Legislating Basic Math for Banks
Civil War In Corporate America: Banks Battling The Chamber On Accounting Rules
Amid the ongoing financial regulation overhaul, the banking industry is hoping to pull off a quiet power grab that has eluded its grasp since the Great Depression, by stripping the independence of the board that sets financial accounting standards.
The move could effectively let banks set their own accounting standards in rough economic times.
Astonishingly, at a time when the public is crying out for greater regulation to limit excessive risk-taking by financial institutions, the banks are trying to get Congress to agree that the next time there's a big downturn, they should have the ability to alter their accounting standards -- essentially, fudge the numbers -- so that the public and investors won't be able to tell how insolvent they really are. By ignoring their declining asset values, they can avoid the standard requirement of raising more capital.
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Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) fought a lonely battle last spring to stave off the loosening of the accounting rules and opposes this more dramatic shift, as well. Banks may have good reason to want to overstate the value of their assets, he said, and it may work for a time. But an economy can't be run indefinitely on imaginary numbers. "I enjoy reading fiction, but not in financial statements," he said.
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The amendment would empower the council overseeing FASB to "recommend to the SEC, either publicly or privately to take such action as is necessary, including but not limited to suspension, modification or elimination of such accounting principles, standards or procedures as they may apply to the stability of the financial system or the safety and soundness of financial companies, as a whole, for such duration as is reasonable and appropriate."If the SEC doesn't follow the "recommendation," according to section (c) of the amendment, the council can order it to do so.
In other words, for the sake of financial stability, bank regulators could secretly order the "elimination" of accounting standards.
Deregulating accounting standards is basically allowing banks to legally say 2 * 2 = 5. This is not how you boost confidence in the banking system. Are they psychotic? This should NEVER be allowed. We already know that deregulation has caused so much damage throughout the history of not just the United States of America but the World.
One of the major problems with deregulating accounting standards is that banks use the fractional reserve system... Any fudging of the numbers can be multiplied. Derivatives are not regulated in any way, they are leveraged contracts (so profits and losses are multiplied), and they are called the economic black hole. We shouldn't let the actual balance sheet of banks to become the same black hole. This would make the problem of insolvency invisible. As in, this is helping to destroy capitalism for ponzi schemes.
Lastly, a laps of accounting standards led to the ongoing sub-prime crisis. Allowing a fast food restaurant employee to claim a monthly income of $5,000 per month was unsustainable in the long term. Now the banks are lobbying for this fraud to legally occur on their own books?
How can you legislate and legally argue that 2 * 2 = 5? This is the same as you claiming your personal net worth is $1,500,000,000. No matter how much you try, it's just not true. How can lying for profit be legal?
Holy crap.
The New Federal Reserve North American Union Bills – Fake with proof
Original: The North American Union Currency – 2010 Series
Great Commentary: NAU currency or another hoax?
If this is another Amero hoax (remember FBI-informant-white-supremacist Hal Turner’s Amero coin hoax) it is an elaborate one– possibly more FBI work. Even if it is, we have no reason to doubt a new NAU currency is planned.
Out of the gates, I see one questionable issue with the $200 bill. Why is the text so much crisper than the photo of J.P. Morgan?
The North American Union, for all practical purposes, has already been signed into law, thanks to the likes of NAFTA and the SPP agreement. The EU already has it’s own currency, the Euro. It’s hardly unreasonable to think we may someday have North American currency. But why would a FBI-run white supremacist like Hal Turner be so intersted in discrediting this using straw man hoaxes?
There are growing numbers of Americans who see the writing on the wall with respect to the dollar. A timely dollar devaluation would set the stage for an exchange rate favorable to the bankers issuing a new currency. But if the middle class gets out of dollars before it loses all it’s value, then we end up preserving our wealth and that is not at all what the banking elite have planned.
So regardless of whether this is real or not, I strongly urge everyone to get out of paper/fiat investments and into property, gold/silver, commodities, energy independence, guns, etc.- things with real value, not worthless inflatable paper.
The image:
FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE SPECIMENS
THE FINAL REVISION - 2010 SERIES - INITIAL PRINTING
(The front face on the left, the back with image on the right. 1, 5, 10, 20 50, 100, 200)
PRETRIAL SPECIMENS ONLY - NOT AUTHORIZED FOR CIRCULATION OR PUBLIC RELEASE
PNISHABLE UNDER THE USC TITLE 18, PART I, CHAPTER 17, § 334
The text here says to me that these claim to be scans of actual bills off the printing press. How true is this? Let's find out!
Only one other country has a 200 unit note: Switzerland. To counter balance this, the only other $200 bill was fake and had G.W. Bush on it.
The One unit bill has UNO written on the back over the lower left numeral. No other denomination here has any Spanish text so prominent. That would be an important usability feature for transactions.
There is no currency specified. All these NAU bills say the denomination but not the currency. Euros even say 'EYPΩ' (The Greek spelling of 'EURO') in addition to 'EURO'. If it said Ameros on it or some other unnamed currency, then I'd believe it.
The image was "created" by Picasa 3.0. It's in the JPEG Header. I doubt anyone at the Federal Reserve Manages enough images to warrant a photo manager. Even then, they wouldn't use Picasa due to its social features and the security risks that poses with something so sensitive. You can basically click a button and share the image with the world. They wouldn't allow this. Not at all. Having worked at a large financial institution, unauthorized software is punishable by explicit and swift firing. There may have been an intermediary that used Picasa and it resaved the file with it's own heading, but it's very dubious.
The text around the illuminati symbol says: "Domus Aedificata est" and "Novus Ordo Mundi" which translates to "This house was built for me" and "New World Order," respectively. The Roman date below the illuminati pyramid is 1776 which has no NAU meaning. The influence of the Federal Reserve in these bills would make 1913 a much more important date to signify under the illuminati.
The current US bills have a marking on them to describe their location in the sheet. Here are samples of these bills where you can clearly see the location in the sheet at the bottom of each snapshot.
Here are the sheet position markings on these bills:
- 1 - L1
- 5 - A4
- 10 - A2
- 20 - A1
- 50 - A7
- 100 - G1
- 200 - F3
If these bills were printed they were pulled randomly out of each stack for the scan. There is a chance of this happening. The damning evidence is if these bills were produced from the same presses as our US Dollar Bills are printed now, there is no such position as L1 nor A7 unless the one unit and fifty unit paper is exactly twice the size. Together, the paper would be 4 times the normal size. In other words, to get a bill in position L7 the paper would be huge (as in, four times the normal size). This is not how bills are printed. These things are standardized for efficiency, quality, and cost.
The fact that there are bankers and important people to the Federal Reserve on the bills is utter non-sense. This would never happen. There is too much pent up anger at banks in North America (all over the world really) and no one would stand for it. Most people have no idea who these people are!
- 1 - Charles S. Hamlin - First Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
- 5 - Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich - Politician instrumental in setting up the Federal Reserve.
- 10 - William Gibbs McAdoo - U.S. Senator, United States Secretary of the Treasury and director of the United States Railroad Administration. Served as an "ex-officio member" on the first Federal Reserve Board.
- 20 - Edward Mandell House - Laid the groundwork for establishment of the Council on Foreign Relations.
- 50 - Paul Moritz WarburgHelp to found of the Federal Reserve System. He was appointed a member of the first Federal Reserve Board.
- 100 - John D. Rockefeller Advocated for the Federal Reserve (at least)
- 200 - John Pierpont Morgan The most powerful banker before the Federal Reserve System
There are a number of elements that "show through" the bills and when comparing them, some elements are missing. One side is much more transparent than the other. The most interesting evidence is that the partial numbers on the two sides of all the bills don't form a perfect number while the text "THE UNITED FEDERATION OF NORTH AMERICA" is exactly lined up with the background fade of the opposite text. This technique exactly lines up so you can read the denomination very clearly when holding a bill up to the light including in the Euro. A notable point is that the "faded see-through" of the number pieces an each side is a perfect denomination despite the fact that superimposing an aligned, flipped reverse side does not produce a perfect denomination. Each side suggests the see through nature and point out that it does line up but when you actually put it together these elements to not line up.
On the left is the Photoshop combined 50-50 faded overlay of the two sides, one side is horizontally flipped so it overlays as if you were to look through it with light on the other side. It's completely out of alignment. Yet, as you can see from the middle and right, each denomination on each side clearly ghosts through as the whole number.
This holds true for the denomination security strip in each bill as well. Superimposing lines on each side places this strip in very different places The one and five is almost there, but all the others are way off. This is the 100 bill. The strips have been highlighted in red and blue to show you how off they are. You can see the ghost of the strips without the color overlay.
For clarity you can look at this enhanced image too. This is darkened to show you the see through ghosting of the reverse side a bit better.
Lastly, the bill positions on the supposed sheet of tens are all A2. This is not how they would be labeled. If this was a pretrial print run, they'd most likely do the actual bill positions in the sheet so as to test that aspect of the printing system.
Given this analysis... I'm going to step out and say these bills are 100% fake. Clearly, the person or organization spent a lot of time trying to get it right but there are a lot of "mistakes" that an actual printed bill would not have. Any graphic designer worth their salt would have caught these mistakes. This leads me to believe they were purposefully placed there. People without the analysis ability would start speculating. People with the ability would scan the bills and say, yeah, maybe they're real. Anyone doing real analysis would find the mistakes. These flaws are so obvious that they almost WANT people to know it's fake.
This begs the question why go through this exercise? Who would do such a thing?
My best guess is that this is some kind of CoIntelPro. It's an attempt to discredit the conspiracy theorists. Police use these techniques all the time. They infiltrate a group of peaceful protestors and cause violence and havoc which allows the riot police to move in with the fake reason of crowd control. But what is the purpose here?
Billionaires Plunder Alabama, U.S. Troops Occupy Towns… Illegally
As the Billionaires Plunder Alabama, U.S. Troops Occupy Towns… Illegally
One of the creepiest details to emerge in the shooting rampage were reports that troops from nearby Fort Rucker were brought into Samson [by police request] and other surrounding areas to patrol the streets. This is a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, every freedom-loving American’s worst nightmare.
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Indeed. For a lot of Americans, the sight of troops occupying their towns is their worst nightmare come true — part of the reason that America came into existence was to create a country where this sort of thing would never happen, even if the Army’s sole intent was to be a good neighbor and help old ladies cross the streets.
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But what even the right-wing anti-government people won’t report is the true reason why the Army was called out in the first place, something that goes right back to the cause of the shooting rampage: billionaire exploitation of the local Alabamans, not just by the chicken oligarch, but from higher up the predator food chain — Wall Street banking behemoth JP Morgan Chase.You see, thanks to a combination of corporate-tax holidays (which reduce local revenues), billionaire greed like the sort that bankrupted Pilgrim’s Pride, and Wall Street investment-banking scams on places like Alabama that result in corrupted local officials and bankrupted municipalities, counties and states — now, there’s no money left to fund local police forces
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Yeah, why bother commenting to the public when you own the bastards? JPMorgan, which took $25 billion in direct bailout money and tens of billions more in backdoor subsidies and handouts, just posted a massive $3.6 billion quarterly profit, and has set aside at least $11.1 billion for management bonuses. Meanwhile, Alabamans can’t afford to flush their toilets.This is what inequality looks like. From Wall Street, it must look extremely appealing; for the rest of America, it’s a nightmare that’s only getting worse.
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The state’s response is right out of the Central America banana republic playbook: When there’s no money left for the people, send in the troops.
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In light of all of this, the Army’s brief, illegal occupation of a string of towns in Alabama this past spring no longer looks like a freak one-off, but rather a logical progression in the ongoing billionaire plunder of America.
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Now you can see why Alabamans are loading up on so many weapons. That makes sense. Now they need to understand who the real enemy is. Not the make-believe liberal bogeymen of their nightmares. Rather, Alabamans should focus their anger on the real-world billionaires who are making this country a living hell.
This is the America we live in today. It may be just one place now but this could very quickly and painfully spread. Are you ready?
Copyright Treaty Is Policy Laundering at Its Finest
Copyright Treaty Is Policy Laundering at Its Finest
The blogosphere is abuzz over an apparently leaked document showing the United States trying to push its controversial DMCA-style notice-and-takedown process on the world. But since Threat Level already lives in the land of the DMCA, or Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we’re more bothered by the fact that the U.S. proposal goes far beyond that 1998 law, and would require Congress to alter the DMCA in a manner even more hostile to consumers.
At issue is the internet section of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being developed under a cloak of secrecy by dozens of countries. The leaked document is a three-page European Commission memo written by an unnamed EU official, which purports to summarizes a private briefing given in September by U.S. trade officials.
The language in the Sept. 30 memo shows the United States wants ISPs around the world to punish suspected, repeat downloaders with a system of “graduated response” — code for a three-strikes policy that results in the customer eventually being disconnected from the internet with the ISP alone deciding what constitutes infringement and fair use.
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The Obama administration has been obsessively secretive about the draft ACTA treaty — even, at one point, claiming national security could be jeopardized if the proposed treaty’s working documents were disclosed to the public. Now, it seems, we know what the administration is hiding.
Obama hasn’t asked Congress to implement a three-strike policy, which could anger consumers and watchdog groups. But if the administration gets three strikes written into ACTA, and the United States signs and ratifies the treaty, Congress would be obliged to change the DMCA to comply with it, while the administration throws its hands in the air and says, “It wasn’t our idea! It’s that damn treaty!”
That practice is common enough to have a name: policy laundering.
This is WIRED magazine damning the Copyright Treaty and the Obama Administration.
When will we learn that the Republicrats are screwing us?
Britain’s Protesters Rebranded “Domestic Extremists”
Britain's Protesters Rebranded "Domestic Extremists"
In "Mind Your Tweets: CIA and European Union Building Social Networking Surveillance System," Antifascist Calling explored the trend by security agencies in Europe and the United States to build political dossiers on dissidents by data mining their electronic communications.
Taking a page from America's political police force, the FBI, the British state is beefing-up an ever-growing watch list of "domestic extremists."
Investigative journalists Paul Lewis, Rob Evans and Matthew Taylor provided chilling details how police and corporate spies "are gathering the personal details of thousands of activists who attend political meetings and protests, and storing their data on a network of nationwide intelligence databases."
As the journalists point out, the phrase "domestic extremism" is not a lawful term. In fact, the widespread use of the term is a demonstration of how powerful constituencies have perverted law, thus creating their own all-embracing interpretation of the role of protest in a democratic society.
Where to even start... damn!
Already at Economic War with China
Gold "Targets $1100" as Beijing Insider Says China "Can't Buy Enough Gold"
Trading near $1090 and €735 an ounce for US and Eurozone investors, gold was up 4.3% and 3.5% respectively for the week so far.
Crude oil crept back above $80 per barrel. The US Dollar slipped on the forex market as the European Central Bank and Bank of England kept their key interest rate on hold at record lows.
"Despite current resistance [in gold], we see the downside well protected and dips should still be bought." --Walter de Wet at Standard Bank
"The question now is who buys the rest of the IMF gold?" asks Bart Melek at the $375 billion BMO Capital Markets in a note to clients.
Following India's surprise 200-tonne purchase announced on Tuesday, "We suspect it may be China, other Asian countries, Russia or even India again," says Melek.
The world No.1 producer since 2008, China is now also the world No.1 private gold consumer market.
"They hold relatively little gold relative to their very large foreign exchange reserves, and may want to diversify away from US Dollars."
"It's cheaper for us to buy gold from the Chinese market," agreed an un-named People's Bank official
"Even if China bought half the world's annual gold supply, it would only cost a few tens of billions of dollars, which is tiny compared to China's huge reserves.
The Chinese are purposefully devaluing our currency against gold.
I suspect the Chinese government is using their US Dollar Reserves to help their citizens buy gold by subsidizing it. This helps the Chinese move out of US Dollars while decreasing the value of the dollar against gold. It even uses their own citizens money to buy the stuff. Thus keeping inflation of their own currency down. It also puts the value into its citizens hands. Being a Communist country, they could easily confiscate it all in 5, 10, or 20 years so they don't care who actually possesses the gold so long as it's in their country.
If Obama were smart, he'd subsidize gold purchase by US citizens to compete with the Chinese instead of bailing out banks and other companies. He may (or may not) tell us that China has already declared economic warfare against us but he does need to call people to action, face reality, and actually do something to save the America economically. I would say the second step is real and sound money without the fractional reserve system or banks as master controllers. Auditing the Federal Reserve would be the great start we need to move down this path.
In my view, this is one of the strongest cases that gold, silver, and other metals are extremely undervalued. The people saying gold at $50,000 per ounce and silver at $1,000 do have logic behind their statements.
Well, we keep printing money out of thin air. Due to the exponential function we need to print more and more just to keep up. The dollar is being dumped by foreign everything. China and India are pumping up gold and transferring wealth into their countries. We are starting to look like the Titanic... only no one will know it until it's too late.
The Iraq War and the Afghanistan War are really just smoke and mirrors to what the real threats are to this country.
China brands US ‘protectionist’
China on Friday accused the US of protectionist and biased trade policies less than a week before president Barack Obama’s first visit to Beijing.
In a stinging rebuke to Washington, China’s commerce ministry promised to take measures to protect its domestic industry after the US slapped anti-dumping duties on $2.6bn of Chinese steel pipe imports. The duties are part of a growing roster of trade conflicts between the two countries, despite a high-level meeting last week in China aimed at reducing tensions.
16 total complaints between China and the US. Half (8) just this year.
Will the economic war between China and America turn into anything more?
Harrods to sell gold bullion for first time
Harrods to sell gold bullion for first time
In a sign that the credit crisis has left his gilded customer base largely untouched, Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed has teamed up with Produits Artistiques Métaux Précieux (PAMP), the Swiss refiner, to sell gold in the store.
Aimed at private investors, the gold will be sold at the Harrods Bank branch on the lower ground floor of the West London store.
Mehdi Bakhordar, managing director of PAMP, said: "Harrods stock our full range and are now the only location in London where investors can purchase a 12.5kg gold bar 'off the shelf'."
Harrods, famed for its gold and green livery, has never sold bullion before.
This is an AMAZING move by Harrods. It shows that wealthy people are very worried about the value of fiat currency. It shows that companies are recognizing this fact and providing the market place with supply because the demand is there. It shows that companies are starting to not believe, or at least not care, what the government is saying.
How long before the merely well-to-do people start understanding, seeing, or copying what the wealthy are doing?
So, a 12.5kg gold bar weighs 27.6 lbs. That's 440.923 oz. At the going market rate of about $1100/oz, that bar costs $485,016.98. Harrod's is also going to mark it up to for profit. Imagine walking in and charging half a million dollars to your credit card and walking out with a gold bar in a suit case? Would Harrod's be kind enough to drive the bar around in a security truck to your destination of choice?