you prepared for the unemployment rate to double?

Are you prepared for foreclosures to soar to unprecedented heights?

Are you prepared for economic pain unlike anything you have ever seen before?

According to the New York Times, there are 100 million Americans that are either living in poverty or that are considered to be among the "near poor" right now.

So how bad will things get if we plunge into a depression?

Anyone that believes that we can drastically cut the federal budget and improve the economy at the same time under our current system is not being rational.

Just look at what is happening to Greece. They implemented substantial budget cuts (although not nearly big enough to bring them to a balanced budget) and they have plunged into a nightmarish economic depression.

Right now, we are in a position where we are going to experience a horrific amount of pain whatever we do. If we keep piling up debt at this rate we will experience a nightmare, but if we pop the debt bubble and try to live within our means we will also experience a nightmare.

There is a way out of this, but our politicians are not talking about it. As I have written about previously, if the federal government abolishes the Federal Reserve and starts issuing debt-free money, we could eliminate our federal budget deficits, cut taxes and improve the economy all at the same time.

But nobody is even talking about debt-free money.

Instead, all of our politicians are talking about "fixing" the current system.

Well, let me tell you, it is impossible to solve our problems under the current system. If we insist on maintaining our current debt-based financial system, it will only end in a massive amount of pain.

The American people need to get educated about our financial system. They need to learn that the Federal Reserve and the debt-based currency that they issue are at the very heart of our economic problems.

Back in 1913, prior to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, the national debt was only about $2.9 billion.

Today, our national debt is over 5000 times larger.

Debt-based central banking is a perpetual debt machine. It is at the heart of our financial problems and it is also at the heart of the financial problems that Europe is experiencing.

Unfortunately, the American people don't understand this, and there are virtually no politicians out there that are even talking about this.

Very dark days are ahead for America.

You had better get prepared.

Horrible Bosses, Pitchforks & Torches

2011-11-22T09:44:00.001-06:00

D. Sherman Okst
Zero Hedge
November 22, 2011

If you haven’t seen the movie “Horrible Bosses” I’d recommend that you do. Please see it. Go enjoy yourself. As bad as things are getting it is incredible to realize that we can still laugh.

And trust me, you’ll laugh hard at this movie.

When I left the theater with my wife, I realized why it was that movie theaters did well in the last Great Depression. For an hour and forty minutes we escaped all the negativity that has crept into this world. It had a long lasting effect. For at least a week I was in a good mood.

The movie “Horrible Bosses” is comprised of a few character types: The ‘Psycho’, the ‘Maneater’ and the ‘Tool.’ Three friends come to the realization that their lives are miserable because of them. They like their jobs, they hate their bosses.

One friend, Dale used a playground, near the bar he frequented, as a late night urinal. He was arrested for indecent exposure. This got him the tile of “registered sex offender”—for what he claims was entrapment, (putting a playground adjacent to a bar). The irony is that his boss, Dr. Julia is a ‘manteater,’ the one the cops should have arrested. Bottom line—he’s not marketable.

Then we have Dave who works for a financial psycho who threatens to expose him to future employers for having a drinking problem—a problem that he really doesn’t have. Another non-marketable, stuck in his job for life worker.

Friend number three is Kurt. The owner of Kurt’s place of employment dies suddenly. This leaves the owners kid, ‘Bobby-the-Tool-Coke-Head’ as Kurt’s new boss. With the economy being what it isn’t, Kurt is also stuck at his job.

So the three come to the realization that their lives can only get better if they each kill their friend’s boss. They hire MF Jones as their murder consultant . He got the name MF because when he was a kid he stole from his mother’s purse and it really “set her back.”

The Psychopaths Have Crossed the Line

As I knock out my book “Where Psychopaths & Economics Meet,” I’ve resolved myself to not write “too many” articles. But, Gerald Celente is one of us. He’s one of the economic bloggers. One of the good guys. The ones out there reading good and spreading good in a world ruled by evil.

Our world has been taken over by three bad bosses: Political Capture, Economic Capture and Mainstream Media Capture. A sequel to “Horrible Bosses” is about to be written. Sadly I don’t think it’ll be a comedy.

A depression created by psychopaths.

I was just a college drop-in. My wife just got her degree. Twelve years of slogging through classes. I read most of her books along the way. When I wasn’t tutoring her in computer programming she was teaching me. I don’t recall the philosopher, but one said something to the effect: “Names aren’t coincidental.” When the Madoff scandal broke we laughed about his name, “made-off,” as in I made-off with your money. As my favorite author, the late Kurt Vonnegut would say, “someone should look into this.”

Celente got taken by MF Global. When I told my wife the story over coffee this morning she laughingly said, “MF as in Mother-F(again, I’ll let you fill in the blanks here)r Global. Hey, just like the movie “Horrible Bosses” and MotherF(ehem)r Jones.” Even the name Jon is a tipoff. I don’t trust people who spell their names like they are better than the rest of us, and Corzine I first misread as Conman somehow.

Can you spot the two criminals in this lineup?

So here we have 7,000 clients who got MF’d out of some $800,000,000 and Jon is walking around a free man. Let’s not mince words here, Jon is Obama’s top Wall Street Fundraiser.

Pitchforks and Torches

In 2004 we downsized. By 2007 our new house was complete. We literally built it ourselves. I didn’t use the cheapest materials. The house is very sound, 2 x 6 walls, heavier sheathing on the roof, the silent floor system, low-e windows, stone and HardiPlank all on top of a poured concrete foundation.

The circa mid-2000 appliances we got are made like junk—and we didn’t buy the cheapest ones. I’ve decided not to let this “slip.” My Jihad these days has been accountability.

The well guy put a computer in that sounds like one of the turbine engines on the planes I used to fly. He claims he did this to save me $300 dollars in electrical wire. I’m still trying to get his Bernanke math. I paid $2,000 bucks for this computer to save $300 bucks in wire. I must be a moron because losing $1,700 dollars doesn’t sound like a savings to me? Of course this computer turns the 3.5 horsepower, electric power guzzling, well pump on every time we so much as flush a toilet, and pushing age 50 we seem to do that a lot more often. As a result our downsizing to a smaller home hasn’t downsized our electric bill. But I “saved” 300 bucks in wire. I’ve got that going for me.
The stove has a broken knob. Turning on various burners is like playing musical knobs. Puts my wife in a great mood.

The oven door has to be screwed back together, it only separates when the oven is hot. Using a screwdriver with oven mitts on drives me bat(ehm) crazy.

The dishwasher racks had their track “stoppers” fall out, so now the racks fall out the tracks and we get to pick up glass.

The ice-maker in the fridge has to be manually turned on and off or ice goes all over the packed freezer. When we use the door dispenser we get more ice on the floor than in our glasses.

The gate opener outside has been replaced 12 times, and is ready again for a new computer board. The intercom by the gate stopped working — I’m not replacing it, I’m not social. It’s one reason I have an 8,400 volt electric fence, the other is I like keeping my garbage outside and I don’t like bears messing with it or eating it. Some poor son of a gun out west shot a bear because he was worried about his kids outside and the police charged him.

More governmental insanity that we pay for.

There is something in Celente’s voice. I’m not the only one who hears it. It reminds me of flying in weather, the times we got so close while deviating between cells that I could hear the thunder over the planes engines. Kunstler hears it too. Jim—another good guy—wrote today about Celente’s getting taken by MF Global, “I heard him [Gerald] fulminating over it on a podcast and he is not somebody I’d want to be on the bad side of.” Last week the wood stove manufacturer’s CEO and president heard my thunder. This week they buy their stove back and we put a more expensive one in.

I’m done dealing with morons and through with being robbed blind.

It’s bad enough inflation rips us off, but to be forced into buying lifetime warrenties which cost as much as the product that you’re buying, or having to replace what you just bought a year ago is criminal.

Things should not come down to pitchforks and torches—but they are quickly coming to that. It isn’t a pleasant fix but when the authorities think that it is permissible for someone to steal $800 million from 7,000 customers and nothing is immediatly done about it then it is proof that they have—once again—failed us. If you can backstop Wall Street you better backstop those ripped off by them—and this time, go liquidate their assets to pay it back. K-Street of course won’t tolerate that, and that’s who really pays our horrible bosses we call politicians. (Ron Paul and a few other good eggs excluded).

What happened to Celente and 7,000 other Celentes is no different from the cops who beat the ex-war vet protester until his spleen ruptured; or pepper sprayed those two little girls; or shot a kid in the head with teargas canisters and then, while lying helplessly on the ground in a puddle of his own blood, proceed to lob a flash grenade at him and those helping him. Sick!

Like I told the stove compnay—Nice job champs!

Americans have been very tolerant. We’ve handed money over for Wall Street bonuses rewarding the psychopaths who blew up our economy and created 23.9% unemployment (the real undistorted employment rate). We’ve watched silently as Bernanke lied to us about the banks being fixed—as if we’re too stupid to know that FASB is now just legalized Enron accounting. We’ve rolled our eyes and bitten our tongues when some of the psychopaths later professed to be, “Doing God’s work.” We’ve watched our kids get molested by perverts hired off adds on pizza boxes, had our wives breasts exposed during these idiotic searches and ourselves been exposed to radiation while in naked body scanners that could be used in the oncology departments of hospitals.

I seriously suspect that people have had enough and that it won’t be long before they break out the pitchforks and torches. Throughout history we’ve read about times when citizens were forced to resort to violence in order to restore law and order.

Ironic—if you really think about it.

I seriously suspect we are about to witness this first hand—pitchforks and torches.
Right now I’m just entirely ecstatic that my name isn’t Jon Corzine. Like Kuntsler says, ‘Celente isn’t someone that I’d want to be on the bad side of. If tomorrow I open up my RSS reader and see one of those 7,000 screwed by Mother F#r Global holding a pitchfork with Corzine’s head on it I won’t be surprised.’

I AM NOT MOVING - Short Film - Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-18T16:53:00.000-05:00

Incredible Speech By Wall Street Protester "End The Fed" 2011

2011-10-08T22:06:00.000-05:00

In all the media coverage I have viewed over the course of the past few weeks I failed to hear anyone who put forth a compelling argument as to what they were protesting against. Then I saw this young man and I was truly blown away. Here is a young man who truly understands what is going on in this country and gives one of the best speeches I have heard in a long time.

Obama Goes All Out For Dirty Banker Deal

2011-08-25T21:12:00.000-05:00

by Matt Taibbi / Rolling Stone

A power play is underway in the foreclosure arena, according to the New York Times.

On the one side is Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General, who is conducting his own investigation into the era of securitizations – the practice of chopping up assets like mortgages and converting them into saleable securities – that led up to the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

On the other side is the Obama administration, the banks, and all the other state attorneys general.

This second camp has cooked up a deal that would allow the banks to walk away with just a seriously discounted fine from a generation of fraud that led to millions of people losing their homes.

The idea behind this federally-guided “settlement” is to concentrate and centralize all the legal exposure accrued by this generation of grotesque banker corruption in one place, put one single price tag on it that everyone can live with, and then stuff the details into a titanium canister before shooting it into deep space.

This is all about protecting the banks from future enforcement actions on both the civil and criminal sides. The plan is to provide year-after-year, repeat-offending banks like Bank of America with cost certainty, so that they know exactly how much they’ll have to pay in fines (trust me, it will end up being a tiny fraction of what they made off the fraudulent practices) and will also get to know for sure that there are no more criminal investigations in the pipeline.

This deal will also submarine efforts by both defrauded investors in MBS and unfairly foreclosed-upon homeowners and borrowers to obtain any kind of relief in the civil court system. The AGs initially talked about $20 billion as a settlement number, money that would “toward loan modifications and possibly counseling for homeowners,” as Gretchen Morgenson reported the other day.

The banks, however, apparently “balked” at paying that sum, and no doubt it will end up being a lesser amount when the deal is finally done.

To give you an indication of how absurdly small a number even $20 billion is relative to the sums of money the banks made unloading worthless crap subprime assets on foreigners, pension funds and other unsuspecting suckers around the world, consider this: in 2008 alone, the state pension fund of Florida, all by itself, lost more than three times that amount ($62 billion) thanks in significant part to investments in these deadly MBS.

So this deal being cooked up is the ultimate Papal indulgence. By the time that $20 billion (if it even ends up being that high) gets divvied up between all the major players, the broadest and most destructive fraud scheme in American history, one that makes the S&L crisis look like a cheap liquor store holdup, will be safely reduced to a single painful but eminently survivable one-time line item for all the major perpetrators.

But Schneiderman, who earlier this year launched an investigation into the securitization practices of Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and other companies, is screwing up this whole arrangement. Until he lies down, the banks don’t have a deal. They need the certainty of having all 50 states and the federal government on board, or else it’s not worth paying anybody off. To quote the immortal Tony Montana, “How do I know you’re the last cop I’m gonna have to grease?” They need all the dirty cops on board, or else the whole enterprise is FUBAR.

In addition to the global settlement, Schneiderman is also blocking an individual $8.5 billion settlement for Countrywide investors. He has sued to stop that deal, claiming it could “compromise investors’ claims in exchange for a payment representing a fraction of the losses.”

If Schneiderman thinks $8.5 billion is an insufficient, fractional payoff just for defrauded Countrywide investors, then you can imagine how bad a $20 billion settlement for the entire industry would be for the victims.

In that particular Countrywide settlement deal, it looks like Bank of New York Mellon, the New York Fed, Pimco and other players negotiated on behalf of defrauded investors. They told the Times they were happy with the deal, but investors outside the talks told Gretchen they weren’t happy with the settlement.

Schneiderman apparently listened to those voices instead of the Mellon-Fed-BofA crowd, which infuriated the insiders who struck the actual deal. In a remarkable quote given to the Times, Kathryn Wylde, the Fed board member who ostensibly represents the public, said the following about Schneiderman:

It is of concern to the industry that instead of trying to facilitate resolving these issues, you seem to be throwing a wrench into it. Wall Street is our Main Street — love ’em or hate ’em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible.

This, again, is coming not from a Bank of America attorney, but from the person on the Fed board who is supposedly representing the public!

This quote leads one to wonder just what Wylde would consider “indefensible,” given that stealing is pretty much the worst thing that a bank can do — and these banks just finished the longest and most orgiastic campaign of stealing in the history of money. Is Wylde waiting for Goldman and Citi to blow up a skyscraper? Dump dioxin into an orphanage? It’s really an incredible quote.

The banks are going to claim that all they’re guilty of is bad paperwork. But while the banks are indeed being investigated for "paperwork" offenses like mass tax evasion (by failing to pay fees associated with mortgage registrations and deed transfers) and mass perjury (a la the “robo-signing” practices), their real crime, the one Schneiderman is interested in, is even more serious.

The issue goes beyond fraudulent paperwork to an intentional, far-reaching theft scheme designed to take junk subprime loans and disguise them as AAA-rated investments. The banks lent money to corrupt companies like Countrywide, who made masses of bad loans and immediately sold them back to the banks.

The banks in turn hid the crappiness of these loans via certain poorly-understood nuances in the securitization process – this is almost certainly where Scheniderman’s investigators are doing their digging – before hawking the resultant securities as AAA-rated gold to fools in places like the Florida state pension fund.

They did this for years, systematically, working hand in hand in a wink-nudge arrangement with clearly criminal enterprises like Countrywide and New Century. The victims were millions of investors worldwide (like the pensioners who saw their funds drop in value) and hundreds of thousands of individual homeowners, who were often sold trick loans and hustled into foreclosure when unexpected rate hikes kicked in.

In a larger sense, even the (often irresponsible) people who simply bought more house than they could afford were victims of this scam. That's because in many of these cases, credit simply would not have been available to those people had the banks not first discovered a way to raise vast sums of money dumping crap loans on an unsuspecting market.

In other words: if Bank of America hadn’t found a way to sell worthless subprime loans as AAA paper to the Chinese and the Scandavians in May, you can be sure that it wouldn’t be going back to Countrywide in June to lend out more money for more subprime loans.

And Countrywide, in turn, wouldn’t then have been sending masses of reps out into the ghettoes to offer juicy home loans to undocumented immigrants and refis to confused old ladies on social security.

This is as bad as white-collar crime gets. But to Wylde, it doesn’t rise to the level of being “indefensible.” Until they do something worse than this, we apparently should support the banks, and make sure they don’t have to pay more than a fraction of what they made off of this kind of crime.

What is most amazing about Wylde’s quote is the clear implication that even a law enforcement official like Schneiderman should view it as his job to “do everything we can to support” Wall Street. That would be astonishing interpretation of what a prosecutor's duties are, were it not for the fact that 49 other Attorneys General apparently agree with her.

In Schneiderman we have at least one honest investigator who doesn’t agree, which is to his great credit. But everyone else is on Wylde’s side now. The Times story claims that HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and various Justice Department officials have been leaning on the New York AG to cave, which tells you that reining in this last rogue cop is now an urgent priority for Barack Obama.

Why? My theory is that the Obama administration is trying to secure its 2012 campaign war chest with this settlement deal. If Barry can make this foreclosure thing go away for the banks, you can bet he’ll win the contributions battle against the Republicans next summer.

Which is good for him, I guess. But it seems to me that it might be time to wonder if is this the most disappointing president we’ve ever had.

‘Before NATO intrusion, Libya was African Switzerland’

2011-08-25T11:37:00.001-05:00

Jon Stewart Wants To Know: Why Is The Media Ignoring Ron Paul?

2011-08-16T09:31:00.001-05:00

Over the weekend Dr. Ron Paul placed second in the Iowa Ames Straw Poll by a narrow margin of 200 votes behind Michelle Bachmann. One would have thought that the canidate who came in second in the Straw Poll would have received some serious media attention right?

Wrong!

As Jon Stewart points out in this clip from his show "The Daily Show", there seems to be a complete media blackout on Dr. Ron Paul. Furthermore I find it troublesome how the clip shows how every news outlet is on board with blackballing Dr. Ron Paul.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Bank of America's Back-Door TARP!

2011-08-10T14:01:00.001-05:00

Taxpayer-owned Fannie Mae just bought the servicing rights to a bunch of bad loans from the struggling Bank of America. Where does it end?

By Abigail Field

FORTUNE -- Taxpayers may not realize it, but they just bailed out Bank of America again, this time to the tune of more than a half billion dollars.

The Charlotte, NC-based bank was one of the biggest recipients of bailout funds during the financial crisis. But Bank of America (BAC) continues to face deep problems related to its troubled mortgage portfolio and investors have battered the stock, which has plunged over 40% so far this year. That's escalated concerns that the bank may need to raise more capital. Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has even started a BofA death watch.

But apparently the federal government is determined to resurrect BofA: the Wall Street Journal reports the feds have just used Fannie Mae, which is controlled by the U.S. government, to infuse BofA with $500 million and ease one of the bank's biggest headaches.

Yesterday afternoon on CNBC, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan mentioned that five of BofA's six businesses were making money. The one black spot was its massive portfolio of problematic mortgages and the liabilities flowing from it. Moynihan also mentioned that BofA had just sold some "mortgage servicing rights" as part of its balance sheet strengthening efforts, but he didn't elaborate.

According to the WSJ, Fannie Mae spent $500 million to buy the servicing rights to a big chunk of the "seven million loans still causing the most problems." Although the $500 million is a paper loss to BofA, in that the rights were "originally worth more," it looks like BofA is still getting a good deal because the portfolio's "value is expected to deteriorate further."

In fact, the deal is worth much more than $500 million to BofA, because getting rid of those servicing rights lifts a huge cost burden off BofA's shoulders. And if securitized loans are involved, which they most likely are, the sale also limits the BofA's potential liability to investors for its current servicing violations. Finally, the $500 million is surely more than the servicing rights are worth in an arms-length transaction. How do we know? Beyond the comment that the loans are expected to "deteriorate further," the goal of the intervention can only be to fix Bank of America's capital structure, which is easier for the government to do if it overpays for the rights.

In short, purchasing these servicing rights was another Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Servicing defaulted loans can be good business if cheaply produced foreclosure paperwork isn't questioned, and if the foreclosures have equity and can be resold easily with lots of junk fees. But the mortgage servicing rights Fannie Mae bought are stinkers: they have a 13% delinquency rate, which means lots of foreclosures and loan modifications.

Both foreclosures and mods have been big headaches for BofA, which faces potential liability for document fraud in its foreclosures on multiple fronts. Beyond that, foreclosures are simply expensive to do well. BofA was recently punished by Treasury for failing to do modifications well, and it's also been sued for how it does them.

But the loans Fannie Mae bought are even worse than 13% delinquency rate suggests. According to the WSJ, "more than half of the loans are in troubled U.S. real-estate markets." This likely means markets where a high percentage of the houses are underwater and there's a huge oversupply, driving prices down further and making defaults more likely.

Fannie Mae is purchasing "the servicing rights in order to transfer the day-to-day management of those loans to a different company." That's another huge sign that Fannie Mae is overpaying. If the rights were really worth $500 million, wouldn't a private company pay that for them? Instead, it sounds like Fannie Mae is doing a bailout two-step, one to BofA and one to whomever takes these rights off Fannie Mae's hands.
Another thing needs to become clear: where did Fannie Mae get the money to do BofA the favor of buying these rights? Fannie Mae just asked for another bailout of its own, seeking a new $5.1 billion infusion last week.

Think about how good this deal is for BofA: it gets to stop the bleeding, or at least cauterize much of the wound in its balance sheet that lousy mortgage servicing rights and mortgage securities liabilities are creating. And it gets half a billion dollars to boot.

And taxpayers? Well, we get to own yet another good chunk of BofA's mess.

Video: MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan has a meltdown over the meltdown

2011-08-10T10:38:00.000-05:00

Finally, someone at MSNBC has the balls to say on air what the root of the problems is in this country. Money and politics!

MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan is mad as hell about the U.S. financial crisis--and he's not gonna take it anymore!
While convening a roundtable discussion on the market meltdown on his eponymous MSNBC show on Tuesday, Ratigan exploded.

"We've got a real problem!" an exasperated Ratigan shouted. "This is a mathematical fact! Tens of trillions of dollars are being extracted from the United States of America. Democrats aren't doing it, Republicans aren't doing it. An entire integrated system, financial system, trading system, taxing system, that was created by both parties over a period of two decades is at work on our entire country right now. And we're sitting here arguing about whether we should do the $4 trillion plan that kicks the can down the road for the president for 2017, or burn the place to the ground, both of which are reckless, irresponsible, and stupid."

"I'm sorry to lose my temper," he continued. "But, I tell you what, I've been coming on TV for three years doing this, and the fact of the matter is that there's a refusal on both the Democratic and the Republican side of the aisle to acknowledge the mathematical problem, which is that the United States of America is being extracted."

Later, on the show's website, Ratigan called it his "epic 'Network' moment."

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Lets Take A Moment To Dissect Bernake's Latest Zero Interest Rate Policy

2011-08-10T00:35:00.000-05:00

by: Bruce Krasting / ZeroHedge.com

I had this to say last week:

The Fed could easily attempt to buy some market peace by issuing a statement that the policy of zero interest rates would be extended for a minimum period of one year. I consider this to be a “high probability" to happen in the next 30 days.

I got it right, but I got it completely wrong. I feared that the Fed could extend the ZIRP language for as long as a year. Not in my wildest dream did I think they could take the extremely risky move of guaranteeing that interest rates will remain at zero for another 24 months.

Having been shocked, my thoughts.

*This action is indefensible on economic merits. This move is not motivated by sound monetary policy. It’s motivated by politics. This is a payback to Obama. Shame on the Fed for mixing politics with money.

*We will not go two years with this monetary policy without inflation (measured by core) exceeding the previously stated commitment by Bernanke that policy would not be allowed to rise above 2%. Bernanke and the dove members that signed onto this policy have lied to the American people. Bernanke has done it on 60 Minutes. He has done it to Congress. Shame on all of them.

*The Fed has taken away its ability to react to a situation that would require them to tighten. We are now on a one-way street. There is no way to turn around anymore. I believe the Fed has abdicated its responsibilities under the dual mandate. The have no ability to react if inflation should pop up in a year from now. Even worse, they have no policy options should there be a run on the dollar. The possibility of a run on the buck has gone up exponentially as a result. Should that happen, the Fed will have left us economically defenseless. Shame on the Fed for making us more vulnerable to a speculative attack.

*The stock market run up this afternoon is the Bernanke Put at work. Lets be clear on the consequences of Perpetual ZIRP. From this day onward every buy and hold investor who acquires Treasury debt with maturities of less than five-years is GUARANTEED TO LOSE MONEY. So if you accept that, then stocks have to look better. Shame on the Fed for debasing money and punishing savers.
*We have only one monetary policy. Juice stock multiples. This is the farthest thing from “Progressive” economics as you can get. We have a policy in place that is designed to make wealthy people wealthier. At some point there will be a social cost to this. The fires and riots in London were triggered by a shooting. Underneath is a rage between haves and have nots. Shame on the Fed for rigging the outcome for fat cats. Double shame on them for when our streets are filled with rage.

*Zero interest rates also means Zero risk. I think the change in Fed language will exacerbate recent short-term funding liquidity. I think we will see this appear (again) sooner versus later. I think Zero interest rates discourages leveraged investing. This policy will dry up liquidity in the asset backed market (Shadow banking system). I'm looking for evidence of this in the Euro Dollar funding markets. I am also looking for it to occur in the Term Commercial Paper market. Shame on the Fed for setting us up for this systemic risk.

*Brazil, Argentina, Korea, Indonesia are going to scream bloody murder over perpetual ZIRP. Russia is likely to get downright ugly with their rhetoric. I wouldn’t be surprised if they took this opportunity to vote with their feet and just abandon the dollar as a reserve holding. China will also make noise. They will make more calls for a new international currency to replace the dollar. The Central bankers in Japan and Switzerland are puking in the trashcan over this. Bernanke is exporting US deflation to them. Shame on the Fed for pursuing Beggar my neighbor policies. They deserve all the global criticism they are about to get.

*Bernanke bills himself as a student of the Depression. He has said over and over that he would not make the mistakes that the Fed made in 1937 when a tightening of monetary policy triggered another wave of deflation. I think the history books will look at the Fed and August of 2011 and draw a similar conclusion. At a critical time in history the Fed has taken action. The mistake of 72 years ago DID cause a recession that lasted a few years. The mistakes of 2011 will mark a point in history where America turned a corner downward. One that will take a few decades to recover from. The history books will shame Ben.

I'm 63 and I'm Tired

2011-08-09T20:03:00.000-05:00

By Robert A. Hall

I'm 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired.

Very tired.

I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.

I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor"; of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers"; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Sharia law tells them to.

I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and mandrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America and Canada , while no American nor Canadian group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.

I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate.

I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off?

I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.

Yes, I'm damn tired.

But I'm also glad to be 63.

Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making.

I'm just sorry for my granddaughter!

Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate.

A 634 Point Stock Market Crash And 8 More Reasons Why You Should Be Deeply Concerned That The U.S. Government Has Lost Its AAA Credit Rating

2011-08-08T23:05:00.000-05:00

article from: theeconomiccollapseblog.com

Are you ready for part two of the global financial collapse? Many now fear that we may be on the verge of a repeat of 2008 after the events of the last several days. On Friday, Standard & Poor's stripped the U.S. government of its AAA credit rating for the first time in history. World financial markets had been anticipating a potential downgrade, but that still didn't stop panic from ensuing as this week began. On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 634.76 points, which represented a 5.5 percent plunge. It was the largest one day point decline and the largest one day percentage decline since December 1, 2008. Overall, stocks have fallen by about 15 percent over the past two weeks. When Standard & Poor's downgraded long-term U.S. government debt from AAA to AA+, it was just one more indication that faith in the U.S. financial system is faltering. Previously, U.S. government debt had a AAA rating from S&P continuously since 1941, but now that streak is over. Nobody is quite sure what comes next. We truly are in unprecedented territory. But one thing is for sure - there is a lot of fear in the air right now.

So exactly what caused S&P to downgrade U.S. government debt?

Well, it was the debt ceiling deal that broke the camel's back.

According to S&P, the debt ceiling deal "falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics."

As I have written about previously, the debt ceiling deal was a complete and total joke, and S&P realized this.

Forget all of the huge figures that the mainstream media has been throwing at you concerning this debt ceiling deal. The only numbers that matter are for what happens before the next election.

The only way that the current debt ceiling deal will last beyond the 2012 election is if Obama is still president, the Democrats still control the Senate and the Republicans still control the House. If any of those things change, this deal ceiling deal is dead as soon as the election is over.

Even if all of those things remain the same, there is still a very good chance that we would see dramatic changes to the deal after the next election.

So in evaluating this "deal", the important thing is to look at what is going to happen prior to the 2012 election.

When we examine this "deal" that way, what does it look like?

Well, Barack Obama and the Democrats get the debt ceiling raised by over 2 trillion dollars and will not have to worry about it again until after the 2012 election.

The Republicans get 25 billion dollars in "savings" from spending increases that will be cancelled.

The "Super Congress" that is supposed to be coming up with the second phase of the plan may propose some additional "spending cuts" that would go into effect before the 2012 election, but that seems unlikely.

So in the final analysis, the Democrats won the debt ceiling battle by a landslide.

25 billion dollars is not even 1 percent of the federal budget. The U.S. national debt continues to spiral wildly out of control, and our politicians could not even cut the budget by one percent.

Somehow our politicians believed that the rest of the world would be convinced that they were serious about cutting the budget, but it turns out that global financial markets are tired of getting fooled.

It has gotten to the point where now even the big credit rating agencies are being forced to do something.

Not that they really have much credibility left. Everyone still remembers all of those AAA-rated mortgage-backed securities that imploded during the last financial crisis. The reality is that the big credit rating agencies are a bad joke at this point.

Several smaller credit rating agencies have already significantly slashed the credit rating of the U.S. government. But a lot of pressure had been put on the "big three" to keep them in line.

But now things have gotten so ridiculous that S&P felt forced to make a move.

Sadly, our politicians are still trying to maintain the charade that everything is okay. Barack Obama says that financial markets "still believe our credit is AAA and the world's investors agree".

Once again, Barack Obama is dead wrong.

The truth is that the credit rating for the U.S. government should have been slashed significantly a long time ago. This move by S&P was way, way overdue.

Moody's might be the next one to issue a downgrade. At the moment, Moody's says that it will not be downgrading U.S. debt for now, but Moody's also says that it has serious doubts about the enforceability of the "budget cuts" in the debt ceiling deal.

This crisis is just beginning. It is going to play out over time, and it is going to be very messy.

The following are 8 more reasons why you should be deeply concerned that the U.S. government has lost its AAA credit rating....

#1 The U.S. dollar and U.S. government debt are at the very heart of the global financial system. This credit rating downgrade just doesn't affect the United States - it literally shakes the financial foundations of the entire world.

#2 As the stock market crashes, investors are flocking to U.S. Treasuries right now. However, once the current panic is over the U.S. could be faced with increased borrowing costs. The credit rating downgrade is a signal to investors that they should be receiving a higher rate of return for investing in U.S. government debt. If interest rates on U.S. government debt do end up going up, that is going to make it more expensive for the U.S. government to borrow money. The higher interest on the national debt goes, the more difficult it is going to become to balance the budget.

#3 We could literally see hundreds of other credit rating downgrades now that long-term U.S. government debt has been downgraded. For example, S&P has already slashed the credit ratings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from AAA to AA+. S&P has also already begun to downgrade the credit ratings of states and municipalities. Nobody is quite sure when we are going to see the dominoes stop falling, and this is not going to be a good thing for the U.S. economy.

#4 10-year U.S. Treasuries are the basis for a whole lot of other interest rates throughout our economy. If we see the rate for 10-year U.S. Treasuries go up significantly, it will suddenly become a lot more expensive to get a car loan or a home loan.

#5 The current financial panic caused by this downgrade is hitting financial stocks really hard. The big banks led the decline back in 2008, and it looks like it might be happening again. Just check out what CNN says happened to financial stocks on Monday....

Financial stocks were among the hardest hit, with Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) plunging 20%, and Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) dropped roughly 15%.

#6 China is freaking out. China's official news agency says that China "has every right now to demand the United States to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China's dollar assets". If China starts dumping U.S. government debt that would make things a lot worse.

#7 There are already calls for the Federal Reserve to step in and do something. If the U.S. economy drops into another recession, will we see more quantitative easing? It seems like we have reached a point where the Fed is constantly in "emergency mode".

#8 The U.S. national debt continues to get worse by the day. Just check out what economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff recently told NPR....

"If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That's the fiscal gap"

Dick Cheney once said that "deficits don't matter", but the truth is that all of the debt we have been piling up for decades is now catching up with us.

The United States is in such a huge amount of financial trouble that it is hard to put into words. The days of easy borrowing for the U.S government are starting to come to an end. We have been living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and it has fueled a tremendous amount of "prosperity", but now the party is ending.

A whole lot of financial pain is on the horizon.

Please prepare for the hard times that are coming.

The Silver Bears Are Back For Part 7

2011-08-08T22:24:00.000-05:00

Everyone's favorite cartoon is back after the silver bears make yet another return appearance, this time number 7, in which more than anything,zt is made clear that the name of Blythe Masters will live in infamy long after she no longer has anything to do with the price of silver, and, allegedly, its ongoing suppression.

For those that have not seen parts 1-6 of the silver bears series which lays out how JP Morgand and company are manipulating the silver market you can view those episodes in our "Silver" section.

The Execution of SEAL Team Six

2011-08-08T10:45:00.000-05:00

by: Ann Barnhardt

You're damn right I said it.

On May 5th I had an email conversation with a retired military man with spook contacts. All were in total agreement that the Bin Laden episode was pure theater. The SEALS were sent into a compound as evidenced by the lost chopper on site. But Osama Bin Laden wasn't in that compound. Osama Bin Laden has been dead for years. Bin Laden had a genetic condition that caused renal failure (this genetic condition is common among deeply inbred Saudi arab muslims). Bin Laden had been on dialysis BEFORE 9/11. Dialysis is difficult enough for people in first world countries who can have it done in outstanding facilities. Bin Laden was having it done either in caves or in homes post 9/11. People in renal failure having dialysis done in fricking caves do NOT live for ten more years. Period. There was no dialysis equipment found in the compound the SEALS raided on May 2. Of course there wasn't. Bin Laden wasn't in that compound because Bin Laden has been dead for years.

This is why the "body" was declared "positively identified" faster than any known DNA testing process in existence - and this DNA testing was carried out not in a lab mind you, but inside Chinook and/or V-22 Osprey helos en route to the USS Carl Vinson. The body was then dumped into the Indian Ocean in a mad dash to ensure that "burial" took place within 24 hours of death in order to "honor" musloid burial traditions. Not a single picture of the so-called "Bin Laden corpse" has ever been released - and never will.
The entire Bin Laden episode was stagecraft. It was pure theater that was designed to give Obama a boost in the polls and give distraction and cover. Distract from what? Cover from what?

April 20, 2011: The release date of Dr. Jerome Corsi's book, "Where's the Birth Certificate" is announced as May 17, and pre-sales begin on Amazon.com. Corsi's work is known to be extremely thorough and meticulous. Within hours, Corsi's book is #1 on Amazon.com - fully 28 days before its release. The Obama regime is panicked.

April 27, 2011: In order to diffuse and undercut the Corsi book, the Obama regime releases a PDF image purported to be a scan of his original long-form Hawaiian birth certificate. Within hours, thousands of graphic designers, many of whom are self-professed Obama voters and supporters, isolate and demonstrate with dozens of objective proof sets that the PDF released by the Obama regime is not just a forgery, but an astoundingly incompetent and obvious forgery.

April 27 through May 2: The Obama regime is now in a blind panic. Deeming it too risky, instead of commissioning the forged birth certificate from document and photo illustration experts within the CIA or NSA, the Obama regime instead farmed the project off on someone inside the White House with a functional but middling knowledge of photo illustration programs. To the thoroughly inexpert eyes of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett, the forged certificate file appeared extremely convincing, and was thus released with fanfare. Within hours, they knew that they had not only made a mistake, but a massive mistake that could land them all in prison. The forger was so incompetent that he/she didn’t even flatten the image thus compressing and masking the component layers before posting it. And that was just the tip of the iceberg of glaring flaws and errors. The mainstream press was, so far, completely complicit in the cover-up of the forgery, but Rathergate proved that if the forgery debunking generated any mainstream traction whatsoever, the end could come swiftly. The Obama regime needed a big distraction and they needed it fast. They had been planning on holding the staged Bin Laden capture and killing until 2012 – for the thick of the campaign, and perhaps as an “October Surprise”, but it would have to be moved up to now.

May 2, 2011: The Bin Laden operation occurs. In all likelihood, a low-to-mid level Taliban or insurgent leader is killed.

May 3, 2011: Within hours, Vice President Joe Biden destroys any notions of OPSEC and bellows to the entire world in public remarks at a dinner at the Ritz Carlton that the Bin Laden raid was carried out by “the SEALS”. Within hours Obama regime had gleefully leaked that the raid was carried out by “SEAL Team 6”, also known as DEVGRU. Up until this point in history, all DEVGRU activities and information had been highly classified. Now the term “SEAL Team 6” was blasted across every newspaper in the world, with Disney even moving to trademark the name. The Obama regime wanted the ENTIRE WORLD to know the name “SEAL Team 6”.

May 5, 2011: As I said earlier, I conversed with retired military contact with spook contacts regarding the obvious theatrics of the Bin Laden episode and the need for a cover-up by the Obama regime. The conversation ended with the following exchange:

Ann: I’m on the US Military casualty email list. It would be NO PROBLEM to “hide” casualties. It’s a steady stream out of Afghanistan.

Contact: look for training accidents in the eastern mountains.

May 6, 2011: Obama travels to Ft. Campbell, KY to openly “meet and congratulate” SEAL Team 6 members. This receives huge press coverage, and the press declares the incident “a huge boost [for Obama] going into 2012.” Video citation here:

August 6, 2011: A Chinook helo is shot down in Tangi, Wardak Province, Afghanistan. Within hours, before family notifications could possibly have been completed, global press accounts positively confirm that 22 of the 30 Americans killed were not just SEALS, but members of SEAL Team 6. Again, DEVGRU operations have been, up until now, highly classified. Today, the Obama regime made a point of immediately revealing the unit identities of the SPECOPS forces among the dead.

In the past, DEVGRU men and other SPECOPS men have been killed in action, but their missions were so secret and so crucial to OPSEC that their deaths were covered-up by the government and attributed to such things as “training accidents” and the like – and I have no problem with that. These men understand going in to intense units such as DEVGRU that OPSEC is paramount, that they will never be publicly acknowledged for their heroism, and that if they are killed or captured in action, the government will lie about that in order to protect OPSEC and to prevent the enemy from gaining a propaganda and morale coup. Compare that reality with what happened today. The Obama regime distributed this information, and the Obama regime’s lapdog press instantly splashed headlines declaring this as the Taliban’s “REVENGE” for the “death of Bin Laden.” As I write this now, the Drudge Report headline in bright red reads, “REVENGE: SEALS WHO GOT OSAMA KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN.”

I’ll say what everyone else is thinking but is too scared to say. The Obama regime is almost certainly directly complicit in these deaths. The time, location and most especially, the PASSENGERS in the Chinook were passed to the Taliban. Additionally, you can’t take out a Chinook with small arms fire or even standard RPGs such as the Taliban use. The Taliban needed serious weaponry to take this helo down, and that serious weaponry needed to be in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time, ready to fire.

Why would the Obama regime kill Americans?

I think the question is, why WOULDN’T the Obama regime kill Americans?

The Obama regime is composed of Marxist-Leninist psychopaths. A glancing, superficial survey of 20th century history shows one glaring fact above all others: MARXISTS MURDER PEOPLE WITHOUT COMPUNCTION. Marxists also hate Americans, by definition. Three tacks:

1. The men on board the Chinook may have been some of the same men who participated or had direct knowledge of the staged Bin Laden raid and were killed to permanently silence them.

2. These DEVGRU men were killed to send a signal to the surviving DEVGRU men who carried out the Bin Laden raid to keep their mouths shut.

3. Certainly, the release of the unit identity of the dead within hours – before even family notification could have been made (which requires an IN PERSON visit to the family, remember) was an obvious bow to Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the entire muslim world. This event was INSTANTLY propagandized by the Obama media as “revenge” exacted for Bin Laden’s death. And remember, Bin Laden has been dead for many years. The raid of May 2 was pure stagecraft to distract the world from the release of the forged Obama birth certificate.

I am not a conspiracy theorist. I can’t stand Alex Jones or any 9/11 truther. I have turned down dozens of interviews with such types. In fact, I am a huge believer in the Lex Parsimoniae, which is sometimes called “Occam’s Razor”, which states that the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one. I teach this as part of my job, namely that the cattle markets are neither manipulated nor impossible to operate within at a profit. The reality is that the cattle industry participants do not make money because they are functionally incompetent. It is very, very simple. True conspiracies are very rare.

This entire Obama situation is a conspiracy, and I say that without the slightest hesitation. Obama is not a citizen of the United States, he is a puppet front for a cabal of Marxist-Leninsts including Soros, Ayers, Dohrn, Strong, Jarrett and many, many others. These people are enemies of the United States. These people are deeply psychologically damaged, and are capable of ordering people murdered in order to protect themselves and increase their own power. The three dead homosexual black men from Trinity United Church of Christ, Young, Bland and Spencer, all of whom were sexually linked to Barack Obama, were probably the first people specifically murdered by the Obama regime. The hundreds of Mexicans and the two American agents Terry and Zapata were murdered by Operation Fast and Furious in order to advance and increase the power of the Obama regime. These SEALS and the others on board that Chinook today were almost certainly betrayed and murdered by the Obama regime.

Why did the Obama regime immediately reveal the unit identity of the SPECOPS forces involved in the first place, despite the fact that DEVGRU was highly classified? Why was the personnel composition of the Chinook released IMMEDIATELY today after the helo went down – before even family notifications could be made? WHY? Why would you hand your enemy, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, a massive propaganda coup? WHY?

I’ll tell you why. Because the Obama regime IS THE ENEMY. They are Marxist tyrants who hold the lives of Americans not just cheap, but in scathing contempt. They will say anything, they will do anything, and they will murder ANYONE in order to protect themselves and consolidate and increase their power. Please, I beg you, for the love of God and all that is good in this world, read the history of the Soviet Union. Read about Lenin and Stalin and how they murdered people without any hesitation. Read about how Hitler was constantly ordering the murder of his own officers. Read about Communist China. Read about Mao and the millions upon tens of millions of murders he ordered. Read about the killing fields of the Communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia led by Pol Pot. PLEASE. Marxists MURDER PEOPLE. That is what they do. The Obama regime is MARXIST to the bone. If the Obama regime is not stopped, the 30 Americans murdered today in Afghanistan will be just the beginning. I promise you that.

Here, again, is the clip of Larry Grathwohl, who infiltrated the Weather Underground Marxist terrorist organization in the 1970s. The Weather Underground was founded by Obama’s political godfather, communist mentor (along with Frank Marshall Davis), murderer, and ghostwriter of “Dreams From My Father”, Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn. In this interview, taped in 1980 while Obama was still just an unknown undergrad foreign scholarship student at Occidental College, Grathwohl describes the leadership of the Weather Underground (which is Ayers and Dohrn) discussing what will be done with the “unreformable, diehard capitalists” once they have overthrown the government of the United States. The answer is extermination in camps in the Southwest. The estimated total that would need to be killed? 25 million, which was 10% of the population at the time. Ayers & Dohrn already have overthrown the government of the United States via their puppet protégé, Barack Obama. They have guaranteed that the economy will collapse. The only thing left for them to do is suspend the Constitution and open the camps. I’ll see you there.

Black Monday? - Economic Collapse A Mathematical Certainty, The Top 5 Places Where Not To Be When It Happens!

2011-08-07T17:03:00.000-05:00

The dollar collapse will be the single largest event in human history. This will be the first event that will touch every single living person in the world. All human activity is controlled by money. Our wealth,our work,our food,our government,even our relationships are affected by money.

No money in human history has had as much reach in both breadth and depth as the dollar. It is the de facto world currency. All other currency collapses will pale in comparison to this big one. All other currency crises have been regional and there were other currencies for people to grasp on to.

This collapse will be global and it will bring down not only the dollar but all other fiat currencies,as they are fundamentally no different. The collapse of currencies will lead to the collapse of ALL paper assets. The repercussions to this will have incredible results worldwide.

Full transcript----

"There is no greater disaster that to underestimate danger. Underestimation can be fatal.

The Dollar Collapse will be the single largest event in human history. This will be the first event that will touch every single living person in the world. All human activity is controlled by money. Our wealth, our work, our food, our government even our relationships are affected by money.

No money in human history has had as much reach, in both breadth and depth as the dollar. It is the defacto world currency. All other currency collapses will pale in comparison to this "big one." All other currency crises have been regional and there have always been other currencies for people to grasp onto. This collapse will be global and it will bring down not only the dollar but all other fiat currencies as they are fundamentally; no different.

The collapse of currencies will lead to the collapse of all paper assets. The repercussions to this will have incredible results worldwide. The dollar is the world's currency. It supports the global economy in setting foreign trade; most importantly the petro-dollar trade. This fuels our corporate vampires and acquires and harvests' the wealth of the world.

The corporate powers suppress real assets like natural resources and labor to provide themselves with massive profits. The fascist statists, collectivist's model provides the money to the economy to fun an ever-increasing federal government. That government then grows larger and larger, enriching its minions, with jobs to control their fellow citizens. Finally to come full circle; the government then controls other nations through the military-industrial complex.

This cycle will be cut when the mathematical and inevitable collapse of the dollar occurs. In order for our debt-based money to function we must increase the DEBT every year in excess of the debt and interest accrued the year before, or we will enter a deflationary death spiral. When Debt is created, money is created. When the debt is paid-off money is destroyed. There is never enough to pay off the debt because there would be not one dollar in existence,

We are at a point where we either default on the debt, willingly or unwillingly or create more money or debt: To keep the cycle moving. The problem is if you understand anything about compounding interest is that we are reaching the hockey-stick-moment (on the graph that is the moment when everything goes vertical); where the more debt that is incurred the more debt that is incurred the less effective it is: And this leads us to hyper-inflation. There are only two actors needed for this hyper-inflation: The lender of last resort, or the FED, and the spender of last resort the government. These two can and will blow up the system.

I believe they will wait until the next crises and the whiff of deflationary depression before they fire up the printing presses. That crisis is coming very soon, at the end of the summer or fall. The money and emergency measures are worn-out. The fact that none of the underlying problems that caused the 2008 crises have been resolved: The only thing that has happened is that instead of corporate problems we now have national problems.

In this movie Greece will play the role of Leman Brothers and the United States will play the role of AIG. The problem is there is no where (left) to kick the can down the road: And there is no world-government to absorb the DEBT- yet. So this leads me to the top five places NOT to be when the dollar collapses.

Number 1, Israel. This Anglo-American beachhead in the Middle-East was first conceived by the most powerful family in the world; the Rothschilds in 1917. The Balfour Declaration said that there will be a Zionist Israel , years before WWII, and the eventual establishment of Israel. Israel has not been a very good neighbor to the Muslim nations: And has always had the world's two biggest bullies on the block at its back. When the dollar collapses the United States will have much too much on its plate, both domestically and internationally to worry about such a non-strategic piece of land. This will leave Israel very weak at a time when tensions will be high. This very thin strip of desert land will not be able to withstand the economic realities of needing to import its food and fuel or the political reality of being surrounded by Muslims.

Number 2, Southern California, the land of fruits and nuts turns into Battlefield Los Angeles . Twenty-million people packed into an area that has no water and thus food is not good to say the least. Throw on top of the huge wealth disparities, and the proximity to a narco-state and this does not bode well. We have seen riots from Rodney King. What will happen when the dollar is destroyed and food and fuel stop coming into this area? People will get desperate and do crazy things especially when a huge proportion of its citizens are on anti-depressants. If food and fuel cannot get in, what about Prozac? At a time when people's worlds are falling apart they lack the ability to deal with this new paradigm. If people come off these drugs too fast they will suffer psychotic breaks and you will thousands of shootings or suicides.

Number 3, England the land of the former Big Brother and the Empire of the worldwide slave and drug trade; will suffer heavily.

The "Stiff upper lip" that the British Elite ingrained in to the sheeple will not work anymore, as the British population explodes. The humans character will sacrifice for a foreign enemy, but not if the enemy has always been the elite. The Anglo-American Empire may pull off another false flag to distract its population but I feel this collapse will happen before they pull it off. This will make all eyes point at the British Elite as being solely responsible for this catastrophe. We have seen massive riots for soccer-matches with Hooligans. What will happen when this island with very little food and fuel gets cut off?

Number 4, New York City ; another large urban area living too high on the dollar-hog. There is little doubt that all of the wealth in New York City , New Jersey , and Connecticut is derived off of Wall Street Wealth. The savings and investments of the whole nation and much of the world flows through this financial capital. As the world wakes up to the massive financial fraud; this will lead to the destruction of capital like we have never seen before (the picture is of NYC in ruins just as Berlin looked after the West bombed it into Oblivion at the end of WWII).This will have tremendous effects upon the regional economy, as people driving in Mercedes suddenly wonder where their next meal is coming from.

Number 5, Washington D.C. The political collapse of the Federal Government will reek havoc on the hugely inflated local economy as more and more states find it necessary to assert their natural control the federal government will suddenly lose power and importance, as the whole world suffers from a global Hurricane Katrina (the city in flames).

The money that they create and spend will become worthless and government minion's pensions will evaporate. Millions that once relied upon the ability to force others to send their money to them, will learn that the real power has always been at the most local level. Massive decentralization will be the answer to 'Globalization Gone Mad. ' Local families and communities will forego spending money and power out of their communities as they will care about their next meal and keeping warm. As Ayn Rand once said: "You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."

To sum those areas that have lived highest on the hog on the dollar-paradigm will most-likely be the worst places to live, when the dollar collapses. Many of you will see this video with passing interest; but rest
assured this dollar collapse is coming!

It is a mathematical inevitability. We will not be as fortunate to muddle through this collapse, like we did in 2008, when it was a corporate problem." This time around it is a national and a global problem. The global Ponzi-Scheme has run out of gas: As the demographics decline; as cheap abundant oil declines, as hegemonic power declines: This comes at a time when we reach the exponential or collapse-phase of our money.

The irresistible force paradox says; "what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object: We are about to find out, when infinite money hits a very-finite world!

America "Makes The Cut" - So What Happens Next?

2011-08-07T13:38:00.003-05:00

article by: Brandon Smith/alt-market.com

Around the world, starting Monday, all eyes are on the markets. The tension is palpable. The uncertainty is ample. And anger is heavy in the air. As predicted, the debt ceiling deal was not only NOT enough to assuage economic fears, it actually exacerbated them, triggering a flight from the Dow, and creating a decisive opportunity for ratings agency S&P to cut the once perfect U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+.

At Alt-Market, we often talk about points of balance, and how certain moments in history become highly visible indicators of balance lost. If we pay close attention, and know what we are looking for, these moments can be recognized, allowing us time to shield ourselves from the explosion and the resulting financial shrapnel. The past two weeks have culminated into one of these defining events that tell us the tide has fully turned, and something new and dangerous is just over the horizon. The question now is; what should we expect?

The nature of the credit downgrade situation is not necessarily “unprecedented” in history, but it is surely unprecedented on the scale we see currently in the U.S. It is difficult to predict how exactly the investment world will react. Some consequences, though, are probable, if not inevitable. Let’s examine the events we are likely to see in the coming weeks as well as the coming months, as nations attempt to adjust to America’s final plunge…

1) Ratings Agencies Under Attack

This has already begun. Italian authorities have raided the offices of S&P and Moody’s, apparently perturbed that their credit rating is not under their control. The U.S. is accusing S&P of making "accounting mistakes” and jumping the gun on the American downgrade. The battle between insolvent governments and the ratings agencies from here on will escalate quickly. More offices will be investigated and raided. The mainstream media will try to assert that the downgrades are “not that important”, and that the U.S. will recover quite nicely without a perfect score. Eventually, as the collapse becomes more evident, ratings agencies will fill the role as the go to scapegoat / economic hitman at which all governments will point accusing fingers.

“S&P is gonna’ cut you man! S&P’s a blade-man, man!”

In my view, it’s all theater. First, let’s set aside the recent ratings cuts altogether and look at the facts. The U.S. should have been downgraded years ago, especially after the Federal Reserve decided to begin purchasing U.S. Treasury Bonds in place of dwindling foreign interest and turned to monetizing our debt to the point of rampant inflation. Italy and numerous other EU members should have been downgraded to junk status a long time ago as well. If anything, the ratings agencies over the past few years have been PROTECTING the credit reputations of many countries which in no way deserve it. The recent downgrades are long overdue…

Second, suddenly governments and MSM pundits feel it necessary to point out the large part ratings agencies played in the derivatives bubble and subsequent credit crisis? Please! They were perfectly content with S&P or Moody’s giving fraudulent top ratings for toxic garbage securities, and even defended agency actions after the bubble burst! Now, after they finally start doing their jobs by downgrading bad debt, governments want an investigation?

Third, ratings agencies were not alone in the creation of the derivatives bubble. The private Federal Reserve artificially lowered interest rates and flooded the markets with cheap fiat. International banks used this fast money to create the easy mortgage groundswell and the derivatives poison that was fed it into the system. Ratings agencies went along with the scam and graded the worthless securities as AAA. The federal government and the SEC allowed all of this to take place by purposely ignoring the crime and refusing to apply existing regulations in investigating the fraud.

The Bottom line? You CANNOT create an economic crisis like the one we face today without collusion between big business, government, regulatory bodies, and ratings agencies. The Obama Administration is well aware of this, and the attacks on S&P are nothing more than a show. S&P is not to blame for the downgrade this past weekend. They are ALL to blame.

2) Increased Borrowing Costs

While the mainstream will attempt to downplay the effects of a U.S. downgrade, they cannot deny that our country’s borrowing costs have just gone up. This causes several unfortunate circumstances to develop. Our ability to continue funding our liabilities is now greatly diminished, unless we turn to the Federal Reserve even more in the purchasing of treasury bonds. If investors and central banks can’t get AAA protection for their money in America, they will simply turn to other countries that still retain a top credit rating. The safety of dollars and treasuries already held by other countries will come under question. In response to the S&P downgrade, China, our largest creditor, has openly stated that U.S. securities can no longer be trusted, and that the dollar must be replaced as the world reserve currency. If the dollar does not take an immediate dive starting this week, it certainly will over the course of the Fall season. There are, indeed, many direct consequences in light of a U.S. downgrade. Anyone who says otherwise is living in dreamland.

3) European Union Feeling The Pain

The EU is on a direct interception course with disaster, just as we are, however, being that the U.S. dollar is a widespread world reserve currency, all nations will be affected by our particular downgrade, as opposed to the Greek downgrade, for example, whose effects were minor in comparison.

The European Central Bank has initiated its own TARP measures, and due to the quickening implosion of Spain and Italy, is fully prepared to print fiat Euros in a desperate attempt to control the damage. European reliance on the American consumer has proved fatal. The result is an ever expanding avalanche of fiat on both sides of the Atlantic in an insane race to the bottom between our respective currencies. This development fits perfectly with the IMF plan to introduce Special Drawing Rights (the SDR) as the new global reserve currency, though I’m sure it’s all just a coincidence…

The ECB is also facing serious resistance from Germany, which has been shelling out the largest portion of bailout funds for countries like Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. Germany is tired of playing sugar daddy to the EU, which could conceivably lead to a breakup of the union itself, even with the implementation of fiat injections.

4) Blame Game Overdrive

The blame game is about to get ugly. When economic catastrophe is on the line, civility goes out the window. Who will be the primary target besides ratings agencies? Why fiscal conservatives, of course! Obviously, the Tea Party is full of “terrorists”, and real conservatives are the true culprit behind the collapse because we have this annoying tendency of pointing out that our spending addicted government is dragging us hogtied on a speedboat to Hades.

Please, America, don’t blame the Federal Reserve for feeding the derivatives bubble and destroying our currency. Don’t fret over global banks like Goldman Sachs that deliberately conjured the credit crisis. Don’t attack the government for lending a helping hand to these entities in their quest for complete financial centralization. Instead, shoot the messenger. We love that…

5) Drastic Measures

An announcement by the Fed of yet a third QE stimulus package is a certainty. If the market reaction is especially negative this week, an announcement could even be made before this month is out. I have no doubt, QE3 will be the undoing of this country. Any further devaluation of the dollar will NOT be tolerated by creditor nations who have much to lose if the process of U.S. inflation continues. Treasuries will be dumped. The dollar will be dumped. And, America will have little choice but to hyperinflate to keep up with rising debt burdens.

Those who believe that the U.S. is not expendable in terms of the world economy, and believe that foreign nations will continue pouring money into our coffers because they “have to”, are kidding themselves. We are dealing with an engineered global shift. For central bankers, the U.S. economy is no less expendable than an aging sports car. It can easily be replaced with something newer, shinier, and more compact. Something that will get more girls. The call for “international regulation” of U.S. finances will become the rallying cry of elites across the planet, as well as the largest holders of our exponential debt. The current system will be sacrificed to make way for an IMF controlled body of unaccountable economic overseers.

This is not theory. This is not conjecture. This is reality. The credit downgrade of the U.S. is a concrete trigger point that sets all of the above proceedings in motion.

People will ask for hypotheses on time frames for the events above. I don’t have any, though this week’s market attitudes will be revealing as to the speed that events will take shape. So many interacting factors are present that any specific time predictions on the progress of collapse would be unrealistic. For the short term, watch Federal Reserve activity carefully. Introduction of new QE will be extraordinarily volatile. For the long term, watch wholesale and retail prices of goods, along with treasury auctions and foreign flights from U.S. bonds. One thing is certain, the final half of 2011 will be remembered as a historical turning point for us all. That said, the trials ahead were never the issue. That which is most important is how we RESPOND in these moments. How we adapt. How we function. How we fight back. Disasters do not make history. We make history. As overwhelming as the currents of such events may feel, in the end, they are subservient to the actions of resolved men. Nothing is fated. The conclusion depends upon us.

NIA Report: S&P Downgrades US Debt Rating

2011-08-06T02:00:00.000-05:00

S&P just announced late this evening that they have downgraded the U.S. debt rating from AAA to AA+ with a negative outlook.

NIA is absolutely shocked by this. What shocks us is just how long it took them to make this downgrade. Just like how S&P and Moody's didn't downgrade subprime CDOs until the mortgage-backed bonds they held were practically worthless, S&P waited for U.S. debt obligations to reach five times GDP and for the U.S. dollar to lose 84% of its purchasing power over the course of a single decade. The U.S. was a hair away from defaulting on its debt this week if the debt ceiling wasn't raised, yet it still had a AAA rating.

NIA believes that a AAA rating should be reserved for countries that have budget surpluses, low levels of debt that could easily be paid off without printing money, and low levels of inflation. The U.S. had a cash budget deficit last year of $1.3 trillion, but once you include increases to unfunded liabilities, our real budget deficit was approximately $5 trillion. Even if Americans were taxed 100% of their income it wouldn't be enough to balance the budget.

It is hard to imagine a fiscal situation worse than this, but the credit ratings agencies have justified giving the U.S. a AAA rating based on the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency and the Federal Reserve's ability to monetize our deficits and debts by printing money. If it wasn't for our printing press and the world's willingness to accept and hoard the dollars we print in return for the real products and commodities they produce, the U.S. credit rating would be junk.

S&P claims that their reason for downgrading the U.S. debt rating at this time is because, "the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge". According to S&P, it is because our two political parties are so far apart that we weren't able to pass a bill with anything but modest spending cuts. The reality is, the Republicans and Democrats aren't far apart at all. Neither parties are serious about cutting spending and the underlying fundamentals of both their proposed bills were exactly the same. The Republicans that American tea party supporters elected to office have broken their promises to make major spending cuts and have accomplished absolutely nothing positive since entering office.

Our country just had an unbelievable opportunity to dramatically cut government spending in a last ditch effort to prevent hyperinflation. Instead, our government passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling that had no real spending cuts at all. The mainstream media tried to spin the bill into being a victory for U.S. tea party supporters due to the purported "spending cuts" that it contained. The truth is, government spending is set to rise every single year until the dollar is worthless. The $2.1 trillion in phony spending cuts are only tiny reductions to large spending increases and none of them will begin until early 2013 when we will need to once again raise the debt ceiling. Even if the government in early 2013 decides to follow through with them, rising interest payments on our national debt will mean substantially larger budget deficits than what are projected today.

Credit ratings agencies have absolutely zero credibility left and we believe that with hyperinflation coming soon, credit ratings will become a thing of the past. To capitalize on this, on May 23rd NIA suggested to you put options in the only publicly traded pure credit ratings play, Moody's (MCO). On May 23rd with MCO trading for $37.90, NIA suggested to you MCO November 2011 $35 put options at $1.98. MCO today closed at $32.88 and our MCO put option suggestion finished the day with a last trade of $5.20 for a huge gain of 163% in a little over two months. NIA is very pleased that we figured out the #1 most profitable way to capitalize on the major fundamental shift that is taking place in this industry and as far as we are aware, NIA is the only organization in the world that suggested MCO puts in recent months.

With the stock market down big in recent weeks, NIA believes that this evening's news is already mostly factored into stock prices. With the Fed Funds Rate having been left near zero for over two years, the world is flooded with excess liquidity of U.S. dollars and there is no chance of the stock market crashing like in late-2008/early-2009. In fact, the recent downward move in the stock market means the Federal Reserve is likely to soon implement additional monetary inflation measures and will leave the Fed Funds Rate near zero permanently.

The GDP was already on its way to becoming negative in the second half of 2011 and if the U.S. wants to avoid a debt default later this decade, it needs the Federal Reserve to print enough money to see at least 5% annual nominal GDP growth. It's not just the Federal Government that needs GDP to grow, but most cities and states will default on their debts if GDP doesn't grow rapidly. Cities and states don't have printing presses so unless the U.S. government wants to bail them all out like the European Union is bailing out Greece, Portugal, and Ireland, it needs to create GDP growth even if that means the Federal Reserve eliminating interest payments on the $1.6 trillion in excess reserves held by banks and taxing banks who don't lend the money.

NIA prays that Americans don't make the mistake of buying U.S. Treasuries as a safe haven, as they are now the riskiest asset of all. If U.S. Treasuries rally next week, it will only be temporary and will be followed by the largest and sharpest reversal in history with a crash in Treasury prices and an explosion in yields like never seen before. Most Keynesian economists will likely forecast rising Treasury prices despite the U.S. debt crisis, because they claim the bond markets in other countries are tiny compared to ours and there simply is no other place to park safe haven money. In our opinion, there is no reason to own the fiat currency denominated bonds of any country or company. Gold and silver are the only true safe havens and it is our belief that by the end of this year, the U.S. public will begin investing into gold and silver in droves as they realize that although we avoided a debt default for now, a debt default by inflation is still on its way. The largest ever short-term rally in precious metals and mining stocks is ahead.

2011-08-05T17:34:00.002-05:00

57 Senators Sign Letter To Protect Second Amendment Rights From UN

2011-08-05T10:34:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) joined his colleague Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) and 43 other Senators in expressing grave concern about the dangers posed to Second Amendment rights by the United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty. In a letter to President Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, the 45 senators said they would oppose ratification of an Arms Trade Treaty that in any way restricts the rights of law-abiding American gun owners. This is enough to block the treaty from Senate passage, as treaties submitted to the U.S. Senate require approval of two-thirds of Senators present to be ratified.

“Our Second Amendment is non-negotiable,” said Hatch. “We don’t need a bunch of bureaucrats at the United Nations dictating our liberties and freedoms. This Treaty should not be ratified and I will fight it tooth and nail.”

In the letter, the senators wrote: “As the treaty process continues, we strongly encourage your Administration to uphold our country’s constitutional protections of civilian firearms ownership. These freedoms are not negotiable, and we will oppose ratification of an Arms Trade Treaty presented to the Senate that in any way restricts the rights of law-abiding U.S. citizens to manufacture, assemble, possess, transfer or purchase firearms, ammunition and related items.”

“As we have for the past 15 years, the NRA will fight to stop a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty that infringes on the Constitutional rights of American gun owners,” said Chris W. Cox, executive director, NRA Institute for Legislative Action. “This letter sends a clear message to the international bureaucrats who want to eliminate our fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms. Clearly, a U.N. Arms Trade Treaty that includes civilian arms within its scope is not supported by the American people or their elected U.S. Senators. Sen. Moran is a true champion of our freedom. We are grateful for his leadership and his tenacious efforts on this issue, as well as the 44 other senators who agree with the NRA’s refusal to compromise on our constitutional freedoms.”

In October of 2009 at the U.N. General Assembly, the Obama Administration reversed the previous Administration’s position and voted for the U.S. to participate in negotiating the Arms Trade Treaty, purportedly to establish “common international standards for the import, export, and transfer of conventional arms.” Preparatory committee meetings are now underway in anticipation of a conference in 2012 to finalize the treaty. A treaty draft has not yet been produced.

The full text of the letter the Senators have signed reads:

July 22, 2011
President Barack Obama1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NWWashington, D.C. 20500
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton2201 C St., NWWashington, D.C. 20520

Dear President Obama and Secretary Clinton:

As defenders of the right of Americans to keep and bear arms, we write to express our grave concern about the dangers posed by the United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty. Our country’s sovereignty and the constitutional protection of these individual freedoms must not be infringed.

In October of 2009 at the U.N. General Assembly, your administration voted for the U.S. to participate in negotiating this treaty. Preparatory committee meetings are now underway in anticipation of a conference in 2012 to finalize the treaty. Based on the process to date, we are concerned that the Arms Trade Treaty poses dangers to rights protected under the Second Amendment for the following reasons.

First, while the 2009 resolution on the treaty acknowledged the existence of “national constitutional protections on private ownership,” it placed the existence of these protections in the context of “the right of States to regulate internal transfers of arms and national ownership,” implying that constitutional protections must be interpreted in the context of the broader power of the state to regulate. We are concerned both by the implications of the 2009 resolution and by the hostility to private firearms ownership manifested by similar resolutions in previous years—such as the 2008 resolution, which called for the “highest possible standards” of control.

Second, your Administration agreed to participate in the negotiation only if it “operates under the rule of consensus decision-making.” Given that the 2008 resolution on the treaty was adopted almost unanimously—with only the U.S. and Zimbabwe in opposition—it seems clear that there is a near-consensus on the requirement for the “highest possible standards,” which will inevitably put severe pressure on the United States to compromise on important issues.

Third, U.N. member states regularly argue that no treaty controlling the transfer of arms internationally can be effective without controls on transfers inside member states. Any treaty resulting from the Arms Trade Treaty process that seeks in any way to regulate the domestic manufacture, assembly, possession, transfer, or purchase of firearms, ammunition, and related items would be completely unacceptable to us.

Fourth, reports from the 2010 Preparatory Meeting make it clear that many U.N. member states aim to craft an extremely broad treaty. A declaration by Mexico and other Central and South American countries, for example, called for the treaty to cover “All types of conventional weapons (regardless of their purpose), including small arms and light weapons, ammunition, components, parts, technology and related materials.” Such a broad treaty would be completely unenforceable, and would pose dangers to all U.S. businesses and individuals involved in any aspect of the firearms industry. At the 2010 Meeting, the U.S. representative twice expressed frustration with the wide-ranging and unrealistic scope of the projected treaty. We are concerned that these cautions will not be heeded, and that the Senate will eventually be called upon to consider a treaty that is so broad it cannot effectively be subject to our advice and consent.

Fifth, and finally, the underlying philosophy of the Arms Trade Treaty is that transfers to and from governments are presumptively legal, while transfers to non-state actors (such as terrorists and criminals) are, at best, problematic. We agree that sales and transfers to criminals and terrorists are unacceptable, but we will oppose any treaty that places the burden of controlling crime and terrorism on law-abiding Americans, instead of where it belongs: on the culpable member states of the United Nations who have failed to take the necessary steps to block trafficking that is already illegal under existing laws and agreements.
As the treaty process continues, we strongly encourage your Administration to uphold our country’s constitutional protections of civilian firearms ownership. These freedoms are not negotiable, and we will oppose ratification of an Arms Trade Treaty presented to the Senate that in any way restricts the rights of law-abiding U.S. citizens to manufacture, assemble, possess, transfer or purchase firearms, ammunition, and related items.

Signed by U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), John Barrasso (R-WY), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Boozman (R-AR), Scott Brown (R-MA), Richard Burr (R-NC), Dan Coats (R-IN), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Susan Collins (R-ME), Bob Corker (R-TN), John Cornyn (R-TX), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Jim DeMint (R-SC), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Dean Heller (R-NV), John Hoeven (R-ND), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), James Inhofe (R-OK), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Mike Johanns (R-NE), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Mike Lee (R-UT), John McCain (R-AZ), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Rand Paul (R-KY), Rob Portman (R-OH), Jim Risch (R-ID), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Richard Shelby (R-AL), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), John Thune (R-SD), Pat Toomey (R-PA), David Vitter (R-LA), and Roger Wicker (R-MS).

Wiedemer: Get Ready for Second Recession, Inflation

2011-08-05T09:44:00.000-05:00

article by: Jim Meyers/Ashley Martella

Financial guru Robert Wiedemer tells Newsmax that the American economy is facing a double-barreled threat — a recession is “absolutely” coming and inflation will be the “biggest problem” of all.

Wiedemer, managing director of Absolute Investment Management and a contributor to Newsmax’s Financial Intelligence Report and Moneynews, attributes Thursday’s stock market plunge to the government’s ending of quantitative easing — printing money to buy securities in an effort to fuel economic growth.

But he warns that the practice will likely be resumed and will ultimately bring on inflation.
Back in 2006, Wiedemer was one of three economists who co-authored a book correctly warning that the real estate boom and Wall Street bull run were about to end.

In 2009, they returned and wrote the best-selling book “Aftershock,” describing a situation where a massive pullback on our dollar, coupled with an out-of-control government debt fiasco, would begin to topple the American way of life.

The Dow on Thursday fell 512 points, more than 4 percent. In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Wiedemer was asked what is causing this nosedive.

“A lot of pundits say there’s a lot of bad economic news, and there certainly is, but if you ask me, fundamentally, lack of printed money is doing it,” he says.

“This market basically has never gone up without printed money since the financial crisis.

“Isn’t it fascinating that five or six weeks after we stop printing money in 2010 — we stopped printing on April 1, and by May we had a down market culminating with a flash crash where we were down 360 points for the day. Now five or six weeks after we stop printing money in July, we’re down 500 points for the day. There may be some coincidence, but fundamentally what is happening is a lack of printed money.

“We have some real economic problems, like the bad GDP numbers, but when we’re printing a lot of money we tend to ignore a lot of those things. So that seems to help the market. And frankly when the market goes up it’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy because it encourages especially high-income consumers to spend more.”

Asked if the economy is stalled and the nation headed for a recession, Wiedemer responds: “The economy is clearly stalling. Are we headed for another recession? At some point, absolutely. I’m not sure that’s going to be this year, but it’s coming.”

Wiedemer discussed the economic outlook for the average American family.

“I think that for a while we’re still going to see stagnation, and I might add that this market going down increases the likelihood that the Fed’s going to go in and print more money to push it back up, and that printed money will help the market.

“So this down market will probably be offset by Federal Reserve action that will help the economy for a while. But ultimately it’s not going to be good because printed money only goes so far, and ultimately we are going to hit that recession and that’s going to hit Middle America.”

Quantitative easing is a problem in the long run, he adds: “It’s money from heaven, which I say is the path to big problems. Printing money gives you a quick high but it’s followed by a horrible aftershock.

“I think inflation is the biggest problem going. Inflation is like the housing crisis of 2003. Nobody sees that housing prices were getting out of line, and nobody seems to think that when you print a lot of money you’re going to get inflation. I think you will. I think that’s coming.

“And interestingly, if we do have another QE I think you’re going to find that several members of the Federal Reserve board actually vote against it.

“I think there is growing concern that this is going to cause inflation. That said, I think they will still probably pass more money printing, but I think you’re going to find some disagreement at the Federal Reserve indicating a growing concern that it is going to create inflation, and I certainly think it is going to create inflation.”

As for the prospects for a quick rebound in the market, Wiedemer says: “The market does seem a bit oversold so I would normally expect a rebound. But I would put one caveat on that: Tomorrow (Friday; interview was conducted on Thursday) we’ve got the jobs report coming out. If it comes out negative I’d watch out again.”

Both institutional and retail investors are driving the market down, Wiedemer tells Newsmax.

“Institutional investors are starting to get nervous and that’s part of the problem. But retail investors were also getting nervous in advance of the end of QE2 (quantitative easing) and clearly got nervous with all the circus over the debt ceiling.

Democrats and President Obama have been talking about tax hikes. Wiedemer comments: “It’s hard to make the case that tax hikes are good for an economy, especially in a recession or stagnant economy like this. So I would hope that nobody’s going to pass tax hikes right now, and it doesn’t look like Congress is going to go along with that.”

Asked what are the safest places to ride out the downturn, Wiedemer says: “At my management firm we are invested in gold, we are invested in currencies. We certainly like both of those. They are part of any good portfolio. We’ve certainly done well during these downturns.”

Read more on Newsmax.com: Wiedemer: Get Ready for Second Recession, Inflation