http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/1665/1/
PREDICTIONS BY ECONOMIC ANALYSTS FOR THE REST OF 2010
Bob Chapman
First 6 months of 2010, Americans will continue to live in the 'unreality'the period between July and October is when the financial fireworks will begin. The Fed will act unilaterally for its own survival irrespective of any political implications (source is from insider at FED meetings). In the last quarter of the year we could even see Martial law, which is more likely for the first 6 months of 2011. The FDIC will collapse in September 2010. Commercial real estate is set to implode in 2010. Wall Streetbelieves there is a 100% chance of crash in bond market, especially municipals sometime during 2010. The dollar will be devalued by the end of 2010.
Gerald Celente
Terrorist attacks and the "Crash of 2010". 40% devaluation at first = the greatest depression, worse than the Great Depression.
George Ure
Markets up until mid-to-late-summer. Then "all hell breaks lose" from then on through the rest of the year.
Igor Panarin
In the summer of 1998, based on classified data about the state of the U.S. economy and society supplied to him by fellow FAPSI analysts, Panarin forecast the probable disintegration of the USA into six parts in 2010 (at the end of June start of July 2010, as he specified on 10 December 2000
Neithercorps
Have projected that the third and final stage of the economic collapse will begin sometime in 2010. Barring some kind of financial miracle, or the complete dissolution of the Federal Reserve, a snowballing implosion should become visible by the end of this year. The behavior of the Fed, along with that of the IMF seems to suggest that they are preparing for a focused collapse, peaking within weeks or months instead of years, and the most certain fall of the dollar.
Webbots
July and onward things get very strange. Revolution. Dollar dead by November 2010.
LEAP 20/20
2010 Outlook from a group of 25 European Economists with a 90% accuracy rating- We anticipate a sudden intensification of the crisis in the second half of 2010, caused by a double effect of a catching up of events which were temporarily &laqno; frozen » in the second half of 2009 and the impossibility of maintaining the palliative remedies of past years. There is a perfect (economic) storm coming within the global financial markets and inevitable pressure on interest rates in the U.S. The injection of zero-cost money into the Western banking system has failed to restart the economy. Despite zero-cost money, the system has stalled. It is slowly rolling over into the next big down wave, which in Elliott Wave terminology will be Super Cycle Wave Three, or in common language, "THE BIG ONE, WHERE WE ALL GO OVER THE FALLS TOGETHER."
Joseph Meyer
Forecasts on the economy. He sees the real estate market continuing to decline, and advised people to invest in precious metals and commodities, as well as keeping cash at home in a safe place in case of bank closures. The stock market, after peaking in March or April (around 10,850), will fall all the way down to somewhere between 2450 and 4125 during the next leg down.
Harry Dent (investor)
A very likely second crash by late 2010. The coming depression (starts around the summer of 2010). Dent sees the stock marketcurrently benefiting from upward momentum and peppier economic activityheaded for a very brief and pleasant run that could lift the Dow to the 10,700-11,500 range from its current level of about 10.090. But then, he sees the market running into a stone wall, which will be followed by a nasty stock market decline (starting in early March to late April) that could drive down the Dow later this year to 3,000-5,000, with his best guess about 3,800.
Richard Russell (Market Expert)
(from 2/3/10) says the bear market rally is in the process of breaking up and panic is on the way. He sees a full correction of the entire rise from the 2002 low of 7,286 to the bull market high of 14,164.53 set on October 9, 2007. The halfway level of retracement was 10,725. The total retracement was to 6,547.05 on March 9, 2009. He now sees the Dow falling to 7,286 and if that level does not hold, "I see it sinking to its 1980-82 area low of Dow 1,000." The current action is the worst he has ever seen. (Bob Chapman says for Russell to make such a startling statement is unusual because he never cries wolf and is almost never wrong)
Niño Becerra (Professor of Economics)
Predicted in July 2007 that what was going to happen was that by mid 2010 there is going to be a crisis only comparable to the one in 1929. From October 2009 to May 2010 people will begin to see things are not working out the way the government thought. In May of 2010, the crisis starts with all its force and continues and strengthens throughout 2011. He accurately predicted the current recession and market crash to the month.
Lyndon Larouche
The crisis is accelerating and will become worse week by week until the whole system grinds into a collapse, likely sometime this year. And when it does, it will be the greatest collapse since the fall of the Roman Empire.
WALL STREET JOURNAL- (2/2010)
"You are witnessing a fundamental breakdown of the American dream, a systemic breakdown of our democracy and our capitalism, a breakdown driven by the blind insatiable greed of Wall Street: Dysfunctional government, insane markets, economy on the brink. Multiply that many times over and see a world in total disarray. Ignore it now, tomorrow will be too late."
Eric deCarbonnel
There is no precedence for the panic and chaos that will occur in 2010. The global food supply/demand picture has NEVER been so out of balance. The 2010 food crisis will rearrange economic, financial, and political order of the world, and those who aren't prepared will suffer terrible lossesAs the dollar loses most of its value, America 's savings will be wiped out. The US service economy will disintegrate as consumer spending in real terms (ie: gold or other stable currencies) drops like a rock, bringing unemployment to levels exceeding the great depression. Public health services/programs will be cut back, as individuals will have no savings/credit/income to pay for medical care. Value of most investments will be wiped out. The US debt markets will freeze again, this time permanently. There will be no buyers except at the most drastic of firesale prices, and inflation will wipe away value before credit markets have any chance at recovery. The panic in 2010 will see the majority of derivatives end up worthless. Since global derivatives markets operate on the assumption of the continued stable value of the dollar and short term US debt, using derivatives to bet against the dollar is NOT a good idea. The panic in 2010 will see the majority of derivatives end up worthless. The dollar's collapse will rob US consumers of all purchasing power, and any investment depend on US consumption will lose most of its value.
Alpha-Omega Report (Trends Forecast)
Going into 2010, the trends seemed to lead nowhere or towards oblivion. Geo-politically, the Middle East was and is trending towards some sort of military clash, most likely by mid-year, but perhaps soonerAt the moment, it seems 2010 is shaping up to be a year of absolute chaos. We see trends for war between Israel and her neighbors that will shake every facet of human activityIn the event of war, we see all other societal trends being thoroughly disruptedIran will most likely shut off the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. This will have immense consequences for the world's economy. Oil prices will skyrocket into the stratosphere and become so expensive that world's economies will collapse..There are also trend indicators along economic lines that point to the potential for a total meltdown of the world's financial system with major crisis points developing with the change of each quarter of the year. 2010 could be a meltdown year for the world's economy, regardless of what goes on in the Middle East .
Peter Schiff (3/13/2010)
"In my opinion, the market is now perfectly positioned for a massive dollar sell-off. The fundamentals for the dollar in 2010 are so much worse than they were in 2008 that it is hard to imagine a reason for people to keep buying once a modicum of political and monetary stability can be restored in Europe . In fact, the euro has recently stabilized. My gut is that the dollar sell-off will be sharp and swift. Once the dollar decisively breaks below last year's lows, many of the traders who jumped ship in the recent rally will look to re-establish their positions. This will accelerate the dollar's descent and refocus everyone's attention back on the financial train-wreck unfolding in the United States.
Jimmy "Doomsday"
DOW will fall below 7,000 before mid summer 2010- Dollar will rise above 95 on the dollar index before mid summer 2010- Gold will bottom out below $800 before mid summer 2010- Silver will bottom out below $10 before mid summer 2010- CA debt implosion will start its major downturn by mid summer and hit crisis mode before Q4 2010- Dollar index will plunge below 65 between Q3 and Q4 2010- Commercial real estate will hit crisis mode in Q4 2010- Over 35 states will be bailed out by end of Q4 2010 by the US tax payer End of Q4 2010 gold will hit $1,600 and silver jump to $35 an oz.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
SC102-12
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19120
The Financial Oligarchy Reigns: Democracy’s Death Spiral From Greece to the United States
As the Economic Elite continue their plunder, the people in Greece riot and the big banks score yet another big blow against the people of the United States.
I: Democracy Vs. Oligarchy: Lessons from HistoryII: The Second Civil War: Financial Reform 2010III: Financial Terrorism Operations: 9/29/08 & 5/6/10IV: Economic Imperialism and BlowbackV: Propagandized in AmericaVI: Save Yourself and Take Action
Democracy throughout the world is under attack. Many people can make the argument that our democracy here in America is only an illusion, but even the illusion of democracy is crashing down. Tragedies are currently playing out across the world on an epic scale. Unprecedented economic and environmental catastrophes have become the norm. Billions of people, the overwhelming majority of humanity, have been sentenced to a slow death due to a concentration of wealth and resources within humanity’s economic top 0.5%. Ultimately, short-sighted greed has proven to be humanity’s most severe disease.
I: Democracy Vs. Oligarchy: Lessons from History
The experiment known as democracy is devolving into fascism before our eyes; the “ iron law of oligarchy” is once again asserting itself. From the Founding Fathers on, we have known that you cannot have a concentration of vast wealth and Democracy at the same time - and we currently have the greatest concentration of wealth in the history of the United States. As former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
The power struggle between democracy and the concentration of power represented within private banking interests has been a war raging throughout American history. Our Founders and early Presidents were very explicit in their opposition and our need to vigilantly guard against any private interests who sought control over our economy. In fact, our current crisis and power structure were summed up with stunning accuracy by the Founding Fathers themselves. What James Madison called, “the daring depravity of the times.” As he described, “The stock-jobbers will become the praetorian band of the government, at once its tools and its tyrants, bribed by its largesse, and overawing it by clamors and combinations. Substituting the motive of private interest in place of public duty, leading to a real domination of the few under an apparent domination of the many.”
Leave it to Madison, the Father of the Constitution, to give us one of the most prescient quotes on modern-day America you can find. For those of you who have never heard the term “stock-jobbers,” here’s the definition from a dictionary written in 1811:
“Stock Jobbers
Persons who gamble in Exchange Alley, by pretending to buy and sell the public funds, but in reality only betting that they will be at a certain price, at a particular time; possessing neither the stock pretended to be sold, nor money sufficient to make good the payments for which they contract: these gentlemen are known under the different appellations of bulls, bears, and lame ducks.”
Yes, even the Founders, long before High Frequency Trading algorithms and derivatives, had a clear understanding and great fear of the casino rigging tyrants in “Exchange Alley.” Madison also famously said: “History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.”
Thomas Jefferson was prophetic in his statements as well: “Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.” Jefferson added, “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance.”
If that wasn’t clear enough, Jefferson reiterated his conviction: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [them] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
One wonders what Jefferson would have to say about our current foreclosure crisis and stock market driven housing crash.
The Founders clearly knew that a concentration of wealth and a centralized banking system were the biggest threats to freedom and democracy. That is why the Founders adamantly opposed a central bank and a paper money system. Several Founders even suggested death as the punishment for any banking interest that wanted to create a centralized paper money system. They agreed that it was inevitably the surest road to tyranny.
Moving forward to our seventh President, Andrew Jackson also hit the nail on the head when he warned, “Unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations.”
When President Jackson was asked what his greatest accomplishment was during his presidency, he gave a simple and direct four-word answer: “I killed the Bank.”
Our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln wasn’t as fortunate as Andrew Jackson. It can be argued that “the Bank” killed Lincoln. He took on the banking interests during the Civil War. The banks were charging the government usurious interest rates on the funds Lincoln needed to fight the war. So Lincoln heeded Thomas Jefferson’s advice and made the bold move of taking on the bankers by creating a new money system and issuing “green backs” as the new currency. Shortly before he was assassinated, he had this to say:
“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.”
Lincoln then prophetically added:
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my Country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed.”
Many will argue that Lincoln was proved right and the Republic was destroyed some years later in 1913, when the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law. In 1913, U.S. Congressman Charles Lindbergh famously argued: “The [Federal Reserve] Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this Bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized. The greatest crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill…. From now on, depressions will bescientifically created.”
In fact, President Woodrow Wilson, in 1916, looking back at his signing of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, considered it the most tragic and biggest mistake of his presidency and said this:
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial Nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world, no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”
And, of course, the Federal Reserve Act came as Wall Street’s backlash against Wilson’s two “ trust busting” predecessors, Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Howard Taft. In a situation much like our current crisis, Roosevelt brazenly took on JP Morgan and friends and declared: “Corporation cunning has developed faster than the law of nation or state. Corporations have found ways to steal long before we have found that they were susceptible to punishment for theft. But sooner or later, unless there is a season of readjustment, there will come a riotous, wicked, murderous day of atonement…. These fools on Wall Street think that they can go on forever! They can’t!”
Even the famed economist John Maynard Keynes, the Founding Father of our modern economy, summed it up for us this way: “The ideas of economists… are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.”
The evident lesson from history to take away from all this, is that it has been clearly understood that whoever controls the money supply and economy, controls the country. No matter what form or type of government you have, if the economy is run by a private interest, you live in a Fascist society. Or as President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
As the former populist Senator Huey Long once said, “When fascism comes to America, it will come in the form of democracy.”
II: The Second Civil War: Financial Reform 2010
Most Americans aren’t even aware of the profound implications in the battle being fought on Capitol Hill right now. In the wake of our economic crisis, the financial reform bill has become a critical defining moment in American history. This brings us right into the throes of another pivotal war for the very soul of America, once again pitting concentrated power against American democracy.
After two years since our economic crisis began, people who spend time objectively researching our economic system know what needs to be done to protect the future and general economic security of the American people. There are clearly crucial common-sense measures that must be taken.
On the evening of May 6th, 2010, one of the most vital battles of this war came to the Senate floor, the amendment to break up the “too big to fail” banking interests. The amendment was voted down and the American people were dealt a severe blow, as our democracy was publicly exposed as a mere charade.
The primary reason why 99% of the American population is experiencing the beginning phase of their downward shift in living standards, and the reason the free market and our government have become a farce, as our Forefathers warned, is because large politically-dominate bankers have become so powerful that they are able to rig the market and economic system in their favor and eliminate competition.
To break it down statistically, when six inter-connected banks, all organized in the Federal Reserve system, control over 60% of GDP and have the power to issue currency, competition is impossible. The game is over. They wield so much power that society and government are effectively captured and dominated by this Oligarchy.
Just as the Founders had feared and warned against, these six banks, along with their centralized Federal Reserve system, have concentrated wealth and power and now work together to control the economy and money supply, and therefore control politicians through “legalized” bribery (campaign finance and lobbying). Or as James Madison put it, our politicians have been “bribed by its largesse,” and overcome “by clamors and combinations.”
As former Harvard University President Abbott Lowell made clear back in 1926, “Popular election, it is said, may work fairly well as long as those questions are not raised which cause the holders of wealth and industrial power to make full use of their opportunities. But if the rich people in any modern state thought it worth their while… there is so much skill to be bought, and the art of using skill for production of emotion and opinion has so advanced, that the whole condition of political contests would be changed for the future.”
Key point: “as long as those questions are not raised…”
Quite clearly, the most important questions are now not only being raised, they are being debated and voted upon on the floor of the U.S. Senate. So this hidden power, and their ownership of Government, has now come to the forefront and been exposed for all to see. Let’s look behind the curtain and reveal who the political puppets truly are. Here is a list of the 61 “Senators” who voted against the interests of the American people and in favor of the Financial Oligarchy. This vote has given us the clearest view of who our enemies really are:
Akaka (D-HI)Alexander (R-TN)Barrasso (R-WY)Baucus (D-MT)Bayh (D-IN)Bennet (D-CO)Bond (R-MO)Brown (R-MA)Brownback (R-KS)Burr (R-NC)Carper (D-DE)Chambliss (R-GA)Cochran (R-MS)Collins (R-ME)Conrad (D-ND)Corker (R-TN)Cornyn (R-TX)Crapo (R-ID)Dodd (D-CT)Enzi (R-WY)Feinstein (D-CA)Gillibrand (D-NY)Graham (R-SC)Grassley (R-IA)Gregg (R-NH)Hagan (D-NC)Hatch (R-UT)Hutchison (R-TX)Inhofe (R-OK)Inouye (D-HI)Isakson (R-GA)Johanns (R-NE)Johnson (D-SD)Kerry (D-MA)Klobuchar (D-MN)Kohl (D-WI)Kyl (R-AZ)Landrieu (D-LA)Lautenberg (D-NJ)LeMieux (R-FL)Lieberman (ID-CT)McCain (R-AZ)McCaskill (D-MO)McConnell (R-KY)Menendez (D-NJ)Murkowski (R-AK)Nelson (D-FL)Nelson (D-NE)Reed (D-RI)Risch (R-ID)Roberts (R-KS)Schumer (D-NY)Sessions (R-AL)Shaheen (D-NH)Snowe (R-ME)Tester (D-MT)Thune (R-SD)Udall (D-CO)Voinovich (R-OH)Warner (D-VA)Wicker (R-MS)
These are the 61 “Senators” who sold out the American people and voted their allegiance to the Economic Elite. These “Senators” not only voted against the American people, they voted against the fundamental structure of a democratic society and free market.
If the American people don’t wake up and realize what is at stake here, and urgently start to defend themselves and take action, as bad as the past two years have been, we are going to be in a much worse situation in the near future. The Wall Street Elite are not messing around. They are launching serious attacks upon an unsuspecting American public.
III: Financial Terrorism Operations: 9/29/08 & 5/6/10
In the aftermath of Goldman Sachs’ public flogging before the world in Congress, and while under investigation, on the very day that Congress was voting on the “break up the too big to fail banks” amendment and cutting behind the scenes deals to gut the audit of the Federal Reserve, the stock market had its greatest sudden drop in history, plummeting 700 points in ten minutes - shades of September 29, 2008 all over again.
If you recall, back in September ‘08, as Congress was voting down the first bailout, the big banks made the market plunge a record 778 points in one day. Fear and panic then led Congress to pass the bailout. Trillions of our tax dollars, the money that we desperately need to keep our society functioning over the long run, then went out the window and into the pockets of the very people who caused the crash.
What happened on September 29, 2008 will go down in history as one of the greatest acts of terrorism ever.
9/29/08 proved that when you have so much power concentrated in the hands of a few, you can manipulate a computer algorithm and make the market and economy go whichever way you want it to go. So on 5/6/10, just as the power of the big banks was again threatened on the floor of the Senate and a deal on auditing the Federal Reserve was being negotiated, in came a sudden and unprecedented ten-minute 700 point market drop, a precision-guided High Frequency Trading (HFT) attack to show Congress who’s boss.
If you think the massive sudden drop happened because one lowly trader hit one wrong button, if you actually believe that the entire stock market can plunge because of one mistaken key stroke by a low-level trader, you are stunningly naïve. I hate to burst yourbubble, but this was a direct attack.
In a market where 70% of all trades are executed by computer algorithms via High Frequency Trading (HFT), Goldman Sachs has the power to make the market crash or rise at will. In fact, Goldman has a major Weapon of Mass Destruction in its Program Trading monopoly of the New York Stock Exchange, as Tyler Durden described on Zero Hedge:
“Goldman’s dominance of the NYSE’s Program Trading platform, where in addition to recent entrant GETCO, it has been to date an explicit monopolist of the so-called Supplementary Liquidity Provider program, a role which affords the company greater liquidity rebates for, well providing liquidity, and generating who knows what other possible front market-looking, flow-prop integration benefits. Yesterday [5/6/10], Goldman’s SLP function was non-existent. One wonders - was the Goldman SLP team in fact liquidity taking, or to put it bluntly, among the main reasons for the market collapse….
… here is the most recently disclosed NYSE program trading data….
What is notable here is that of the 1.4 billion in principal shares, or shares traded for the firm’s own account, Goldman was the top trader by a margin of over 100% compared to the second biggest program trader.
We have long claimed that Goldman is the de facto monopolist of the NYSE’s program trading platform. As such, it is certainly the case that Goldman was instrumental in either a) precipitating yesterday’s crash or b) not providing the critical liquidity which it is required to do, when the time came. There are no other options.”
For further investigation, I turned to Max Keiser, who has written and authored similar Program Trading and HFT computer algorithms. I asked him if he thought this was an attack. Here is what he had to say:
“May 6th was an unequivocal act of domestic financial terrorism in America. A day that will live in infamy.
To scare the lawmakers, themselves large owners of the very banks and stocks that they are supposed to be regulating, a financial Weapon of Mass Destruction was put to their head and they acquiesced.
As the inventor of the continuous double-auction, market-making technology (VST tech. US pat. no. 5950176) that is referenced 132 times by program trading and HFT patents since 1996, I can tell you that Goldman, JP Morgan and the gang simply pulled the ‘buys’ from their computer trading programs and manufactured a crash. And when the coast was clear, and it was clear the politicians were not going to vote for anything that would break up the ‘too big to fail’ banks, all the ’sells’ were pulled from the computers and the market roared back.
This is a Manchurian Candidate market where program trading bots start the ball rolling in whatever direction Wall St. wants the market to go - and then hundreds of thousands of day-traders watching Cramer on CNBC jump on the momentum bandwagon and commit the crime for the Wall St. financial terrorists, who then say, ‘It wasn’t us, it was ‘the market!’”
On Friday, the next day, after the “break up the too big to fail banks” amendment was soundly defeated by a 61 to 33 margin in Senate and a deal was struck to eliminate key provisions from the audit of the Federal Reserve bill, Goldman was meeting with the SEC to work out a settlement in their case against them. Once again, Goldman proves that crime pays. Welcome to the New Mafia World Order.
Other than the two major operations carried out on 9/29/08 and 5/6/10, we must also recall a smaller attack on January 21st and 22nd of 2010, when Obama had a press conference and came out in favor of the Volcker Rule, which would have limited these HFT and “proprietary trading” schemes. At that time, the market dropped 430 points. Soon after this attack, all follow-up talk on the Volcker Rule faded away and this reform has not been seriously addressed by Obama since then.
The bottom line: the United States has been taken over by a financial terrorism network. Let’s face it, we are all hostages of these financial terrorists and their puppet politicians would rather be in on the scam than defend our interests. If these terrorists don’t get their way at all times, they have the power to throw their tremendous weight around and turn millions of lives upside down in a matter of minutes and, as they have shown, they have no hesitation in executing that power, no matter how many millions of lives they destroy.
They set off this crisis with a wave of bombings in their initial Economic Shock and Awecampaign two years ago, resulting in massive devastation. Just to name a few of their greatest hits within the U.S.:
* 50 million Americans are now living in poverty, which is the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world;
* 30 million Americans are in need of work;
* Five million American families foreclosed upon, 15 million expected by 2014;
* 50% of US children will now use a food stamp during childhood;
* Soaring budget deficits in states across the country and a record high national debt, with austerity measures on the way;
* Record-breaking profits and bonuses for themselves.
Like other terrorists, they don’t use IEDs, they use CDOs. They don’t use precision laser-guided missiles, they use High Frequency Trading. They don’t have WMDs, they have derivatives. Let’s also not forget that they have toxic assets and dirty debt bombs just waiting to be deployed upon the American public once there is any true growth in the economy. Their nuclear arsenal includes hundreds of Trillions in secretive derivatives and hidden debt bombs, just ticking away, waiting to be set off… at their whim…
IV: Economic Imperialism and Blowback
These same Financial Oligarchs who have been terrorizing America have unleashed vicious attacks all over the world for years now. Ironically, the latest attack is being carried out on the country that was the birthplace of democracy. Greece is now on fire, people are rioting and storming parliament, the financial terrorists have dropped a debt bomb on Greece and harshausterity measures are being thrust upon the Greek people.
As UK Guardian reporter Poul Rasmussen described it, the Greek economy is being “water-boarded.” His reporting gives a glimpse into the Financial Oligarchy’s master plan:
“The austerity measures forced on to the Greeks are not only unfair, they set a bad precedent for the rest of Europe. The EU Conservative majority is trying to use these kinds of austerity measures to force through social cutbacks across Europe. This is but a cynical attempt to roll back fundamental social standards. It does not even make financial sense as it would force thousands into the grey economy – one of the structural causes of the crisis in the first place – or even worse, would force them into abject poverty.”
The big banks, through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), their ultimate imperialism organization, are now in the process of turning Greece into a debt slave nation, yet another of many countries to fall under the brutal grip of the IMF.
For those of you who haven’t been following world affairs since World War II, imperialism never disappeared from the world. It just evolved. You don’t have to enslave populations through brute force; you can now do it through policy, conquering nations through Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). As President John Adams once said, “There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by sword. The other is by debt.”
So once again, Greece is leading the way for us, showing us what our future may hold. This time, however, the lesson isn’t democracy; it’s rebelling against neo-feudalisticeconomic terrorism.
This is the exact economic terrorism that has blown back to the United States in the bailout. Again, history teaches us a valuable lesson. Once empires have conquered the third and developing world, they then turn on their own population, in an orgy of greed and the quest for total unfettered world domination.
As the Greeks are demonstrating, democracy is not a spectator sport. It’s time for us to grow up as a nation and turn off the Disneyland illusion machine (TV) and stand up for ourselves.
V: Propagandized in America
Part of the reason we are in this mess, and the main reason why the American people don’t even know what is happening to them, is that the illusion machine (television) has removed the American population tragically far from reality. The gap between the news we see on TV, and what is actually happening in the world today, is the most severe it has ever been. We have been bred to be completely removed from reality. As famed American philosopher and psychologist John Dewey once said, “We live exposed to the greatest flood of mass suggestion that any people has ever experienced.”
The American people need to understand that creating, manipulating and controlling public opinion through mass media propaganda is a science. As social psychologist Kelton Rhoads wrote in his study, Universal Persuasion, Everyday Influence:
“Make no mistake. There are legions of influence agents operating in our society. They thrive — they exist at the pinnacles of power — by getting you to think things and to do things they want you to think and do… Most people are either unaware of these influences, or when they are, vastly overestimate the amount of freedom they have to make up their own minds. But the successful influence agent knows that if he can manage the situation and choose the correct technique, your response to his technique will be as reliable as the springing of a mousetrap.”
People with power have used this science to divide and conquer the United States. In 1923, Edward Bernays, the Godfather of propaganda wrote: “Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.” William Blum in Rogue State wrote: “Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.” Harold Lasswell in 1927 declared: “The new antidote to willfulness is propaganda. If the mass will be free of chains of iron, it must accept its chains of silver. If it will not love, honor, and obey, it must not expect to escape seduction.”
In an extensive study on propaganda, which is also one of the most insightful looks into our modern-day technological society, sociologist Jacques Ellul wrote:
“Governmental propaganda suggests that public opinion demand this or that decision; it provokes the will of a people, who spontaneously would say nothing. But, once evoked, formed, and crystallized on a point, that will becomes the peoples will; and whereas the government really acts on it’s own, it gives the impression of obeying public opinion – after first having built that public opinion. The point is to make the masses demand of the government what the government has already decided to do.”
Famed British philosopher Bertrand Russell summed up the importance of propaganda this way: “It is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.”
Speaking of the “holders of power,” for another historical lesson in how much effort powerful interests put into dominating mass media and controlling public opinion, consider Congressman Oscar Callaway’s report to Congress in 1917 on JP Morgan’s master plan, which has been in effect since 1915:
“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. An agreement was reached. The policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month, an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers.”
Now consider why it is that so many of the most significant issues and problems facing American society are rarely, if ever, discussed on U.S. television…
I could go on for hours about how mass media propaganda is used to manipulate, confuse, distract and divide us. We, as a population, have been acting against our own interests and fighting amongst ourselves, while the Economic Elite, who control our society and media system, are left unquestioned and unchallenged, operating behind the scenes, beyond the spotlight, above the law, concentrating wealth and resources, at our expense, in unprecedented fashion.
For a painfully obvious example, on the day that the crucial “break up the banks” amendment went to the Senate floor, a deal to gut the vital bill to audit the Federal Reserve was struck; the market had a record-breaking drop; Greece was burning and oil was spewing all over the Gulf of Mexico. I couldn’t believe the amount of historically significant news that was occurring! It was Shakespeare on steroids! I turned on the TV news networks and the coverage primarily focused on two things. One: an old football player, albeit one of the greatest ever, allegedly raped and beat a 16 year old girl. Two: a male anti-gay activist “rented a boy prostitute.”
Tweet this: OMG! What a sign of the times!
Never mind an economic crisis that affects millions. Never mind one of the greatest environmental disasters of all time. Never mind the historic vote on a Senate amendment that will have a profound effect on our economic well-being and possibly break up the Financial Oligarchy that caused our crisis and holds our nation hostage. Never mind the behind-the-scenes dealings to gut the audit of the Federal Reserve that secretly dished out trillions of taxpayer dollars.
While Rome burns, the mainstream media distracts us and spins the economic devastation as business as usual, nothing to be worried about. Yeah, the BS unemployment rate went up, but it’s good news people! Good times ahead, so go invest in some stocks and go buy yourself something special at the mall.
Other than to create and control popular opinion and keep us politically passive, the mainstream media exists to keep people consuming and spending their hard-earned money. That is the bottom line.
Every time you turn on the TV, you have to realize that the entire mass media system is an elaborate psychological operation to keep you passive and make you feel secure in spending your money. That’s why TV pundits and talking heads are paid huge salaries; they are experts in duping us and playing us for fools. We are all being played. We aren’t free citizens; we are indebted wage slaves. That may sound much too harsh for a population that has been propagandized for hours a day, every day of our lives, but it is the truth. As the brilliant John Dewey said, “We live exposed to the greatest flood of mass suggestion that any people has ever experienced.”
Who needs reality when you have American Idol, Disneyland and celebrity sex scandals?
Until we can block out these distractions and face reality, our future and living standards will continue to spiral downward.
VI: Save Yourself and Take Action
If you’re waiting on the Government to help you, you’re going to end up with the “short” end of the stick yet again. The Government is not on our side. In fact, just like Goldman Sachs, they are betting against us and “shorting us,” as the financial reform process is proving. Our government officials have been bought off and are on the side of the Oligarchs.
In life, things are rarely black and white; most situations usually have many gray areas. Unfortunately, this is not one of those situations. Either we all unite on common groundand STAND UP together as a mass non-violent movement now, or we descend further into a death spiral that will eventually lead to rioting and mass violence, as the 50 million Americans who are now desperately fighting for survival continue to be ignored, until they act out, just as they have done the world over. Suicide bombings, like the one that hit the IRS building in Texas, will occur more frequently. Next time, exploited and foreclosed-upon American citizens will not fail in their bombing attempts. The situation we are in now has many precedents in history and currently around the world. On a sociological level, we know what the future will hold for a society with such devastating inequalities and such a high number of desperate citizens living in dire straits.
As Guy DeBord summed it up: “The economy has now come to declare open war on humanity, attacking not only our possibilities for living, but our chances of survival…. When an all-powerful economy lost its reason - and that is precisely what defines these spectacular times.”
In conclusion, my main message is not one of despair. I know the game is rigged against us, but I also know that we ultimately have the power. We are 99% of the population. It’s just a matter of organizing together and exercising our will. It comes down to our ability to inform and inspire our family, friends and neighbors. It comes down to us overcoming our own passive unwillingness to STAND UP for our own rights, which is part of the reason we are in this crisis to begin with. We are at a point in American history where the stakes have never been higher. I wish we could just turn away and ignore it, but I know we can’t. Our very way of life is under attack. It is the very unfortunate reality of our current crisis.
Will we WAKE UP and acknowledge this, or will we continue to sleepwalk in ignorance to a slow death?
The Financial Oligarchy and their puppet politicians are betting that we will remain passive and accept a severe reduction in our standard of living. On a personal level, I’m going “all in” on the side of the American people. So from this point forward, I am dedicating myself to a mobilization to SAVE OUR ECONOMY AND DEMOCRACY from the Financial Oligarchy that has seized it.
I hope that those of you who are aware will do the same. You can get more information on the Mobilization for Our Economy here: http://ForOurEconomy.org/
The Financial Oligarchy Reigns: Democracy’s Death Spiral From Greece to the United States
As the Economic Elite continue their plunder, the people in Greece riot and the big banks score yet another big blow against the people of the United States.
I: Democracy Vs. Oligarchy: Lessons from HistoryII: The Second Civil War: Financial Reform 2010III: Financial Terrorism Operations: 9/29/08 & 5/6/10IV: Economic Imperialism and BlowbackV: Propagandized in AmericaVI: Save Yourself and Take Action
Democracy throughout the world is under attack. Many people can make the argument that our democracy here in America is only an illusion, but even the illusion of democracy is crashing down. Tragedies are currently playing out across the world on an epic scale. Unprecedented economic and environmental catastrophes have become the norm. Billions of people, the overwhelming majority of humanity, have been sentenced to a slow death due to a concentration of wealth and resources within humanity’s economic top 0.5%. Ultimately, short-sighted greed has proven to be humanity’s most severe disease.
I: Democracy Vs. Oligarchy: Lessons from History
The experiment known as democracy is devolving into fascism before our eyes; the “ iron law of oligarchy” is once again asserting itself. From the Founding Fathers on, we have known that you cannot have a concentration of vast wealth and Democracy at the same time - and we currently have the greatest concentration of wealth in the history of the United States. As former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
The power struggle between democracy and the concentration of power represented within private banking interests has been a war raging throughout American history. Our Founders and early Presidents were very explicit in their opposition and our need to vigilantly guard against any private interests who sought control over our economy. In fact, our current crisis and power structure were summed up with stunning accuracy by the Founding Fathers themselves. What James Madison called, “the daring depravity of the times.” As he described, “The stock-jobbers will become the praetorian band of the government, at once its tools and its tyrants, bribed by its largesse, and overawing it by clamors and combinations. Substituting the motive of private interest in place of public duty, leading to a real domination of the few under an apparent domination of the many.”
Leave it to Madison, the Father of the Constitution, to give us one of the most prescient quotes on modern-day America you can find. For those of you who have never heard the term “stock-jobbers,” here’s the definition from a dictionary written in 1811:
“Stock Jobbers
Persons who gamble in Exchange Alley, by pretending to buy and sell the public funds, but in reality only betting that they will be at a certain price, at a particular time; possessing neither the stock pretended to be sold, nor money sufficient to make good the payments for which they contract: these gentlemen are known under the different appellations of bulls, bears, and lame ducks.”
Yes, even the Founders, long before High Frequency Trading algorithms and derivatives, had a clear understanding and great fear of the casino rigging tyrants in “Exchange Alley.” Madison also famously said: “History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.”
Thomas Jefferson was prophetic in his statements as well: “Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.” Jefferson added, “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance.”
If that wasn’t clear enough, Jefferson reiterated his conviction: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [them] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
One wonders what Jefferson would have to say about our current foreclosure crisis and stock market driven housing crash.
The Founders clearly knew that a concentration of wealth and a centralized banking system were the biggest threats to freedom and democracy. That is why the Founders adamantly opposed a central bank and a paper money system. Several Founders even suggested death as the punishment for any banking interest that wanted to create a centralized paper money system. They agreed that it was inevitably the surest road to tyranny.
Moving forward to our seventh President, Andrew Jackson also hit the nail on the head when he warned, “Unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations.”
When President Jackson was asked what his greatest accomplishment was during his presidency, he gave a simple and direct four-word answer: “I killed the Bank.”
Our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln wasn’t as fortunate as Andrew Jackson. It can be argued that “the Bank” killed Lincoln. He took on the banking interests during the Civil War. The banks were charging the government usurious interest rates on the funds Lincoln needed to fight the war. So Lincoln heeded Thomas Jefferson’s advice and made the bold move of taking on the bankers by creating a new money system and issuing “green backs” as the new currency. Shortly before he was assassinated, he had this to say:
“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.”
Lincoln then prophetically added:
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my Country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed.”
Many will argue that Lincoln was proved right and the Republic was destroyed some years later in 1913, when the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law. In 1913, U.S. Congressman Charles Lindbergh famously argued: “The [Federal Reserve] Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this Bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized. The greatest crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill…. From now on, depressions will bescientifically created.”
In fact, President Woodrow Wilson, in 1916, looking back at his signing of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, considered it the most tragic and biggest mistake of his presidency and said this:
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial Nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world, no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”
And, of course, the Federal Reserve Act came as Wall Street’s backlash against Wilson’s two “ trust busting” predecessors, Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Howard Taft. In a situation much like our current crisis, Roosevelt brazenly took on JP Morgan and friends and declared: “Corporation cunning has developed faster than the law of nation or state. Corporations have found ways to steal long before we have found that they were susceptible to punishment for theft. But sooner or later, unless there is a season of readjustment, there will come a riotous, wicked, murderous day of atonement…. These fools on Wall Street think that they can go on forever! They can’t!”
Even the famed economist John Maynard Keynes, the Founding Father of our modern economy, summed it up for us this way: “The ideas of economists… are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.”
The evident lesson from history to take away from all this, is that it has been clearly understood that whoever controls the money supply and economy, controls the country. No matter what form or type of government you have, if the economy is run by a private interest, you live in a Fascist society. Or as President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
As the former populist Senator Huey Long once said, “When fascism comes to America, it will come in the form of democracy.”
II: The Second Civil War: Financial Reform 2010
Most Americans aren’t even aware of the profound implications in the battle being fought on Capitol Hill right now. In the wake of our economic crisis, the financial reform bill has become a critical defining moment in American history. This brings us right into the throes of another pivotal war for the very soul of America, once again pitting concentrated power against American democracy.
After two years since our economic crisis began, people who spend time objectively researching our economic system know what needs to be done to protect the future and general economic security of the American people. There are clearly crucial common-sense measures that must be taken.
On the evening of May 6th, 2010, one of the most vital battles of this war came to the Senate floor, the amendment to break up the “too big to fail” banking interests. The amendment was voted down and the American people were dealt a severe blow, as our democracy was publicly exposed as a mere charade.
The primary reason why 99% of the American population is experiencing the beginning phase of their downward shift in living standards, and the reason the free market and our government have become a farce, as our Forefathers warned, is because large politically-dominate bankers have become so powerful that they are able to rig the market and economic system in their favor and eliminate competition.
To break it down statistically, when six inter-connected banks, all organized in the Federal Reserve system, control over 60% of GDP and have the power to issue currency, competition is impossible. The game is over. They wield so much power that society and government are effectively captured and dominated by this Oligarchy.
Just as the Founders had feared and warned against, these six banks, along with their centralized Federal Reserve system, have concentrated wealth and power and now work together to control the economy and money supply, and therefore control politicians through “legalized” bribery (campaign finance and lobbying). Or as James Madison put it, our politicians have been “bribed by its largesse,” and overcome “by clamors and combinations.”
As former Harvard University President Abbott Lowell made clear back in 1926, “Popular election, it is said, may work fairly well as long as those questions are not raised which cause the holders of wealth and industrial power to make full use of their opportunities. But if the rich people in any modern state thought it worth their while… there is so much skill to be bought, and the art of using skill for production of emotion and opinion has so advanced, that the whole condition of political contests would be changed for the future.”
Key point: “as long as those questions are not raised…”
Quite clearly, the most important questions are now not only being raised, they are being debated and voted upon on the floor of the U.S. Senate. So this hidden power, and their ownership of Government, has now come to the forefront and been exposed for all to see. Let’s look behind the curtain and reveal who the political puppets truly are. Here is a list of the 61 “Senators” who voted against the interests of the American people and in favor of the Financial Oligarchy. This vote has given us the clearest view of who our enemies really are:
Akaka (D-HI)Alexander (R-TN)Barrasso (R-WY)Baucus (D-MT)Bayh (D-IN)Bennet (D-CO)Bond (R-MO)Brown (R-MA)Brownback (R-KS)Burr (R-NC)Carper (D-DE)Chambliss (R-GA)Cochran (R-MS)Collins (R-ME)Conrad (D-ND)Corker (R-TN)Cornyn (R-TX)Crapo (R-ID)Dodd (D-CT)Enzi (R-WY)Feinstein (D-CA)Gillibrand (D-NY)Graham (R-SC)Grassley (R-IA)Gregg (R-NH)Hagan (D-NC)Hatch (R-UT)Hutchison (R-TX)Inhofe (R-OK)Inouye (D-HI)Isakson (R-GA)Johanns (R-NE)Johnson (D-SD)Kerry (D-MA)Klobuchar (D-MN)Kohl (D-WI)Kyl (R-AZ)Landrieu (D-LA)Lautenberg (D-NJ)LeMieux (R-FL)Lieberman (ID-CT)McCain (R-AZ)McCaskill (D-MO)McConnell (R-KY)Menendez (D-NJ)Murkowski (R-AK)Nelson (D-FL)Nelson (D-NE)Reed (D-RI)Risch (R-ID)Roberts (R-KS)Schumer (D-NY)Sessions (R-AL)Shaheen (D-NH)Snowe (R-ME)Tester (D-MT)Thune (R-SD)Udall (D-CO)Voinovich (R-OH)Warner (D-VA)Wicker (R-MS)
These are the 61 “Senators” who sold out the American people and voted their allegiance to the Economic Elite. These “Senators” not only voted against the American people, they voted against the fundamental structure of a democratic society and free market.
If the American people don’t wake up and realize what is at stake here, and urgently start to defend themselves and take action, as bad as the past two years have been, we are going to be in a much worse situation in the near future. The Wall Street Elite are not messing around. They are launching serious attacks upon an unsuspecting American public.
III: Financial Terrorism Operations: 9/29/08 & 5/6/10
In the aftermath of Goldman Sachs’ public flogging before the world in Congress, and while under investigation, on the very day that Congress was voting on the “break up the too big to fail banks” amendment and cutting behind the scenes deals to gut the audit of the Federal Reserve, the stock market had its greatest sudden drop in history, plummeting 700 points in ten minutes - shades of September 29, 2008 all over again.
If you recall, back in September ‘08, as Congress was voting down the first bailout, the big banks made the market plunge a record 778 points in one day. Fear and panic then led Congress to pass the bailout. Trillions of our tax dollars, the money that we desperately need to keep our society functioning over the long run, then went out the window and into the pockets of the very people who caused the crash.
What happened on September 29, 2008 will go down in history as one of the greatest acts of terrorism ever.
9/29/08 proved that when you have so much power concentrated in the hands of a few, you can manipulate a computer algorithm and make the market and economy go whichever way you want it to go. So on 5/6/10, just as the power of the big banks was again threatened on the floor of the Senate and a deal on auditing the Federal Reserve was being negotiated, in came a sudden and unprecedented ten-minute 700 point market drop, a precision-guided High Frequency Trading (HFT) attack to show Congress who’s boss.
If you think the massive sudden drop happened because one lowly trader hit one wrong button, if you actually believe that the entire stock market can plunge because of one mistaken key stroke by a low-level trader, you are stunningly naïve. I hate to burst yourbubble, but this was a direct attack.
In a market where 70% of all trades are executed by computer algorithms via High Frequency Trading (HFT), Goldman Sachs has the power to make the market crash or rise at will. In fact, Goldman has a major Weapon of Mass Destruction in its Program Trading monopoly of the New York Stock Exchange, as Tyler Durden described on Zero Hedge:
“Goldman’s dominance of the NYSE’s Program Trading platform, where in addition to recent entrant GETCO, it has been to date an explicit monopolist of the so-called Supplementary Liquidity Provider program, a role which affords the company greater liquidity rebates for, well providing liquidity, and generating who knows what other possible front market-looking, flow-prop integration benefits. Yesterday [5/6/10], Goldman’s SLP function was non-existent. One wonders - was the Goldman SLP team in fact liquidity taking, or to put it bluntly, among the main reasons for the market collapse….
… here is the most recently disclosed NYSE program trading data….
What is notable here is that of the 1.4 billion in principal shares, or shares traded for the firm’s own account, Goldman was the top trader by a margin of over 100% compared to the second biggest program trader.
We have long claimed that Goldman is the de facto monopolist of the NYSE’s program trading platform. As such, it is certainly the case that Goldman was instrumental in either a) precipitating yesterday’s crash or b) not providing the critical liquidity which it is required to do, when the time came. There are no other options.”
For further investigation, I turned to Max Keiser, who has written and authored similar Program Trading and HFT computer algorithms. I asked him if he thought this was an attack. Here is what he had to say:
“May 6th was an unequivocal act of domestic financial terrorism in America. A day that will live in infamy.
To scare the lawmakers, themselves large owners of the very banks and stocks that they are supposed to be regulating, a financial Weapon of Mass Destruction was put to their head and they acquiesced.
As the inventor of the continuous double-auction, market-making technology (VST tech. US pat. no. 5950176) that is referenced 132 times by program trading and HFT patents since 1996, I can tell you that Goldman, JP Morgan and the gang simply pulled the ‘buys’ from their computer trading programs and manufactured a crash. And when the coast was clear, and it was clear the politicians were not going to vote for anything that would break up the ‘too big to fail’ banks, all the ’sells’ were pulled from the computers and the market roared back.
This is a Manchurian Candidate market where program trading bots start the ball rolling in whatever direction Wall St. wants the market to go - and then hundreds of thousands of day-traders watching Cramer on CNBC jump on the momentum bandwagon and commit the crime for the Wall St. financial terrorists, who then say, ‘It wasn’t us, it was ‘the market!’”
On Friday, the next day, after the “break up the too big to fail banks” amendment was soundly defeated by a 61 to 33 margin in Senate and a deal was struck to eliminate key provisions from the audit of the Federal Reserve bill, Goldman was meeting with the SEC to work out a settlement in their case against them. Once again, Goldman proves that crime pays. Welcome to the New Mafia World Order.
Other than the two major operations carried out on 9/29/08 and 5/6/10, we must also recall a smaller attack on January 21st and 22nd of 2010, when Obama had a press conference and came out in favor of the Volcker Rule, which would have limited these HFT and “proprietary trading” schemes. At that time, the market dropped 430 points. Soon after this attack, all follow-up talk on the Volcker Rule faded away and this reform has not been seriously addressed by Obama since then.
The bottom line: the United States has been taken over by a financial terrorism network. Let’s face it, we are all hostages of these financial terrorists and their puppet politicians would rather be in on the scam than defend our interests. If these terrorists don’t get their way at all times, they have the power to throw their tremendous weight around and turn millions of lives upside down in a matter of minutes and, as they have shown, they have no hesitation in executing that power, no matter how many millions of lives they destroy.
They set off this crisis with a wave of bombings in their initial Economic Shock and Awecampaign two years ago, resulting in massive devastation. Just to name a few of their greatest hits within the U.S.:
* 50 million Americans are now living in poverty, which is the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world;
* 30 million Americans are in need of work;
* Five million American families foreclosed upon, 15 million expected by 2014;
* 50% of US children will now use a food stamp during childhood;
* Soaring budget deficits in states across the country and a record high national debt, with austerity measures on the way;
* Record-breaking profits and bonuses for themselves.
Like other terrorists, they don’t use IEDs, they use CDOs. They don’t use precision laser-guided missiles, they use High Frequency Trading. They don’t have WMDs, they have derivatives. Let’s also not forget that they have toxic assets and dirty debt bombs just waiting to be deployed upon the American public once there is any true growth in the economy. Their nuclear arsenal includes hundreds of Trillions in secretive derivatives and hidden debt bombs, just ticking away, waiting to be set off… at their whim…
IV: Economic Imperialism and Blowback
These same Financial Oligarchs who have been terrorizing America have unleashed vicious attacks all over the world for years now. Ironically, the latest attack is being carried out on the country that was the birthplace of democracy. Greece is now on fire, people are rioting and storming parliament, the financial terrorists have dropped a debt bomb on Greece and harshausterity measures are being thrust upon the Greek people.
As UK Guardian reporter Poul Rasmussen described it, the Greek economy is being “water-boarded.” His reporting gives a glimpse into the Financial Oligarchy’s master plan:
“The austerity measures forced on to the Greeks are not only unfair, they set a bad precedent for the rest of Europe. The EU Conservative majority is trying to use these kinds of austerity measures to force through social cutbacks across Europe. This is but a cynical attempt to roll back fundamental social standards. It does not even make financial sense as it would force thousands into the grey economy – one of the structural causes of the crisis in the first place – or even worse, would force them into abject poverty.”
The big banks, through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), their ultimate imperialism organization, are now in the process of turning Greece into a debt slave nation, yet another of many countries to fall under the brutal grip of the IMF.
For those of you who haven’t been following world affairs since World War II, imperialism never disappeared from the world. It just evolved. You don’t have to enslave populations through brute force; you can now do it through policy, conquering nations through Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). As President John Adams once said, “There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by sword. The other is by debt.”
So once again, Greece is leading the way for us, showing us what our future may hold. This time, however, the lesson isn’t democracy; it’s rebelling against neo-feudalisticeconomic terrorism.
This is the exact economic terrorism that has blown back to the United States in the bailout. Again, history teaches us a valuable lesson. Once empires have conquered the third and developing world, they then turn on their own population, in an orgy of greed and the quest for total unfettered world domination.
As the Greeks are demonstrating, democracy is not a spectator sport. It’s time for us to grow up as a nation and turn off the Disneyland illusion machine (TV) and stand up for ourselves.
V: Propagandized in America
Part of the reason we are in this mess, and the main reason why the American people don’t even know what is happening to them, is that the illusion machine (television) has removed the American population tragically far from reality. The gap between the news we see on TV, and what is actually happening in the world today, is the most severe it has ever been. We have been bred to be completely removed from reality. As famed American philosopher and psychologist John Dewey once said, “We live exposed to the greatest flood of mass suggestion that any people has ever experienced.”
The American people need to understand that creating, manipulating and controlling public opinion through mass media propaganda is a science. As social psychologist Kelton Rhoads wrote in his study, Universal Persuasion, Everyday Influence:
“Make no mistake. There are legions of influence agents operating in our society. They thrive — they exist at the pinnacles of power — by getting you to think things and to do things they want you to think and do… Most people are either unaware of these influences, or when they are, vastly overestimate the amount of freedom they have to make up their own minds. But the successful influence agent knows that if he can manage the situation and choose the correct technique, your response to his technique will be as reliable as the springing of a mousetrap.”
People with power have used this science to divide and conquer the United States. In 1923, Edward Bernays, the Godfather of propaganda wrote: “Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.” William Blum in Rogue State wrote: “Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.” Harold Lasswell in 1927 declared: “The new antidote to willfulness is propaganda. If the mass will be free of chains of iron, it must accept its chains of silver. If it will not love, honor, and obey, it must not expect to escape seduction.”
In an extensive study on propaganda, which is also one of the most insightful looks into our modern-day technological society, sociologist Jacques Ellul wrote:
“Governmental propaganda suggests that public opinion demand this or that decision; it provokes the will of a people, who spontaneously would say nothing. But, once evoked, formed, and crystallized on a point, that will becomes the peoples will; and whereas the government really acts on it’s own, it gives the impression of obeying public opinion – after first having built that public opinion. The point is to make the masses demand of the government what the government has already decided to do.”
Famed British philosopher Bertrand Russell summed up the importance of propaganda this way: “It is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.”
Speaking of the “holders of power,” for another historical lesson in how much effort powerful interests put into dominating mass media and controlling public opinion, consider Congressman Oscar Callaway’s report to Congress in 1917 on JP Morgan’s master plan, which has been in effect since 1915:
“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. An agreement was reached. The policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month, an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers.”
Now consider why it is that so many of the most significant issues and problems facing American society are rarely, if ever, discussed on U.S. television…
I could go on for hours about how mass media propaganda is used to manipulate, confuse, distract and divide us. We, as a population, have been acting against our own interests and fighting amongst ourselves, while the Economic Elite, who control our society and media system, are left unquestioned and unchallenged, operating behind the scenes, beyond the spotlight, above the law, concentrating wealth and resources, at our expense, in unprecedented fashion.
For a painfully obvious example, on the day that the crucial “break up the banks” amendment went to the Senate floor, a deal to gut the vital bill to audit the Federal Reserve was struck; the market had a record-breaking drop; Greece was burning and oil was spewing all over the Gulf of Mexico. I couldn’t believe the amount of historically significant news that was occurring! It was Shakespeare on steroids! I turned on the TV news networks and the coverage primarily focused on two things. One: an old football player, albeit one of the greatest ever, allegedly raped and beat a 16 year old girl. Two: a male anti-gay activist “rented a boy prostitute.”
Tweet this: OMG! What a sign of the times!
Never mind an economic crisis that affects millions. Never mind one of the greatest environmental disasters of all time. Never mind the historic vote on a Senate amendment that will have a profound effect on our economic well-being and possibly break up the Financial Oligarchy that caused our crisis and holds our nation hostage. Never mind the behind-the-scenes dealings to gut the audit of the Federal Reserve that secretly dished out trillions of taxpayer dollars.
While Rome burns, the mainstream media distracts us and spins the economic devastation as business as usual, nothing to be worried about. Yeah, the BS unemployment rate went up, but it’s good news people! Good times ahead, so go invest in some stocks and go buy yourself something special at the mall.
Other than to create and control popular opinion and keep us politically passive, the mainstream media exists to keep people consuming and spending their hard-earned money. That is the bottom line.
Every time you turn on the TV, you have to realize that the entire mass media system is an elaborate psychological operation to keep you passive and make you feel secure in spending your money. That’s why TV pundits and talking heads are paid huge salaries; they are experts in duping us and playing us for fools. We are all being played. We aren’t free citizens; we are indebted wage slaves. That may sound much too harsh for a population that has been propagandized for hours a day, every day of our lives, but it is the truth. As the brilliant John Dewey said, “We live exposed to the greatest flood of mass suggestion that any people has ever experienced.”
Who needs reality when you have American Idol, Disneyland and celebrity sex scandals?
Until we can block out these distractions and face reality, our future and living standards will continue to spiral downward.
VI: Save Yourself and Take Action
If you’re waiting on the Government to help you, you’re going to end up with the “short” end of the stick yet again. The Government is not on our side. In fact, just like Goldman Sachs, they are betting against us and “shorting us,” as the financial reform process is proving. Our government officials have been bought off and are on the side of the Oligarchs.
In life, things are rarely black and white; most situations usually have many gray areas. Unfortunately, this is not one of those situations. Either we all unite on common groundand STAND UP together as a mass non-violent movement now, or we descend further into a death spiral that will eventually lead to rioting and mass violence, as the 50 million Americans who are now desperately fighting for survival continue to be ignored, until they act out, just as they have done the world over. Suicide bombings, like the one that hit the IRS building in Texas, will occur more frequently. Next time, exploited and foreclosed-upon American citizens will not fail in their bombing attempts. The situation we are in now has many precedents in history and currently around the world. On a sociological level, we know what the future will hold for a society with such devastating inequalities and such a high number of desperate citizens living in dire straits.
As Guy DeBord summed it up: “The economy has now come to declare open war on humanity, attacking not only our possibilities for living, but our chances of survival…. When an all-powerful economy lost its reason - and that is precisely what defines these spectacular times.”
In conclusion, my main message is not one of despair. I know the game is rigged against us, but I also know that we ultimately have the power. We are 99% of the population. It’s just a matter of organizing together and exercising our will. It comes down to our ability to inform and inspire our family, friends and neighbors. It comes down to us overcoming our own passive unwillingness to STAND UP for our own rights, which is part of the reason we are in this crisis to begin with. We are at a point in American history where the stakes have never been higher. I wish we could just turn away and ignore it, but I know we can’t. Our very way of life is under attack. It is the very unfortunate reality of our current crisis.
Will we WAKE UP and acknowledge this, or will we continue to sleepwalk in ignorance to a slow death?
The Financial Oligarchy and their puppet politicians are betting that we will remain passive and accept a severe reduction in our standard of living. On a personal level, I’m going “all in” on the side of the American people. So from this point forward, I am dedicating myself to a mobilization to SAVE OUR ECONOMY AND DEMOCRACY from the Financial Oligarchy that has seized it.
I hope that those of you who are aware will do the same. You can get more information on the Mobilization for Our Economy here: http://ForOurEconomy.org/
Monday, May 10, 2010
SC102-11
http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/05/and-chicks-for-free.html#more
And Chicks for Free?
The European Union came up with a trillion dollar bail-out for itself at the dawn's early light. Plus, each member gets a Latvian prostitute, gratis. The Germans will love this. It already goosed the Euro back above $1.30 -- just when they hoped a lower Euro would help them move a few more export goods off the shelves. I expect that Mrs Merkel is already catching an earful. A few hours earlier, her coalition of Christian Democrats and free Democrats got their joint ass kicked in a North Rhine - Westphalia local election....
I mention these events reluctantly, knowing how averse we Americans are to news out of Old Europe, that boring backwater of sclerotic cafe lay-abouts, socialistic train service, and less-than man-sized portions of things that real men don't eat anyway.
The question begging itself here, of course, is how Europe intends to come up with roughly a trillion in bail-out money. Sell Portugal to China? Cut Greece up into bait and catch whatever fish are left in the Mediterranean Sea? Frankly, I'm stumped. Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul.... All the European nations are already so hopelessly enmeshed in chains of unfulfillable counter-party obligations that the bail-out might as well be a game of musical chairs played in the Large Hadron Particle Collider, set to the tunes of Karlheinz Stockhausen. The European bail-out is, in fact, an absurdity. I predict that the effect of the announcement will last all of one trading day on the stock markets.
The truth is that the imbalances of global finance are so grotesque now that the whole money system is hanging together with nothing but spit and prayer. I get rafts of e-letters every week warning of a supposedly-coming global currency -- a companion idea to the notion of a one-world government. Both are idiotic fantasies. Events are taking the nations of the world in the other direction: towards break-up, down-sizing, down-scaling. Likewise, if major currencies such as the Euro and the dollar blow up, they're much more likely to be replaced by more local bank-notes backed by gold than by some hypothetical Amero or Globo-buck.
At seven a.m. Eastern time, the European stock markets were zooming, and Bloomberg even carried a wonderfully mysterious headline saying Greek Bonds Rally. That was especially rich -- like, who in the fuck is going to load up on Greek bonds now? Is there a pension fund somewhere run by such dimwits that they would sell their positions in the Goldman Sachs issued Timberwolf CDO in order to get in on the new bargain in ten-year Greek sovereigns? I hope those pensioners are prepared to spend what remains of their lives selling chestnuts from pushcarts on the streets of Oslo, because they sure won't be clipping coupons in front of any World Cup telecast.
As if life in the USA wasn't surreal enough last week. Once upon a time, the stock market was a place where people with capital went to look for productive activity to invest in -- say, a company devoted to making soap flakes, an underpants factory. Now the market is a robot combat arena where algorithms battle for supremacy of the feedback loops. Thursday's still-baffling fifteen-minute "crash" was an excellent demonstration of the diminishing returns of technology. People too-clever-by-half, aided greatly by computers, have now gamed the investment indexes so successfully that these markets no longer have anything to do with investment -- they're just about shaving micro-points of profit at high volumes by micro-milliseconds off mere differentials in... math! This is truly quant heaven, a place where only numbers matter and there is no correspondence to anything in the real world. In other words, last Thursday's bizarre action was a warning that the American stock markets have flown up their own aggregate ass.
These algo-robots may be elegantly complex, but they are really no more than triggering mechanisms, and Thursday's -- whatever it was -- glitch, let's say, ought to be regarded as a mere preview of coming attractions for a full-on feature clusterfuck in which the putative contents of these stock markets get sucked into a black hole so vast that the trading desks will have to find a way to arbitrage infinity to ever again catch a glimpse of America's receding wealth. And it could all happen in a finger-snap.
Why would anybody not heavily medicated stay invested in the stock markets? Well, the answer must be that they're not. The few still hanging around are the institutionals with nowhere else to go, the pitiful pension funds or the pathetic college endowment funds desperately chasing "yield" in a world where once-sturdier instruments yield zirp-o -- and these poor chumps are getting played and played out. The only other remaining marketeers are -- you guessed it -- the too-big-to-fail banks, the Federal Reserve, and possibly the US Treasury itself playing front-running games and algo stunts and black box buy-ups, and carry-trade rackets, and -- let's not forget -- outright swindles.
We tend to forget that all this hugger-mugger once had a relation to real economies. The basic truth about real economies -- at least the industrial-strength ones -- is that they cannot be successfully managed on the basis of revolving debt in the context of no growth -- and no growth is exactly the bottom line of the peak oil story so revolving debt is finished for now. Speaking of oil, the Deepwater Horizon disaster (still ongoing) has gotten so boring to the editors of The New York Times that further news about it has been banished from the front page of the paper. Too depressing, I guess.
In the meantime, though, rest assured that whatever else is going on out there, credit default swaps never sleep.
And Chicks for Free?
The European Union came up with a trillion dollar bail-out for itself at the dawn's early light. Plus, each member gets a Latvian prostitute, gratis. The Germans will love this. It already goosed the Euro back above $1.30 -- just when they hoped a lower Euro would help them move a few more export goods off the shelves. I expect that Mrs Merkel is already catching an earful. A few hours earlier, her coalition of Christian Democrats and free Democrats got their joint ass kicked in a North Rhine - Westphalia local election....
I mention these events reluctantly, knowing how averse we Americans are to news out of Old Europe, that boring backwater of sclerotic cafe lay-abouts, socialistic train service, and less-than man-sized portions of things that real men don't eat anyway.
The question begging itself here, of course, is how Europe intends to come up with roughly a trillion in bail-out money. Sell Portugal to China? Cut Greece up into bait and catch whatever fish are left in the Mediterranean Sea? Frankly, I'm stumped. Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul.... All the European nations are already so hopelessly enmeshed in chains of unfulfillable counter-party obligations that the bail-out might as well be a game of musical chairs played in the Large Hadron Particle Collider, set to the tunes of Karlheinz Stockhausen. The European bail-out is, in fact, an absurdity. I predict that the effect of the announcement will last all of one trading day on the stock markets.
The truth is that the imbalances of global finance are so grotesque now that the whole money system is hanging together with nothing but spit and prayer. I get rafts of e-letters every week warning of a supposedly-coming global currency -- a companion idea to the notion of a one-world government. Both are idiotic fantasies. Events are taking the nations of the world in the other direction: towards break-up, down-sizing, down-scaling. Likewise, if major currencies such as the Euro and the dollar blow up, they're much more likely to be replaced by more local bank-notes backed by gold than by some hypothetical Amero or Globo-buck.
At seven a.m. Eastern time, the European stock markets were zooming, and Bloomberg even carried a wonderfully mysterious headline saying Greek Bonds Rally. That was especially rich -- like, who in the fuck is going to load up on Greek bonds now? Is there a pension fund somewhere run by such dimwits that they would sell their positions in the Goldman Sachs issued Timberwolf CDO in order to get in on the new bargain in ten-year Greek sovereigns? I hope those pensioners are prepared to spend what remains of their lives selling chestnuts from pushcarts on the streets of Oslo, because they sure won't be clipping coupons in front of any World Cup telecast.
As if life in the USA wasn't surreal enough last week. Once upon a time, the stock market was a place where people with capital went to look for productive activity to invest in -- say, a company devoted to making soap flakes, an underpants factory. Now the market is a robot combat arena where algorithms battle for supremacy of the feedback loops. Thursday's still-baffling fifteen-minute "crash" was an excellent demonstration of the diminishing returns of technology. People too-clever-by-half, aided greatly by computers, have now gamed the investment indexes so successfully that these markets no longer have anything to do with investment -- they're just about shaving micro-points of profit at high volumes by micro-milliseconds off mere differentials in... math! This is truly quant heaven, a place where only numbers matter and there is no correspondence to anything in the real world. In other words, last Thursday's bizarre action was a warning that the American stock markets have flown up their own aggregate ass.
These algo-robots may be elegantly complex, but they are really no more than triggering mechanisms, and Thursday's -- whatever it was -- glitch, let's say, ought to be regarded as a mere preview of coming attractions for a full-on feature clusterfuck in which the putative contents of these stock markets get sucked into a black hole so vast that the trading desks will have to find a way to arbitrage infinity to ever again catch a glimpse of America's receding wealth. And it could all happen in a finger-snap.
Why would anybody not heavily medicated stay invested in the stock markets? Well, the answer must be that they're not. The few still hanging around are the institutionals with nowhere else to go, the pitiful pension funds or the pathetic college endowment funds desperately chasing "yield" in a world where once-sturdier instruments yield zirp-o -- and these poor chumps are getting played and played out. The only other remaining marketeers are -- you guessed it -- the too-big-to-fail banks, the Federal Reserve, and possibly the US Treasury itself playing front-running games and algo stunts and black box buy-ups, and carry-trade rackets, and -- let's not forget -- outright swindles.
We tend to forget that all this hugger-mugger once had a relation to real economies. The basic truth about real economies -- at least the industrial-strength ones -- is that they cannot be successfully managed on the basis of revolving debt in the context of no growth -- and no growth is exactly the bottom line of the peak oil story so revolving debt is finished for now. Speaking of oil, the Deepwater Horizon disaster (still ongoing) has gotten so boring to the editors of The New York Times that further news about it has been banished from the front page of the paper. Too depressing, I guess.
In the meantime, though, rest assured that whatever else is going on out there, credit default swaps never sleep.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
SC102-10
http://www.vtcommons.org/journal/2010/04/ian-baldwin-free-vermont-media-way-all-empires-us-eve-peak-oil
The Way of All Empires - The U.S. On The Eve of Peak Oil
For me, Michael Ruppert is the Paul Revere of our present moment in history. Revere risked his life to carry news and vital communiqués to the leaders of the burgeoning secessionist movement in Boston all the way southward to New York and Philadelphia. On his historic night of "alarming" the countryside en route to the Lexington homes of the secessionist leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, a sentry confronted him and asked Revere not to make so much noise. "Noise!" exclaimed Revere, "you’ll have noise enough before long."
Like Revere before him, Ruppert is a dedicated, hard-riding messenger, who has risked his life to bear news vital to the survival of a society grown suddenly global. Of course, Ruppert’s message is not about the dreaded approach of the redcoats, but a far larger, far more formidable, and yet strangely less visible "enemy" known to some by the name of Peak Oil. Or, perhaps more accurately, Peak Oil and Peak Money.Ruppert describes his purpose as an activist-writer thus: "to impart to as many individual human beings as possible the gut-level awareness of the magnitude of the crisis we face, and to enable those who do understand to prepare to face it, free of denial and with open eyes."
It is fortuitous a filmmaker of Chris Smith’s consummate skill has given us a riveting hour-and-twenty-minute window into Ruppert’s mind and soul in CoLLapse, which began as a project about Peak Oil and ended up as a film featuring the man who made the subject his cause célèbre.
Although he may not yet be a household name, Michael C. Ruppert’s first book, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil (2004), a complex and labyrinthine tour of the multi-chambered basement of imperial power, sold more than 100,000 copies and was for many months among amazon.com’s top 50 sellers. Rubicon became the Rosetta Stone for those who sought to deconstruct the most impenetrable, disguised machinations of power on the global stage, and provided its readers with a veritable Map of the Post-9-11 World.
The phenomenon of Peak Oil has only recently gained consensus among a broad range of experts, despite being discussed and argued about for at least two decades. It is not about running out of oil, a common misconception. It is about running out of cheap oil. That is the peg on which the Peak Oil story hangs.
And it is quite a story. Ruppert writes early on in Confronting Collapse: "The edifice of human civilization…is built upon cheap oil." He then adds, "There is no combination of alternative energies anywhere…that will sustain the structure built by [cheap] oil and fossil fuels." It turns out the American Dream is negotiable after all. (Or soon will be.)
Unlike money, or credit, which may be and is being loaned into limitless existence by the central bankers 24-7, energy sources are bounded. And yet, as Ruppert insists, "Money has no value without energy to back it up." This essential and exquisite insight into the relationship between energy and money is either ignored or glossed over by nearly every economist who advises hapless governments, national and local."Energy, not money," claims Ruppert, "is the root of all economic activity…the equivalent of free slave labor for industrial civilization."
And what a source of "free" labor it has been for those of us who have lived and live in the last and present centuries! One $2.69 gallon of gasoline yields us 500 slave hours of work, or the equivalent of owning three weeks’ of slave labor. Anyone who commandeers the energy equivalent of a barrel of oil, for the moment priced at about $80, gets the energy-equivalent work of a human slave for two to three years — 23,200 hours worth. Talk about cheap!
However messy or proximate these slave-work analogies may be, they signify one thing for sure: cheap oil has meant boom times, and no nation has sucked up more of the black gold and enjoyed its oomph more than the United States.
EROEI: the ratio of collapse
Ruppert and other Peak Oil students believe that in 2005 the world economy climbed to the top of the bell-shaped curve that describes the useful life of oil (and practically any other non-renewable resource located on Earth). We humans now live atop The Bumpy Plateau, where global supply cannot be much expanded regardless of demand expressed by oil’s price. The bumps on the world economy’s road consist of price-driven dips down (aka recessions caused by "demand destruction") and rises (a.k.a. faux "recoveries," caused by massive inputs of central bank fiat money) that overall are making for a rocky ride for anyone who’s not an investment banker.
The ride, and its eventual destination, matter not much to those Lords of the Universe who inhabit the warrens of Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, the Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Treasury (as well as TBTF banks elsewhere on the planet), for whom the laws of economic growth are more certain and reliable than the Laws of Thermodynamics (or any other science whose laws govern life), and who in the end are principally concerned to "Make money on the way up and make money on the way down."In Confronting Collapse, Ruppert reminds us more than once during the course of his terse deconstruction of Peak Oil, that "Until we change the way money works, we change nothing" (my italics). In the interim, we bear witness to the ravishment of our own wealth as ordinary Americans. "Simply put, more money can be made – more quickly – by accelerating decline, bankrupting the country, starving people, and selling off assets than by investing it in rebuilding under a new economic paradigm or by trying to soften the crash… Financial markets have no long-term vision in the infinite growth paradigm… The current economic paradigm will find that it uses less energy to make more money by driving things [assets, such as housing] down than by building them up." (My italics.)
At this juncture the hard facts of energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) raise their stony heads. According to Ruppert, "EROEI is at the heart of what sustainability means," the litmus test all new energy sources must pass (and few do). The search for the hard-to-find-and-hard-to-produce oil and other fossil sources of energy has already begun in earnest, albeit amidst confusing price signals. Demand decreases in the OECD countries (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), but rises in massive nations like China, India, and Brazil, as well as in oil-dense nations such as the Arab Gulf states, yielding a relentless net upward pressure on price.
EROEI now guides the calculus of energy enterprises and governments. If you have to invest $100 to get an $80 barrel of oil, are you going to do it? Not likely, even on spec. As for the oil fields already drilled, "Once it takes more than one barrel of oil …to extract one barrel of oil, an oil field is considered dead" (Confronting Collapse).
More than 96 percent of all the oil used in the world to date has been used since the United States entered World War II. Earlier in the last century, when the oil boom started in earnest, one barrel of energy-equivalent oil yielded an astonishing 100 barrels returned. Kaboom! That same barrel of oil invested today yields a meager three barrels here in the U.S. In Saudi Arabia, where one quarter of all the world’s oil is estimated to lie, and whose reserves are a closely guarded state secret, drilling offshore has begun (despite Saudi assurances its on-shore storehouse is practically limitless). As for oil produced from shale, tar sands, and coal, from deep beneath the Arctic and other oceans, off Brazil’s coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, such wished-for bonanzas are likely to yield EROEIs of 2:1 or less.
A world built on such expensive energy will be profoundly, comprehensively different from the one built on 100:1 energy.
Transition time
Entry onto The Bumpy Plateau has given us precious "transition time" to "power down" while not-yet-too-expensive energy reserves are available to repair and maintain the infrastructure that "lies at the heart of complex civilizations . . . without which civilization starts to break down." Plugging the leaks in the dikes that are our infrastructure gives us time to start the work of re-localizing our economies, plural. Make no mistake, Ruppert is "alarming" us, as did Revere in a similarly life-threatening situation 235 years ago, to re-localize our food and energy systems now, without delay. We must come to understand that "globalization," a term for the American Dream gone viral, "will die with ever-increasing [fossil] fuel costs."
Some Peak Oil analysts believe The Bumpy Plateau — our final breathing space or "transition-time" — may last for one or two decades, to 2015 or 2025 (or possibly longer). Ruppert is not among this sanguinary lot. In a personal communication he has told me 2010 could be the year when the global economy "goes over the cliff." I myself am agnostic on the timing, if not about the event itself. "The United States," he told me, "will be impossible to govern as a single nation… There are only 13 combat brigades in the U.S. and these will not be enough to prevent chaos." Like Rome was, the U.S. will be caught with its troops scattered over the face of the Earth fighting perpetual imperial wars on multiple frontiers where the last sweet crude still flows in a world grown ravenous for every last drop.
In a recent Foreign Affairs essay, "Complexity and Collapse: Empires at the Edge of Chaos," the historian Niall Ferguson suggests that empires are complex systems that "operate somewhere between order and disorder – on the edge of ‘chaos.’" Following the theory of complex systems, Ferguson reminds readers just how fast actual civilizations do in fact collapse, contrary to the ex post facto narratives of professional historians. Rome – that is, the Western Roman Empire – fell "within the span of a single generation." That was long time ago, when transportation and communication systems were almost infinitely slower than they are today.
The incomparable 300-year old Ming Dynasty’s fall "from equipoise to anarchy took little more than a decade." The relatively modern Hapsburg, Ottoman, Romanov, and British empires all ceased to be empires swiftly. Closer in time to our own era was the former Soviet Union. "If ever an empire fell off a cliff, rather than gently declining — it was the one founded by Lenin," Ferguson notes. He concludes his essay by observing that, like it or not, the collapse of empires (and the civilizations they embody) "is sudden."
Ruppert thus hardly stands alone in his assessment of the precarious condition of the United States, and indeed of the whole of industrial civilization. Written in 2008, his new book contains many very specific and useful recommendations whose chances for adoption are now less than what they were when "change we can believe in" was a slogan that energized a plurality of voting Americans. However, in light of his ruthlessly sober observation that "recovery is what will kill us," do we have a choice – and a chance?We do. We must confront the truth of Peak Oil and begin the long march toward radical re-localization of fundamental life-supporting economic enterprises such as agriculture, energy, credit and currency, education, security, and health, and toward the creation of a new economic paradigm that permits us to live in equilibrium with our natural Earth-given endowments, both renewable and non-renewable, wherever we ourselves are located. And become sovereign in our own local domains.
Just as "union" was once necessary for nations, including our own, to survive and flourish in the wide-open, expansive energy era of the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, today’s conditions, which are being determined by Peak Oil-driven collapse, make secession the new survival zeitgeist, as inevitable as "union" was 150 years ago. Survival won’t be in empires or regional hegemons but in the locales where we live as flesh-and-blood beings, growing our own food (no thank you, Monsanto), making our own energy (no thank you, ExxonMobil), assuring our own security (no thank you, Pentagon), making our own currency (no thank you, Federal Reserve), and issuing our own credit (no thank you, Goldman Sachs).
And thereby secede. Secede from the old paradigm and all that it enables, preeminently the thievery, murder, and wanton destruction of empire itself.
The Way of All Empires - The U.S. On The Eve of Peak Oil
For me, Michael Ruppert is the Paul Revere of our present moment in history. Revere risked his life to carry news and vital communiqués to the leaders of the burgeoning secessionist movement in Boston all the way southward to New York and Philadelphia. On his historic night of "alarming" the countryside en route to the Lexington homes of the secessionist leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, a sentry confronted him and asked Revere not to make so much noise. "Noise!" exclaimed Revere, "you’ll have noise enough before long."
Like Revere before him, Ruppert is a dedicated, hard-riding messenger, who has risked his life to bear news vital to the survival of a society grown suddenly global. Of course, Ruppert’s message is not about the dreaded approach of the redcoats, but a far larger, far more formidable, and yet strangely less visible "enemy" known to some by the name of Peak Oil. Or, perhaps more accurately, Peak Oil and Peak Money.Ruppert describes his purpose as an activist-writer thus: "to impart to as many individual human beings as possible the gut-level awareness of the magnitude of the crisis we face, and to enable those who do understand to prepare to face it, free of denial and with open eyes."
It is fortuitous a filmmaker of Chris Smith’s consummate skill has given us a riveting hour-and-twenty-minute window into Ruppert’s mind and soul in CoLLapse, which began as a project about Peak Oil and ended up as a film featuring the man who made the subject his cause célèbre.
Although he may not yet be a household name, Michael C. Ruppert’s first book, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil (2004), a complex and labyrinthine tour of the multi-chambered basement of imperial power, sold more than 100,000 copies and was for many months among amazon.com’s top 50 sellers. Rubicon became the Rosetta Stone for those who sought to deconstruct the most impenetrable, disguised machinations of power on the global stage, and provided its readers with a veritable Map of the Post-9-11 World.
The phenomenon of Peak Oil has only recently gained consensus among a broad range of experts, despite being discussed and argued about for at least two decades. It is not about running out of oil, a common misconception. It is about running out of cheap oil. That is the peg on which the Peak Oil story hangs.
And it is quite a story. Ruppert writes early on in Confronting Collapse: "The edifice of human civilization…is built upon cheap oil." He then adds, "There is no combination of alternative energies anywhere…that will sustain the structure built by [cheap] oil and fossil fuels." It turns out the American Dream is negotiable after all. (Or soon will be.)
Unlike money, or credit, which may be and is being loaned into limitless existence by the central bankers 24-7, energy sources are bounded. And yet, as Ruppert insists, "Money has no value without energy to back it up." This essential and exquisite insight into the relationship between energy and money is either ignored or glossed over by nearly every economist who advises hapless governments, national and local."Energy, not money," claims Ruppert, "is the root of all economic activity…the equivalent of free slave labor for industrial civilization."
And what a source of "free" labor it has been for those of us who have lived and live in the last and present centuries! One $2.69 gallon of gasoline yields us 500 slave hours of work, or the equivalent of owning three weeks’ of slave labor. Anyone who commandeers the energy equivalent of a barrel of oil, for the moment priced at about $80, gets the energy-equivalent work of a human slave for two to three years — 23,200 hours worth. Talk about cheap!
However messy or proximate these slave-work analogies may be, they signify one thing for sure: cheap oil has meant boom times, and no nation has sucked up more of the black gold and enjoyed its oomph more than the United States.
EROEI: the ratio of collapse
Ruppert and other Peak Oil students believe that in 2005 the world economy climbed to the top of the bell-shaped curve that describes the useful life of oil (and practically any other non-renewable resource located on Earth). We humans now live atop The Bumpy Plateau, where global supply cannot be much expanded regardless of demand expressed by oil’s price. The bumps on the world economy’s road consist of price-driven dips down (aka recessions caused by "demand destruction") and rises (a.k.a. faux "recoveries," caused by massive inputs of central bank fiat money) that overall are making for a rocky ride for anyone who’s not an investment banker.
The ride, and its eventual destination, matter not much to those Lords of the Universe who inhabit the warrens of Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, the Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Treasury (as well as TBTF banks elsewhere on the planet), for whom the laws of economic growth are more certain and reliable than the Laws of Thermodynamics (or any other science whose laws govern life), and who in the end are principally concerned to "Make money on the way up and make money on the way down."In Confronting Collapse, Ruppert reminds us more than once during the course of his terse deconstruction of Peak Oil, that "Until we change the way money works, we change nothing" (my italics). In the interim, we bear witness to the ravishment of our own wealth as ordinary Americans. "Simply put, more money can be made – more quickly – by accelerating decline, bankrupting the country, starving people, and selling off assets than by investing it in rebuilding under a new economic paradigm or by trying to soften the crash… Financial markets have no long-term vision in the infinite growth paradigm… The current economic paradigm will find that it uses less energy to make more money by driving things [assets, such as housing] down than by building them up." (My italics.)
At this juncture the hard facts of energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) raise their stony heads. According to Ruppert, "EROEI is at the heart of what sustainability means," the litmus test all new energy sources must pass (and few do). The search for the hard-to-find-and-hard-to-produce oil and other fossil sources of energy has already begun in earnest, albeit amidst confusing price signals. Demand decreases in the OECD countries (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), but rises in massive nations like China, India, and Brazil, as well as in oil-dense nations such as the Arab Gulf states, yielding a relentless net upward pressure on price.
EROEI now guides the calculus of energy enterprises and governments. If you have to invest $100 to get an $80 barrel of oil, are you going to do it? Not likely, even on spec. As for the oil fields already drilled, "Once it takes more than one barrel of oil …to extract one barrel of oil, an oil field is considered dead" (Confronting Collapse).
More than 96 percent of all the oil used in the world to date has been used since the United States entered World War II. Earlier in the last century, when the oil boom started in earnest, one barrel of energy-equivalent oil yielded an astonishing 100 barrels returned. Kaboom! That same barrel of oil invested today yields a meager three barrels here in the U.S. In Saudi Arabia, where one quarter of all the world’s oil is estimated to lie, and whose reserves are a closely guarded state secret, drilling offshore has begun (despite Saudi assurances its on-shore storehouse is practically limitless). As for oil produced from shale, tar sands, and coal, from deep beneath the Arctic and other oceans, off Brazil’s coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, such wished-for bonanzas are likely to yield EROEIs of 2:1 or less.
A world built on such expensive energy will be profoundly, comprehensively different from the one built on 100:1 energy.
Transition time
Entry onto The Bumpy Plateau has given us precious "transition time" to "power down" while not-yet-too-expensive energy reserves are available to repair and maintain the infrastructure that "lies at the heart of complex civilizations . . . without which civilization starts to break down." Plugging the leaks in the dikes that are our infrastructure gives us time to start the work of re-localizing our economies, plural. Make no mistake, Ruppert is "alarming" us, as did Revere in a similarly life-threatening situation 235 years ago, to re-localize our food and energy systems now, without delay. We must come to understand that "globalization," a term for the American Dream gone viral, "will die with ever-increasing [fossil] fuel costs."
Some Peak Oil analysts believe The Bumpy Plateau — our final breathing space or "transition-time" — may last for one or two decades, to 2015 or 2025 (or possibly longer). Ruppert is not among this sanguinary lot. In a personal communication he has told me 2010 could be the year when the global economy "goes over the cliff." I myself am agnostic on the timing, if not about the event itself. "The United States," he told me, "will be impossible to govern as a single nation… There are only 13 combat brigades in the U.S. and these will not be enough to prevent chaos." Like Rome was, the U.S. will be caught with its troops scattered over the face of the Earth fighting perpetual imperial wars on multiple frontiers where the last sweet crude still flows in a world grown ravenous for every last drop.
In a recent Foreign Affairs essay, "Complexity and Collapse: Empires at the Edge of Chaos," the historian Niall Ferguson suggests that empires are complex systems that "operate somewhere between order and disorder – on the edge of ‘chaos.’" Following the theory of complex systems, Ferguson reminds readers just how fast actual civilizations do in fact collapse, contrary to the ex post facto narratives of professional historians. Rome – that is, the Western Roman Empire – fell "within the span of a single generation." That was long time ago, when transportation and communication systems were almost infinitely slower than they are today.
The incomparable 300-year old Ming Dynasty’s fall "from equipoise to anarchy took little more than a decade." The relatively modern Hapsburg, Ottoman, Romanov, and British empires all ceased to be empires swiftly. Closer in time to our own era was the former Soviet Union. "If ever an empire fell off a cliff, rather than gently declining — it was the one founded by Lenin," Ferguson notes. He concludes his essay by observing that, like it or not, the collapse of empires (and the civilizations they embody) "is sudden."
Ruppert thus hardly stands alone in his assessment of the precarious condition of the United States, and indeed of the whole of industrial civilization. Written in 2008, his new book contains many very specific and useful recommendations whose chances for adoption are now less than what they were when "change we can believe in" was a slogan that energized a plurality of voting Americans. However, in light of his ruthlessly sober observation that "recovery is what will kill us," do we have a choice – and a chance?We do. We must confront the truth of Peak Oil and begin the long march toward radical re-localization of fundamental life-supporting economic enterprises such as agriculture, energy, credit and currency, education, security, and health, and toward the creation of a new economic paradigm that permits us to live in equilibrium with our natural Earth-given endowments, both renewable and non-renewable, wherever we ourselves are located. And become sovereign in our own local domains.
Just as "union" was once necessary for nations, including our own, to survive and flourish in the wide-open, expansive energy era of the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, today’s conditions, which are being determined by Peak Oil-driven collapse, make secession the new survival zeitgeist, as inevitable as "union" was 150 years ago. Survival won’t be in empires or regional hegemons but in the locales where we live as flesh-and-blood beings, growing our own food (no thank you, Monsanto), making our own energy (no thank you, ExxonMobil), assuring our own security (no thank you, Pentagon), making our own currency (no thank you, Federal Reserve), and issuing our own credit (no thank you, Goldman Sachs).
And thereby secede. Secede from the old paradigm and all that it enables, preeminently the thievery, murder, and wanton destruction of empire itself.
Monday, May 3, 2010
SC102-9
http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/05/worse-than-1789.html#more
lbendet May 3, 2010 5:07 PM
Everything works hand-in-hand. It's a recipe for disaster long in the making not an accident.
Just look at this past week as your guide to the "Long Emergency". We have climactic incidents, tornadoes and flooding. Coal mine and oil rig accidents, water main break outside Boston, effecting 2 million people. And the cherry on top is an amature terror attack in Times Square on a Saturday night while our power elite are self-indulging in their yearly presidential roast. (BFD)
As beautifully described this weekend on CNN, unlike other countries, US law does not require the safety apparatus that can shut an oil well down in the event of failure of the shut down mechanisms. By the way, what isn't being mentioned is Cheney little pet, Halliburton was the contractor hired to cemented the rig. There have been other rigs that have failed thanks to their shoddy work.
In the Nixon White house an economist by the name of Milton Friedman was working with Kissinger and that administration to move from Keynesianism to The Chicago School of Business paradigm of the free market as ideated by Friedman. (and orchestrating the Pinochet takeover of Chile)
This theory of his for which he won a Nobel Peace Prize, is for the abdication of the government to apply any restrictions to the ownership class, which basically removes the rule of law as applied to business activities. A must read on the subject is Naomi Kline's "Shock Doctrine", a brilliantly researched book that will shine a light on everything that is going on. Once you read it you won't be fooled by the tripe you hear on the news.
Keep in mind that the people who say they hate big government love it for the privatized contractors who are after the very money the American people have paid in taxes for their future. (IE the "Entitlements", now under attack by Friedmanites on both sides of the aisle.) Yes, I'm afraid our educational system does not want anyone to understand the greatness that was once the American marketplace due to a balance between public and private.
Kissinger lead Nixon by the ear to China in the '70's as he saw the potential of over a billion people buying US goods and producing them for peanuts. Like pigs sniffing out the truffles, these people are looking for slave labor world-wide, cutting out the American middleclass in the act. The idea is to go regressive, destroying the great historic strides of the working class in the twentieth century and pressuring all our salaries and rates downward.
The idea was to go global--for US business owners to operate outside the framework of US laws and taxation. The removal of the dollar peg to gold. Is key to the downfall of our currency, even if it is still the fiat currency. With the fall of Communism, the US no longer needed a well educated populace, nor did it need to be the manufacturing bulwark that showcased a great society of happy well-employed people to advertise the success of Capitalism over Communism.
My theory is that Friedman reconstructed Leon Trotsky's idea of world-wide Revolution of the Proletariat and switched it to worldwide elite, unite. Like-minded elites around the world would in fact be working together to undermine the social contract with the people and in David Rockefeller's words. "Nation States should be decoupled from their resources".
Since the fall of communism this country has been fast-tracked through NAFTA and our insane trade policies to find the cheapest labor on earth, with no regulation. There's no oversight or quality control. Instead of raising all ships as Clinton would say, our ship is being lowered and the biggest loser in this paradigm is the American middle class, soon to be as poor as the poorest third worlders. What people need to understand is that the US is but a quaint idea to these people who see themselves as globalists.
They scream loudest about patriotism while undermining the country.
We no longer produce wealth, but are living on the keytones of debt and monetization of securities. I think we really can't call ourselves Capitalist anymore. The destruction is all around us in our infrastructure that these great Americans don't want to fix, because they believe private companies from Spain, such as the clients of Rudy Guiliani, who will get government contracts. Check out the Nasco Corridor on the web and find out more about these ideas, never discussed on the news.
Yes, we are going to face tremendous challenges for energy but it didn't have to be like this. This was a choice made by greedy people, who want world hegemony in the sphere of finance and military. That is why there are so many who are above the law. Don't hold your breath for the end of TBTF.
lbendet May 3, 2010 5:07 PM
Everything works hand-in-hand. It's a recipe for disaster long in the making not an accident.
Just look at this past week as your guide to the "Long Emergency". We have climactic incidents, tornadoes and flooding. Coal mine and oil rig accidents, water main break outside Boston, effecting 2 million people. And the cherry on top is an amature terror attack in Times Square on a Saturday night while our power elite are self-indulging in their yearly presidential roast. (BFD)
As beautifully described this weekend on CNN, unlike other countries, US law does not require the safety apparatus that can shut an oil well down in the event of failure of the shut down mechanisms. By the way, what isn't being mentioned is Cheney little pet, Halliburton was the contractor hired to cemented the rig. There have been other rigs that have failed thanks to their shoddy work.
In the Nixon White house an economist by the name of Milton Friedman was working with Kissinger and that administration to move from Keynesianism to The Chicago School of Business paradigm of the free market as ideated by Friedman. (and orchestrating the Pinochet takeover of Chile)
This theory of his for which he won a Nobel Peace Prize, is for the abdication of the government to apply any restrictions to the ownership class, which basically removes the rule of law as applied to business activities. A must read on the subject is Naomi Kline's "Shock Doctrine", a brilliantly researched book that will shine a light on everything that is going on. Once you read it you won't be fooled by the tripe you hear on the news.
Keep in mind that the people who say they hate big government love it for the privatized contractors who are after the very money the American people have paid in taxes for their future. (IE the "Entitlements", now under attack by Friedmanites on both sides of the aisle.) Yes, I'm afraid our educational system does not want anyone to understand the greatness that was once the American marketplace due to a balance between public and private.
Kissinger lead Nixon by the ear to China in the '70's as he saw the potential of over a billion people buying US goods and producing them for peanuts. Like pigs sniffing out the truffles, these people are looking for slave labor world-wide, cutting out the American middleclass in the act. The idea is to go regressive, destroying the great historic strides of the working class in the twentieth century and pressuring all our salaries and rates downward.
The idea was to go global--for US business owners to operate outside the framework of US laws and taxation. The removal of the dollar peg to gold. Is key to the downfall of our currency, even if it is still the fiat currency. With the fall of Communism, the US no longer needed a well educated populace, nor did it need to be the manufacturing bulwark that showcased a great society of happy well-employed people to advertise the success of Capitalism over Communism.
My theory is that Friedman reconstructed Leon Trotsky's idea of world-wide Revolution of the Proletariat and switched it to worldwide elite, unite. Like-minded elites around the world would in fact be working together to undermine the social contract with the people and in David Rockefeller's words. "Nation States should be decoupled from their resources".
Since the fall of communism this country has been fast-tracked through NAFTA and our insane trade policies to find the cheapest labor on earth, with no regulation. There's no oversight or quality control. Instead of raising all ships as Clinton would say, our ship is being lowered and the biggest loser in this paradigm is the American middle class, soon to be as poor as the poorest third worlders. What people need to understand is that the US is but a quaint idea to these people who see themselves as globalists.
They scream loudest about patriotism while undermining the country.
We no longer produce wealth, but are living on the keytones of debt and monetization of securities. I think we really can't call ourselves Capitalist anymore. The destruction is all around us in our infrastructure that these great Americans don't want to fix, because they believe private companies from Spain, such as the clients of Rudy Guiliani, who will get government contracts. Check out the Nasco Corridor on the web and find out more about these ideas, never discussed on the news.
Yes, we are going to face tremendous challenges for energy but it didn't have to be like this. This was a choice made by greedy people, who want world hegemony in the sphere of finance and military. That is why there are so many who are above the law. Don't hold your breath for the end of TBTF.
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