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.
Keiser Report №15: Markets! Finance! Scandal!
Remarkable that we let the government, the corporations, and these people do what they do.
Why the Euro is important
Moving debt around isn't going to ultimately solve the problem... The problem is that Money is Debt.
Better Off Deadbeat: Craig Cunningham Has a Simple Solution for Getting Bill Collectors Off His Back. He Sues Them.
Cunningham armed himself with this knowledge, and the next time a debt collector called, the trap was set.
It didn't take long. Cunningham had canceled a home alarm service with ADT Security after two months, and the company had billed him a $450 early termination fee, which he disputed. ADT sent his account to Equinox Financial Management Solutions, a third-party debt collector. The collection agency sent him a letter asking that he call back immediately. He dialed, armed with a voice recorder.
"Can you garnish my wages if I don't pay?" he asked.
"Yes," the voice on the other end of the line said.
"Can you put a lien on my house?"
"Yes."
Wrong answers. Turns out, Texas consumer rights laws are some of the most consumer-friendly in the country. And according to a federal consumer protection law, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), debt collectors are prohibited from threatening legal action that would violate state laws. In this case, garnishing wages or putting a lien on Cunningham's house would violate the Texas Debt Collection Act.
Cunningham knew he had a good enough case to file a lawsuit against the debt collection agency, and for his first lawsuit, he decided to enlist the help of a lawyer. Two months later, he had a check in his hand for $1,000.
"It's like discovering fire," says Cunningham, thumbing through the stack of lawsuit papers on his table.
....
Like Cunningham, Smith now armed himself with voice recorders and began keeping meticulous financial files. His file cabinet grew quickly. "I mean there's nothing I don't document now and that's probably the best thing a consumer can do."
Find out the laws in your state and take action. This is not a bad idea.
How the banks make the big bucks (by taking it from you)
Does Obama know this is going on? If he does, why doesn't he stop it?
Obama is a really smart guy. How could he not know this is going on?
Two things:
1- if he doesn't know, then he's incompetent.
2- if he does know and isn't doing anything about it, he's implicitly authorizing theft of government coffers at a biblical scale.
Lastly, why isn't the FBI investigating this kind of fraud?
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.
Corporate Personhood: First Amendment Rights
Supreme Court OKs unlimited corporate spending on elections
Reporting from Washington - Overturning a century-old restriction, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that corporations could spend as much as they wanted to sway voters in federal elections.
In a landmark 5-4 decision, the court's conservative bloc said that corporations had the same right to free speech as individuals, and for that reason the government could not stop corporations from spending to help their favored candidates.
The ruling, which will presumably apply as well to labor unions and other organizations, is likely to have an effect on this year's congressional elections. Many political analysts and election-law experts predict that millions of extra dollars will flood into this fall's contests, much of it benefiting Republican candidates.
Republicans praised the decision as a victory for wide-open political speech, but Democrats slammed it as a win for big money.
President Obama called the ruling "a major victory for Big Oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans." He promised to seek "a forceful response to this decision" from Congress. Some Democrats talked about seeking legislation that would require corporations to get approval from their shareholders before spending money on politics.
...
Until Thursday, corporations and unions were barred from spending their treasury funds on broadcast ads, campaign workers or billboards that urge the election or defeat of a federal candidate.The restriction dates to 1907, when President Theodore Roosevelt persuaded Congress to forbid corporations, railroads and national banks from putting money into federal races. After World War II, Congress extended the ban to labor unions. More recently, the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002 added an extra limit on corporate and union-funded broadcast ads in the month before an election. Such ads were prohibited if they even mentioned a candidate running for office.
Thursday's decision swept away all of these restrictions.
"The government may not suppress political speech on the basis of the speaker's corporate identity," said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion. While the case of Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission dealt only with corporations, the ruling will probably also free unions to spend as they wish.
Two significant prohibitions were left standing. Corporations and unions cannot give money directly to the campaigns of federal candidates, or to political parties. And the court affirmed the requirement that sponsors of political ads disclose who paid for them. Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented on these points.
Thursday's decision was supported by five justices who were Republican nominees: Kennedy and Thomas along with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
The dissenters included the three Democratic appointees: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. They joined a 90-page dissenting opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who was appointed by President Ford, a Republican. Stevens, who will turn 90 in April, spoke in a halting voice as he read part of his dissent in the courtroom Thursday.
He called the decision "a radical change in the law." He predicted that the ruling would "cripple the ability of ordinary citizens, Congress and the states to adopt even limited measures to protect against corporate domination of the electoral process."
The decision displayed a deep division of opinion on the court about the meaning of the 1st Amendment and the freedom of speech.
...
Stevens and the dissenters said that the majority was ignoring the long-understood rule that the government could limit election money from corporations, unions and others, such as foreign governments."Under today's decision, multinational corporations controlled by foreign governments" would have the same rights as Americans to spend money to tilt U.S. elections, Stevens said.
...
When his(this) case first reached the Supreme Court, the conservative justices voiced alarm that the government could restrict a movie, or perhaps a book, that criticized a candidate simply because it was paid for with corporate money. In September, they heard the case for a second time to broadly consider the issue of corporate-funded election ads.Chief Justice Roberts said he was convinced that a broad free-speech ruling was required. Otherwise, it "would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern."
I have so many issues with this that it felt like someone kicked me in the chest. Watching this move through the system was worrisome. This decision has only further solidified the fascist take over of our republic.
I wrote about corporate personhood last year during Sotomayor's admission into the court. She is very much questioning not just first amendment rights but giving any constitutional rights to corporations.
Once again, the strict constructionist conservative wing of the Supreme Court threw out their ideals and voted to further corporate power and it's take-over of our government. It's *($%^ infectious. It's growing and they have bastardized the US Constitution again.
This is how the strict constructionists strayed to lands beyond from their ideals. Strict Constructionists
"Strict constructionism" is also used in American political discourse as an umbrella term for conservative legal philosophies such as originalism and textualism, which emphasize judicial restraint and fidelity to the original meaning (or originally intended meaning) of constitutions and laws.
The original intent of the constitution nor the 14th Amendment never even considered corporations as actual people. If they had intended Corporations to have the same constitutional rights as individuals they would have written "People and Corporations" throughout the document. In fact, before corporations had personhood, they needed a charter for organization which needed to be continually renewed by each state. That is the original intent of the Constitution.
There are a few arguments for it:
- Investor protection
- Management protection
There are so many arguments against it:
- They have a LOT money, translating into more and more effective speech for corporations
- They enjoy more rights in the form of lower tax rates and then just on profit. This is like taxing Caucasians 20% and everyone else 25%. Secondly, imagine if actual people were only taxed on what we "save" because all living costs were tax deductible? Also, imagine states fighting for your citizenship by giving you incentives like no state taxes for 10 years? These corporate "people" have preferential laws.
- It is a form of double representation. The investors are already represented as themselves. They vote and can put their own money towards a campaign. If you invest in a company but want another canditate to win other than what is being supported by the corporation, then the corporation is not accurately representing you.
- Corporations make false claims and representations. They use their First Amendment Rights to do great harm to the people. A great example of this is the Tobacco and Cigarette Industry claiming that smoking was safe and funding skewed studies.
- Financial Ratings companies like Standard & Poor and Moody say that their financial ratings are opinion and protected by the First Amendment. So, when they rated toxic assets as AAA they had no liability to their word even though the entire financial industry depends on these ratings accuracy. Giving them accountability may actually force them to give securities proper ratings.
- The Constitution cannot be cherry-picked. A real person cannot only have some right in the constitution. A person MUST have all rights. The problem is that corporations are slaves and cannot vote, to name two important conflicts with corporations having the full rights of the constitution.
- A corporation legally must maximize shareholder value. This is the highest law to the corporation and can even be sued by shareholders if found to not be doing this. These include things that could be "to the detriment of people." Corporations do not have the same priorities as actual people who exist in reality. Two or three times a day, we eat. Without sufficient food we die. Corporations don't have these daily existential crises
Solutions:
- Force the court to explain why corporations don't have full First Amendment Rights as people do. Corporations are "artificial people" after all. Justice Clarence Thomas had the clarity to at least do away with this contradiction.
- Force the court to tell us how corporations are not slaves.
- Force the court to tell us how corporations will participate in voting during an election.
- Force the court to tell us how a corporation can use a firearm without any other person helping.
- Force the court to tell us how a corporation can be conscripted into a war if we re-instate the draft.
- Force the court to tell us why corporations younger than 21 can possess alcohol.
- Force the court to tell us why corporations don't have identification cards like passports or driver licenses.
- Force the court to tell us how to imprison a corporation in a jail.
- Force the court to tell us why corporations owned by foreign entities, including foreign governments, can have rights under our constitution.
Any answers to these questions are purely rationalizations.
I don't believe any of this can be done because a corporation by itself cannot think, learn, or feel. It cannot be thrown in jail for the lack of physical presence. It cannot pull a lever in a voting booth nor mark any paper. A corporation does not need food or water. It doesn't even need toilet paper. It does not need to breath and cannot ever be hospitalized. A corporation never came out of a vagina (or c-section) nor must it eventually die. It cannot use a firearm. It is not conscious and can only act through proxies.
or we could just,
Remove corporate personhood. Singapore doesn't have corporate personhood and, while investment and growth is hampered, it still has a thriving economy where the risk of corporations is priced, truly, into its market value.
I'm not quite sure how corporate protection should look but we can cross that bridge when we get to it.
My last point is that this ruling clearly flies in the face of stare-decisis. This was an important aspect to confirming the Supreme Court Judges Alito and Roberts in the Judiciary Committee of Congress.
Monsanto’s GMO Corn Linked To Organ Failure, Study Reveals
Monsanto's GMO Corn Linked To Organ Failure, Study Reveals
Monsanto has immediately responded to the study, stating that the research is "based on faulty analytical methods and reasoning and do not call into question the safety findings for these products."
A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health
"Effects were mostly concentrated in kidney and liver function, the two major diet detoxification organs, but in detail differed with each GM type. In addition, some effects on heart, adrenal, spleen and blood cells were also frequently noted. As there normally exists sex differences in liver and kidney metabolism, the highly statistically significant disturbances in the function of these organs, seen between male and female rats, cannot be dismissed as biologically insignificant as has been proposed by others. We therefore conclude that our data strongly suggests that these GM maize varieties induce a state of hepatorenal toxicity....These substances have never before been an integral part of the human or animal diet and therefore their health consequences for those who consume them, especially over long time periods are currently unknown."
I'm calling bullshit on Monsanto. There is no absolute proof that GMO is safe. The health effects of all the other foods we eat is known because we've been eating it for so long. Some people are even allergic to various food like peanuts. But GMO? It's not the same food as the original. Not even close. These plants produce their own insecticide!
Monsanto... Your gig is up. We the American people should have a nation wide class action lawsuit for the harm you've done to each of us through at least the GMO food stuff you say is safe. Denial only lasted so long for the Cigarette industry.
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.
...
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.