Keiser Report №17: Markets! Finance! Scandal!
We've been at financial war with China for many, many years. No one talks about the Chinese only letting us go through the kindness of their communist heart. At some point China is going start selling their worthless dollars, which will show just how little they are actually worth.
It's amazing that Goldman Sacks PROFITED from the hiding the Greek debt through derivatives and manipulating market prices. This only shows that derivatives really should be regulated. How exactly I don't know but maybe putting a cap on a derivative at $100 million would be a good idea. If banks move off shore to do this business so be it, would that put enough distance to be safe should the speculation hysteria burst?
I couldn't agree more with Keiser. The sooner and faster, the better. The more we delay the harder it will be. And there are some significant changes needed. Fiat money needs to go which is going to change a lot of things. But this is the only way to actually fix things.
If we don't fix this problem, then the banks will take everything because we all are using their future money which we need to pay back. The system is designed to make people fall off because not enough value has been, or ever could be, created to pay off their debt money with interest.
This is not a system of stable value. More money must be created to support the base of money in existence, with interest. This is an ever growing problem because the value represented by the dollar, the economy, needs to keep pace in order to stabilize the value. For decades they've created a little more money than created in the economy but now the economy has no more steam and cannot continue growing except through the shadow banking economy to which we are not allowed access. There has been extraordinary market distortions since the creation of the Federal Reserve and fiat money. That whole big mess needs to unwind before we get back on a sustainable track. This means a lot of changes which could be a complete mess if not actually planned by the government.
Not only that, but let me remind you that fiat money in the USA is actually unconstitutional.
Debt is everywhere because it is what we use as money! If you have money, it is really possessing other people's debts which they have to get back from you because, ultimately, it must go back to the bank with interest. We are literally slaves to our money system. Wasn't slavery made unconstitutional at some point?
The odd thing is that the money you do have usually lives at the bank. If you read the fine print of a new account document you'll see that it is really a loan to the bank. In exchange you get numbers in an account and the ability to (hopefully) get it back at some point in the future. Alas, they use this money as reserves to create new money and perpetuate the system.
The Anti-Free-Market Federal Reserve
I believe in democracy, freedom, capitalism, and a free market. Why does the Federal Reserve keep insisting that it knows better by implementing anti-capitalistic plans and perpetually fucking around with the market? Please let the market operate! Let it go! Prices are what they should be! That's the definition of a free market! When they manipulate the market it's no longer free.
This includes the proprietary trading systems at investment banks. If the bank can invest its own money, it can influence the market in any way it sees fit. Want to tell politicians that a particular law or not passing a particular law would cause the market to drop (or rise)? They can trigger it. This is called Terrorism, and it was used to pass the bank bailout bill in late 2008. Investment banks investing their own money is a conflict of interest to democracy, their own clients, and the interests of the economy.
@ 9:10
The FBI should be investigating that act of Terrorism by the banks and Federal Reserve System. Even if the people didn't know (and thus weren't afraid), the politicians were threatened directly to pass the bailout bill. Influencing law is exactly what terrorism is designed to do... at it seemed to work, unfortunately.
Official says Fed might buy more mortgage-backed securities
The Federal Reserve would consider reopening its program to support the mortgage market if interest rates spiked or the economy showed new weakness, Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William C. Dudley said in two new interviews.
The Fed is buying $1.25 trillion in mortgage-backed securities in its effort to prop up the economy but has said it will end those purchases March 31.
They need to stop manipulating the market immediately.
This manipulation introduces distortion in the market. That distortion is not singular. It ripples out through the economy. These ripples required more fixes and those even more until it's the Katrina Hurricane of the financial market.
In order to force the market to be focused on people, this bailout money would have been better placed into the hands of the people. At least the distortion would have been citizen oriented instead of banker bonus oriented. Then again, it's corporate America that gives politicians the money to convince us to vote for them; so it's not too surprising that this didn't happen.
In all, there should have been no bailouts. Failure for companies that are too weak. Success for those that could fill their place. Would there have been pain? Yes. But, that short term pain is much smaller than the long term pain we are now in for now.
Why the Euro is important
Moving debt around isn't going to ultimately solve the problem... The problem is that Money is Debt.
The Greatest Recession
I pulled this image from the National Inflation Association- Charts
This is a wild chart. I super imposed my best guestimate fitting curve. As you can see, i tried to be conservative and deal with the bumps along the way. It's most certainly not perfect but it will do to demonstrate the ideas.
That red area is the area of the recession. There are a few notable things about this chart. The decline we've had in the recreated M3 over the last year has never happened in the last 40 years. Given the charts I've seen, this has never happened in the last century.
In order to be as prosperous as we were before the recession we need about $2.5 trillion more dollars in the system RIGHT NOW. Not some bailout for the banks or tax refund bull crap. The banks need to be loaning that amount within the next few months for us to really recover the way economists (at least were) talking about.
The dollars where the green line ends and the black line hitting 2010, is about $13.7 and $16.2 trillion dollars. The difference is about $2.5 trillion.
This is about the same amount the government has spent in budget deficits over the last 2 years. This is significant because as you can see that $2.5 trillion didn't move us up to where we "should" be. It shows either 1) just how ineffective government spending is in replacing economic output; or 2) The recreated M3 would be at $11.2 trillion if we are to believe that government spending was 100% effective at producing economic growth. I'd like to thank both the Federal Government and the banking industry for this monster.
My sense is that excessive government spending doesn't produce real sustainable economic growth. This includes the huge budget for the military. Funding technology in the military is important but only when it has real civilian use. Research, yada, yada. Agreed. Though it most certainly could and probably should be sliced in half if not more. That would be value being directly injected into the economy through lower inflation and lower taxes in the long run. This is getting at least closer to a more sustainable future.
By January 2011, this estimate shows the M3 needing to be ~$18 trillion. Obama just submitted his budget. It's enormous. The deficit is estimated to be $1.6 trillion. $18 trillion minus $16.2 is $1.8 trillion. That's damn close.... and that won't do a damn thing except cause more inflation. They need to get that value some how. (Stealing it from you is socially acceptable, no?)
Our single party system, the Corporate Republicrats, have no idea what they are doing to secure America. Removing our freedoms "for security" is giving the terrorists exactly what they want. As soon as we started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the "enemy" shipped out. Better to live to fight another day. The got us bogged down and now have the Military Industrial Complex stuck in a growing feedback loop which is sucking down our national value. More military is not the correct answer... A smarter, leaner, more efficient, and productive military is. Until our "leaders" realize that terrorism is the application of "We will fight them there so we don't have to fight them here" we won't get anywhere and we won't be all that much more secure either. If they take a page from our playbook, which a smart terrorist would do, they will attack US HERE... not our military there. The former is much scarier. Duh. I'm not going to get into how terrorism is likely a false flag operation especially given all the shady circumstances.
Obama! Yo! Fix it! Also, can we put Bush on trial as a War Criminal? Congress didn't even declare war. They put a face on terrorism and then funded its destruction without actually consenting to explicitly to kill it. Then the Republicans declare the Democrats as being soft? That's a load of bull crap. If you want something to happen, do it the way the Constitution defines it be done. It's not legitimate if you don't. You can't make claims that anybody is "soft on terror" because they believe in the constitution. In fact, making these claim only makes you "soft on democracy."
Ah yes, how is this for communist/facsist?
If you don't follow the corporate party line (on either side), you are ostracized and made not important by the corporate mega-phone media.
Wait a minute... Isn't this reminiscent of Communist Russia?
Bankrupt Bogus Bonuses
This holds for Goldman Sacks too... they are giving out $150 billion of OUR MONEY to each other. Just remember when you do your taxes for last year that at least $500 of that is paying for Goldman Sacks bonuses. Just their bonuses!
Why aren't these people in jail?
Democrats And The 60 Vote Lie
It seems that people are starting to get it that politics is just a theatre for thieves to profiteer but for very few. This is particularly disturbing now knowing that the Conservative Supreme Court just gave corporations nearly full access to politicians through money. This will utterly drown out everyone else. This means laws will, wait, will? THEY ARE being made for the benefit of corporations because it keeps the corrupt in power. Ad-Infinitum.
We absolutely must pass a constitutional amendment stating this:
Reclaim Democracy: Proposed Constitutional Amendments
An Amendment to Preclude Corporations from Claiming Bill of Rights Protections
SECTION 1. The U.S. Constitution protects only the rights of living human beings.
SECTION 2. Corporations and other institutions granted the privilege to exist shall be subordinate to any and all laws enacted by citizens and their elected governments.
SECTION 3. Corporations and other for-profit institutions are prohibited from attempting to influence the outcome of elections, legislation or government policy through the use of aggregate resources or by rewarding or repaying employees or directors to exert such influence.
SECTION 4. Congress shall have power to implement this article by appropriate legislation.
More on why we need to revoke corporate constitutional privileges (a.k.a., corporate personhood)
Of course, no crooked Republican or Democrat (which is most of them) in their right mind would vote for this lest their corporate master overlords wrath. Then the states very likely wouldn't pass it either.
Google Threatening To Leave China Over Hacking, Email Leak
Google Threatening To Leave China Over Hacking, Email Leak
SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc. will stop censoring its search results in China and may pull out of the country after discovering that computers hackers had tricked human rights activists into opening their e-mail accounts to outsiders.
The change-of-heart announced Tuesday heralds a major shift for Google, which has repeatedly said it will obey Chinese laws that require some politically and socially sensitive issues to be blocked from search results that are available in other countries
Google disclosed in a blog post that it had detected a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China." Further investigation revealed that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists," Google said in the post written by Chief Legal Officer David Drummond.
Google did not specifically accuse the Chinese government. But the company added that it is "no longer willing to continue censoring our results" on its Chinese search engine, as the government requires. Google says the decision could force it to shut down its Chinese site and its offices in the country.
It's about time that the economic and war on and of ideas get going. I'm quite glad to see that Google is on the side of freedom and freedom of speech on this battle. Clearly, they are not happy with the Chinese Communist Government.
Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident--albeit a significant one--was something quite different.
First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.
Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.
Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.
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These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
I'm hoping that other search engines will follow this lead.
Lastly, if our government tries to interfere with this decision it would show the depths to which the American Federal Government would fall to eliminate capitalism.
The Problem of War on Terror
Just like all the other modern "wars" we run in the USA, the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't working. Here is why:
Terrorists are smart and adaptive people... just like we are. Only, we use war against these people which is like building a gun that you can only fire at a solid wall. It looks impressive but is completely useless. "Terrorists" use this system against us because it's not flexible. When you start a war in Iraq, that's where it stays. They've moved on. We have not.
This is why you cannot fight terror with violence. They don't have the rules that nations do and we can't let them exploit that. They are using it, and we are falling for it.
We should end both these wars. They are illegal anyway, but that is apparently no problem for people. They should be ended because terrorists moved on. The got us stuck there, almost, as they intended. We are emptying our reserves on something so expensive that it costs $400 per gallon of gas and $1,000,000 per year to keep one troop on the ground there. This is insane.
All the while, the Chinese have Universal Health Care. They have a hard time covering all the people yes but their economy is stronger for it. How many decades of double digit growth have they had? Really, the profits on the insurance industry could be kept in the actual businesses that provide value in order to hire more people, make more investments, and grow faster. In the USA we have leeches on the economy. The more they leech, the stronger they get and the harder it is to reform. They have a HUGE lobby branch which they have shown are willing to spend a LOT of money upon.
China doesn't need to go to the moon to make real advancements. They just built the 'world's fastest train link'. In the wealthiest nation in the world, why aren't we doing stuff like that? Ah, it's because we buy nearly everything from China.
We have become a depleted country. A part of that is from the hugely expensive wars we inflict upon the world and a part of it is that we don't save money or produce much any more. The only thing we seem to be really good at is printing money. Even that is starting to look like a destitute adventure.
Detroit, Criminalizing Poverty, and our Sad State of Affairs
If you thought this was bad:
SLUMS OF DETROIT: A LOOK AT THE HEART OF AMERICA’S 2ND MOST DESERTED CITY
Then check out this:
Criminalizing Poverty For Profit: Local Government's New Debtors Prisons
In other words, we are starting to lock away by criminalizing their situation. The Nazi's locked away Jewish people. This time it's going to be the poor. I'm not saying that being in poverty means you can do anything against the law but many of the laws we have here in the United States are aimed at a thriving economy with a solid middle class. This balance is starting to change. Our society is starting to reduce away from such standard. We don't have the money to criminalize petty actions any more. Locking these people away is costing much more than the value they add to the society by being free, abet irresponsible.
The banks and government are making us poor through inflation (and bail-outs). They continue to suck out our wealth to fund impossible ideals whether through taxes or inflation, they are the same. We need to stop this idea that both parties have of big government whether for the people or the corporations. Big is just not possible right now. Not with the Federal Reserve and Banking system stealing the wealth of the citizens by inflation and bailouts. We cannot afford to keep this up. Not with us, nor on the international scene.
This is some serious shit people. Every day America is looking more like Collapsing Fascist State: from the corporate control that we can CLEARLY see in the Health System Reform Bill changes, to criminalizing the poor, to perpetual war started on false pretenses, to the over-funding of the military industrial complex, to collapsing states, the commitment and preferential treatment for corporation and especially banks.
This whole system stinks. It smells to high hell of control, rigging, "cronyism," trickle up economics, and, well, fascism. Even the markets seem (in a few cases, are known) to be rigged.
The banking crisis: Till debt us do part
Some governments are borrowing so much that markets are becoming wary and may stop lending to them. Could this be the next leg of the crisis?
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The big fear is that, if economies such as America and Britain were downgraded by the agencies and their borrowing costs rose, the effect would be felt throughout the credit markets, making it more expensive for businesses and emerging-market economies to borrow. It could set back the global economic recovery.It is not all one-way traffic. Some economies in Asia and Latin America have received upgrades or are about to get them. So far, however, they are outnumbered by countries facing downgrades.
If we get down graded, will the Chinese stop taking our fake dollars? What will happen to 95% of all products in Walmart?
Is Sovereign Debt the New Subprime?
To varying degrees, Greece, Spain, Ukraine, Austria, Latvia, Mexico are just a handful of the nations viewed at risk of defaulting. Meanwhile, Dubai only just avoided a similar fate thanks to a $10 billion bailout from their oil-rich neighbor Abu Dhabi.
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Few investors seriously worry about an imminent default by the U.S. or the U.K. But with worries about Dubai's ability to pay its debts shaking markets across the globe in recent weeks, investors are on guard about which other countries might be in dire financial straights.
Who ever wrote this article was a moron. What happens in the future when the U.S or U.K. are imminently going to default? It may not be soon but we have $50-$60 Trillion in obligations coming due and that money isn't going to be from taxes or foreign governments or banks. The U.S. is too big to fail... This time we don't have anyone to bail us out.