Geithner Update
Bend Over and Say, "Uncle Sam"
Timothy Geithner refuses to take underwater banks into receivership and resolve them, but has no problem transforming the FDIC into a hedge fund. Go figure? Here's what everyone needs to know: The US government (you) will provide up to 94 percent of the financing (low interest, of course) for dodgy mortgage-backed assets that no one in their right mind would ever buy so that wealthy and politically-connected banksters can scrub up to $1 trillion of red ink from their balance sheets. Ugh!
The so-called "private partners" in this confidence scam, will get non recourse loans, which means that if the plan backfires and they lose their skimpy 6 percent investment they can call it quits and leave the taxpayer holding the bag. ($1 trillion in potential losses!) Here's how Paul Krugman sums it up:
"The Geithner scheme would offer a one-way bet: if asset values go up, the investors profit, but if they go down, the investors can walk away from their debt. This isn't really about letting markets work. It's just an indirect, disguised way to subsidize purchases of bad assets."
"Markets"? Who said anything about markets? This is corporate welfare, pure and simple.
Also, the partnerships will be conducted through off-balance sheets operations, (Enron-type structured investment vehicles or SIVs), so the parent company (our new business partners) can avoid liability when they dump all types of ineligible, unmarketable, toxic garbage into the program, which they will since the average banker has moral scruples of Hannibal Lector.
The opportunities for fraud in Geithner's "public-private" Banker's Bonanza are truly breathtaking. All the bank has to do is shovel its mountainous pile of B-grade dog-dung into its newly-minted SIV and then hide behind its government-issue "no risk" loan and claim ignorance when the FDIC tries to get its money back.
"I'm so sorry. How did that 2006 vintage subprime CDO made up of liar's loans from unemployed Pizza Hut workers get mixed up in there? My bad."
In Geithner's defense, we should point out the challenges he's facing. It's not easy pulling the wool over people's eyes, especially when they've been repeatedly fleeced. The Treasury Secretary's main job is "to keep the big banks in private hands" and to remove over a trillion dollars of toxic mortgage-backed assets that are worth only a fraction of their original value. According to economist Dean Baker, these junk assets are worth roughly 30 cents on the dollar, although the banks have them listed on their books at 60 cents on the dollar. If the banks are unable get full price, then many of them will be forced into bankruptcy. Geithner's job is to make sure that doesn't happen, which is why he has created the "partnership" smokescreen to conceal the fact that the government is intentionally overpaying for significantly-downgraded sludge. Here's how economist James Galbraith puts it:
"The bad assets are bad because they are worth less than the banks say they are. House prices have dropped by nearly 30% nationwide. That has created something in the neighborhood of $5+ trillion of losses in residential real estate alone (off a peak market value of housing about $20+ trillion). The banks don't want to take their share of those losses because doing so will wipe them out. So they, and Geithner, are doing everything they can to pawn the losses off on the taxpayer."
Galbraith (indirectly) explains why Geithner has avoided "price discovery" at all cost. Think about it for a minute: We are now 19 months into the biggest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression and STILL the public has no fixed idea of what these rotten assets are really worth. Why? The business media, the government and big finance have engineered the biggest cover up in memory in order to protect the interests of privately-owned financial institutions. Is that how a free market is supposed to work?
The question that should be on everyone's mind is this: Why would Geithner create a program that rewards bankers and hedge funds at the expense of the public? Or to be more specific: What manner of man would conjure up a transaction where taxpayers put up 94 percent of the investment but only stand to get 50 percent of the profits?
Who is Geithner working for anyway?
There's no way around the fact that Geithner is a financial industry representative ( the FED's minion ) planted in the White House to do Wall Street's bidding. Institutional bias precludes him from doing his job and operating in the public interest. Thus, the first step in any financial rescue plan must be to remove Geithner, Summers and all the other parasitic Rubin-clones that have infected the present administration and bring in a whole new team. That will prepare the ground for nationalizing the banks and providing debt-relief to the people who need it most, the victims of Wall Street's Ponzi-credit bubble...........
And Obama appointed and fully supports these guys. Nothing like , " Change you can believe in! ".
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
SC89-4 / http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12879
Simmering Public Fury regarding the Bank Bailout: Judgment Day for Geithner
Whether he deserves it or not, Timothy Geithner has become the poster boy for everything that's wrong with the government's scatterbrain financial rescue plan. Geithner was in the wheelhouse at the New York Fed when Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros defaulted, and he played a central role in the $165 million AIG bonus scandal which ignited a populist firestorm across the country. Now everything even remotely connected to the bank bailout has become a source of fist-clinching rage. The mood of the country has darkened from the steady downpour of bad economic news, the sharp decline in housing prices and the steep rise in unemployment. People are angry at the government, the banks and Wall Street. Their nerves are frayed and their patience is stretched to the limit.
It is in this atmosphere of simmering public fury that Geithner will announce the details of his long-awaited plan for removing up to $1 trillion of toxic assets from the balance sheets of some of the country's biggest banks. Information about Geithner's "Public-Private Partnership" and the so called Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) has been spotty so far, but enough is known about the plan to predict that it will likely be the noose into which Geithner thrusts his scrawny neck bringing his dismal career at Treasury to a end. The country will not endure another pretentious-sounding banker-friendly flim flam, which is precisely what Geithner has in mind.
According to the Associated Press:
"Officials said Geithner’s plan will have three major parts. One part will be an effort Geithner spoke about last month - the creation of a public-private partnership to back purchases of bad assets by private investors... Treasury will hire four or five investment management firms, matching the private money that each of the firms puts up with government funds.
A second part of the plan will expand a recently launched program being run by the Federal Reserve called the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF.
That program is providing loans for investors to buy assets backed by consumer debt in an effort to make it easier for consumers to get auto, student and credit card loans. Under Geithner’s proposal, this program would be expanded to support investors’ purchases of banks’ toxic assets.
The third part of the Geithner plan would utilize the resources of the FDIC, the agency that guarantees bank deposits, to purchase toxic assets. Officials said that the FDIC will create special purpose investment partnerships and then lend those partnerships money so that they can buy up troubled assets." (AP)
Why in heaven's name would Shiela Bair attach her good name to Treasury's latest bunko-scam? As Bair undoubtedly knows, the main objective of the Public-Private Partnership and TALF is to provide inflated prices for garbage assets that investors refuse to buy. It's just a way of transferring losses from the banks to the taxpayer by using a middleman who looks like a partner but only has a 5 percent stake in the game. This is "tax cheat" Timmy's circuitous way of socking it to the public one more time. Here's how Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism explains it:
"First, the banks, as in normal auctions, will presumably set a reserve price equal to the value of the assets on their books. If the price does not meet the reserve (and the level of the reserve is not disclosed to the bidders), there is no sale; in this case, the bank would keep the toxic instruments.
Having the banks realize a price at least equal to the value they hold it at on their books is a boundary condition. If the banks sell the assets as a lower level, it will result in a loss, which is a direct hit to equity. The whole point of this exercise is to get rid of the bad paper without further impairing the banks."
Okay, so the auctions are rigged and the banks get overpaid for toxic waste. Surprised? Geithner's task from Day 1 has been to keep the money flowing from the vault at Treasury to the big banks. This is just more of the same. The TALF and the PPP are just clever acronyms meaning "corporate welfare" which is ladled out to bank tycoons who have their agents working the levers from the inside. The public, of course, takes it in the shorts once again.
Yves Smith puts it like this:
"Dear God, the Administration really thinks the public is full of idiots. But there are so many components to the program, and a lot of moving parts in each, they no doubt expect everyone's eyes to glaze over." (Public Private partnership emerging, Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism)
Geithner has been trying for weeks to lure hedge funds and private equity firms into participating in his program offering up to 95 percent leverage for the purchase of the banks bad assets. By providing loan guarantees rather than capital, Geithner can (in the words of the Wall Street Journal's David Wessel) "rely on the Federal Reserve's amazing ability to come up with unlimited sums without congressional consent." This means that Geithner has moved on to Plan B which makes good use of Bernanke's deep pockets and well-oiled printing press.
Geithner's strategy is nothing more than a trillion dollar stealth bailout of the country's biggest banks. The funding from the TALF and PPP are just the first part of a one-two knockout punch. Treasury will try to show that it paid less for the assets than their current book-value (which, of course, is grossly inflated) and then follow up with generous capital injections from the TARP program to make up the difference. That way, the banks will be "made whole" again while the public gets the double whammy. Geithner is hoping that the public relations hype surrounding the program will allow him to carry out his strategy before anyone figures out what's really going on. Fortunately, the blogosphere is following every little detail, which means that the plan will be picked apart just minutes after it is released. If the punditocracy gives it the "thumbs down", there's a good chance that Geithner will have to pack it in and resign. His credibility was wobbly to begin with. A failure here would surely be the last straw. Senator Richard Shelby, voiced the concerns of many elected representatives when he said on FOX News Sunday, that Geithner was on "shaky ground" and that "If he keeps going down this road, he won’t last long.” By late Monday, we should know whether Geithner will continue to serve at Treasury or hobble back to his dingy rookery at Kissinger and Associates.
According to the New York Times:
"The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will set up special-purpose investment partnerships and lend about 85 percent of the money that those partnerships will need to buy up troubled assets that banks want to sell.
... Private investors, then, would be contributing as little as 3 percent of the equity, and the government as much as 97 percent."
The idea that 97 percent "low interest" funding constitutes a "partnership", boggles the mind. Where can a businessman or a homeowner get gravy a deal like that? The Treasury is providing a subsidy to Wall Street crooksters to manage taxpayer money so they can fatten their own bottom line. It's that simple. Geithner's not only willing to empty the public purse for his buddies but, also, write another trillion dollar check on an account that is already overdrawn by $11 trillion. This is one gigantic looting operation concocted by bank lobbyists masquerading as public officials.
The whole purpose of the Geithner shakedown is to mislead the public. Why should the perilously underfunded FDIC provide a non-recourse loans to hedge fund sharpies and PE scalawags when its primary responsibility is to protect bank depositors? And why are they setting up more of the same Enron-type "off-balance sheets" special purpose vehicles which blew up the financial markets to begin with? This has disaster written all over it. The non recourse loans create a "no lose" situation for investors who can dump any type of crappy mortgage-backed sludge into the program and not worry about any legal backlash. Here's how Paul Krugman sums it up on Saturday's blog:
"The Geithner plan has now been leaked in detail. It’s exactly the plan that was widely analyzed — and found wanting — a couple of weeks ago. The zombie ideas have won.
The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved.
To this end the plan proposes to create funds in which private investors put in a small amount of their own money, and in return get large, non-recourse loans from the taxpayer, with which to buy bad — I mean misunderstood — assets. This is supposed to lead to fair prices because the funds will engage in competitive bidding....
This plan will produce big gains for banks that didn’t actually need any help; it will, however, do little to reassure the public about banks that are seriously undercapitalized. And I fear that when the plan fails, as it almost surely will, the administration will have shot its bolt: it won’t be able to come back to Congress for a plan that might actually work." (Paul Krugman's blog)
Geithner's plan is a catastrophe. It's just a sloppy remake of Paulson's failed Super SIV that was supposed to save Citi from massive losses but closed without a single sale. Not one investor stepped forward to buy assets even though Paulson slapped the Treasury's seal of approval on entire operation. It was a complete bust. Now Geithner is following in the ex-Treasury Secretary's footsteps.
The banks are not going to fix themselves. Only government can do that, which means that someone will have to fill the leadership void and do the heavy lifting. But time is running out and the problems are getting worse. Public support is on the wane. Obama should take advantage of what little confidence in the system is left and take radical corrective action. Insolvent financial institutions have to be taken into receivership and liquidated. Shareholders and bondholders will have to take a haircut. And Geithner, Summers and the rest of the White House banking fraternity will have to resign or be fired. Obama should mull over Albert Einstein's sage advice when he said, "The problems we face today cannot be solved by the minds that created them."...........
And, AIG becomes AIU, like, Toxic Assets becomes Legacy Assets! All is well in this year of 1984 where up is down and greed is good.
Whether he deserves it or not, Timothy Geithner has become the poster boy for everything that's wrong with the government's scatterbrain financial rescue plan. Geithner was in the wheelhouse at the New York Fed when Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros defaulted, and he played a central role in the $165 million AIG bonus scandal which ignited a populist firestorm across the country. Now everything even remotely connected to the bank bailout has become a source of fist-clinching rage. The mood of the country has darkened from the steady downpour of bad economic news, the sharp decline in housing prices and the steep rise in unemployment. People are angry at the government, the banks and Wall Street. Their nerves are frayed and their patience is stretched to the limit.
It is in this atmosphere of simmering public fury that Geithner will announce the details of his long-awaited plan for removing up to $1 trillion of toxic assets from the balance sheets of some of the country's biggest banks. Information about Geithner's "Public-Private Partnership" and the so called Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) has been spotty so far, but enough is known about the plan to predict that it will likely be the noose into which Geithner thrusts his scrawny neck bringing his dismal career at Treasury to a end. The country will not endure another pretentious-sounding banker-friendly flim flam, which is precisely what Geithner has in mind.
According to the Associated Press:
"Officials said Geithner’s plan will have three major parts. One part will be an effort Geithner spoke about last month - the creation of a public-private partnership to back purchases of bad assets by private investors... Treasury will hire four or five investment management firms, matching the private money that each of the firms puts up with government funds.
A second part of the plan will expand a recently launched program being run by the Federal Reserve called the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF.
That program is providing loans for investors to buy assets backed by consumer debt in an effort to make it easier for consumers to get auto, student and credit card loans. Under Geithner’s proposal, this program would be expanded to support investors’ purchases of banks’ toxic assets.
The third part of the Geithner plan would utilize the resources of the FDIC, the agency that guarantees bank deposits, to purchase toxic assets. Officials said that the FDIC will create special purpose investment partnerships and then lend those partnerships money so that they can buy up troubled assets." (AP)
Why in heaven's name would Shiela Bair attach her good name to Treasury's latest bunko-scam? As Bair undoubtedly knows, the main objective of the Public-Private Partnership and TALF is to provide inflated prices for garbage assets that investors refuse to buy. It's just a way of transferring losses from the banks to the taxpayer by using a middleman who looks like a partner but only has a 5 percent stake in the game. This is "tax cheat" Timmy's circuitous way of socking it to the public one more time. Here's how Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism explains it:
"First, the banks, as in normal auctions, will presumably set a reserve price equal to the value of the assets on their books. If the price does not meet the reserve (and the level of the reserve is not disclosed to the bidders), there is no sale; in this case, the bank would keep the toxic instruments.
Having the banks realize a price at least equal to the value they hold it at on their books is a boundary condition. If the banks sell the assets as a lower level, it will result in a loss, which is a direct hit to equity. The whole point of this exercise is to get rid of the bad paper without further impairing the banks."
Okay, so the auctions are rigged and the banks get overpaid for toxic waste. Surprised? Geithner's task from Day 1 has been to keep the money flowing from the vault at Treasury to the big banks. This is just more of the same. The TALF and the PPP are just clever acronyms meaning "corporate welfare" which is ladled out to bank tycoons who have their agents working the levers from the inside. The public, of course, takes it in the shorts once again.
Yves Smith puts it like this:
"Dear God, the Administration really thinks the public is full of idiots. But there are so many components to the program, and a lot of moving parts in each, they no doubt expect everyone's eyes to glaze over." (Public Private partnership emerging, Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism)
Geithner has been trying for weeks to lure hedge funds and private equity firms into participating in his program offering up to 95 percent leverage for the purchase of the banks bad assets. By providing loan guarantees rather than capital, Geithner can (in the words of the Wall Street Journal's David Wessel) "rely on the Federal Reserve's amazing ability to come up with unlimited sums without congressional consent." This means that Geithner has moved on to Plan B which makes good use of Bernanke's deep pockets and well-oiled printing press.
Geithner's strategy is nothing more than a trillion dollar stealth bailout of the country's biggest banks. The funding from the TALF and PPP are just the first part of a one-two knockout punch. Treasury will try to show that it paid less for the assets than their current book-value (which, of course, is grossly inflated) and then follow up with generous capital injections from the TARP program to make up the difference. That way, the banks will be "made whole" again while the public gets the double whammy. Geithner is hoping that the public relations hype surrounding the program will allow him to carry out his strategy before anyone figures out what's really going on. Fortunately, the blogosphere is following every little detail, which means that the plan will be picked apart just minutes after it is released. If the punditocracy gives it the "thumbs down", there's a good chance that Geithner will have to pack it in and resign. His credibility was wobbly to begin with. A failure here would surely be the last straw. Senator Richard Shelby, voiced the concerns of many elected representatives when he said on FOX News Sunday, that Geithner was on "shaky ground" and that "If he keeps going down this road, he won’t last long.” By late Monday, we should know whether Geithner will continue to serve at Treasury or hobble back to his dingy rookery at Kissinger and Associates.
According to the New York Times:
"The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will set up special-purpose investment partnerships and lend about 85 percent of the money that those partnerships will need to buy up troubled assets that banks want to sell.
... Private investors, then, would be contributing as little as 3 percent of the equity, and the government as much as 97 percent."
The idea that 97 percent "low interest" funding constitutes a "partnership", boggles the mind. Where can a businessman or a homeowner get gravy a deal like that? The Treasury is providing a subsidy to Wall Street crooksters to manage taxpayer money so they can fatten their own bottom line. It's that simple. Geithner's not only willing to empty the public purse for his buddies but, also, write another trillion dollar check on an account that is already overdrawn by $11 trillion. This is one gigantic looting operation concocted by bank lobbyists masquerading as public officials.
The whole purpose of the Geithner shakedown is to mislead the public. Why should the perilously underfunded FDIC provide a non-recourse loans to hedge fund sharpies and PE scalawags when its primary responsibility is to protect bank depositors? And why are they setting up more of the same Enron-type "off-balance sheets" special purpose vehicles which blew up the financial markets to begin with? This has disaster written all over it. The non recourse loans create a "no lose" situation for investors who can dump any type of crappy mortgage-backed sludge into the program and not worry about any legal backlash. Here's how Paul Krugman sums it up on Saturday's blog:
"The Geithner plan has now been leaked in detail. It’s exactly the plan that was widely analyzed — and found wanting — a couple of weeks ago. The zombie ideas have won.
The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved.
To this end the plan proposes to create funds in which private investors put in a small amount of their own money, and in return get large, non-recourse loans from the taxpayer, with which to buy bad — I mean misunderstood — assets. This is supposed to lead to fair prices because the funds will engage in competitive bidding....
This plan will produce big gains for banks that didn’t actually need any help; it will, however, do little to reassure the public about banks that are seriously undercapitalized. And I fear that when the plan fails, as it almost surely will, the administration will have shot its bolt: it won’t be able to come back to Congress for a plan that might actually work." (Paul Krugman's blog)
Geithner's plan is a catastrophe. It's just a sloppy remake of Paulson's failed Super SIV that was supposed to save Citi from massive losses but closed without a single sale. Not one investor stepped forward to buy assets even though Paulson slapped the Treasury's seal of approval on entire operation. It was a complete bust. Now Geithner is following in the ex-Treasury Secretary's footsteps.
The banks are not going to fix themselves. Only government can do that, which means that someone will have to fill the leadership void and do the heavy lifting. But time is running out and the problems are getting worse. Public support is on the wane. Obama should take advantage of what little confidence in the system is left and take radical corrective action. Insolvent financial institutions have to be taken into receivership and liquidated. Shareholders and bondholders will have to take a haircut. And Geithner, Summers and the rest of the White House banking fraternity will have to resign or be fired. Obama should mull over Albert Einstein's sage advice when he said, "The problems we face today cannot be solved by the minds that created them."...........
And, AIG becomes AIU, like, Toxic Assets becomes Legacy Assets! All is well in this year of 1984 where up is down and greed is good.
Monday, March 23, 2009
SC89-3 / http://www.ricefarmer.blogspot.com/
How Soon Will Torchlight Parades Come to America?
According to reports, disgruntled taxpayers took a bus ride to visit the palatial estates of AIG executives to protest their bonuses. The citizens are being distracted by the bonuses, which are mere pocket change compared with the huge gobs of money the US government has thrown at AIG and other entities, but that’s another story. Here I want to make an observation on the anger of the masses, which is nothing to trifle with, as history has shown.
Elites obviously believe that the protests aren’t always going to be peaceful, that it’s only a matter of time until there are nasty visits from torch-wielding crowds. They may be right. And they are making preparations to deal with citizen anger.
For example, according to PR Watch,
Harvard Law School is hosting seminars in April and November to teach “Public Relations, Communications and Media Strategies for Dealing With an Angry Public.” They'll be teaching techniques for dealing with people who “are angry because you've let them down” or who “want to embarrass you publicly,” as well as “environmental groups threatening you” over issues such as “the use and disposal of toxic materials.” You can visit their website for details. A flyer announcing the seminars carries endorsements from officials with the U.S. Air Force, Federal Aviation Administration, ConocoPhillips, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.
Another sign that companies are seriously worried about unrest is this Marketwatch article, which informs us that “U.S. companies are being advised to batten down the hatches for their annual meetings this year amid rising anger among investors and the public over bonuses, bailouts, layoffs and slumping share prices.” An expert suggests that they are anticipating violence at annual meetings.
If it’s not possible to keep the pot from boiling over, torchlight parades could occur, and considering the number of guns owned by Americans, the situation could become very ugly. That is no doubt behind the preparations for mass internment.
According to reports, disgruntled taxpayers took a bus ride to visit the palatial estates of AIG executives to protest their bonuses. The citizens are being distracted by the bonuses, which are mere pocket change compared with the huge gobs of money the US government has thrown at AIG and other entities, but that’s another story. Here I want to make an observation on the anger of the masses, which is nothing to trifle with, as history has shown.
Elites obviously believe that the protests aren’t always going to be peaceful, that it’s only a matter of time until there are nasty visits from torch-wielding crowds. They may be right. And they are making preparations to deal with citizen anger.
For example, according to PR Watch,
Harvard Law School is hosting seminars in April and November to teach “Public Relations, Communications and Media Strategies for Dealing With an Angry Public.” They'll be teaching techniques for dealing with people who “are angry because you've let them down” or who “want to embarrass you publicly,” as well as “environmental groups threatening you” over issues such as “the use and disposal of toxic materials.” You can visit their website for details. A flyer announcing the seminars carries endorsements from officials with the U.S. Air Force, Federal Aviation Administration, ConocoPhillips, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.
Another sign that companies are seriously worried about unrest is this Marketwatch article, which informs us that “U.S. companies are being advised to batten down the hatches for their annual meetings this year amid rising anger among investors and the public over bonuses, bailouts, layoffs and slumping share prices.” An expert suggests that they are anticipating violence at annual meetings.
If it’s not possible to keep the pot from boiling over, torchlight parades could occur, and considering the number of guns owned by Americans, the situation could become very ugly. That is no doubt behind the preparations for mass internment.
SC89-2 / http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12864
"Down the Memory Hole," Alan Greenspan Style
He's back and in denial in a March 11 Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined: "The Fed Didn't Cause the Housing Bubble." He lied, the way he did throughout his career and for 18.5 years as Fed chairman. How else could he have kept the job, be knighted in the UK for his "contribution to global economic stability, wisdom and skill," then afterwards be extolled by the Money Trust he enriched.
So now he's preserving his "legacy" by expunging its dark side the way Orwell described in 1984 - "down the memory hole," a convenient slot for "any document....due for destruction," politically inconvenient truths to be erased to preserve only sanitized versions for the public. It's called historical revisionism, but even some on the right aren't convinced.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute is a libertarian research and educational center espousing the Austrian School economics of its namesake. Robert Murphy is one of its adjunct scholars, and in an April 14, 2008 article he asked: "Did the Fed Cause the Housing Bubble?"
"The case....is straightforward," he stated. "...Greenspan slashed the federal funds target from 6.5% in January 2001 down to a ridiculous 1% by June 2003. After holding rates at 1% for a year, the Fed then steadily ratcheted them back up to 5.25% by June 2006," a pumping and popping process that "seemed to be more than just a coincidence." It led to speculative "malinvestments," then needing a "recession" to correct.
"The Fed's role in the housing boom and bust is a classic illustration of the Austrian business cycle theory," according to Murphy. "Indeed, the Misesian explanation is so compelling that more and more economists and financial analysts are being persuaded." But not Greenspan who made his own case and got the Wall Street Journal to publish it. The problem is what he said, even worse what he omitted.
That as Fed chairman he led a pump and dump scheme, a financial coup d'etat, to defraud the public for Wall Street. It continues unabated, with new schemes, sucking trillions of dollars of wealth from the many to the few through fraudulently engineered housing, asset, and debt bubbles, illegally offshoring vast sums of capital globally, and shifting government assets to private interests, then their liabilities onto the government leaving taxpayers stuck with the bill.
Across the board, his Fed tenure outraged William Greider enough to call him one of "the most duplicitous figures (ever) in modern American government" who used his position to "corrupt the political dialogue" to sell snake oil to Congress and the public and be a willing co-conspirator in the theft of trillions going back to the early 1980s before his Fed days. He championed derivatives, securitization, and deregulation. He believed unfettered markets work best so let them and told a congressional committee in the mid-1990s:
"Risks in financial markets, including derivative markets, are being regulated by private parties. There is nothing involved in federal regulation per se which makes it superior to market regulation." In other words, let capital operate freely, plunder at will, and have no regulatory restraints regardless of the harm caused.
He sanctioned fraud as a tool of the Money Trust, and as Fed chairman engineered multiple bubbles in stocks, housing, mortgages, bonds, derivatives, currencies, and commodities, yet took no responsibility for the fallout. When asked, he said he has "no regrets on any of the Federal Reserve's policies that we initiated." In fact, he championed them.
He let house prices become an $8 trillion wealth bubble, yet had regulatory authority to prevent it. He chided his critics, ignored the public interest, and even encouraged use of risky no down payment adjustable rate mortgages (including subprime ones) at the worst possible time to buy property. He bears full responsibility for the greatest ever economic collapse costing millions their homes, jobs, savings, pensions, and futures - yet he has "no regrets" for any of his actions.............
............The "Maestro," of course, with Greenspan quoting Milton Friedman for support. In evaluating the 1987 - 2005 period, he said: "There is not another period in which the Federal Reserve System has performed so well. It is more than a difference of degree; it approaches a difference of kind." From one defrocked icon about another, his comment rings hollow, and, according to Catherine Austin Fitts, the evidence is compelling from her experience as an insider.
Replying to the Wall Street Journal, she explained that her "company served as lead financial advisor to the Federal Housing Administration between 1994 and 1997. (She) watched both the Administration and (Fed) aggressively implement policies that engineered the housing bubble," and gave an example involving securitizing mortgages for pooling, then repackaging and selling them in tranches to investors.
"Even in 1995, (she) could see that these plans would create unserviceable debt loads in communities struggling with" globalization-caused declining incomes. The fallout would be mortgage defaults combined with mortgage-backed securities (MBS) "drain(ing) retirement savings from 401(k)s and pension plans."
Taxpayers would get the bill "but insiders would make bundle." She accused an administration official involved in the scheme with "planning on issuing more mortgages than there were houses or residents." His reply: "Shut up, this is none of your business."
It gets worse the result of the "long standing partnership of narcotics trafficking and mortgage fraud," then combining them "to target and destroy minority and poor communities with highly profitable economic warfare. The model is global" and very profitable throughout the world and across America with numerous examples as proof. She cited one.
In October 1996, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) released documents showing evidence of CIA links to the South-Central Los Angeles crack epidemic at least since the mid-1980s, attributable to fund-raising efforts for the Nicaraguan Contras.
Fitts wrote in May 1999 that in December 1997, "the CIA Inspector General delivered Volume I of their report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence" on the charges. It documented "the continued (money laundered) flow of an estimated $500 billion - $1 trillion a year....into the US financial system." To placate Waters, Greenspan met with her in January 1998 and "pledged billions (would) come to her district." It began in February when Al Gore announced it "was awarded Empowerment Zone status....and made eligible for $300 million in federal grants and tax benefits."
Fitts called Greenspan a "liar" and accused him of being complicit with the Treasury in engineering the housing bubble "as part of a financial coup d'etat" - documented in her writing "Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. (where she served as a Managing Director and Board member) and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits." She explained how:
"America's aristocracy makes money ensnaring our youth in a pincer movement of drugs and prisons and wins middle class support through (government-funded) contracts for War on Drugs activities at federal, state and local levels. This consensus (is sustained) by the gush of growing debt and derivatives used to bubble the housing and mortgage markets, manipulate the stock and precious metals markets, and finance trillions missing from the US government in the largest pump and dump in history....of the entire economy."
It's "more than a process designed to wipe out the middle class. (It's) genocide - a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by" legions of previous scoundrels. She described a process of insider deals designed to:
-- hollow out America,
-- centralize power and knowledge,
-- shift wealth to the privileged,
-- destroy communities and local infrastructure,
-- create new wealth by rebuilding them, and
-- leave human despair in its wake.
It's no accident that they crushed world economies to enrich the Money Trust, wrecked lives and impoverished millions, and the scheme remains very much ongoing. Yet Greenspan remains unapologetic, indeed smug in his Journal op-ed.
He deflected blame on "global forces beyond the control of domestic monetary policy makers" while claiming that "Global market competition and integration in goods, services and finance have brought unprecedented gains in material well-being." For whom he wouldn't say. He didn't have to, just look at the winners and losers.
Then explain it to the victims, the millions of Americans losing homes, jobs, pensions, savings and futures, the growing numbers with inadequate safety net protection for emergencies. Explain the greatest ever economic collapse, not an accident but willfully engineered, the lack of regulatory restraints that allowed it, and the devastating toll from its fallout.
Tell those affected how "the appropriate policy response is not to bridle financial intermediation with heavy regulation" but free it save for minor reforms too little to matter and simple to remove once the heat's off. Justify the "ret(ention of) a dynamic world economy capable of producing prosperity and future sustainable growth" based on business as usual policies - ones you describe as not "rely(ing) on governments to intermediate saving and investment flows" but freeing capital to grow more of it to enrich the few at the expense of the rest.
Justify the global economic collapse, the billions harmed, the human misery, and the fear that's it's just beginning. Explain how that jibes with democratic freedoms, equal opportunity, and the best of all possible worlds. At age 83 as a prominent figure, a well-paid private advisor and speaker, historical revisionism is how, and let the devil take the hindmost.............
The on-going economic meltdown is, " not an accident but willfully engineered ".
He's back and in denial in a March 11 Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined: "The Fed Didn't Cause the Housing Bubble." He lied, the way he did throughout his career and for 18.5 years as Fed chairman. How else could he have kept the job, be knighted in the UK for his "contribution to global economic stability, wisdom and skill," then afterwards be extolled by the Money Trust he enriched.
So now he's preserving his "legacy" by expunging its dark side the way Orwell described in 1984 - "down the memory hole," a convenient slot for "any document....due for destruction," politically inconvenient truths to be erased to preserve only sanitized versions for the public. It's called historical revisionism, but even some on the right aren't convinced.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute is a libertarian research and educational center espousing the Austrian School economics of its namesake. Robert Murphy is one of its adjunct scholars, and in an April 14, 2008 article he asked: "Did the Fed Cause the Housing Bubble?"
"The case....is straightforward," he stated. "...Greenspan slashed the federal funds target from 6.5% in January 2001 down to a ridiculous 1% by June 2003. After holding rates at 1% for a year, the Fed then steadily ratcheted them back up to 5.25% by June 2006," a pumping and popping process that "seemed to be more than just a coincidence." It led to speculative "malinvestments," then needing a "recession" to correct.
"The Fed's role in the housing boom and bust is a classic illustration of the Austrian business cycle theory," according to Murphy. "Indeed, the Misesian explanation is so compelling that more and more economists and financial analysts are being persuaded." But not Greenspan who made his own case and got the Wall Street Journal to publish it. The problem is what he said, even worse what he omitted.
That as Fed chairman he led a pump and dump scheme, a financial coup d'etat, to defraud the public for Wall Street. It continues unabated, with new schemes, sucking trillions of dollars of wealth from the many to the few through fraudulently engineered housing, asset, and debt bubbles, illegally offshoring vast sums of capital globally, and shifting government assets to private interests, then their liabilities onto the government leaving taxpayers stuck with the bill.
Across the board, his Fed tenure outraged William Greider enough to call him one of "the most duplicitous figures (ever) in modern American government" who used his position to "corrupt the political dialogue" to sell snake oil to Congress and the public and be a willing co-conspirator in the theft of trillions going back to the early 1980s before his Fed days. He championed derivatives, securitization, and deregulation. He believed unfettered markets work best so let them and told a congressional committee in the mid-1990s:
"Risks in financial markets, including derivative markets, are being regulated by private parties. There is nothing involved in federal regulation per se which makes it superior to market regulation." In other words, let capital operate freely, plunder at will, and have no regulatory restraints regardless of the harm caused.
He sanctioned fraud as a tool of the Money Trust, and as Fed chairman engineered multiple bubbles in stocks, housing, mortgages, bonds, derivatives, currencies, and commodities, yet took no responsibility for the fallout. When asked, he said he has "no regrets on any of the Federal Reserve's policies that we initiated." In fact, he championed them.
He let house prices become an $8 trillion wealth bubble, yet had regulatory authority to prevent it. He chided his critics, ignored the public interest, and even encouraged use of risky no down payment adjustable rate mortgages (including subprime ones) at the worst possible time to buy property. He bears full responsibility for the greatest ever economic collapse costing millions their homes, jobs, savings, pensions, and futures - yet he has "no regrets" for any of his actions.............
............The "Maestro," of course, with Greenspan quoting Milton Friedman for support. In evaluating the 1987 - 2005 period, he said: "There is not another period in which the Federal Reserve System has performed so well. It is more than a difference of degree; it approaches a difference of kind." From one defrocked icon about another, his comment rings hollow, and, according to Catherine Austin Fitts, the evidence is compelling from her experience as an insider.
Replying to the Wall Street Journal, she explained that her "company served as lead financial advisor to the Federal Housing Administration between 1994 and 1997. (She) watched both the Administration and (Fed) aggressively implement policies that engineered the housing bubble," and gave an example involving securitizing mortgages for pooling, then repackaging and selling them in tranches to investors.
"Even in 1995, (she) could see that these plans would create unserviceable debt loads in communities struggling with" globalization-caused declining incomes. The fallout would be mortgage defaults combined with mortgage-backed securities (MBS) "drain(ing) retirement savings from 401(k)s and pension plans."
Taxpayers would get the bill "but insiders would make bundle." She accused an administration official involved in the scheme with "planning on issuing more mortgages than there were houses or residents." His reply: "Shut up, this is none of your business."
It gets worse the result of the "long standing partnership of narcotics trafficking and mortgage fraud," then combining them "to target and destroy minority and poor communities with highly profitable economic warfare. The model is global" and very profitable throughout the world and across America with numerous examples as proof. She cited one.
In October 1996, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) released documents showing evidence of CIA links to the South-Central Los Angeles crack epidemic at least since the mid-1980s, attributable to fund-raising efforts for the Nicaraguan Contras.
Fitts wrote in May 1999 that in December 1997, "the CIA Inspector General delivered Volume I of their report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence" on the charges. It documented "the continued (money laundered) flow of an estimated $500 billion - $1 trillion a year....into the US financial system." To placate Waters, Greenspan met with her in January 1998 and "pledged billions (would) come to her district." It began in February when Al Gore announced it "was awarded Empowerment Zone status....and made eligible for $300 million in federal grants and tax benefits."
Fitts called Greenspan a "liar" and accused him of being complicit with the Treasury in engineering the housing bubble "as part of a financial coup d'etat" - documented in her writing "Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. (where she served as a Managing Director and Board member) and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits." She explained how:
"America's aristocracy makes money ensnaring our youth in a pincer movement of drugs and prisons and wins middle class support through (government-funded) contracts for War on Drugs activities at federal, state and local levels. This consensus (is sustained) by the gush of growing debt and derivatives used to bubble the housing and mortgage markets, manipulate the stock and precious metals markets, and finance trillions missing from the US government in the largest pump and dump in history....of the entire economy."
It's "more than a process designed to wipe out the middle class. (It's) genocide - a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by" legions of previous scoundrels. She described a process of insider deals designed to:
-- hollow out America,
-- centralize power and knowledge,
-- shift wealth to the privileged,
-- destroy communities and local infrastructure,
-- create new wealth by rebuilding them, and
-- leave human despair in its wake.
It's no accident that they crushed world economies to enrich the Money Trust, wrecked lives and impoverished millions, and the scheme remains very much ongoing. Yet Greenspan remains unapologetic, indeed smug in his Journal op-ed.
He deflected blame on "global forces beyond the control of domestic monetary policy makers" while claiming that "Global market competition and integration in goods, services and finance have brought unprecedented gains in material well-being." For whom he wouldn't say. He didn't have to, just look at the winners and losers.
Then explain it to the victims, the millions of Americans losing homes, jobs, pensions, savings and futures, the growing numbers with inadequate safety net protection for emergencies. Explain the greatest ever economic collapse, not an accident but willfully engineered, the lack of regulatory restraints that allowed it, and the devastating toll from its fallout.
Tell those affected how "the appropriate policy response is not to bridle financial intermediation with heavy regulation" but free it save for minor reforms too little to matter and simple to remove once the heat's off. Justify the "ret(ention of) a dynamic world economy capable of producing prosperity and future sustainable growth" based on business as usual policies - ones you describe as not "rely(ing) on governments to intermediate saving and investment flows" but freeing capital to grow more of it to enrich the few at the expense of the rest.
Justify the global economic collapse, the billions harmed, the human misery, and the fear that's it's just beginning. Explain how that jibes with democratic freedoms, equal opportunity, and the best of all possible worlds. At age 83 as a prominent figure, a well-paid private advisor and speaker, historical revisionism is how, and let the devil take the hindmost.............
The on-going economic meltdown is, " not an accident but willfully engineered ".
SC89-1 / http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/
Full Commanding Denial
If central casting called for a poised, straight-talking, and capable-seeming president, it would be hard to come up with someone better than the Barack Obama who walked and talked around the White House grounds with Steve Croft on "60-Minutes" Sunday night. He may perfectly represent the majority who elected him, though, because he also appears to be in full commanding denial of the realities overtaking our American experience.Those realities include the fact that we can't possibly return to the easy credit and no money down "consumer" economy no matter how many nominal dollars get shoveled into the fiery furnaces of banks too-big-to-fail. As Treasury Secretary Geithner's underling, Stephanie Cutter, said last week, "Our singular focus is on increasing lending to support economic recovery. Everything we do to stabilize the financial system is done with that goal in mind." Lending on the scale that became normal over the last decade is for sure the one thing that we will not recover. We turn around in 2009 to find ourselves a much poorer nation than we thought we were a year ago, especially among that broad range of formerly middle-class wage-earners who lived so luxuriously until yesterday. The public can't process this reality and the president, for all his relaxed charm, is either not ready to articulate it, or can't process it himself.Everything that we're doing right now is engineered to avoid reality, to sustain the unsustainable, to recover the unrecoverable, when the mandate of reality compels us to face our losses in order to move on to the next chapter of a collective American life. The next chapter would be a society that runs on a much more local and modest scale, centered on essential activities like growing food, requiring harder physical work, and focused attention -- in other words, the opposite of a society lost in abstractions, long-range daisy chains of off-loaded responsibility, and incessant pleasure-seeking.In retreat from this reality, we've set in motion two forces that are pretty certain to bring us to grief. The first proceeds from the fateful FMOC decision last week at the Federal Reserve Bank to begin buying massive amounts of our own treasury bonds and bills. This is predicated on the idea that the mechanisms of wealth production -- even of illusory wealth, such as the fortunes created by trading securitized unpayable debt -- can keep chugging along, spinning off limitless additional suburban villas, chain stores, car trips, and deep-fried snacks. It would be sententious to explain how this destroys currencies, but wherever "monetizing debt" has been tried before in history, that is the outcome. The result would be ruinous at every level and would lead straight to the second terrible force: social upheaval brought on by the conversion of economic problems into political turbulence.Those two forces are underway right now, in fact, since the overt monetizing of last week was preceded by the shoveling of bail-outs, which tacitly guaranteed a collapse of credibility in US debt instruments. I'm not in favor of violence and anarchy, but after the AIG bonus affair, it's hard to imagine that we are not one more corporate misdeed away from a rocket-propelled-grenade, or something like that, being fired into a glass office tower somewhere -- and then the "first-broken-window" rule of social disintegration comes into play. Meanwhile, I stick to my time-table of six-to-eighteen months before the reckless creation of new money-for-nothing filters through the system, overcomes even compressive mass bankruptcy, and starts expressing itself in the sinking value of dollars and the revved up velocity of their circulation in pursuit of tangible commodities.We're already seeing the first twinges of that in the up-creep of oil prices, busting through the $50-a-barrel barrier last week. Since scarcity tends to express itself in gross volatility, it's easy to imagine oil prices rising swiftly beyond the $147-per-barrel record level of last year. As that occurs, the most basic premises of everyday life in the USA will be called into question. If you think car sales have been bad lately, with oil in the $35-a-barrel range most of the winter, just wait. The newly-minted unemployed will be marooned in their subdivisions. They will not be buying GMC Yukons on 48-month installment contracts, let alone X-boxes on their Visa cards. They might be very very hungry, though. All bets are off as to how these social classes may organize themselves to alleviate their hunger (and express their anger about it).Given all this, it's kind of hard to believe that the savvy, thoughtful Mr. Obama is going along with such a disastrous program as the one his "team" is rolling out. Perhaps his ease and confidence masks a tragically conventional world-view, an incapacity to imagine "change" outside a very narrow range of possibility. I must say I doubt this is the case. I think, he is going along, for the moment, with a consensus of wishes to prop up life as we know it at all costs. This consensus emanates from the top down and the bottom up. The millions of "Joe-the-Plumber(s)" out there don't want to rethink the terms of existence anymore than the lords of Goldman Sachs. I also think that circumstances will force Mr. Obama's hand before long -- specifically that a moment will arrive when he goes on TV and tells the American public that things have changed way beyond the scope of what they even imagined when they pulled the levers last fall and voted for an uncharted future.Capable observers are calling, meanwhile, for a robust bear market rally moving through Spring, on technical grounds that have little to do with the greater forces roistering in the background. Reality is a cruel mistress. If the stock market rally rolls out as predicted, it will surely fake-out the mainstream media. They'll conclude wishfully and foolishly that something like "recovery" is underway. They may even interpret rising oil prices as a "positive sign" that the great groaning enterprise of the something-for-nothing economy is back "on track."They'll be shocked sometime after Memorial Day when it all comes off the rails again. We have a lot to sort out and very little time to get on with job. Notice, I haven't even mentioned the potential for mischief and instability coming out of the rest of the world -- enough black swans to blot out the sun. Want some concrete advice? For those of you sitting on US Treasury bonds and bills, now would be a good time to get out.............
And today Wall Street is celebrating because of Geithner's new proposals to buy up hundreds of billions of toxic assets choking the Big Banksters. Also the levity is being helped by the indications that the proposed 90% tax on the AIG bonuses might not hold together after all in view of Obama's expressed sentiments on 60 minutes. The buying up of the Toxic Sludge is supposed to be done within the framework of a newly created entity where public and private funds supposedly will team up to purchase this junk. Notably however the private funds suggested will be backstopped ( by the taxpayers ) to the tune of 90 plus percent if the deals go bad. The stuff is not being valued because it is worthless trash, the very reason the Banksters want to get rid of it, and guess who will be picking up the slack ( get screwed ) once again in these new arrangement created by Geithner and his true bosses the FED, the working class. So Wall Street and the Big Banksters are whooping it up today in the markets knowing that their good buddy Geithner is helping them find some suckers to take a large amount of the toxic instrument crap off of their books. The corruption and scams continue on massive levels.
If central casting called for a poised, straight-talking, and capable-seeming president, it would be hard to come up with someone better than the Barack Obama who walked and talked around the White House grounds with Steve Croft on "60-Minutes" Sunday night. He may perfectly represent the majority who elected him, though, because he also appears to be in full commanding denial of the realities overtaking our American experience.Those realities include the fact that we can't possibly return to the easy credit and no money down "consumer" economy no matter how many nominal dollars get shoveled into the fiery furnaces of banks too-big-to-fail. As Treasury Secretary Geithner's underling, Stephanie Cutter, said last week, "Our singular focus is on increasing lending to support economic recovery. Everything we do to stabilize the financial system is done with that goal in mind." Lending on the scale that became normal over the last decade is for sure the one thing that we will not recover. We turn around in 2009 to find ourselves a much poorer nation than we thought we were a year ago, especially among that broad range of formerly middle-class wage-earners who lived so luxuriously until yesterday. The public can't process this reality and the president, for all his relaxed charm, is either not ready to articulate it, or can't process it himself.Everything that we're doing right now is engineered to avoid reality, to sustain the unsustainable, to recover the unrecoverable, when the mandate of reality compels us to face our losses in order to move on to the next chapter of a collective American life. The next chapter would be a society that runs on a much more local and modest scale, centered on essential activities like growing food, requiring harder physical work, and focused attention -- in other words, the opposite of a society lost in abstractions, long-range daisy chains of off-loaded responsibility, and incessant pleasure-seeking.In retreat from this reality, we've set in motion two forces that are pretty certain to bring us to grief. The first proceeds from the fateful FMOC decision last week at the Federal Reserve Bank to begin buying massive amounts of our own treasury bonds and bills. This is predicated on the idea that the mechanisms of wealth production -- even of illusory wealth, such as the fortunes created by trading securitized unpayable debt -- can keep chugging along, spinning off limitless additional suburban villas, chain stores, car trips, and deep-fried snacks. It would be sententious to explain how this destroys currencies, but wherever "monetizing debt" has been tried before in history, that is the outcome. The result would be ruinous at every level and would lead straight to the second terrible force: social upheaval brought on by the conversion of economic problems into political turbulence.Those two forces are underway right now, in fact, since the overt monetizing of last week was preceded by the shoveling of bail-outs, which tacitly guaranteed a collapse of credibility in US debt instruments. I'm not in favor of violence and anarchy, but after the AIG bonus affair, it's hard to imagine that we are not one more corporate misdeed away from a rocket-propelled-grenade, or something like that, being fired into a glass office tower somewhere -- and then the "first-broken-window" rule of social disintegration comes into play. Meanwhile, I stick to my time-table of six-to-eighteen months before the reckless creation of new money-for-nothing filters through the system, overcomes even compressive mass bankruptcy, and starts expressing itself in the sinking value of dollars and the revved up velocity of their circulation in pursuit of tangible commodities.We're already seeing the first twinges of that in the up-creep of oil prices, busting through the $50-a-barrel barrier last week. Since scarcity tends to express itself in gross volatility, it's easy to imagine oil prices rising swiftly beyond the $147-per-barrel record level of last year. As that occurs, the most basic premises of everyday life in the USA will be called into question. If you think car sales have been bad lately, with oil in the $35-a-barrel range most of the winter, just wait. The newly-minted unemployed will be marooned in their subdivisions. They will not be buying GMC Yukons on 48-month installment contracts, let alone X-boxes on their Visa cards. They might be very very hungry, though. All bets are off as to how these social classes may organize themselves to alleviate their hunger (and express their anger about it).Given all this, it's kind of hard to believe that the savvy, thoughtful Mr. Obama is going along with such a disastrous program as the one his "team" is rolling out. Perhaps his ease and confidence masks a tragically conventional world-view, an incapacity to imagine "change" outside a very narrow range of possibility. I must say I doubt this is the case. I think, he is going along, for the moment, with a consensus of wishes to prop up life as we know it at all costs. This consensus emanates from the top down and the bottom up. The millions of "Joe-the-Plumber(s)" out there don't want to rethink the terms of existence anymore than the lords of Goldman Sachs. I also think that circumstances will force Mr. Obama's hand before long -- specifically that a moment will arrive when he goes on TV and tells the American public that things have changed way beyond the scope of what they even imagined when they pulled the levers last fall and voted for an uncharted future.Capable observers are calling, meanwhile, for a robust bear market rally moving through Spring, on technical grounds that have little to do with the greater forces roistering in the background. Reality is a cruel mistress. If the stock market rally rolls out as predicted, it will surely fake-out the mainstream media. They'll conclude wishfully and foolishly that something like "recovery" is underway. They may even interpret rising oil prices as a "positive sign" that the great groaning enterprise of the something-for-nothing economy is back "on track."They'll be shocked sometime after Memorial Day when it all comes off the rails again. We have a lot to sort out and very little time to get on with job. Notice, I haven't even mentioned the potential for mischief and instability coming out of the rest of the world -- enough black swans to blot out the sun. Want some concrete advice? For those of you sitting on US Treasury bonds and bills, now would be a good time to get out.............
And today Wall Street is celebrating because of Geithner's new proposals to buy up hundreds of billions of toxic assets choking the Big Banksters. Also the levity is being helped by the indications that the proposed 90% tax on the AIG bonuses might not hold together after all in view of Obama's expressed sentiments on 60 minutes. The buying up of the Toxic Sludge is supposed to be done within the framework of a newly created entity where public and private funds supposedly will team up to purchase this junk. Notably however the private funds suggested will be backstopped ( by the taxpayers ) to the tune of 90 plus percent if the deals go bad. The stuff is not being valued because it is worthless trash, the very reason the Banksters want to get rid of it, and guess who will be picking up the slack ( get screwed ) once again in these new arrangement created by Geithner and his true bosses the FED, the working class. So Wall Street and the Big Banksters are whooping it up today in the markets knowing that their good buddy Geithner is helping them find some suckers to take a large amount of the toxic instrument crap off of their books. The corruption and scams continue on massive levels.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
SC88-13 / http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4256:the-peak-oil-crisis-government-in-the-transition&catid=17:national-com
The peak oil crisis: government in the transition
Nearly every day brings news of trillion-dollar government interventions in the world's economies.
With the power of deficit financing and the printing press, Washington is clearly leading the pack. Using the credit accumulated over many decades as the world's largest economy and issuer of the world's reserve currency, the U.S. is on track to borrow several trillion dollars over the course of a year or two that will be spent attempting to reverse the recession and credit freeze.
How well these multi-trillion efforts will succeed is still very much up in the air. The administration, which must, of course, be seen as optimistic, is predicting some sort of an economic revival next year. Others are not so sure. They believe the massive borrowing at home and abroad at close to zero interest rates will be coming to an end as soon as lenders simply run out of funds and the willingness to invest in U.S. government securities. Rates will rise, the government will resort to printing money, and a whole new set of still more serious economic problems will occur. Current policies will come to an end soon for they are simply unsustainable.
In America, government is not just Washington. We have 50 state governments and thousands of local ones that provide most of the services that hold our civilization together - water, sewers, sanitation, schools, roads, police, fire, courts, welfare, and prisons. Now these governments have another set of problems. They can't print money, most are already indebted to the hilt, and many are under legal restrictions to balance their budgets. In recent decades, the prevailing political in America sentiment has become one of opposition to taxes. Without much thought being devoted to just what goods, services and edifices might be bought with the tax money, a substantial portion of the body politic is convinced that nearly all government is a waste of money and that the less taxes, the better off we will all be.
This of course is what comes from nearly 70 years of good economic times. There are few left to remember the bad years of the 1930's when life, even in America, was a struggle for survival and not just deciding what to buy today.
There is no question that state and local governments are in trouble. Revenues are falling and were it not for the recent stimulus package of federally-borrowed money, tens of thousands more teachers and municipal employees would be drawing unemployment before the end of the year. The bottom line is that state and local governments that provide really essential services, have taken a first step in becoming more dependent on the federal government for part of their funding. Some local jurisdictions are so poor that there is simply nothing left to tax. These are already dependent on state governments to shuffle money from wealthier places to poorer ones.
Many, however, believe the days of the great federal borrowing binge are numbered. The favored scenario says that the U.S. Treasury will one day no longer sell increasing amounts of debt, interest rates will soar into double digits, the government will turn on the printing presses and we will all be living in the Weimar Republic with a worthless currency.
From a peak oil perspective, the notion of returning to days of vibrant economic growth is simply not in the cards. Economic growth takes oil; world production has already started to drop; and there will be much competition for that which is left. While gasoline is currently cheap, three to five years from now it won't be, as a combination of slowly increasing rates of oil depletion and lack of investment in new production will lead to shortages and growth-stifling prices.
At some point, the federal government which, through inertia and good lobbying, tends to fund all sorts of relics from bygone eras - space travel, submarine fleets, jet fighters, and a world-wide military presence -- will have to rethink what it is doing. There clearly are vast amounts of "government" expenditures which can be cut before we get to elementary teachers, sanitation departments, and public health.
If the past year is any example, the next few decades will be ones of extreme hardship. Governmental priorities are already [moving] from nice-to-do to can't-survive-without. The relationship among and services provided by the various levels of government will change - perhaps radically. For the coming fiscal year we seem to have a new paradigm under which the federal government borrows and sends enough money to lower levels of government to keep them functioning. If the borrow-without-much-taxing model is to continue to work, then some flavor of continuing federal support for local services will have to continue.
The transition from a lifestyle in which we live on dwindling reserves of fossil energy to something more sustainable is obviously going to take increasing amounts of government support just to keep functioning. We have built a very complex civilization in which we are dependent on a complex supply chain for the essentials of life - food, warmth, sanitation, health. The days of the independent, self-sufficient farmer are over for 98 percent of us. Take away or even start to reduce supplies of food, electricity, natural gas, and gasoline and we are in a lot of trouble.
As the supply of liquid fuels dwindles and increases in price, travel, particularly by aircraft, is likely to fall sharply. Services provided by the federal government - defense, foreign relations, interstate highways, and regulation -- that have grown to massive proportions in the last 70 years are likely to take on a much lower priority in favor of food, clothing, shelter, public safety, education, health care, and employment that will be provided at the local level.
Over the next 20 years we are almost certain to witness major changes in the functions performed by various levels of government and whether we like it or not, the share of our resources going to pay for these functions [is going to increase] - i.e. higher taxes. Although it is not yet generally recognized, this great transition has already begun.
Nearly every day brings news of trillion-dollar government interventions in the world's economies.
With the power of deficit financing and the printing press, Washington is clearly leading the pack. Using the credit accumulated over many decades as the world's largest economy and issuer of the world's reserve currency, the U.S. is on track to borrow several trillion dollars over the course of a year or two that will be spent attempting to reverse the recession and credit freeze.
How well these multi-trillion efforts will succeed is still very much up in the air. The administration, which must, of course, be seen as optimistic, is predicting some sort of an economic revival next year. Others are not so sure. They believe the massive borrowing at home and abroad at close to zero interest rates will be coming to an end as soon as lenders simply run out of funds and the willingness to invest in U.S. government securities. Rates will rise, the government will resort to printing money, and a whole new set of still more serious economic problems will occur. Current policies will come to an end soon for they are simply unsustainable.
In America, government is not just Washington. We have 50 state governments and thousands of local ones that provide most of the services that hold our civilization together - water, sewers, sanitation, schools, roads, police, fire, courts, welfare, and prisons. Now these governments have another set of problems. They can't print money, most are already indebted to the hilt, and many are under legal restrictions to balance their budgets. In recent decades, the prevailing political in America sentiment has become one of opposition to taxes. Without much thought being devoted to just what goods, services and edifices might be bought with the tax money, a substantial portion of the body politic is convinced that nearly all government is a waste of money and that the less taxes, the better off we will all be.
This of course is what comes from nearly 70 years of good economic times. There are few left to remember the bad years of the 1930's when life, even in America, was a struggle for survival and not just deciding what to buy today.
There is no question that state and local governments are in trouble. Revenues are falling and were it not for the recent stimulus package of federally-borrowed money, tens of thousands more teachers and municipal employees would be drawing unemployment before the end of the year. The bottom line is that state and local governments that provide really essential services, have taken a first step in becoming more dependent on the federal government for part of their funding. Some local jurisdictions are so poor that there is simply nothing left to tax. These are already dependent on state governments to shuffle money from wealthier places to poorer ones.
Many, however, believe the days of the great federal borrowing binge are numbered. The favored scenario says that the U.S. Treasury will one day no longer sell increasing amounts of debt, interest rates will soar into double digits, the government will turn on the printing presses and we will all be living in the Weimar Republic with a worthless currency.
From a peak oil perspective, the notion of returning to days of vibrant economic growth is simply not in the cards. Economic growth takes oil; world production has already started to drop; and there will be much competition for that which is left. While gasoline is currently cheap, three to five years from now it won't be, as a combination of slowly increasing rates of oil depletion and lack of investment in new production will lead to shortages and growth-stifling prices.
At some point, the federal government which, through inertia and good lobbying, tends to fund all sorts of relics from bygone eras - space travel, submarine fleets, jet fighters, and a world-wide military presence -- will have to rethink what it is doing. There clearly are vast amounts of "government" expenditures which can be cut before we get to elementary teachers, sanitation departments, and public health.
If the past year is any example, the next few decades will be ones of extreme hardship. Governmental priorities are already [moving] from nice-to-do to can't-survive-without. The relationship among and services provided by the various levels of government will change - perhaps radically. For the coming fiscal year we seem to have a new paradigm under which the federal government borrows and sends enough money to lower levels of government to keep them functioning. If the borrow-without-much-taxing model is to continue to work, then some flavor of continuing federal support for local services will have to continue.
The transition from a lifestyle in which we live on dwindling reserves of fossil energy to something more sustainable is obviously going to take increasing amounts of government support just to keep functioning. We have built a very complex civilization in which we are dependent on a complex supply chain for the essentials of life - food, warmth, sanitation, health. The days of the independent, self-sufficient farmer are over for 98 percent of us. Take away or even start to reduce supplies of food, electricity, natural gas, and gasoline and we are in a lot of trouble.
As the supply of liquid fuels dwindles and increases in price, travel, particularly by aircraft, is likely to fall sharply. Services provided by the federal government - defense, foreign relations, interstate highways, and regulation -- that have grown to massive proportions in the last 70 years are likely to take on a much lower priority in favor of food, clothing, shelter, public safety, education, health care, and employment that will be provided at the local level.
Over the next 20 years we are almost certain to witness major changes in the functions performed by various levels of government and whether we like it or not, the share of our resources going to pay for these functions [is going to increase] - i.e. higher taxes. Although it is not yet generally recognized, this great transition has already begun.
SC88-12 / http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/7
The Big Takeover
The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution
...........None other than disgraced senator Ted Stevens was the poor sap who made the unpleasant discovery that if Congress didn't like the Fed handing trillions of dollars to banks without any oversight, Congress could apparently go **** itself — or so said the law. When Stevens asked the GAO about what authority Congress has to monitor the Fed, he got back a letter citing an obscure statute that nobody had ever heard of before: the Accounting and Auditing Act of 1950. The relevant section, 31 USC 714(b), dictated that congressional audits of the Federal Reserve may not include "deliberations, decisions and actions on monetary policy matters." The exemption, as Foss notes, "basically includes everything." According to the law, in other words, the Fed simply cannot be audited by Congress. Or by anyone else, for that matter.
VI. WINNERS AND LOSERS
Stevens isn't the only person in Congress to be given the finger by the Fed. In January, when Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida asked Federal Reserve vice chairman Donald Kohn where all the money went — only $1.2 trillion had vanished by then — Kohn gave Grayson a classic eye roll, saying he would be "very hesitant" to name names because it might discourage banks from taking the money.
"Has that ever happened?" Grayson asked. "Have people ever said, 'We will not take your $100 billion because people will find out about it?'"
"Well, we said we would not publish the names of the borrowers, so we have no test of that," Kohn answered, visibly annoyed with Grayson's meddling.
Grayson pressed on, demanding to know on what terms the Fed was lending the money. Presumably it was buying assets and making loans, but no one knew how it was pricing those assets — in other words, no one knew what kind of deal it was striking on behalf of taxpayers. So when Grayson asked if the purchased assets were "marked to market" — a methodology that assigns a concrete value to assets, based on the market rate on the day they are traded — Kohn answered, mysteriously, "The ones that have market values are marked to market." The implication was that the Fed was purchasing derivatives like credit swaps or other instruments that were basically impossible to value objectively — paying real money for God knows what.
"Well, how much of them don't have market values?" asked Grayson. "How much of them are worthless?"
"None are worthless," Kohn snapped.
"Then why don't you mark them to market?" Grayson demanded.
"Well," Kohn sighed, "we are marking the ones to market that have market values."
In essence, the Fed was telling Congress to lay off and let the experts handle things. "It's like buying a car in a used-car lot without opening the hood, and saying, 'I think it's fine,'" says Dan Fuss, an analyst with the investment firm Loomis Sayles. "The salesman says, 'Don't worry about it. Trust me.' It'll probably get us out of the lot, but how much farther? None of us knows."
When one considers the comparatively extensive system of congressional checks and balances that goes into the spending of every dollar in the budget via the normal appropriations process, what's happening in the Fed amounts to something truly revolutionary — a kind of shadow government with a budget many times the size of the normal federal outlay, administered dictatorially by one man, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. "We spend hours and hours and hours arguing over $10 million amendments on the floor of the Senate, but there has been no discussion about who has been receiving this $3 trillion," says Sen. Bernie Sanders. "It is beyond comprehension."............
The rest of this article is excellent and goes into the subjects of CDO's, CDS,s, the FED relationship to AIG and more details of the history of how the implosion of the newly created financial instruments brought the US economic house of cards down. Reading the complete article will be well worth your time.
The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution
...........None other than disgraced senator Ted Stevens was the poor sap who made the unpleasant discovery that if Congress didn't like the Fed handing trillions of dollars to banks without any oversight, Congress could apparently go **** itself — or so said the law. When Stevens asked the GAO about what authority Congress has to monitor the Fed, he got back a letter citing an obscure statute that nobody had ever heard of before: the Accounting and Auditing Act of 1950. The relevant section, 31 USC 714(b), dictated that congressional audits of the Federal Reserve may not include "deliberations, decisions and actions on monetary policy matters." The exemption, as Foss notes, "basically includes everything." According to the law, in other words, the Fed simply cannot be audited by Congress. Or by anyone else, for that matter.
VI. WINNERS AND LOSERS
Stevens isn't the only person in Congress to be given the finger by the Fed. In January, when Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida asked Federal Reserve vice chairman Donald Kohn where all the money went — only $1.2 trillion had vanished by then — Kohn gave Grayson a classic eye roll, saying he would be "very hesitant" to name names because it might discourage banks from taking the money.
"Has that ever happened?" Grayson asked. "Have people ever said, 'We will not take your $100 billion because people will find out about it?'"
"Well, we said we would not publish the names of the borrowers, so we have no test of that," Kohn answered, visibly annoyed with Grayson's meddling.
Grayson pressed on, demanding to know on what terms the Fed was lending the money. Presumably it was buying assets and making loans, but no one knew how it was pricing those assets — in other words, no one knew what kind of deal it was striking on behalf of taxpayers. So when Grayson asked if the purchased assets were "marked to market" — a methodology that assigns a concrete value to assets, based on the market rate on the day they are traded — Kohn answered, mysteriously, "The ones that have market values are marked to market." The implication was that the Fed was purchasing derivatives like credit swaps or other instruments that were basically impossible to value objectively — paying real money for God knows what.
"Well, how much of them don't have market values?" asked Grayson. "How much of them are worthless?"
"None are worthless," Kohn snapped.
"Then why don't you mark them to market?" Grayson demanded.
"Well," Kohn sighed, "we are marking the ones to market that have market values."
In essence, the Fed was telling Congress to lay off and let the experts handle things. "It's like buying a car in a used-car lot without opening the hood, and saying, 'I think it's fine,'" says Dan Fuss, an analyst with the investment firm Loomis Sayles. "The salesman says, 'Don't worry about it. Trust me.' It'll probably get us out of the lot, but how much farther? None of us knows."
When one considers the comparatively extensive system of congressional checks and balances that goes into the spending of every dollar in the budget via the normal appropriations process, what's happening in the Fed amounts to something truly revolutionary — a kind of shadow government with a budget many times the size of the normal federal outlay, administered dictatorially by one man, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. "We spend hours and hours and hours arguing over $10 million amendments on the floor of the Senate, but there has been no discussion about who has been receiving this $3 trillion," says Sen. Bernie Sanders. "It is beyond comprehension."............
The rest of this article is excellent and goes into the subjects of CDO's, CDS,s, the FED relationship to AIG and more details of the history of how the implosion of the newly created financial instruments brought the US economic house of cards down. Reading the complete article will be well worth your time.
SC88-11 / http://survivalacres.com/wordpress/
Big Problems Ahead
............we already have a pretty serious population problem. It will not take one more birth to break the proverbial straw, so claiming that another billion or so more will “do it” isn’t logical. The issues of land, food, fresh water, energy, resources and habitable climate are all already here for all of the world’s current population (current news example here). We’re already jockeying with each other over these resources, but if you notice, nothing of these things are increasing, they’re all still decreasing.
I think many of these articles are deliberately written to keep you off-kilter and basically in the dark (while selling newspapers). Consider this statement:
“We’re relatively fortunate in the UK; there may not be shortages here, but we can expect prices of food and energy to rise.”
Hahaha, England is going get SLAMMED with massive food shortages, changing climate, huge waves of immigration and rising crime. Their energy supplies are also highly questionable (depending on what data you believe), so England is not “fortunate” at all, England is one of the First World countries that is going to be in very serious trouble.
Like climatologist, I think that the entire world is scrambling to “keep up” with the changing data sets that portray our future. There is already widespread agreement now that the IPCC has woefully underestimated the effects of climate change even in their “worst case scenario”.
The recent Copenhagen conference has made this quite clear — we’re not sound the alarm loudly or long enough. But I argue that until we stop trying to politicize the issue, we will fail anyway. The economists (in all of us) always wins out (for the present) when it comes to charting our path through this dark future. It is not until we are backed into a corner will we effectively change, and by then I also argue, it will be already far too late.
This is why climate discussions never translate into a real change on the ground. We wrongly believe that we still have time, that we can still engineer our way out of this and that it won’t be as bad as it could be. I strongly disagree with this view, I think it will be VERY BAD, I think it is already too late (self-reinforcing feedbacks are now in motion) and any attempts at engineering this will backfire badly (make things even worse).
It is my view that nature does not “need” our help, it simply needs to be respected and to be left alone for the most part. What nature does in terms of “adjustments” (biodiversity), it does far, far better then humans ever will.
But leaving nature alone is not likely to ever happen, not in a world that believes in ownership, wealth, dominion, power, greed, corruption and exploitation. So I realize that this is just a fantasy that will never happen, but it sure would have made for a much different world if it did.
So I still think, and am having more and more people to agree, that we need to continue to prepare for the worst. This is the growing conclusion of the brighter and more educated minds on the planet. I’m not at all surprised the media outlets are still downplaying the long-term effects of these problems. I’m 100% convinced that they are out of their depth, real apocalyptic scenarios aren’t their bailiwick. Maybe they should hire on a few fiction writers to supplement the fiction they keep trying to force feed us.
The only real, sure-fire-ways to fix these issues is for humanity to basically “stop” doing everything that it is presently doing that is leading itself to destruction. But this will never happen, because this would undermine the very basis of our civilization (which is the problem). A new human civilization needs to be “built” (embraced) that does not exploit what it does not need, that does not own what it cannot possess (the land effectively laughs at us claiming “ownership”, then we wither and die), and does not greedily hunger after material things.
These three things, exploitation, ownership and greed are root evils in humans that continue to plague mankind. We’ve wrongly exalted these qualities as being the earmarks of “success”, when it is really among the worst kind of human behavior there is.
We’ve created a world based upon competition instead of sharing, exploitation instead of nurturing, and false ideas of ownership and possession as means and measurements to provide meaning in life.
Effectively, we are all forced to “compete” for everything, even those things that should still be free (the right to life, liberty and security, which includes food, water, shelter, clothing and housing).
We demean those that refuse these abominable lies, and exalt and praise those and even reward those who excel in it. Don’t believe it? Examine how we humans treat the “poor”, homeless, hungry, impoverished and needy. We are truly horrible when it comes to understanding what is really valuable in this world.We’ve got it all backwards. And quite frankly, most of us are simply too dumb to know it.
Therefore, do not expect science or technology, politicians or corporate “benevolence” to “save you” from what is certain to happen. This is a fiction which permeates to the very roots of our society and civilization. You will remain the slave that you are as long for as they can manage. And then when you are of no more use to them, you will be discarded like a dirty rag and left to rot in “shelters” or tent cities.
This is exactly how we dealt with the American Indians and other “savage” cultures, offering them trinkets and baubles in exchange for land and resources, while holding a bloody knife behind our backs (which we were quick to use when the time came).
We have destroyed ALL of the civilizations that refused exploitation of the natural world, and those that believed ownership was evil or wrong. And we have now laid waste to an entire planet as a result.
So as I’ve always said right here, you are all on your own. You will always be on your own because you all live in the same place I do, in a world that does not even comprehend its own peril, that does not care much for its own survival, and has no interest at all in things that are not profitable.
You will be bamboozled and misled by lying articles and politicians and corporate shills who will claim that they are “doing all these things for your own good” and how they are “fixing it” and working towards your salvation, but all they will be really doing, all that they will have always done, is to tighten the noose around your neck that much more before they hang you.
Remember that because it has always been true.
The world does not need and never has these “people” who believe that they can ’serve you’ by becoming your masters (owners), governing your life in ways that are against nature and life itself. They are only serving themselves and those that own them. I don’t need to tell you to eschew their company and to abandon their ranks. These are the people who are going to fall the hardest of all, because they are going to lose the most (witness the financial crisis now occurring).
So yes, we’ve got big, big problems ahead, and they all remain as unsolved as ever.............
Regarding exploding population, the world's pre-imminent problem, the elephant in the room that gets consistently ignored, there was a record amount of births in the US in 2007. Most of humanities greatest ills derive from excessive and growing world population. As human numbers continue to sky rocket, the travails created by this will explode in scope beyond any ability of proposed solutions to deal with the consequences.
............we already have a pretty serious population problem. It will not take one more birth to break the proverbial straw, so claiming that another billion or so more will “do it” isn’t logical. The issues of land, food, fresh water, energy, resources and habitable climate are all already here for all of the world’s current population (current news example here). We’re already jockeying with each other over these resources, but if you notice, nothing of these things are increasing, they’re all still decreasing.
I think many of these articles are deliberately written to keep you off-kilter and basically in the dark (while selling newspapers). Consider this statement:
“We’re relatively fortunate in the UK; there may not be shortages here, but we can expect prices of food and energy to rise.”
Hahaha, England is going get SLAMMED with massive food shortages, changing climate, huge waves of immigration and rising crime. Their energy supplies are also highly questionable (depending on what data you believe), so England is not “fortunate” at all, England is one of the First World countries that is going to be in very serious trouble.
Like climatologist, I think that the entire world is scrambling to “keep up” with the changing data sets that portray our future. There is already widespread agreement now that the IPCC has woefully underestimated the effects of climate change even in their “worst case scenario”.
The recent Copenhagen conference has made this quite clear — we’re not sound the alarm loudly or long enough. But I argue that until we stop trying to politicize the issue, we will fail anyway. The economists (in all of us) always wins out (for the present) when it comes to charting our path through this dark future. It is not until we are backed into a corner will we effectively change, and by then I also argue, it will be already far too late.
This is why climate discussions never translate into a real change on the ground. We wrongly believe that we still have time, that we can still engineer our way out of this and that it won’t be as bad as it could be. I strongly disagree with this view, I think it will be VERY BAD, I think it is already too late (self-reinforcing feedbacks are now in motion) and any attempts at engineering this will backfire badly (make things even worse).
It is my view that nature does not “need” our help, it simply needs to be respected and to be left alone for the most part. What nature does in terms of “adjustments” (biodiversity), it does far, far better then humans ever will.
But leaving nature alone is not likely to ever happen, not in a world that believes in ownership, wealth, dominion, power, greed, corruption and exploitation. So I realize that this is just a fantasy that will never happen, but it sure would have made for a much different world if it did.
So I still think, and am having more and more people to agree, that we need to continue to prepare for the worst. This is the growing conclusion of the brighter and more educated minds on the planet. I’m not at all surprised the media outlets are still downplaying the long-term effects of these problems. I’m 100% convinced that they are out of their depth, real apocalyptic scenarios aren’t their bailiwick. Maybe they should hire on a few fiction writers to supplement the fiction they keep trying to force feed us.
The only real, sure-fire-ways to fix these issues is for humanity to basically “stop” doing everything that it is presently doing that is leading itself to destruction. But this will never happen, because this would undermine the very basis of our civilization (which is the problem). A new human civilization needs to be “built” (embraced) that does not exploit what it does not need, that does not own what it cannot possess (the land effectively laughs at us claiming “ownership”, then we wither and die), and does not greedily hunger after material things.
These three things, exploitation, ownership and greed are root evils in humans that continue to plague mankind. We’ve wrongly exalted these qualities as being the earmarks of “success”, when it is really among the worst kind of human behavior there is.
We’ve created a world based upon competition instead of sharing, exploitation instead of nurturing, and false ideas of ownership and possession as means and measurements to provide meaning in life.
Effectively, we are all forced to “compete” for everything, even those things that should still be free (the right to life, liberty and security, which includes food, water, shelter, clothing and housing).
We demean those that refuse these abominable lies, and exalt and praise those and even reward those who excel in it. Don’t believe it? Examine how we humans treat the “poor”, homeless, hungry, impoverished and needy. We are truly horrible when it comes to understanding what is really valuable in this world.We’ve got it all backwards. And quite frankly, most of us are simply too dumb to know it.
Therefore, do not expect science or technology, politicians or corporate “benevolence” to “save you” from what is certain to happen. This is a fiction which permeates to the very roots of our society and civilization. You will remain the slave that you are as long for as they can manage. And then when you are of no more use to them, you will be discarded like a dirty rag and left to rot in “shelters” or tent cities.
This is exactly how we dealt with the American Indians and other “savage” cultures, offering them trinkets and baubles in exchange for land and resources, while holding a bloody knife behind our backs (which we were quick to use when the time came).
We have destroyed ALL of the civilizations that refused exploitation of the natural world, and those that believed ownership was evil or wrong. And we have now laid waste to an entire planet as a result.
So as I’ve always said right here, you are all on your own. You will always be on your own because you all live in the same place I do, in a world that does not even comprehend its own peril, that does not care much for its own survival, and has no interest at all in things that are not profitable.
You will be bamboozled and misled by lying articles and politicians and corporate shills who will claim that they are “doing all these things for your own good” and how they are “fixing it” and working towards your salvation, but all they will be really doing, all that they will have always done, is to tighten the noose around your neck that much more before they hang you.
Remember that because it has always been true.
The world does not need and never has these “people” who believe that they can ’serve you’ by becoming your masters (owners), governing your life in ways that are against nature and life itself. They are only serving themselves and those that own them. I don’t need to tell you to eschew their company and to abandon their ranks. These are the people who are going to fall the hardest of all, because they are going to lose the most (witness the financial crisis now occurring).
So yes, we’ve got big, big problems ahead, and they all remain as unsolved as ever.............
Regarding exploding population, the world's pre-imminent problem, the elephant in the room that gets consistently ignored, there was a record amount of births in the US in 2007. Most of humanities greatest ills derive from excessive and growing world population. As human numbers continue to sky rocket, the travails created by this will explode in scope beyond any ability of proposed solutions to deal with the consequences.
SC88-10 / http://survivalacres.com/wordpress/?p=1644#more-1644
As the world's economies continue their slide into economic armegedon, other parts of the many converging worldscale catastrophic issues continue their march towards an ever worsening state. One of grave importance that is being largely sidelined by the current economic travails of late is the quickening meltdown of earth's climate precipitated most significantly by humanities prolific burning of various carbon based fuels. The extent of this monumental growing crisis is staggering:
http://survivalacres.com/wordpress/?p=1644#more-1644
Beyond The Point Of No Return
It’s too late to stop climate change — so what do we do now?
As the pace of global warming kicks into overdrive, the hollow optimism of climate activists, along with the desperate responses of some of the world’s most prominent climate scientists, are preventing us from focusing on the survival requirements of the human enterprise.
The environmental establishment continues to peddle the notion that we can solve the climate problem.
We can’t.
We have failed to meet nature’s deadline. In the next few years, this world will experience progressively more ominous and destabilizing changes.............
............Within the last two years, a number of leading scientists — including Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), British ecologist James Lovelock, and NASA scientist James Hansen — have all declared that humanity is about to pass or already has passed a “tipping point” in terms of global warming. The IPCC, which reflects the findings of more than 2,000 scientists from over 100 countries, recently stated that it is “very unlikely” that we will avoid the coming era of “dangerous climate change.”
In fact, we may already be witnessing the early stages of runaway climate change in the melting of the Arctic, the increase in storm intensity, the accelerating extinctions of species, the ominous, large-scale releases of methane and the prolonged nature of recurring droughts.
Moreover, some scientists now fear that the warming is taking on its own momentum — driven by internal feedbacks that are independent of the human-generated carbon layer in the atmosphere.
Consider these examples:
* Despite growing public awareness of global warming, the world’s carbon emissions are rising three times faster than they did in the 1990s. As a result, many scientists tell us that the official, government-sanctioned forecasts of coming changes are understating the threats facing the world.
* The International Energy Agency recently found that the costs of avoiding dangerous climate change may be three times higher than those estimated by the IPCC in 2007.
* Scientists recently discovered a plume of methane rising from the perforated ocean seabed near Siberia into the atmosphere. Methane traps about 20 times more heat, molecule for molecule, than CO2. But because ocean-bed methane normally dissolves before it escapes into the air, the discovery has a number of scientists wondering whether it signals the beginnings of runaway climate change.
* A rise of 2 degree C. over pre-industrial temperatures is now virtually inevitable, according to the IPCC, as the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is approaching the destabilizing level of 450 parts per million. That rise will bring drought, hunger, disease and flooding to millions of people around the world. In fact, a number of scientists believe that forecast is far too rosy. John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said recently that only a return to pre-industrial levels of CO2 — about 280 parts per million — would be enough to guarantee a safe future for the planet.
* Scientists predict a steady rise in temperatures beginning in about two years — with at least half the years between 2009 and 2019 surpassing the average global temperature in 1998, to date, the hottest year on record.
* Given the unexpected speed with which Antarctica is melting, coupled with the increasing melt rates in the Arctic and Greenland, the rate of sea level rise has doubled — with scientists now raising their prediction of ocean rise by century’s end from about three feet to about six feet.
* Scientists recently concluded that the growing acidification of the world’s oceans may face a “tipping point” in the next 20 years. As the oceans continue to absorb CO2, the drop in their pH levels will begin to dissolve the shells of ocean organisms and destroy other forms of sea life. Researchers had initially estimated that tipping point might occur around 2060 — but new findings shortened that horizon to another two decades, according to Australian scientists.
* Scientists discovered that a recent, unexplained surge of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is due to more greenhouse gases escaping from trees, plants and soils — which have traditionally buffered the warming by absorbing the gases. In the lingo of climate scientists, carbon sinks are turning into carbon sources. Because the added warmth is making vegetation less able to absorb our carbon emissions, scientists expect the rate of warming to jump substantially in the coming years.
* The intensity of hurricanes around the world has doubled in the last decade. As Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research explained, “If you take the last 10 years, we’ve had twice the number of category-5 hurricanes than any other [10-year period] on record.”
* In Australia,a new, permanent state of drought in the country’s breadbasket has cut crop yields by over 30 percent. The 1-in-1000-year drought exemplifies a little-noted impact of climate change. As the atmosphere warms, it tightens the vortex of the winds that swirl around the poles. One result is that the water that traditionally evaporated from the Southern Ocean and rained down over New South Wales is now being pulled back into Antarctica — drying out the southeastern quadrant of Australia and contributing to the buildup of glaciers in the Antarctic — the only area on the planet where glaciers are increasing.
As one prominent climate scientist said recently, “We are seeing impacts today that we did not expect to see until 2085.”.........
...........You should know that even this assessment above (December 2008) is already dated in its totality and effects of runaway climate change. The Copenhagen conference and recent data sets indicate that the very worst case scenarios of the IPCC Report were woefully inadequate and will all be realized (and then some).
In point of fact — I’ve yet to reveal just how inadequately we are being informed. Here’s some data points that should scare the living hell out of you (sent in by Lonewolf):
1) A mean temperature rise of 4C to 6C within 50 - 90 years (and not slowing down after this time frame) is expected by many scientists from around the world.
2) An even higher mean temperature rise of 6C - 10C is expected by many others. Using the average then of 8C increase, we find:
This equates to 14.7F hotter (everywhere) on average. This is a 40% increase in temperature. A 90 degree day is now 126 degrees. A 100 degree day (now) is then 140 degrees. The hottest days now will soon become the coldest days of the future.
This means vast swaths inhabitable land around the the world will become absolutely desolate and unihabitable.
This also means nothing will grow except the most hardiest (and non-edible) of plants. This also means you can forget your water supplies — they won’t exist.
3) Even the optimistic predictions of temperature increase indicate that we will see a 25% - 33% rise in average temperature.
4) Under either of these scientific predictions, by the end of this century, most life on Earth will all be dead. This will kill most land-based life forms and probably all the marine life except the deepest animals (but even this is unknown).
5) Global temperature rises such as this will lead to increasing and escalating scarcity of critical and essential resources; food, water, land, habitable climate, agriculture regions, etc., and will inevitably lead to growing competition and unending war over these resources. A great many people in the coming years are going to die violent, horrible deaths.
6) This is not stoppable. This is not even debatable anymore.
7) This is not survivable for the vast majority of humankind. Those predictions by Lovelock of “30,000 humans” living above the Arctic Circle should be niggling your ears right about now...........
...........Grassroot efforts and community organizations and related efforts are all inadequate for the scale and scope of these changes.........
Notably, as the structure and integrity of the world's infinite growth economic paradigms ( enabled by our usage of the power of hydrocarbon energy sources ) continue to crumble and increasing negative growth becomes the " new reality " there will be less and less energy and resources available for any of the large scale attempts that might be made to mitigate to some degree the massive climate changes that we are experiencing now and those climate repercussions which will be increasingly severe in our future.
http://survivalacres.com/wordpress/?p=1644#more-1644
Beyond The Point Of No Return
It’s too late to stop climate change — so what do we do now?
As the pace of global warming kicks into overdrive, the hollow optimism of climate activists, along with the desperate responses of some of the world’s most prominent climate scientists, are preventing us from focusing on the survival requirements of the human enterprise.
The environmental establishment continues to peddle the notion that we can solve the climate problem.
We can’t.
We have failed to meet nature’s deadline. In the next few years, this world will experience progressively more ominous and destabilizing changes.............
............Within the last two years, a number of leading scientists — including Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), British ecologist James Lovelock, and NASA scientist James Hansen — have all declared that humanity is about to pass or already has passed a “tipping point” in terms of global warming. The IPCC, which reflects the findings of more than 2,000 scientists from over 100 countries, recently stated that it is “very unlikely” that we will avoid the coming era of “dangerous climate change.”
In fact, we may already be witnessing the early stages of runaway climate change in the melting of the Arctic, the increase in storm intensity, the accelerating extinctions of species, the ominous, large-scale releases of methane and the prolonged nature of recurring droughts.
Moreover, some scientists now fear that the warming is taking on its own momentum — driven by internal feedbacks that are independent of the human-generated carbon layer in the atmosphere.
Consider these examples:
* Despite growing public awareness of global warming, the world’s carbon emissions are rising three times faster than they did in the 1990s. As a result, many scientists tell us that the official, government-sanctioned forecasts of coming changes are understating the threats facing the world.
* The International Energy Agency recently found that the costs of avoiding dangerous climate change may be three times higher than those estimated by the IPCC in 2007.
* Scientists recently discovered a plume of methane rising from the perforated ocean seabed near Siberia into the atmosphere. Methane traps about 20 times more heat, molecule for molecule, than CO2. But because ocean-bed methane normally dissolves before it escapes into the air, the discovery has a number of scientists wondering whether it signals the beginnings of runaway climate change.
* A rise of 2 degree C. over pre-industrial temperatures is now virtually inevitable, according to the IPCC, as the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is approaching the destabilizing level of 450 parts per million. That rise will bring drought, hunger, disease and flooding to millions of people around the world. In fact, a number of scientists believe that forecast is far too rosy. John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said recently that only a return to pre-industrial levels of CO2 — about 280 parts per million — would be enough to guarantee a safe future for the planet.
* Scientists predict a steady rise in temperatures beginning in about two years — with at least half the years between 2009 and 2019 surpassing the average global temperature in 1998, to date, the hottest year on record.
* Given the unexpected speed with which Antarctica is melting, coupled with the increasing melt rates in the Arctic and Greenland, the rate of sea level rise has doubled — with scientists now raising their prediction of ocean rise by century’s end from about three feet to about six feet.
* Scientists recently concluded that the growing acidification of the world’s oceans may face a “tipping point” in the next 20 years. As the oceans continue to absorb CO2, the drop in their pH levels will begin to dissolve the shells of ocean organisms and destroy other forms of sea life. Researchers had initially estimated that tipping point might occur around 2060 — but new findings shortened that horizon to another two decades, according to Australian scientists.
* Scientists discovered that a recent, unexplained surge of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is due to more greenhouse gases escaping from trees, plants and soils — which have traditionally buffered the warming by absorbing the gases. In the lingo of climate scientists, carbon sinks are turning into carbon sources. Because the added warmth is making vegetation less able to absorb our carbon emissions, scientists expect the rate of warming to jump substantially in the coming years.
* The intensity of hurricanes around the world has doubled in the last decade. As Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research explained, “If you take the last 10 years, we’ve had twice the number of category-5 hurricanes than any other [10-year period] on record.”
* In Australia,a new, permanent state of drought in the country’s breadbasket has cut crop yields by over 30 percent. The 1-in-1000-year drought exemplifies a little-noted impact of climate change. As the atmosphere warms, it tightens the vortex of the winds that swirl around the poles. One result is that the water that traditionally evaporated from the Southern Ocean and rained down over New South Wales is now being pulled back into Antarctica — drying out the southeastern quadrant of Australia and contributing to the buildup of glaciers in the Antarctic — the only area on the planet where glaciers are increasing.
As one prominent climate scientist said recently, “We are seeing impacts today that we did not expect to see until 2085.”.........
...........You should know that even this assessment above (December 2008) is already dated in its totality and effects of runaway climate change. The Copenhagen conference and recent data sets indicate that the very worst case scenarios of the IPCC Report were woefully inadequate and will all be realized (and then some).
In point of fact — I’ve yet to reveal just how inadequately we are being informed. Here’s some data points that should scare the living hell out of you (sent in by Lonewolf):
1) A mean temperature rise of 4C to 6C within 50 - 90 years (and not slowing down after this time frame) is expected by many scientists from around the world.
2) An even higher mean temperature rise of 6C - 10C is expected by many others. Using the average then of 8C increase, we find:
This equates to 14.7F hotter (everywhere) on average. This is a 40% increase in temperature. A 90 degree day is now 126 degrees. A 100 degree day (now) is then 140 degrees. The hottest days now will soon become the coldest days of the future.
This means vast swaths inhabitable land around the the world will become absolutely desolate and unihabitable.
This also means nothing will grow except the most hardiest (and non-edible) of plants. This also means you can forget your water supplies — they won’t exist.
3) Even the optimistic predictions of temperature increase indicate that we will see a 25% - 33% rise in average temperature.
4) Under either of these scientific predictions, by the end of this century, most life on Earth will all be dead. This will kill most land-based life forms and probably all the marine life except the deepest animals (but even this is unknown).
5) Global temperature rises such as this will lead to increasing and escalating scarcity of critical and essential resources; food, water, land, habitable climate, agriculture regions, etc., and will inevitably lead to growing competition and unending war over these resources. A great many people in the coming years are going to die violent, horrible deaths.
6) This is not stoppable. This is not even debatable anymore.
7) This is not survivable for the vast majority of humankind. Those predictions by Lovelock of “30,000 humans” living above the Arctic Circle should be niggling your ears right about now...........
...........Grassroot efforts and community organizations and related efforts are all inadequate for the scale and scope of these changes.........
Notably, as the structure and integrity of the world's infinite growth economic paradigms ( enabled by our usage of the power of hydrocarbon energy sources ) continue to crumble and increasing negative growth becomes the " new reality " there will be less and less energy and resources available for any of the large scale attempts that might be made to mitigate to some degree the massive climate changes that we are experiencing now and those climate repercussions which will be increasingly severe in our future.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
SC88-9 / http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12839
AIG is a Legal Money-laundering Ring
The Circle of Financial Life, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Others…
There is a very tight financial circle spinning in perpetuity. There are players on the inside and there are others on the outside, forever looking for some sort of break, trying to figure out just how to stop this insidious circle from spinning… Like a tornado, it sucks money into it, but never seems to throw any out. Thus is the disaster that is the current United States Financial crisis.
It was reported by several outlets that AIG, after receiving $170 billion-plus in taxpayer-funded bailout money, is paying “bills.” Some of those “bills” were in the form of bonuses…$168 million in bonuses, to be exact. But, the most disgusting “bills” paid by AIG, in my opinion, were the ones they paid to Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, CitiGroup, and a few others. Yes the very same companies to which our government (from here on out, I will use the term lightly, as it doesn’t seem able to “govern” anything!) took the liberty of bailing out, along WITH AIG…
That is, AIG paid, according to a report meant for transparency, Goldman Sachs $12.9 billion, Merrill Lynch $6.8 billion, Bank of America $5.2 billion, Wachovia $1.5 billion, Morgan Stanley $1.2 billion, JP Morgan $400 million, among others. The funny thing about this is that ALL these institutions also received bailout money from the “government,” as well, so they have now received a double dose! Please tell me I am not the only one to find this utterly appalling! Enough is enough!
On top of that, AIG paid several foreign banks, as well. France’s Societe Generale received a whopping $11.9 billion, Deutsche Bank in Germany received nearly that at $11.8 billion. Barclays of England faired well at $7.9 billion and the Swiss UBS received $5 billion, among others…so, our much-needed money is going overseas! Now, granted, it was the dim-witted US financial institutions that caused the global meltdown, but come on!
Add to that, AIG paid itself $2.5 billion, and it paid AIG International $600 million. Now, before we go too much farther, technically speaking Maiden Lane III paid AIG the $2.5 billion, as well as portions of the other payouts, but Maiden Lane III was set up for AIG by the New York Federal Reserve office to handle AIG business…so…the way I see it, they are the same company!
Why is it so hard for our “government” to let AIG fail and let other, (yes, smaller) companies pick up their slack? Why is this a bad idea in the “land of opportunity?” Our “government” has committed money to the favored, yet utterly worthless, AIG several times, and AIG is still failing. The “government” isn’t, however. Our “government” is shifting from a Constitutional Republic to a Fascist state right before our eyes and there seems to be little we can do about it…AND, our “government,” on behalf of the US taxpayers, now owns an 80% controlling share of AIG…as a result of the huge bailout. Maybe that sheds some light on it!
Over the past six months, our “government” has committed money (that wasn’t theirs to commit) to AIG, to the tune of $170 billion. To put the $170 billion into perspective, that is about $555 PER PERSON living in the US right now. A family of 4 has paid approximately $2,220 JUST to AIG in this bailout fiasco! How many of us have lost jobs because of the nefarious dealings of AIG and all the others that caused this economic disaster? Let’s put things another way…The War in Iraq, at the time of this writing, has only cost us (I use that lightly as well!) right around $656 billion.
Our economy is tanking and while it was not our “policies” that caused it, our representatives are dedicating our funds to these shoddy businesses to fix it, all the while letting the criminals at the helm of these derelict companies get away with barely a slap on the wrist. These companies and our “government” make unwise decisions and we pay for it. I guess it is easy to make daring mistakes if you have a guarantee that someone else will pay for them!...........
............I’ve decided with all these inside-the-circle payments, that AIG is a legal money-laundering ring.
This is an incessant circle of destruction that is continually fueled by more and more taxpayer money….......
AIG is " too big to fail " because the Federal Reserve, the entity used by the elites to plunder the masses has used the entity of AIG as a means to further monumentally sized pilfering of public wealth. As seen above in this article, " Maiden Lane III was set up for AIG by the New York Federal Reserve office to handle AIG business… " the FED is behind the scenes pulling the strings and setting up the various nefarious constructs of these rigged bailout scams of great complexity. The Fed trotted out Bernake earlier this week having him put on his happy friendly face and speaking of things which imply that the Federal Reserve is here to help, and that they care about the plight of the working class. What a joke! While they shake your hand a smile they are stabbing you in the back in ernest. Only a mass up-rising of public action driven by its angst for these pirates will change anything.
The Circle of Financial Life, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Others…
There is a very tight financial circle spinning in perpetuity. There are players on the inside and there are others on the outside, forever looking for some sort of break, trying to figure out just how to stop this insidious circle from spinning… Like a tornado, it sucks money into it, but never seems to throw any out. Thus is the disaster that is the current United States Financial crisis.
It was reported by several outlets that AIG, after receiving $170 billion-plus in taxpayer-funded bailout money, is paying “bills.” Some of those “bills” were in the form of bonuses…$168 million in bonuses, to be exact. But, the most disgusting “bills” paid by AIG, in my opinion, were the ones they paid to Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, CitiGroup, and a few others. Yes the very same companies to which our government (from here on out, I will use the term lightly, as it doesn’t seem able to “govern” anything!) took the liberty of bailing out, along WITH AIG…
That is, AIG paid, according to a report meant for transparency, Goldman Sachs $12.9 billion, Merrill Lynch $6.8 billion, Bank of America $5.2 billion, Wachovia $1.5 billion, Morgan Stanley $1.2 billion, JP Morgan $400 million, among others. The funny thing about this is that ALL these institutions also received bailout money from the “government,” as well, so they have now received a double dose! Please tell me I am not the only one to find this utterly appalling! Enough is enough!
On top of that, AIG paid several foreign banks, as well. France’s Societe Generale received a whopping $11.9 billion, Deutsche Bank in Germany received nearly that at $11.8 billion. Barclays of England faired well at $7.9 billion and the Swiss UBS received $5 billion, among others…so, our much-needed money is going overseas! Now, granted, it was the dim-witted US financial institutions that caused the global meltdown, but come on!
Add to that, AIG paid itself $2.5 billion, and it paid AIG International $600 million. Now, before we go too much farther, technically speaking Maiden Lane III paid AIG the $2.5 billion, as well as portions of the other payouts, but Maiden Lane III was set up for AIG by the New York Federal Reserve office to handle AIG business…so…the way I see it, they are the same company!
Why is it so hard for our “government” to let AIG fail and let other, (yes, smaller) companies pick up their slack? Why is this a bad idea in the “land of opportunity?” Our “government” has committed money to the favored, yet utterly worthless, AIG several times, and AIG is still failing. The “government” isn’t, however. Our “government” is shifting from a Constitutional Republic to a Fascist state right before our eyes and there seems to be little we can do about it…AND, our “government,” on behalf of the US taxpayers, now owns an 80% controlling share of AIG…as a result of the huge bailout. Maybe that sheds some light on it!
Over the past six months, our “government” has committed money (that wasn’t theirs to commit) to AIG, to the tune of $170 billion. To put the $170 billion into perspective, that is about $555 PER PERSON living in the US right now. A family of 4 has paid approximately $2,220 JUST to AIG in this bailout fiasco! How many of us have lost jobs because of the nefarious dealings of AIG and all the others that caused this economic disaster? Let’s put things another way…The War in Iraq, at the time of this writing, has only cost us (I use that lightly as well!) right around $656 billion.
Our economy is tanking and while it was not our “policies” that caused it, our representatives are dedicating our funds to these shoddy businesses to fix it, all the while letting the criminals at the helm of these derelict companies get away with barely a slap on the wrist. These companies and our “government” make unwise decisions and we pay for it. I guess it is easy to make daring mistakes if you have a guarantee that someone else will pay for them!...........
............I’ve decided with all these inside-the-circle payments, that AIG is a legal money-laundering ring.
This is an incessant circle of destruction that is continually fueled by more and more taxpayer money….......
AIG is " too big to fail " because the Federal Reserve, the entity used by the elites to plunder the masses has used the entity of AIG as a means to further monumentally sized pilfering of public wealth. As seen above in this article, " Maiden Lane III was set up for AIG by the New York Federal Reserve office to handle AIG business… " the FED is behind the scenes pulling the strings and setting up the various nefarious constructs of these rigged bailout scams of great complexity. The Fed trotted out Bernake earlier this week having him put on his happy friendly face and speaking of things which imply that the Federal Reserve is here to help, and that they care about the plight of the working class. What a joke! While they shake your hand a smile they are stabbing you in the back in ernest. Only a mass up-rising of public action driven by its angst for these pirates will change anything.
Friday, March 20, 2009
SC88- 8 / http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12816
US Federal Reserve announces massive increase in government debt
The US Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday announced that it will massively expand its moves to pump liquidity into near-frozen credit markets, including a highly unusual plan to purchase up to $300 billion in longer-term Treasury securities over the next six months.
The plan also includes an additional $750 billion in Fed purchases of mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the federally owned mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and an additional $100 billion in Fed purchases of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt. These measures came as a surprise to global financial markets and triggered a simultaneous rush to buy Treasury bonds and a sharp sell-off of US dollars on world currency markets.
The announcement came in the statement issued by the Fed's policy-making Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) following its scheduled two-day meeting. As expected, the FOMC said it would continue to keep the Fed's benchmark federal funds rate—the interest charged by banks for overnight loans to one another—in a range of 0 to 0.25 percent, and would do so for the indefinite future.
But the announcement that the Fed would inject up to $1.15 trillion in additional funds into the US financial system—essentially printing that amount of additional dollars—was widely seen as something of a desperate gamble, motivated by concern over the deepening economic crisis as well as the mounting political crisis arising from public outrage over the $165 million in bonuses awarded to executives and traders at the bailed-out insurance giant, AIG.............
...........The Fed's action had the character of a pre-emptive move aimed at averting a financial panic should the Obama administration fail to obtain Congressional approval for its bailout plan. The Fed has the legal power to take such action without recourse to Congress.
In its Wednesday statement, the FOMC painted a grim picture of the economic situation. It began: "Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in January indicates that the economy continues to contract." It went on to note job losses, declining equity and housing wealth, tight credit, falling consumer sentiment and spending, declining business investment and shrinking exports resulting from the global contraction. Significantly, the statement omitted any reference to the economy recovering "later this year.".............
.............The Fed is taking advantage of the privileged and unique position of the United States due to the role of the dollar as the world's reserve and trading currency. That status gives the US a degree of leeway to print money to paper over its debts far beyond that of any other nation. In taking the actions announced Wednesday, the US is, in effect, offloading the brunt of its crisis onto its international creditors.
However, there are limits to this license. Since last September, the Fed's lending programs have doubled the size of its balance sheet, to about $1.8 trillion from $900 billion. The actions announced Wednesday are likely to expand that to well over $3 trillion over the next year.
Such an immense expansion of US debt inevitably calls into question the value of the dollar and the credit-worthiness of the US government itself. Already last week the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, warned that China was losing confidence in the value of its more than $1 trillion in US debt holdings.
A United Nations panel of experts is looking at creating a new "accounting unit" or basket of currencies to replace the dollar as the world's central currency. Reuters reported that Russia is anxious to begin a discussion of such a move at the Group of 20 summit of leading economic nations in early April.
The Fed's extraordinary measures highlight the impossibility of resolving the economic crisis within the framework of capitalism without a massive destruction of living standards and a growth of economic nationalism and militarism. The more the failure of the profit system has become evident, the more emphatically President Barack Obama has declared his support for the capitalist market.
The essence of all of the measures taken in response to the crisis—from the bank bailouts to the stimulus program to the housing plan—is an effort to rescue the system and protect the wealth and power of the financial elite at the expense of the broad masses of the population. The ability of the American ruling class to reassure its global creditors in the face of an unprecedented expansion of US government debt increasingly hinges on its pledge to ruthlessly slash basic social programs such as Medicare and Social Security and impose poverty conditions on the working class.
The US Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday announced that it will massively expand its moves to pump liquidity into near-frozen credit markets, including a highly unusual plan to purchase up to $300 billion in longer-term Treasury securities over the next six months.
The plan also includes an additional $750 billion in Fed purchases of mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the federally owned mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and an additional $100 billion in Fed purchases of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt. These measures came as a surprise to global financial markets and triggered a simultaneous rush to buy Treasury bonds and a sharp sell-off of US dollars on world currency markets.
The announcement came in the statement issued by the Fed's policy-making Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) following its scheduled two-day meeting. As expected, the FOMC said it would continue to keep the Fed's benchmark federal funds rate—the interest charged by banks for overnight loans to one another—in a range of 0 to 0.25 percent, and would do so for the indefinite future.
But the announcement that the Fed would inject up to $1.15 trillion in additional funds into the US financial system—essentially printing that amount of additional dollars—was widely seen as something of a desperate gamble, motivated by concern over the deepening economic crisis as well as the mounting political crisis arising from public outrage over the $165 million in bonuses awarded to executives and traders at the bailed-out insurance giant, AIG.............
...........The Fed's action had the character of a pre-emptive move aimed at averting a financial panic should the Obama administration fail to obtain Congressional approval for its bailout plan. The Fed has the legal power to take such action without recourse to Congress.
In its Wednesday statement, the FOMC painted a grim picture of the economic situation. It began: "Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in January indicates that the economy continues to contract." It went on to note job losses, declining equity and housing wealth, tight credit, falling consumer sentiment and spending, declining business investment and shrinking exports resulting from the global contraction. Significantly, the statement omitted any reference to the economy recovering "later this year.".............
.............The Fed is taking advantage of the privileged and unique position of the United States due to the role of the dollar as the world's reserve and trading currency. That status gives the US a degree of leeway to print money to paper over its debts far beyond that of any other nation. In taking the actions announced Wednesday, the US is, in effect, offloading the brunt of its crisis onto its international creditors.
However, there are limits to this license. Since last September, the Fed's lending programs have doubled the size of its balance sheet, to about $1.8 trillion from $900 billion. The actions announced Wednesday are likely to expand that to well over $3 trillion over the next year.
Such an immense expansion of US debt inevitably calls into question the value of the dollar and the credit-worthiness of the US government itself. Already last week the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, warned that China was losing confidence in the value of its more than $1 trillion in US debt holdings.
A United Nations panel of experts is looking at creating a new "accounting unit" or basket of currencies to replace the dollar as the world's central currency. Reuters reported that Russia is anxious to begin a discussion of such a move at the Group of 20 summit of leading economic nations in early April.
The Fed's extraordinary measures highlight the impossibility of resolving the economic crisis within the framework of capitalism without a massive destruction of living standards and a growth of economic nationalism and militarism. The more the failure of the profit system has become evident, the more emphatically President Barack Obama has declared his support for the capitalist market.
The essence of all of the measures taken in response to the crisis—from the bank bailouts to the stimulus program to the housing plan—is an effort to rescue the system and protect the wealth and power of the financial elite at the expense of the broad masses of the population. The ability of the American ruling class to reassure its global creditors in the face of an unprecedented expansion of US government debt increasingly hinges on its pledge to ruthlessly slash basic social programs such as Medicare and Social Security and impose poverty conditions on the working class.
SC88-7 / http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12817
Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?A Program of Financial Concentration
Professor Michael Hudson (Counter Punch, [editor: Global Research] March 18) is correct that the orchestrated outrage over the $165 million AIG bonuses is a diversion from the thousand times greater theft from taxpayers of the approximately $200 billion “bailout” of AIG. Nevertheless, it is a diversion that serves an important purpose. It has taught an inattentive American public that the elites run the government in their own private interests.
Americans are angry that AIG executives are paying themselves millions of dollars in bonuses after having cost the taxpayers an exorbitant sum. Senator Charles Grassley put a proper face on the anger when he suggested that the AIG executives “follow the Japanese example and resign or go commit suicide.”
Yet, Obama’s White House economist, Larry Summers, on whose watch as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration financial deregulation got out of control, invoked the “sanctity of contracts” in defense of the AIG bonuses.
But the Obama administration does not regard other contracts as sacred. Specifically: labor unions had to agree to give-backs in order for the auto companies to obtain federal help; CNN reports that “Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday [March 10] that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance”; the Washington Post reports that the Obama team has set its sights on downsizing Social Security and Medicare.
According to the Post, Obama said that “it is impossible to separate the country’s financial ills from the long-term need to rein in health-care costs, stabilize Social Security and prevent the Medicare program from bankrupting the government.”
After Washington’s trillion dollar bank bailouts and trillion dollar gratuitous wars for the sake of the military industry’s profits and Israeli territorial expansion, there is no money for Social Security and Medicare.
The US government breaks its contracts with US citizens on a daily basis, but AIG’s bonus contracts are sacrosanct. The Social Security contract was broken when the government decided to tax 85% of the benefits. It was broken again when the Clinton administration rigged the inflation measure in order to beat retirees out of their cost-of-living adjustments. To have any real Medicare coverage, a person has to give up part of his Social Security check to pay Medicare Part B premium and then take out a private supplemental policy. The true cost of Medicare to beneficiaries is about $6,000 annually in premiums, plus deductibles and the Medicare tax if the person is still earning.
Treasury Secretary Geithner, the fox in charge of the hen house, has resolved the problem for us. He is going to withhold $165 million (the amount of the AIG bonuses) from the next taxpayer payment to AIG of $30,000 million. If someone handed you $30,000 dollars, would you mind if they held back $165?
PR flaks have rechristened the bonus payments “retention payments” necessary if AIG is to retain crucial employees. This lie was shot down by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who informed the House Committee on Financial Services that the payments went to members of AIG’s Financial Products subsidiary, “the unit of AIG that was principally responsible for the firm’s meltdown.” As for retention, Cuomo pointed out that ”numerous individuals who received large ‘retention’ bonuses are no longer at the firm” .
Eliot Spitzer, the former New York Governor who was set-up in a sex scandal to prevent him investigating Wall Street’s financial gangsterism, pointed out on March 17 that the real scandal is the billions of taxpayer dollars paid to the counter-parties of AIG’s financial deals. These payments, Spitzer writes, are “a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.”
Goldman Sachs, for example, had already received a taxpayer cash infusion of $25 billion and was sitting on more than $100 billion in cash when the Wall Street firm received another $13 billion via the AIG bailout.
Moreover, in my opinion, most of the billions of dollars in AIG counter-party payments were unnecessary. They represent gravy paid to firms that had made risk-free bets, the non-payment of which constituted no threat to financial solvency.
Spitzer identifies a conflict of interest that could possibly be criminal self-dealing. According to reports, the AIG bailout decision involved Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner, former New York Federal Reserve president and currently Secretary of the Treasury. No doubt the incestuous relationships are the reason the original bailout deal had no oversight or transparency.
The Bush/Obama bailouts require serious investigation. Were these bailouts necessary, or were they a scam, like “weapons of mass destruction,” used to advance a private agenda behind a wall of fear? Recently I heard Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren, a member of a congressional bailout oversight panel, say on NPR that the US has far too many banks. Out of the financial crisis, she said, should come consolidation with the financial sector consisting of a few mega-banks. Was the whole point of the bailout to supply taxpayer money for a program of financial concentration?..........
There were provisions to stop the AIG " retention " bonus but then the bonuses were allowed after pressure from guess who, the Treasury Dept, and you can bet Timothy Geithner was involved.
Professor Michael Hudson (Counter Punch, [editor: Global Research] March 18) is correct that the orchestrated outrage over the $165 million AIG bonuses is a diversion from the thousand times greater theft from taxpayers of the approximately $200 billion “bailout” of AIG. Nevertheless, it is a diversion that serves an important purpose. It has taught an inattentive American public that the elites run the government in their own private interests.
Americans are angry that AIG executives are paying themselves millions of dollars in bonuses after having cost the taxpayers an exorbitant sum. Senator Charles Grassley put a proper face on the anger when he suggested that the AIG executives “follow the Japanese example and resign or go commit suicide.”
Yet, Obama’s White House economist, Larry Summers, on whose watch as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration financial deregulation got out of control, invoked the “sanctity of contracts” in defense of the AIG bonuses.
But the Obama administration does not regard other contracts as sacred. Specifically: labor unions had to agree to give-backs in order for the auto companies to obtain federal help; CNN reports that “Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday [March 10] that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance”; the Washington Post reports that the Obama team has set its sights on downsizing Social Security and Medicare.
According to the Post, Obama said that “it is impossible to separate the country’s financial ills from the long-term need to rein in health-care costs, stabilize Social Security and prevent the Medicare program from bankrupting the government.”
After Washington’s trillion dollar bank bailouts and trillion dollar gratuitous wars for the sake of the military industry’s profits and Israeli territorial expansion, there is no money for Social Security and Medicare.
The US government breaks its contracts with US citizens on a daily basis, but AIG’s bonus contracts are sacrosanct. The Social Security contract was broken when the government decided to tax 85% of the benefits. It was broken again when the Clinton administration rigged the inflation measure in order to beat retirees out of their cost-of-living adjustments. To have any real Medicare coverage, a person has to give up part of his Social Security check to pay Medicare Part B premium and then take out a private supplemental policy. The true cost of Medicare to beneficiaries is about $6,000 annually in premiums, plus deductibles and the Medicare tax if the person is still earning.
Treasury Secretary Geithner, the fox in charge of the hen house, has resolved the problem for us. He is going to withhold $165 million (the amount of the AIG bonuses) from the next taxpayer payment to AIG of $30,000 million. If someone handed you $30,000 dollars, would you mind if they held back $165?
PR flaks have rechristened the bonus payments “retention payments” necessary if AIG is to retain crucial employees. This lie was shot down by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who informed the House Committee on Financial Services that the payments went to members of AIG’s Financial Products subsidiary, “the unit of AIG that was principally responsible for the firm’s meltdown.” As for retention, Cuomo pointed out that ”numerous individuals who received large ‘retention’ bonuses are no longer at the firm” .
Eliot Spitzer, the former New York Governor who was set-up in a sex scandal to prevent him investigating Wall Street’s financial gangsterism, pointed out on March 17 that the real scandal is the billions of taxpayer dollars paid to the counter-parties of AIG’s financial deals. These payments, Spitzer writes, are “a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.”
Goldman Sachs, for example, had already received a taxpayer cash infusion of $25 billion and was sitting on more than $100 billion in cash when the Wall Street firm received another $13 billion via the AIG bailout.
Moreover, in my opinion, most of the billions of dollars in AIG counter-party payments were unnecessary. They represent gravy paid to firms that had made risk-free bets, the non-payment of which constituted no threat to financial solvency.
Spitzer identifies a conflict of interest that could possibly be criminal self-dealing. According to reports, the AIG bailout decision involved Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner, former New York Federal Reserve president and currently Secretary of the Treasury. No doubt the incestuous relationships are the reason the original bailout deal had no oversight or transparency.
The Bush/Obama bailouts require serious investigation. Were these bailouts necessary, or were they a scam, like “weapons of mass destruction,” used to advance a private agenda behind a wall of fear? Recently I heard Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren, a member of a congressional bailout oversight panel, say on NPR that the US has far too many banks. Out of the financial crisis, she said, should come consolidation with the financial sector consisting of a few mega-banks. Was the whole point of the bailout to supply taxpayer money for a program of financial concentration?..........
There were provisions to stop the AIG " retention " bonus but then the bonuses were allowed after pressure from guess who, the Treasury Dept, and you can bet Timothy Geithner was involved.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
SC88-6 / http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29783369/
Olbermann: Time to get tough on bankers
Wall Street treated the bailout bill like a national blackmail scheme
Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the latest atrocity from the banks. The vast, engorged, gluttonous multi-national corporations. Whose sneezes can be fatal to our jobs. Whose mistakes can turn us into the homeless. Whose accounting errors can be so panoramic that they can make our economy tremble and force us to hand them billions after billions in a blackmail scheme that has come to be known as "bailout."
Five weeks ago Vikram Pandit, the chief executive officer of Citigroup, went back to Congress, tail seemingly between his legs, and, with entreaty dripping from his voice, announced "I get the new reality and I'll make sure Citi gets it as well."
In point of fact, as Bloomberg News reports today, what Mr. Pandit "got" was a new $10 million executive suite for himself and his key associates.
This is the same Mr. Pandit who said he would show his leadership by accepting compensation of $1 a year. In fact, he then "accepted" a total compensation package for 2008 of $38 million.
Enough!
Mr. Pandit, you're probably just a good actor and a damned liar and a con man. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume instead, that you just can't tell the difference between $1 and 38 million of them. That would certainly explain the maelstrom into which you, and your colleagues at Citi and your counterparts elsewhere, have gotten us, including the vast majority of us who are innocent bystanders.
Your bank says your new $10 million office is part of a global strategy of space reduction that will ultimately save billions. It seems entirely appropriate to remind everyone, sir, that this promise could be fulfilled by Citi saving $2 a year for a billion years.
God knows you guys have pulled off every other accounting trick every dreamt up by immoral man. You, Sir, and the other corporate pirates like you — those who are saved from your obsessive spending and greed and self-aggrandizement by the taxpayer — who then pretend to atone — who then publicly promise good behavior — and who then revert immediately to the rapaciousness that is your only skill.
You, sir, all of you, need to be fired.
Enough!
And Mr. Pandit's corporation should be cut up into little pieces. And when he and the other ultra-millionaires wonder what hit them, we should make sure they are easily reminded. Our representatives should entitle the legislation that ends their moral ponzi schemes, "The Punish Vikram Pandit Act of 2009."
The far right in this country, without the slightest provocation, screams "socialism," and the sheep who follow it, who do not know what the word means and do not know it is only being used because "communism" now rings laughably hollow. In this cry of fire in a crowded unemployment line, there is outrage.
But there is also license. They think this is socialism? There is a million miles of reform to go before we hit socialism but if they're going to call us names whether they apply or not let's give them real reform.
Break up the banks. Regulate the financial industries, to within an inch of their existences. Roll back corporate legal protections. Make liable the officers of corporations, for their debts, and for their deeds. Resurrect the rallying cry of a hundred years past: bust the trusts!
AIG gives "failure bonuses" to the cretins whose dalliances in derivatives brought the company and part of the nation to her knees? Spin off that division whose traders are owed the 165 million in bonuses, under fund it, and cause it to go bankrupt.
Enough!
Let those with bonuses owed, stand in line before a bankruptcy referee, and wind up — just as you and I would — with half a cent on the dollar. Northern Trust fires 450 employees in December. Then takes a billion six in bailout money. Sponsors a golf tournament. Flies hundreds of clients to Southern California for private Oscar Parties including the renting of an airplane hangar and the hiring of the group "Earth, Wind & Fire?"
Enough!
Fire the executives. And fire up the Justice Department to figure out just how much fraud was involved in asking for a billion-six in bailout money when Northern Trust said nothing as the checks were written, even though it knew in advance that millions could be saved by simply cutting the fluff and the trumpery.
Thirteen more companies that took bailouts, signed the mandatory documents that said they owed no back taxes lied turned out, per Congressman John Lewis of Ways and Means today lied — they owe, just among those thirteen firms, 220 million in back taxes?
Enough!
Have the IRS take these companies, immediately, to the tax courts to which the rest of us are liable. And strip those ancient, outdated laws of Corporation, so that the officers of the corporation are personally liable for their companies' debts, just as you or I would be. And if the monopolies of radio or television rear up to support the corporate structure, to say a contract is a contract, even though that isn't true for a union these days, only for an AIG Trader. Take the invisible, unused Sword of Damocles they still fatuously insist hangs over their heads, and make it real.
Enough!
Make sure both sides are heard. Re-regulate the radio and television industries to limit station ownership and demand diversity of management and product. Re-instate the old rules that denied one man all the voices in a public square. End all waivers of multiple ownership of television stations and networks and newspapers in the same market.
And, yes, if a voice of the privileged classes unfairly uses his cable platform to call our neighbors who are the victims of this, "losers" to insist he alone speaks for the real people.
Or if another, indicts without equal time for defense a particular elected official, and then offers himself as a candidate for that very official's seat, in violation of all canons of good or even fair broadcasting then tell the cable industry that the free ride is over and it is time that it too be regulated by the FCC.
Enough!
To all of you in the Corporate boardrooms.
Stop viewing the public's reaction to this naked, unhindered robbery of the public coffers, and your audacious, immeasurable sense of proprietorship and entitlement stop viewing our anger as some kind of brief impediment, some traffic delay that keeps you from your God-given corporate ballpark sponsorships, and perpetually remodeled offices, and the divine right of $38 million "compensation packages."
You, gentlemen and ladies, and not the good and long-suffering average people of this country, you are fomenting rage in this nation. You are the losers in this equation, and the people are the generous ones; they have not assembled in the streets with pitch-forks and flaming torches. You are the ones perceived — understood in a visceral and even transcendent way — as the committers of what is becoming class economic rape.
And heed this one word before these people grow weary of forgiving you, and instead decide to bring the "good life" — which you have built on their backs — crashing down on top of your heads. When the next boardroom needs re-modeling, or the next bonus paid, or the next jet purchased, remember that one word:
Enough!
Wall Street treated the bailout bill like a national blackmail scheme
Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the latest atrocity from the banks. The vast, engorged, gluttonous multi-national corporations. Whose sneezes can be fatal to our jobs. Whose mistakes can turn us into the homeless. Whose accounting errors can be so panoramic that they can make our economy tremble and force us to hand them billions after billions in a blackmail scheme that has come to be known as "bailout."
Five weeks ago Vikram Pandit, the chief executive officer of Citigroup, went back to Congress, tail seemingly between his legs, and, with entreaty dripping from his voice, announced "I get the new reality and I'll make sure Citi gets it as well."
In point of fact, as Bloomberg News reports today, what Mr. Pandit "got" was a new $10 million executive suite for himself and his key associates.
This is the same Mr. Pandit who said he would show his leadership by accepting compensation of $1 a year. In fact, he then "accepted" a total compensation package for 2008 of $38 million.
Enough!
Mr. Pandit, you're probably just a good actor and a damned liar and a con man. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume instead, that you just can't tell the difference between $1 and 38 million of them. That would certainly explain the maelstrom into which you, and your colleagues at Citi and your counterparts elsewhere, have gotten us, including the vast majority of us who are innocent bystanders.
Your bank says your new $10 million office is part of a global strategy of space reduction that will ultimately save billions. It seems entirely appropriate to remind everyone, sir, that this promise could be fulfilled by Citi saving $2 a year for a billion years.
God knows you guys have pulled off every other accounting trick every dreamt up by immoral man. You, Sir, and the other corporate pirates like you — those who are saved from your obsessive spending and greed and self-aggrandizement by the taxpayer — who then pretend to atone — who then publicly promise good behavior — and who then revert immediately to the rapaciousness that is your only skill.
You, sir, all of you, need to be fired.
Enough!
And Mr. Pandit's corporation should be cut up into little pieces. And when he and the other ultra-millionaires wonder what hit them, we should make sure they are easily reminded. Our representatives should entitle the legislation that ends their moral ponzi schemes, "The Punish Vikram Pandit Act of 2009."
The far right in this country, without the slightest provocation, screams "socialism," and the sheep who follow it, who do not know what the word means and do not know it is only being used because "communism" now rings laughably hollow. In this cry of fire in a crowded unemployment line, there is outrage.
But there is also license. They think this is socialism? There is a million miles of reform to go before we hit socialism but if they're going to call us names whether they apply or not let's give them real reform.
Break up the banks. Regulate the financial industries, to within an inch of their existences. Roll back corporate legal protections. Make liable the officers of corporations, for their debts, and for their deeds. Resurrect the rallying cry of a hundred years past: bust the trusts!
AIG gives "failure bonuses" to the cretins whose dalliances in derivatives brought the company and part of the nation to her knees? Spin off that division whose traders are owed the 165 million in bonuses, under fund it, and cause it to go bankrupt.
Enough!
Let those with bonuses owed, stand in line before a bankruptcy referee, and wind up — just as you and I would — with half a cent on the dollar. Northern Trust fires 450 employees in December. Then takes a billion six in bailout money. Sponsors a golf tournament. Flies hundreds of clients to Southern California for private Oscar Parties including the renting of an airplane hangar and the hiring of the group "Earth, Wind & Fire?"
Enough!
Fire the executives. And fire up the Justice Department to figure out just how much fraud was involved in asking for a billion-six in bailout money when Northern Trust said nothing as the checks were written, even though it knew in advance that millions could be saved by simply cutting the fluff and the trumpery.
Thirteen more companies that took bailouts, signed the mandatory documents that said they owed no back taxes lied turned out, per Congressman John Lewis of Ways and Means today lied — they owe, just among those thirteen firms, 220 million in back taxes?
Enough!
Have the IRS take these companies, immediately, to the tax courts to which the rest of us are liable. And strip those ancient, outdated laws of Corporation, so that the officers of the corporation are personally liable for their companies' debts, just as you or I would be. And if the monopolies of radio or television rear up to support the corporate structure, to say a contract is a contract, even though that isn't true for a union these days, only for an AIG Trader. Take the invisible, unused Sword of Damocles they still fatuously insist hangs over their heads, and make it real.
Enough!
Make sure both sides are heard. Re-regulate the radio and television industries to limit station ownership and demand diversity of management and product. Re-instate the old rules that denied one man all the voices in a public square. End all waivers of multiple ownership of television stations and networks and newspapers in the same market.
And, yes, if a voice of the privileged classes unfairly uses his cable platform to call our neighbors who are the victims of this, "losers" to insist he alone speaks for the real people.
Or if another, indicts without equal time for defense a particular elected official, and then offers himself as a candidate for that very official's seat, in violation of all canons of good or even fair broadcasting then tell the cable industry that the free ride is over and it is time that it too be regulated by the FCC.
Enough!
To all of you in the Corporate boardrooms.
Stop viewing the public's reaction to this naked, unhindered robbery of the public coffers, and your audacious, immeasurable sense of proprietorship and entitlement stop viewing our anger as some kind of brief impediment, some traffic delay that keeps you from your God-given corporate ballpark sponsorships, and perpetually remodeled offices, and the divine right of $38 million "compensation packages."
You, gentlemen and ladies, and not the good and long-suffering average people of this country, you are fomenting rage in this nation. You are the losers in this equation, and the people are the generous ones; they have not assembled in the streets with pitch-forks and flaming torches. You are the ones perceived — understood in a visceral and even transcendent way — as the committers of what is becoming class economic rape.
And heed this one word before these people grow weary of forgiving you, and instead decide to bring the "good life" — which you have built on their backs — crashing down on top of your heads. When the next boardroom needs re-modeling, or the next bonus paid, or the next jet purchased, remember that one word:
Enough!
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
SC88-5 / http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article9446.html
United States Economic Collapse Facing Its Weimar Moment
..............According to the World Economic Forum, forty percent of the entire world's wealth has been destroyed in the recent financial collapse. In the U.S. alone, between housing and the stock market, more than $18 trillion in wealth has already been destroyed.
The private mega-banks that anchor the financial systems of the western world are bankrupt. This makes it all but impossible to jump-start the western world's economies which are heavily dependent on bank-system credit to operate.
More than 10,000 homes go into foreclosure every day. More than 20,000 people lose their job every day. And the collapse is accelerating, developing its own self-reinforcing dynamic. Job losses breed foreclosures, reducing demand, leading to more job losses and further degradation of the financial system. None of the stopgaps designed to stanch the bleeding have yet worked. There is no bottom in sight.
Meanwhile, debt has risen to astronomical levels. Reagan and Bush I quadrupled the national debt in only twelve years. Bush II doubled it again in only eight. It is now ten times higher than it was in 1980 when Reagan was elected. Total public and private debt exceeds 300% of GDP, half again higher than it was in 1929.
The government's unfunded liabilities, promises it has made to the American people but for which no payment source can be identified, now exceed $60 trillion, a literally inconceivable sum that can never, will never, be paid. Federal Reserve economist Lawrence Kotlikoff has suggested that the U.S. government is "actuarially bankrupt."
The full measure of the nation's plight is revealed in Hillary Clinton's first trip as Secretary of State. It was to China, to beg them to fund Obama's new fiscal deficits. Without loans from China, the U.S. economy cannot be revived. The significance of this cannot be overstated: the U.S. no longer exercises sovereignty over its own economic affairs. That sovereignty now resides in the hands of China, the U.S.'s greatest long-term rival.
Thanks to Republican policies of massive debt and shipping jobs abroad, the U.S. has technically become a colony of China. It exports raw materials and imports finished goods, together with the capital to make up the difference. Should the Chinese decide not to lend the trillions of dollars the U.S. is begging for, the U.S. economy will implode, plummeting onto itself in a World Trade Center-like collapse that will leave dust clouds circling the planet for decades.
Notwithstanding the destruction inflicted on the economy by Republican policies, the most devastating breakdown is in the intellectual foundation on which right wing economic ideology itself is premised. Free market doctrine, the secular religion of right-wing America, is in utter, irretrievable shambles.
One of the most lofty tenets on which free markets are premised is their claim for themselves that they are "efficient," that is, that market prices always reflect "fundamental values" of assets. But if that's true, how could the world's largest insurance company, AIG, have lost 99.5% of its market value in only 18 months? How could the world's largest bank, Citibank, have lost 98% of its value over the same period?
How could the world's largest brokerage company, Merrill Lynch, have gone bankrupt and need to be bought by Bank of America? How could the world's largest car company, General Motors, have lost 95% of its value and stand on the threshold of extinction? How could the world's largest industrial conglomerate, General Electric, have lost 85% of its value in only 18 months?
If the largest companies in the world, those at the very heart of the capitalist system itself, can lose virtually all of their value in only 18 months, what is the possible meaning of the phrases "efficient markets" and "fundamental value"?
The other core tenets of free market ideology are equally compromised. Major actors are clearly not rational - a breakdown of theological proportions admitted by no less an avatar of the cult than its pope himself, Alan Greenspan. Free markets clearly cannot, will not, regulate themselves. It is precisely their innate, irrepressible propensity for sociopathic greed and predatory fraud that has brought the whole of the world's economy to the precipice of collapse.
Free markets clearly do not align risk and reward, allocating capital to its most productive uses, as its promoters advertise. They clearly do not automatically return to equilibrium, but must be bailed out with trillions of dollars of injections from the shrinking coffers of the public to the ever-bulging coffers of a private priesthood of pillage and plunder.
And in perhaps the greatest indictment of all, one going back to its primeval roots in Adam Smith's eighteenth century opus, The Wealth of Nations, the unrestrained behavior of self-interested individuals clearly, manifestly, does not "coalesce as if by an Invisible Hand to the greatest good for the greatest number."
These are not peripheral premises that have failed. They are not tangential tenets. Efficient markets. Rational actors. Market equilibrium. Risk and reward. Self interest. These are the essential sacraments on which the entire free market system is founded. They are in tatters. And it isn't that any one of them has been discredited by the glaring, merciless force of events. All of them have been. All of them together. And all of them at the same time.
Free markets have long been the basis for a legitimate - though rightly debated - economic policy framework. But they have become little more than a robotically-recited cultural catechism, a mindless mantra mumbled to mask the looting of the nation's resources.................
..............According to the World Economic Forum, forty percent of the entire world's wealth has been destroyed in the recent financial collapse. In the U.S. alone, between housing and the stock market, more than $18 trillion in wealth has already been destroyed.
The private mega-banks that anchor the financial systems of the western world are bankrupt. This makes it all but impossible to jump-start the western world's economies which are heavily dependent on bank-system credit to operate.
More than 10,000 homes go into foreclosure every day. More than 20,000 people lose their job every day. And the collapse is accelerating, developing its own self-reinforcing dynamic. Job losses breed foreclosures, reducing demand, leading to more job losses and further degradation of the financial system. None of the stopgaps designed to stanch the bleeding have yet worked. There is no bottom in sight.
Meanwhile, debt has risen to astronomical levels. Reagan and Bush I quadrupled the national debt in only twelve years. Bush II doubled it again in only eight. It is now ten times higher than it was in 1980 when Reagan was elected. Total public and private debt exceeds 300% of GDP, half again higher than it was in 1929.
The government's unfunded liabilities, promises it has made to the American people but for which no payment source can be identified, now exceed $60 trillion, a literally inconceivable sum that can never, will never, be paid. Federal Reserve economist Lawrence Kotlikoff has suggested that the U.S. government is "actuarially bankrupt."
The full measure of the nation's plight is revealed in Hillary Clinton's first trip as Secretary of State. It was to China, to beg them to fund Obama's new fiscal deficits. Without loans from China, the U.S. economy cannot be revived. The significance of this cannot be overstated: the U.S. no longer exercises sovereignty over its own economic affairs. That sovereignty now resides in the hands of China, the U.S.'s greatest long-term rival.
Thanks to Republican policies of massive debt and shipping jobs abroad, the U.S. has technically become a colony of China. It exports raw materials and imports finished goods, together with the capital to make up the difference. Should the Chinese decide not to lend the trillions of dollars the U.S. is begging for, the U.S. economy will implode, plummeting onto itself in a World Trade Center-like collapse that will leave dust clouds circling the planet for decades.
Notwithstanding the destruction inflicted on the economy by Republican policies, the most devastating breakdown is in the intellectual foundation on which right wing economic ideology itself is premised. Free market doctrine, the secular religion of right-wing America, is in utter, irretrievable shambles.
One of the most lofty tenets on which free markets are premised is their claim for themselves that they are "efficient," that is, that market prices always reflect "fundamental values" of assets. But if that's true, how could the world's largest insurance company, AIG, have lost 99.5% of its market value in only 18 months? How could the world's largest bank, Citibank, have lost 98% of its value over the same period?
How could the world's largest brokerage company, Merrill Lynch, have gone bankrupt and need to be bought by Bank of America? How could the world's largest car company, General Motors, have lost 95% of its value and stand on the threshold of extinction? How could the world's largest industrial conglomerate, General Electric, have lost 85% of its value in only 18 months?
If the largest companies in the world, those at the very heart of the capitalist system itself, can lose virtually all of their value in only 18 months, what is the possible meaning of the phrases "efficient markets" and "fundamental value"?
The other core tenets of free market ideology are equally compromised. Major actors are clearly not rational - a breakdown of theological proportions admitted by no less an avatar of the cult than its pope himself, Alan Greenspan. Free markets clearly cannot, will not, regulate themselves. It is precisely their innate, irrepressible propensity for sociopathic greed and predatory fraud that has brought the whole of the world's economy to the precipice of collapse.
Free markets clearly do not align risk and reward, allocating capital to its most productive uses, as its promoters advertise. They clearly do not automatically return to equilibrium, but must be bailed out with trillions of dollars of injections from the shrinking coffers of the public to the ever-bulging coffers of a private priesthood of pillage and plunder.
And in perhaps the greatest indictment of all, one going back to its primeval roots in Adam Smith's eighteenth century opus, The Wealth of Nations, the unrestrained behavior of self-interested individuals clearly, manifestly, does not "coalesce as if by an Invisible Hand to the greatest good for the greatest number."
These are not peripheral premises that have failed. They are not tangential tenets. Efficient markets. Rational actors. Market equilibrium. Risk and reward. Self interest. These are the essential sacraments on which the entire free market system is founded. They are in tatters. And it isn't that any one of them has been discredited by the glaring, merciless force of events. All of them have been. All of them together. And all of them at the same time.
Free markets have long been the basis for a legitimate - though rightly debated - economic policy framework. But they have become little more than a robotically-recited cultural catechism, a mindless mantra mumbled to mask the looting of the nation's resources.................
SC88-4 /
The United States Of Corruption
The AIG hearings of today are just the latest installment of the ongoing mass corruption being perpetrated on the American Public from elites that have no conscience or sense of morality. CEO of AIG Liddy was asked today about future repayment of the 175 billion that this fraudulent company has so far been given. He said that first the Federal Reserve would be payed back when/and if AIG gets stable, and then the TARP billions would be paid. So the Federal Reserve gets paid first, and not the American Public who supposedly now own 80 percent of AIG. Liddy later said, " Everything we do, we do in partnership with the Federal Reserve ". It has come out today the the FED has know about the AIG bonuses long before the rising angst about all of this in the last two days. AIG is being kept alive because it is an important tool of the FED, through which billions of taxpayer money is funneled through it, as it is the insurer of most of the Big Banksters created toxic debt fiasco.
The FED is not a part of the US goverment, they are huge privately owned central Banksters. This entity ( the FED ) illegally came into being in 1913, and now they have growing ( almost total ) control over US economic policy. The elites that comprise this entity serve their own interest, and not that of the American public. Just today on MSNBC a government official was heard to say, " The Federal Reserve and Ben Bernake are in control of whats going forward in this economy ". Late last year the FED gave itself new sweeping powers of control over the US economy after it ( in the person of Hank Paulson ) told US government officials that if the FED wasn't allowed these powers, the US economy would desinigrate and very likely martial law would be declared in the US. Where have the multiple trillions of taxpayer money gone? Who got the money? What has it accomplished ? The people who know, the FED, are not talking and haven't disclosed to date any details. The FED is a criminal enterprise, a Godzilla sized parasite sucking the life blood out of the American economy. Kashkari, the FED mini me minion who was appointed to oversee the TARP 700 billion was asked recently about who are the counter parties receiving the bailout money. His response, " I don't understand your question ". Why should he answer, the FED is in control, not the American Public.
Timothy Geitner was the head of the New York FED before being appointed to the US treasurer position. Geitner is a FED man however without a doubt. The fact that he holds this treasurer government position makes no differance, he's working for the FED, not the American Public. Why is he still working with a skeleton staff this long after the election. Very convenient not to have more people looking over his shoulders as he continues to do the FED,s nefarious business. While everyone is focused on the relatively smaller corrupt issues of stuff like the AIG bonuses and Madoff the Ponzi King the FED is looting and pillaging the public coffers to the tune of many multiple trillions of dollars. You, your children, and their children are being put on the hook for all of these frauds in the form of a skyrocketing public debt. Just today the FED is pumping 1.1 trillion more of public money into the fray to help wash away some more ( a small percentage ) of the toxic investment sludge the banksters created in the first place. The Banksters are getting bailed out, and the public is getting screwed.
The public rage is rising quickly now and why not. These scumbag elites financiers and corportate criminals have been scamming the American public on a ongoing basis for many decades with the rigged economic systems they have put in place and a brutal reckoning is long overdue. CEO Liddy spoke today of an e-mail to their company speaking of piano wire and the fraudulent criminals getting what their due. For all they have done to the American Public, I hope the Karma payback for these corrupt criminals is severe and painful ( mentally and otherwise ) for those involved with these massive frauds.
The AIG hearings of today are just the latest installment of the ongoing mass corruption being perpetrated on the American Public from elites that have no conscience or sense of morality. CEO of AIG Liddy was asked today about future repayment of the 175 billion that this fraudulent company has so far been given. He said that first the Federal Reserve would be payed back when/and if AIG gets stable, and then the TARP billions would be paid. So the Federal Reserve gets paid first, and not the American Public who supposedly now own 80 percent of AIG. Liddy later said, " Everything we do, we do in partnership with the Federal Reserve ". It has come out today the the FED has know about the AIG bonuses long before the rising angst about all of this in the last two days. AIG is being kept alive because it is an important tool of the FED, through which billions of taxpayer money is funneled through it, as it is the insurer of most of the Big Banksters created toxic debt fiasco.
The FED is not a part of the US goverment, they are huge privately owned central Banksters. This entity ( the FED ) illegally came into being in 1913, and now they have growing ( almost total ) control over US economic policy. The elites that comprise this entity serve their own interest, and not that of the American public. Just today on MSNBC a government official was heard to say, " The Federal Reserve and Ben Bernake are in control of whats going forward in this economy ". Late last year the FED gave itself new sweeping powers of control over the US economy after it ( in the person of Hank Paulson ) told US government officials that if the FED wasn't allowed these powers, the US economy would desinigrate and very likely martial law would be declared in the US. Where have the multiple trillions of taxpayer money gone? Who got the money? What has it accomplished ? The people who know, the FED, are not talking and haven't disclosed to date any details. The FED is a criminal enterprise, a Godzilla sized parasite sucking the life blood out of the American economy. Kashkari, the FED mini me minion who was appointed to oversee the TARP 700 billion was asked recently about who are the counter parties receiving the bailout money. His response, " I don't understand your question ". Why should he answer, the FED is in control, not the American Public.
Timothy Geitner was the head of the New York FED before being appointed to the US treasurer position. Geitner is a FED man however without a doubt. The fact that he holds this treasurer government position makes no differance, he's working for the FED, not the American Public. Why is he still working with a skeleton staff this long after the election. Very convenient not to have more people looking over his shoulders as he continues to do the FED,s nefarious business. While everyone is focused on the relatively smaller corrupt issues of stuff like the AIG bonuses and Madoff the Ponzi King the FED is looting and pillaging the public coffers to the tune of many multiple trillions of dollars. You, your children, and their children are being put on the hook for all of these frauds in the form of a skyrocketing public debt. Just today the FED is pumping 1.1 trillion more of public money into the fray to help wash away some more ( a small percentage ) of the toxic investment sludge the banksters created in the first place. The Banksters are getting bailed out, and the public is getting screwed.
The public rage is rising quickly now and why not. These scumbag elites financiers and corportate criminals have been scamming the American public on a ongoing basis for many decades with the rigged economic systems they have put in place and a brutal reckoning is long overdue. CEO Liddy spoke today of an e-mail to their company speaking of piano wire and the fraudulent criminals getting what their due. For all they have done to the American Public, I hope the Karma payback for these corrupt criminals is severe and painful ( mentally and otherwise ) for those involved with these massive frauds.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
SC88-3 / http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2009/03/forget-about-recovery/comments/page/2/#comments
Vultures & Hyenas:
We have entered the carcass-picking moment in human affairs, a relatively brief era in which the Earth's vultures and hyenas are going to scour humanity's carcass clean, leaving only the bleached-white bones, fossils that a new generation of post-industrial human beings will uncover and examine and about which they will shake their heads in bemused bewilderment.
There is no way to stop it now. We have reached that extraordinary point in time in which the first shot has been fired and all hell has broken loose; in which cannibalism has become the preeminent form of social organization; in which the industrial disease that we birthed some two centuries hence has finally taken on a life of its own and is commencing the process devouring its masters.
The government knows its over. That is why they employ apparent insanity in lieu of reason in their development, defense and implementation of fiscal policy. They lie, as all false Messiah's lie, about such things as "renewed prosperity" and about the coming of a "better, more prosperous America" in the future, but they too are coming to recognize that the numbers all point to an epic global implosion. No capital, no food, no water, no fuel, no shelter: All summarily destroyed by a system fatally addicted to growth and consumption and resource exploitation and avarice; a system in which the new virtues of lying and theft and accumulation have buried the old, quaint virtues of kindness and generosity and humility.
The financial chieftains know its over. That's why they are willing, with utter impunity and stunning bravado, to steal every last possible cent from the rest of us. They do not even hide their theft anymore. They understand the coming chaos, and any fear of retribution or humiliation has all but vanished from their maggot-infested consciousness. They know that the Titanic is taking on water and it's only a matter of time before the Unsinkable Molly Brown tips her hat one final time and races to the bottom of the sea, gone and all but forgotten.
This past weekend's big news was the astonishing disclosures about AIG's trillion dollar Credit Default Swap scam and the U.S. governmental complicity in perpetuating these financial crimes against humanity. Before that it was Sheila Bair's $500 Billion TARP II, "bad" bank end-run. And before that, trillions in secretive bailouts to banks that are completely insolvent and who must, by the very nature of things, eventually die. Tomorrow, who knows. Hundreds of billions of dollars more to GM? Trillions more to Citi and BofA?? The Obama team---with support from the most powerful Democrats AND some weighty Republicans as well---is willing to spend tens of trillions of dollars in Monopoly Money to attempt, in vain, to subsidize a global stay-of execution. It's no longer about saving the system; it is now about delaying the inevitable.
But the gallows beckons, and she will have her day. As has been stated a thousand times on this blog alone: Spending trillions of dollars that do not exist to somehow try to"restart" a global economy that, for decades, has been based upon the reckless consumption of goods and services, and thus upon the total destruction of our environment---well, it simply cannot succeed. In reality, the only thing that our current "efforts" succeed in doing is hastening our inexorable march toward our very own global "Atlantis" moment. Like blowing holes in the side of a sinking ship, things will go down far more quickly.
It's an amazing experience, really, to witness first-hand the instant in which reason and rationality gives way to chaos and abandon. When political discourse disintegrates into riots and massive blood-letting; when the food dropped from the helicopter to the starving masses leads to the trampling deaths of hundreds of children. A complete social breakdown. We truly are an awe-inspiring species. Capable of such beautiful things---and yet somehow we have found a way to destroy it all.
Posted by: DanW March 09, 2009 at 11:05 AM
We have entered the carcass-picking moment in human affairs, a relatively brief era in which the Earth's vultures and hyenas are going to scour humanity's carcass clean, leaving only the bleached-white bones, fossils that a new generation of post-industrial human beings will uncover and examine and about which they will shake their heads in bemused bewilderment.
There is no way to stop it now. We have reached that extraordinary point in time in which the first shot has been fired and all hell has broken loose; in which cannibalism has become the preeminent form of social organization; in which the industrial disease that we birthed some two centuries hence has finally taken on a life of its own and is commencing the process devouring its masters.
The government knows its over. That is why they employ apparent insanity in lieu of reason in their development, defense and implementation of fiscal policy. They lie, as all false Messiah's lie, about such things as "renewed prosperity" and about the coming of a "better, more prosperous America" in the future, but they too are coming to recognize that the numbers all point to an epic global implosion. No capital, no food, no water, no fuel, no shelter: All summarily destroyed by a system fatally addicted to growth and consumption and resource exploitation and avarice; a system in which the new virtues of lying and theft and accumulation have buried the old, quaint virtues of kindness and generosity and humility.
The financial chieftains know its over. That's why they are willing, with utter impunity and stunning bravado, to steal every last possible cent from the rest of us. They do not even hide their theft anymore. They understand the coming chaos, and any fear of retribution or humiliation has all but vanished from their maggot-infested consciousness. They know that the Titanic is taking on water and it's only a matter of time before the Unsinkable Molly Brown tips her hat one final time and races to the bottom of the sea, gone and all but forgotten.
This past weekend's big news was the astonishing disclosures about AIG's trillion dollar Credit Default Swap scam and the U.S. governmental complicity in perpetuating these financial crimes against humanity. Before that it was Sheila Bair's $500 Billion TARP II, "bad" bank end-run. And before that, trillions in secretive bailouts to banks that are completely insolvent and who must, by the very nature of things, eventually die. Tomorrow, who knows. Hundreds of billions of dollars more to GM? Trillions more to Citi and BofA?? The Obama team---with support from the most powerful Democrats AND some weighty Republicans as well---is willing to spend tens of trillions of dollars in Monopoly Money to attempt, in vain, to subsidize a global stay-of execution. It's no longer about saving the system; it is now about delaying the inevitable.
But the gallows beckons, and she will have her day. As has been stated a thousand times on this blog alone: Spending trillions of dollars that do not exist to somehow try to"restart" a global economy that, for decades, has been based upon the reckless consumption of goods and services, and thus upon the total destruction of our environment---well, it simply cannot succeed. In reality, the only thing that our current "efforts" succeed in doing is hastening our inexorable march toward our very own global "Atlantis" moment. Like blowing holes in the side of a sinking ship, things will go down far more quickly.
It's an amazing experience, really, to witness first-hand the instant in which reason and rationality gives way to chaos and abandon. When political discourse disintegrates into riots and massive blood-letting; when the food dropped from the helicopter to the starving masses leads to the trampling deaths of hundreds of children. A complete social breakdown. We truly are an awe-inspiring species. Capable of such beautiful things---and yet somehow we have found a way to destroy it all.
Posted by: DanW March 09, 2009 at 11:05 AM
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