The Obama Deception

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TruthBringer
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The Obama Deception

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Misdirected “Bailout Rage” Sets Pretext For New Financial World Order

Greedy Wall St Execs are flotsam jetsam compared to global banking elites

Steve Watson

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

A so called “bailout backlash”, a huge rise in public antagonism toward banks and Wall Street, is set to provide the Obama administration and the governments of the G20 nations a pretext to usher in a new era of international centralization and control over financial practices and institutions.

The backlash or “bailout rage” as others have dubbed it, has been further heightened by revelations regarding AIG’s squandering of almost $100 billion in taxpayer rescue funding - which it siphoned off to Goldman Sachs and a number of European banks - in addition to the company’s plan to continue issuing massive bonuses to the people in the very division that were responsible for it’s spiraling derivative-driven downturn.

The intention to use such practices to push for increased authoritative regulation is clear.

“Mr. Obama’s advisers argued that to at least some extent, this was a sentiment they could tap to push through his measures in Congress,” reported The New York Times yesterday.

However, the Times article also highlights the fine line that Obama and other heads of state must tread in utilizing such backlash for their own gain.

“The danger, aides said, is that if he were to become identified as an advocate for the banks and Wall Street, people could take out their anger on him.”

This is the stumbling block that must be overcome in order to uncover the real solutions to the induced global financial collapse.

While the practices of those at AIG, Goldman Sachs and their ilk are abhorrent, they represent a mere drop in the ocean compared to the actions of our governments and their central bank bedfellows, who have provided for such circumstances in the first instance anyway.

The Federal Reserve still refuses to answer specific questions about where $2 trillion in bailout funds has gone, a subject that Bloomberg News sued the Fed simply to try and discover.

Staggering scenes unfolded two weeks ago at a Senate budget Committee meeting when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke arrogantly refused to state where any of the bailout money had gone despite repeated questioning by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.

The economic “stimulus” is the latest phase of an overarching effort to foment another Great Depression, or rather a Greater Depression. It is a debt and inflation tool designed to pump up another bubble in the economy. It is a built-in demolition of an already stressed economy. It is how the global elite and the banksters will take control and create a world banking empire and one-world government that is accountable to no one.

It is blatantly apparent that Obama is merely one of the select frontmen for this, an agenda which is truly global in scale.
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The elite have exploited the problem that they created to push for increased regulation of the world economic system in the pursuit of a de-facto global financial dictatorship.

The swift and ruthless exploitation of the economic meltdown on behalf of globalists and central banks revolves around their drive to move towards a one world currency system and an unprecedented centralization of global financial power, a fact that financial analysts are finally beginning to realise.

Last week Ben Bernanke told an elite gathering at the Council on Foreign Relations that a new overarching financial authority should be created and empowered with sweeping new regulatory responsibilities.

Such a suggestion echoes that of über elitist Paul Volcker, an Obama adviser and former Fed chairman, who has consistently called for regulatory crackdowns, along with other members of the elite Group of Thirty and the Trilateral Commission.

During Volcker’s address at the Columbia University’s Center for Capitalism and Society last month, he said only new forms of international financial regulation will save us from the yawning catastrophe. “All banks must be supervised and regulated, but those of systemic significance around the world, which, almost inevitably… are international, they’re not just national, will be subject to a particular layer of supervision,” said Volcker.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, EU heads such as Joaquin Almunia and establishment media outlets like the Wall Street Journal amongst many others have all continually used the economic crisis as an excuse to argue for greater financial power, a “new world economic order” in which control is concentrated into fewer hands - with the IMF and the World Bank enjoying the spoils.

UK Business Secretary and top Bilderberg member Peter Mandelson has also pushed for a “Bretton Woods for this century,” to help build the “machinery of global economic governance”.

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy all made the same appeal at a conference in Paris on the future of capitalism earlier this year.

Merkel called for the creation of a new global economic body under the UN, similar to the Security Council, to judge government policy.

Sarkozy called for a “new world, new capitalism” during his speech, as he commented “In capitalism of the 21st century, there is room for the state.”

Meanwhile, Blair called for a new financial order which he said should be constructed upon “values other than the maximum short-term profit.”

More of the same appeals are set to be made this weekend at the meeting of the G20 in England.

The globalists created the problem of wildly irresponsible fractional reserve banking, the debt bubble and the credit crunch by ceaselessly inflating the money supply and now they are offering their solution to the crisis by posing as the saviors and promising to fix the crisis, but only if complete control of the global financial system be signed over to them.

As Ron Paul, Peter Schiff and their ilk have tirelessly argued, the only way to solve the financial crisis is to allow incompetent banks and companies to fail, not to reward their misdeeds by giving them billions in taxpayer money. The only way to re-capitalize the world is to provide incentives for people to work hard and save money, not by creating more credit out of thin air, which is what caused the problem in the first place.

The globalists’ call for a centralized global economic order has nothing to do with providing solutions to the crisis but everything to do with providing themselves with more power and control over the world’s financial system.

Misdirected “Bailout Rage” Sets Pretext For New Financial World Order
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The Obama Deception:

YouTube - youtube the obama deception pt1 (1)

YouTube - youtube the obama deception pt2 (2)

YouTube - youtube the obama deception pt3 (3)

YouTube - youtube the obama deception pt4 (4)

YouTube - youtube the obama deception pt5 (5)

YouTube - youtube the obama deception pt6 (6)

YouTube - youtube the obama deception pt7 (7)

YouTube - youtube the obama deception pt8 (8)

YouTube - youtube the obama deception pt9 (9)

YouTube - youtube the obama deception pt10 (10)

YouTube - youtube the obama deception pt11 (11)
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I was watching this last night. It's a two hour film and I'm only half way through it so far.

Again, though, these film makers must do more in the way of providing concrete evidence. Having said that, Obama's broken resolutions are verifiable.
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He's a scapegoat. It's something that every single person in the United States (including myself) is soon going to be forced to realize as we try and figure out how in the World we allowed our own government to fool us into selling out our country. The very same country that our founding fathers had never intended to be sold. The very same country that was founded on revolution from the very thing we are now all allowing to happen to us again.
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TruthBringer;1159300 wrote: He's a scapegoat. It's something that every single person in the United States (including myself) is soon going to be forced to realize as we try and figure out how in the World we allowed our own government to fool us into selling out our country. The very same country that our founding fathers had never intended to be sold. The very same country that was founded on revolution from the very thing we are now all allowing to happen to us again.


Society in the UK has so many factions, it would be difficult to organise anything that would worry these moguls. I somehow think that it's not very different in the USA. They have control of the military.



You know. I have nothing against a unified world order. But these people are doing this for the wrong reasons.
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He/they have set up AIG nicely. Dumped hundreds of billions in, threw more good money after bad. Now it's "Well, we have such a vested interest in AIG, we have to keep going to make sure our investments don't go to waste."



For those who wanted a national insurance program, there ya go. Merry Christmas. :mad:
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Deception

Deception (also called beguilement, deceit, bluff, or subterfuge) is the act of convincing another to believe information that is not true, or not the whole truth as in certain types of half-truths.

Deception involves concepts like propaganda, distraction and/or concealment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deception
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TruthBringer;1159300 wrote: He's a scapegoat. It's something that every single person in the United States (including myself) is soon going to be forced to realize as we try and figure out how in the World we allowed our own government to fool us into selling out our country. The very same country that our founding fathers had never intended to be sold. The very same country that was founded on revolution from the very thing we are now all allowing to happen to us again.


Maybe Im missing something but shouldnt these CEO's be spending quite a bit of time at the white house with admin officials, the pres and congressional leaders hammering out some concrete plans together ?

Shouldnt they be working in unison as team to brainstorm. The best minds available should be elbow to elbow in a room nailing this thing down.

Collaberation...dems, repubs, ron paul, Forbes.

Im beginning to think theres more ego than resolution on the table.
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Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 Trillion



Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry

Bloomberg

Wednesday, April 1, 2009



The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s.

New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. include $1 trillion for the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to help investors buy distressed loans and other assets from U.S. banks. The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.

President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with the chief executives of the nation’s 12 biggest banks on March 27 at the White House to enlist their support to thaw a 20-month freeze in bank lending.

“The president and Treasury Secretary Geithner have said they will do what it takes,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein said after the meeting. “If it is enough, that will be great. If it is not enough, they will have to do more.”

Commitments include a $500 billion line of credit to the FDIC from the government’s coffers that will enable the agency to guarantee as much as $2 trillion worth of debt for participants in the Term Asset-Backed Lending Facility and the Public-Private Investment Program. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair warned that the insurance fund to protect customer deposits at U.S. banks could dry up because of bank failures.

Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 Trillion (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
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World Bank President Admits Agenda For Global Government



Paul Joseph Watson

Wednesday, April 1, 2009



World Bank President and Bilderberg elitist Robert Zoellick openly admitted the plan to eliminate national sovereignty and impose a global government during a speech on the eve of the G20 summit.

Speaking about the agenda to increase not just funding but power for international organizations on the back of the financial crisis, Zoellick stated, “If leaders are serious about creating new global responsibilities or governance, let them start by modernising multilateralism to empower the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank Group to monitor national policies.”

In other words, give global institutions the power to regulate national policy as part of the creation of global government.

What Zoellick is outlining is essentially the end of national sovereignty and the reclassification of national governments as mere subordinates to a global authority that is completely unaccountable to the voting public of any country.

The more cynical amongst us would call this a global dictatorship. Zoellick couches the plan in flowery rhetoric of helping the poor and alleviating poverty, but as we have documented for years, the global elite’s goal of world government has little to do with saving the planet and everything to do with creating a global fascist state.

Zoellick, former Executive Vice President of Fannie Mae and advisor to Goldman Sachs, is a top elitist who was intimately involved in the Enron scandal and the 2000 presidential election debacle. He was also a signatory to the Project For A New American century document that called for invading Iraq as part of implementing a brutal world empire in 1998. He was later a foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush.

As to be expected, Zoellick is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. He also attended the annual invitation-only conferences of the Bilderberg Group in 1991, 2003, 2006 and 2007.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will use the G20 summit in London to extend an olive branch to China, offering them a central role in the construction of a new world order and a global government, according to reports.

“Brown will hold talks with Hu Jintao, China’s president, following discussions with Barack Obama, amid signs that developing countries see the G20 summit as a chance to impose a new world order and end the era of Anglo-European dominance,” reports the Guardian.

Under the proposal, China will vastly increase its IMF funding in return for more voting rights.

A central focus of the G20 summit will be the proposal to supplant the dollar with a new global currency. Both the IMF and the United Nations threw their weight behind the implementation of a new global reserve currency system to replace the dollar, in the same week that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CFR globalists that he was “open” to the idea.

China and Russia brought the issue to the forefront of this week’s G20 when they jointly called for a new global reserve currency a week ago.

Brown has consistently called for global regulation of the financial system as a means towards global governance. In a speech at St Paul’s Cathedral in London yesterday he again called for a new “global society”.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/world-bank- ... nment.html
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UN & IMF Back Agenda For Global Financial Dictatorship



Paul Joseph Watson

Friday, March 27, 2009



Both the IMF and the United Nations have thrown their weight behind proposals to implement a new world reserve currency system to replace the dollar as part of the acceleration towards a global financial dictatorship, in the same week that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CFR globalists that he was “open” to the idea.

As we reported yesterday, Timothy Geithner initially renounced a Chinese and Russian proposal to supplant the dollar with a new global currency, but he later told CFR elitists, who have consistently lobbied for a global currency as part of a wider agenda for global government, that he was “open” to the idea. Indeed, before Geithner was appointed by Obama when he was still president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he argued for a new global central banking system shortly after attending the 2008 Bilderberg meeting.

Now the U.N. and the IMF have thrown their weight behind the move and reports indicate that the matter will be a major point of discussion at the upcoming G20 conference, with officials having initially dismissed speculation that a global currency would be on the agenda.

“A UN panel of expert economists pressed Thursday for a new global currency reserve scheme to replace the volatile, dollar-based system and for coordinated steps by rich countries to stimulate their economies,” reports AFP.

“A new Global Reserve System — what may be viewed as a greatly expanded SDR (Special Drawing Rights), with regular or cyclically adjusted emissions calibrated to the size of reserve accumulations, could contribute to global stability, economic strength and global equity,” the panel said.

In addition, “IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that talks on a new global reserve currency to replace the US dollar were “legitimate” and could take place “in the coming months,” according to the report.

As we have repeatedly warned, the introduction of a new global currency system is a key cornerstone in the move towards global government, centralized control and more power being concentrated into fewer hands.

The swift and ruthless exploitation of the economic meltdown on behalf of globalists and central banks who caused the problem in the first place revolves around their drive for a global monetary union, which is a directive coming from the very inner core of the CFR and the Bilderberg Group.

The Federal Reserve is already is a private organization and as such unaccountable to the American people. A global central bank, which is effectively what a new global reserve currency system will create, will establish a de facto financial dictatorship which will wield power over the economies of every country on the planet with no accountability whatsoever.

The ruling elite resolved long ago to force a global currency down our throats. In fact, a global currency is at the very core of their plan to dominate the world. Control money and you control the destiny of states, you eliminate national sovereignty. “The control of money and credit strikes at the very heart of national sovereignty,” A.W. Clausen, president of Bank of America once observed.

As Georgetown professor and CFR historian Carroll Quigley noted, the goal of the banking families and their minions consists of “nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole… controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.”

In 2007, Robert Mundell, “the father of the euro,” noted that “international monetary reform usually becomes possible only in response to a felt need and the threat of a global crisis.”

That very crisis arrived shortly after, providing the elite with the perfect opportunity to ram through a massive program of financial centralization by posing as the saviors - when they created the problem in the first place.

The very actions of the elite will continue to worsen the financial crisis, providing the necessary political capital for them to institute what they had planned all along - a new global currency for the global government that they plan to implement thereafter.

UN & IMF Back Agenda For Global Financial Dictatorship
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I must say these articles seem like a huge overreaction to me. (laughs) The BBC had been rather cynically wondering whether anything of significance will come out of the G20! Now they are starting to get excited because it looks as though there might be some significant stuff. Latest gossip appears to be that the French and Germans are pushing their regulatory agenda with some success, but it's just gossip at this point. Sarkosy has talked of putting morality back into banking and by implication, business in general.

They are pushing the point that their systems are reasonably ok and that this was a crisis made in Britain and the USA. Hard to argue with that. Who is this Watson bloke? What's his agenda?
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Ron Paul on the Budget and the G20

Friday, April 3, 2009

On Thursday, Dr. Paul sat down with legislative assistant Paul-Martin Foss to give his thoughts on the budget, global economic regulation, and the gold standard.

Here is the video of the interview:

Ron Paul on the Budget and the G20
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The term “New World Order” was mentioned in connection with the G20 this week hundreds of times by both global leaders and in news reports.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown himself yesterday announced that the G20 heralded the creation of a “New World Order” which would involve increased global regulation of economic markets:

YouTube - cnn - gordon brown @g20 - "new world order is emerging"
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A Google News search provides well over a thousand results of reports including the term “New World Order” over the past couple of weeks.

Despite the fact that world leaders have been talking about a “New World Order” for decades, in the context of the political agenda to diminish the power of sovereign states in favor of a move towards global governance, it was still regarded as a delusion of paranoid conspiracy theorists by the establishment media until relatively recently.

Now even Fox News and Sean Hannity are throwing their arms in the air and admitting that the “conspiracy theorists were right” as the agenda for global government is openly announced.

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The new world order has nothing to do with saving the world and everything to do with centralizing power and control into the hands of a gaggle of criminal globalists who are concerned about nothing other than increasing their domination over the planet - at the expense of the rest of the population.

The new world order is totalitarian by its very nature - shifting power away from sovereign countries to global institutions which have no accountability to the general public whatsoever, and through which the public has no voice or influence. That cannot be defined as anything else but undemocratic. There is no such thing as a “benign” new world order.

This very agenda was again enunciated this week by World Bank President and and Bilderberg elitist Robert Zoellick, who openly admitted the plan to eliminate national sovereignty and impose a global government during a speech on the eve of the G20 summit.

Speaking about the agenda to increase not just funding but power for international organizations on the back of the financial crisis, Zoellick stated, “If leaders are serious about creating new global responsibilities or governance, let them start by modernising multilateralism to empower the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank Group to monitor national policies.”

Proponents of a new world order have always disguised their rhetoric with flowery notions of achieving some kind of global utopia, but behind the scenes the real agenda has always been sinister, nepotistic and anathema to any reasonable notion of democratic freedom.

It’s about time the establishment media stopped parroting the words of globalists and blithely repeating the term “new world order” like it was going out of fashion, and actually started asking real questions about what it really means.

New World Order: Still A Conspiracy Theory?
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Bretton Woods 1945 created a new world order. London 2009 reformed it.

What conspiracy?
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Economist: US collapse driven by ‘fraud,’ Geithner covering up bank insolvency



Stephen C. Webster

Raw Story

Sunday, April 5, 2009



In an explosive interview on PBS’ Bill Moyers Journal, William K. Black, a professor of economics and law with the University of Missouri, alleged that American banks and credit agencies conspired to create a system in which so-called “liars loans” could receive AAA ratings and zero oversight, amounting to a massive “fraud” at the epicenter of US finance.

But worse still, said Black, Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury, is currently engaged in a cover-up to keep the truth of America’s financial insolvency from its citizens.

The interview, which aired Friday night, is carried on the Bill Moyers Journal Web site.

Black’s most recent published work, “The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One,” released in 2005, was hailed by Nobel-winning economist George A. Akerlof as “extraordinary.”

“There is no one else in the whole world who understands so well exactly how these lootings occurred in all their details and how the changes in government regulations and in statutes in the early 1980s caused this spate of looting,” he wrote. “This book will be a classic.”

But that book only covers the fallout from the 1980s Savings & Loan crisis; Black’s later first-hand involvement in that scandal being the ensuing liquidation of bad banks.

“A single bank, IndyMac, lost more money than the entire Savings and Loan Crisis,” reported PBS. “The difference between now and then, explains Black, is a drastic reduction in regulation and oversight, ‘We now know what happens when you destroy regulation. You get the biggest financial calamity of anybody under the age of 80.’”

That financial calamity, he explained, was brought about not by mishap or accident, but only after a concerted effort to undermine and remove all regulations, allowing a creditor free-for-all that hinged on fraudulent risk ratings for bad loans.

“[T]he way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better,” he told Moyers. “Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you’re a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it inevitable that there’s going to be a disaster down the road.

“…This stuff, the exotic stuff that you’re talking about was created out of things like liars’ loans, that were known to be extraordinarily bad,” he continued. “And now it was getting triple-A ratings. Now a triple-A rating is supposed to mean there is zero credit risk. So you take something that not only has significant, it has crushing risk. That’s why it’s toxic. And you create this fiction that it has zero risk. That itself, of course, is a fraudulent exercise. And again, there was nobody looking, during the Bush years. So finally, only a year ago, we started to have a Congressional investigation of some of these rating agencies, and it’s scandalous what came out. What we know now is that the rating agencies never looked at a single loan file. When they finally did look, after the markets had completely collapsed, they found, and I’m quoting Fitch, the smallest of the rating agencies, “the results were disconcerting, in that there was the appearance of fraud in nearly every file we examined.”

He equated the entire US financial system to a giant “ponzi scheme” and charged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, like Secretary Henry Paulson before him, of “covering up” the truth.

“Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?” asked Moyers.

“Absolutely, because they are scared to death,” he said. “All right? They’re scared to death of a collapse. They’re afraid that if they admit the truth, that many of the large banks are insolvent. They think Americans are a bunch of cowards, and that we’ll run screaming to the exits. And we won’t rely on deposit insurance. And, by the way, you can rely on deposit insurance. And it’s foolishness. All right? Now, it may be worse than that. You can impute more cynical motives. But I think they are sincerely just panicked about, ‘We just can’t let the big banks fail.’ That’s wrong.”

Ultimately, said Black, the financial downfall of the United States in the wake of the Bush years is due to “the most elite institutions in America engaging in or facilitating fraud.”

“When will Americans wake up and hold the real criminals - Banksters - accountable for their actions, and pressure the government to enact systemic changes to prevent future abuses?” asked Huffington Post blogger Mike Garibaldi-Frick.



http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/profile.html

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html

http://www.prisonplanet.com/economist-u ... vency.html
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Peter Schiff On Glenn Beck: Inflation Nation?

YouTube - 10/13/2008 - Peter Schiff On Glenn Beck: Inflation Nation?
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I can't even believe they are asking this question. The Rockefellers? Give me a ****** break. The day I let bankers tell me what to do with my rights is the day that I take a flying leap off a cliff into a giant bowl of acid!



Should Obama Control the Internet?



A new bill would give the President emergency authority to halt web traffic and access private data.

—By Steve Aquino



Should President Obama have the power to shut down domestic Internet traffic during a state of emergency?

Senators John Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) think so. On Wednesday they introduced a bill to establish the Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor—an arm of the executive branch that would have vast power to monitor and control Internet traffic to protect against threats to critical cyber infrastructure. That broad power is rattling some civil libertarians.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (PDF) gives the president the ability to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any "critical" information network "in the interest of national security." The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to the president.

The bill does not only add to the power of the president. It also grants the Secretary of Commerce "access to all relevant data concerning [critical] networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access." This means he or she can monitor or access any data on private or public networks without regard to privacy laws.

Rockefeller made cybersecurity one of his key issues as a member of the Senate intelligence committee, which he chaired until last year. He now heads the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which will take up this bill.

"We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs—from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records—the list goes on," Rockefeller said in a statement. Snowe echoed her colleague, saying, "if we fail to take swift action, we, regrettably, risk a cyber-Katrina."

But the wide powers outlined in the Rockefeller-Snowe legislation has at least one Internet advocacy group worried. "The cybersecurity threat is real," says Leslie Harris, head of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), "but such a drastic federal intervention in private communications technology and networks could harm both security and privacy."

The bill could undermine the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), says CDT senior counsel Greg Nojeim. That law, enacted in the mid '80s, requires law enforcement seek a warrant before tapping in to data transmissions between computers.

"It's an incredibly broad authority," Nojeim says, pointing out that existing privacy laws "could fall to this authority."

Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that granting such power to the Commerce secretary could actually cause networks to be less safe. When one person can access all information on a network, "it makes it more vulnerable to intruders," Granick says. "You've basically established a path for the bad guys to skip down."

The bill's scope, she says, is "contrary to what the Constitution promises us." That's because of the impact it could have on Internet users' privacy rights: If the Commerce Department uncovers evidence of illegal activity when accessing "critical" networks, that information could be used against a potential defendant, even if the department never had the intent to find incriminating evidence. And this might violate the Constitutional protection against searches without cause.

"Once information is accessed, it can be used for whatever purpose, no matter the original reason for accessing something," Granick says. "Who's interested in this [bill]? Law enforcement and people in the security industry who want to ensure more government dollars go to them."

Nojeim, though, thinks it's possible the bill's powers could be trimmed as it moves through Congress. "We will be working with them to clarify just what is needed and how to accomplish that," he says. "We're hopeful that some of the very broad powers that the bill would confer won't be included."

Should Obama Control the Internet? | Mother Jones
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Am I dreaming or is this for real?

Jay Rockefeller, who declared last month that we would all be better off if the internet was never invented, is spouting his mouth off that the internet needs to be controlled for "security purposes".

And not only that, but two bills have already been created to do just that.

Indeed, there are political forces are behind Senate bills No. 773 and 778.

Rockefeller meant the government would be better off if the internet was never invented. If the internet was never invented, the corporate media would dominate news and information and alternative media restricted to print would have a far more difficult time counter balancing government propaganda. Government and the elite behind it are sincerely worried about the fact increasing numbers of people get their news from alternative media sources on the internet and corporate media newspapers are falling like dominoes.

Rockefeller’s bills introduced in the Senate — known as the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 — would create yet another government bureaucracy, the Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor. It would report directly to Obama. Rockefeller’s legislation would grant “the Secretary of Commerce access to all privately owned information networks deemed to be critical to the nation’s infrastructure “without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule or policy restricting such access”.

In other words, Obama would have a Cyber Czar in the Commerce Department and the power to shut down the internet.

Here is a video of Jay Rockefeller peddling this BS:

YouTube - Jay Rockefeller: Internet should have never existed
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The cybersecurity fraud now in motion will grant the Department of Commerce oversight of “critical” networks, such as banking records, would grant the government access to potentially incriminating information obtained without cause or warrant, a violation of the Constitution’s prohibition against unlawful search and seizure.

Obama’s internet agenda is an extension of his effort to impose government control over the private sector. It should be obvious what is going on here. Not if but when the next false flag attack occurs here in America, the elite will turn off the internet in order to control the flow of information. They will tell us they were forced to do this in order to deny terrorists in caves or driving around with Ron Paul bumper stickers on their cars the ability to sabotage the power grid and banks.

Senate bills No. 773 and 778 are about controlling information. The bills have nothing to do with mischievous kids with laptops in Latvia.
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No End in Sight



Mike Whitney

April 11, 2009



It’s been 21 months since two Bear Stearns hedge funds defaulted setting off a series of events which have led to the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression. No one expected the financial meltdown to hit this hard or spread this fast. The failure at Bear triggered a freeze in the secondary market where mortgage loans are repackaged into securities and sold to investors. That market is now completely paralyzed cutting off 40 percent of funding for consumer and business loans and thrusting the broader economy into a deep recession. Banks and financial institutions have been forced to curtail their off-balance sheet operations and build their reserves which have ballooned from $45 billion to nearly $700 billion in the last 6 months alone. Like millions of homeowners who have seen their home equity vanish and their retirement savings slashed in half, the banks are hunkering down hoping they can outlast the deflationary hurricane ahead.

The deteriorating economic conditions have taken their toll on consumer confidence and forced businesses to lay off employees that won’t be needed during the slowdown. The system is bursting with overcapacity. Demand is falling faster than any time since the 1930s. Inventories will have to be trimmed and budgets cut to muddle through the down-times. Foreign trade has slowed to a crawl, auto sales are down by 40 percent or more, and unemployment is rising at 650,000 per month. Policymakers have pushed through a $800 billion stimulus plan, but it won’t be nearly enough to stop the steady rise in unemployment or take up the slack in an economy where industrial output has been cut in half, new home construction has dropped to record lows, and manufacturing has fallen off a cliff. Economists warn that when governments don’t step in and provide stimulus to increase aggregate demand, consumers cut back sharply on spending and push the economy deeper into depression.

Treasury Secretary Geithner and Fed chief Bernanke have lent or committed $13 trillion, but they’ve only managed to plug a few holes. The financial system is hobbled and unable to provide sufficient credit to generate growth. Every sector has suffered cutbacks, layoffs and slimmer profits. The problems go beyond toxic assets or complex derivatives. The system is plagued with stagnation, overcapacity and redundancy. Economics professor Robert Brenner sums it up like this in an interview in the Asia Pacific Journal:

Robert Brenner: "The current crisis is more serious than the worst previous recession of the postwar period, between 1979 and 1982, and could conceivably come to rival the Great Depression, though there is no way of really knowing. Economic forecasters have underestimated how bad it is because they have over-estimated the strength of the real economy and failed to take into account the extent of its dependence upon a buildup of debt that relied on asset price bubbles. In the U.S., during the recent business cycle of the years 2001-2007, GDP growth was by far the slowest of the postwar epoch. There was no increase in private sector employment. The increase in plants and equipment was about a third of the previous, a postwar low. Real wages were basically flat. There was no increase in median family income for the first time since World War II. Economic growth was driven entirely by personal consumption and residential investment, made possible by easy credit and rising house prices. Economic performance was weak, even despite the enormous stimulus from the housing bubble and the Bush administration’s huge federal deficits. Housing by itself accounted for almost one-third of the growth of GDP and close to half of the increase in employment in the years 2001-2005. It was, therefore, to be expected that when the housing bubble burst, consumption and residential investment would fall, and the economy would plunge. " ("Overproduction not Financial Collapse is the Heart of the Crisis", Robert P. Brenner speaks with Jeong Seong-jin, Asia Pacific Journal)
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The economy is now in a downward spiral. Tightening in the credit markets has made it harder for consumers to borrow or businesses to expand. Overextended financial institutions are forced to shed assets at firesale prices to meet margin calls from the banks. Asset deflation is ongoing with no end in sight. Price declines in housing have reached 30 percent already and are now accelerating on the downside. This is the nightmare scenario; a capitulation in real estate that drags the rest of economy into a black hole. Economist Nouriel Roubini and market analyst Meredith Whitney predict that housing prices will drop another 20 percent before they hit bottom. Nearly half of all homeowners will be underwater and owe more on their mortgages than the current value of their homes. That will increase the foreclosures and push scores of banks into default. According to Merrill Lynch’s economist David Rosenberg:

"It would take over three years to achieve price stability (in housing) The problem is that prices do not begin to stabilize until we break below eight months’ supply – and they tend to deflate 3% per quarter until that happens. So as impressive as it is that the builders have taken single-family starts below underlying sales, their efforts are just not sufficient to prevent real estate prices from falling further. In fact, even if the builders were to declare a moratorium immediately, that is, taking starts to zero, demand is so weak and the unsold inventory so intractable that it would now take over three years to achieve the holy grail of price stability in the residential real estate market."

The main economic indicators all point to a long period of retrenchment ahead. The slowdown in global trade has hit Germany, Japan, and most of Asia particularly hard. The export-driven model of growth has suffered a major setback and won’t rebound for some time to come. With the US consumer unable to continue his debt-fueled spending spree, surplus countries will have to develop domestic markets for growth, but it won’t be easy. Chinese workers save 50 percent of what they earn and German workers already have a comfortable life without increasing personal consumption. Higher wages and lower interest rates can help stimulate demand, but cultural influences make it difficult to change spending habits. Meanwhile, the economy will continue to languish operating well below its optimum capacity.

Capital flows have also suddenly reversed causing turmoil in the currency markets. January’s TIC data indicates that net capital outflows for the US were negative $148 billion in January. Capital is now fleeing the country. Financial protectionism has triggered the repatriation of foreign investment causing a sharp drop in the purchase of US sovereign debt. This is from Brad Setser, economist for the CFR:

"The obvious implication of the recent downturn in total reserve holdings — and the $180 billion fall in q4 wasn’t driven by currency moves — is that the pace of growth in the world’s dollar reserves has slowed dramatically…
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The obvious implication: most of the 2009 US fiscal deficit WILL NEED TO BE FINANCED DOMESTICALLY. The Fed’s custodial data indicates central banks are still buying Treasuries, though at a somewhat slower pace than in late 2008. But their demand hasn’t kept up with issuance. (Foreign Central banks aren’t going to finance much of the 2009 US fiscal deficit; Their reserves aren’t growing anymore", Brad Setser, Council on Foreign Relations)

The United States does not have the reserves to finance it own massive deficits which will soar to $1.9 trillion by the end of 2009. The Fed will have to increase its purchases of US Treasuries and monetize the debt. Foreign holders of Treasuries and dollar-backed assets ($5 trillion overseas) will be watching carefully as Bernanke revs up the printing presses to fight the recession and meet government obligations. China, Russia, Venezuela and Iran have already called for a change in the world’s reserve currency. It won’t happen overnight, but the momentum is steadily growing.

The S&P 500 has soared 23 percent in the last four weeks, but the current bear market rally is misleading. The prospects for a quick recovery are remote at best. The fundamentals are all weak. Corporate profits are down, GDP is negative 6 percent, housing is in a shambles, and the banking system broken. The Fed has increased the money supply by 22 percent, but economic activity is at a standstill. The velocity at which money is spent is the slowest since 1987. Nothing is moving. The banks are hoarding, credit has dried up, and consumers are saving for the first time in 2 decades. The banks’ credit-conduit cannot function properly until bad assets are removed from their balance sheets. But the magnitude of the losses make it impossible for the government to purchase them outright without bankrupting the country. According to the Times Online, the IMF has increased its estimates of how much toxic mortgage-backed paper the banks are holding:

"Toxic debts racked up by banks and insurers could spiral to $4 trillion, new forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are set to suggest.

The IMF said in January that it expected the deterioration in US-originated assets to reach $2.2 trillion by the end of next year, but it is understood to be looking at raising that to $3.1 trillion in its next assessment of the global economy, due to be published on April 21. In addition, it is likely to boost that total by $900 billion for toxic assets originated in Europe and Asia.

Banks and insurers, which so far have owned up to $1.29 trillion in toxic assets, are facing increasing losses as the deepening recession takes a toll, adding to the debts racked up from sub-prime mortgages. The IMF’s new forecast, which could be revised again before the end of the month, will come as a blow to governments that have already pumped billions into the banking system."
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Since banks lend at a ratio of 10 to 1; the amount of credit cut off to the broader economy will ensure that sluggish growth well into the future. If there is a recovery, it will be weak. The Obama administration will have to increase its capital injections even though they will add to mushrooming deficits. So far, financial institutions have only written down $1 trillion or 25 percent of their losses. This means the banking system is insolvent. Eventually, Obama will have to resolve the bad banks and auction off troubled assets, even though political support is rapidly eroding. According to political analyst F. William Engdahl, most of the garbage assets are concentrated in the nation’s five biggest banks:

"Today five US banks according to data in the just-released Federal Office of Comptroller of the Currency’s Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activity, hold 96% of all US bank derivatives positions in terms of nominal values, and an eye-popping 81% of the total net credit risk exposure in event of default.

The five are, in declining order of importance: JPMorgan Chase which holds a staggering $88 trillion in derivatives (€66 trillion!). Morgan Chase is followed by Bank of America with $38 trillion in derivatives, and Citibank with $32 trillion. Number four in the derivatives sweepstakes is Goldman Sachs with a ‘mere’ $30 trillion in derivatives. Number five, the merged Wells Fargo-Wachovia Bank, drops dramatically in size to $5 trillion. Number six, Britain’s HSBC Bank USA has $3.7 trillion. ("Geithner’s ‘Dirty Little Secret’: The Entire Global Financial System is at Risk", F. William Engdahl, Global Research)

These five banking Goliaths are at the center of political power in America today. Their White House emissary, Timothy Geithner, has concocted a rescue plan–the Public-Private Investment Program–which will provide 94 percent funding from the FDIC for the purchase bad assets. The program is designed to keep asset prices artificially high while transferring the bulk of the losses to the taxpayer. The plan has been widely criticized and has even raised a few eyebrows even among usually-supportive members of the establishment like the Financial Times:

"US banks that have received government aid, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase, are considering buying toxic assets to be sold by rivals under the Treasury’s $1,000bn (£680bn) plan to revive the financial system.

The plans proved controversial, with critics charging that the government’s public-private partnership - which provide generous loans to investors - are intended to help banks sell, rather than acquire, troubled securities and loans.

Banks have three options if they want to buy toxic assets: apply to become one of four or five fund managers that will purchase troubled securities; bid for packages of bad loans; or buy into funds set up by others. The government plan does not allow banks to buy their own assets, but there is no ban on the purchase of securities and loans sold by others." (The Financial Times)

It’s a multi-billion dollar shell game with myriad opportunities for fraud. In theory, the banks could create their own off-balance sheet operations (SIVs or SPEs) and use them to purchase their own bad assets taking advantage of the government’s 94 percent low interest non recourse loans. It’s a blatant swindle and another windfall for Wall Street.
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Geithner’s plan does not fix the problems with the banks, it only delays the final outcome. The next leg-down in the recession will push many of the undercapitalized banks into receivership. Geithner’s PPIP won’t change that. As housing prices fall and foreclosures rise, the capital position of many of the banks will become untenable leading to a rash of bank failures. An article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal puts adds some historical perspective to today’s financial crisis:

"The events of the past 10 years have an eerie similarity to the period leading up to the Great Depression. Total mortgage debt outstanding increased from $9.35 billion in 1920 to $29.44 billion in 1929. In 1920, residential mortgage debt was 10.2% of household wealth; by 1929, it was 27.2% of household wealth….

The causes of the Great Depression need more study, but the claims that losses on stock-market speculation and a monetary contraction caused the decline of the banking system both seem inadequate. It appears that both the Great Depression and the current crisis had their origins in excessive consumer debt — especially mortgage debt — that was transmitted into the financial sector during a sharp downturn.

Why does one crash cause minimal damage to the financial system, so that the economy can pick itself up quickly, while another crash leaves a devastated financial sector in the wreckage? The hypothesis we propose is that a financial crisis that originates in consumer debt, especially consumer debt concentrated at the low end of the wealth and income distribution, can be transmitted quickly and forcefully into the financial system. It appears that we’re witnessing the second great consumer debt crash, the end of a massive consumption binge." (From Bubble to Depression? Steven Gjerstad and Vernon L. Smith, Wall Street Journal)

PARTY LIKE ITS 1929

Two leading economic historians, Barry Eichengreen and Kevin H. Rourke, have written an article "A Tale of Two Depressions" which has been widely circulated on the Internet. It illustrates (with graphs) how the global economy is plummeting faster now than during the 1930s.

The world economy is tracking or doing worse than during the Great Depression | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

By nearly every objective standard, the present downturn is worse than the Great Depression. Manufacturing, industrial production, foreign trade, capital flows, consumer confidence, housing, and even stocks are falling faster today than after the crash of 1929. So far, there hasn't been a wholesale collapse of the financial system, but that could change. The economy continues its downhill slide and it looks like there’s nothing to stop it from falling further still.

No End in Sight
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Obama and his administration are not telling us the cold hard facts, and they are making the problem much much worse for our country by throwing more and more of our tax dollars at it with no major beneficial results in return. Basicly in the long run they are only adding fuel to the blaze, and it seems at least to me that they are doing it deliberately. They had to have known that their methods and efforts were only going to end up increasing the problem for all of us over time. And yet, even now they seem to be doing nothing to stop themselves from continuing their behavior. This is a mark of betrayel in my opinion. The betrayel of us as individual tax payers, and the betrayel of our nation as a whole. We mine as well just stamp the word "sucker" on all of our foreheads folks, because right now we're being played as fools.
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TruthBringer;1174082 wrote: Obama and his administration are not telling us the cold hard facts, and they are making the problem much much worse for our country by throwing more and more of our tax dollars at it with no major beneficial results in return. Basicly in the long run they are only adding fuel to the blaze, and it seems at least to me that they are doing it deliberately. They have to know that their methods and efforts are only increasing the problem for all of us. And yet, even now they seem to be doing nothing to stop themselves from continuing their behavior. This is a mark of betrayel in my opinion. The betrayel of us as individual tax payers, and the betrayel of our nation as a whole. We mine as well just stamp the word "sucker" on all of our foreheads folks, because right now we're being played as a fool.
I hafta agree with you. They speak of fiscal responsibility, personal sacrifice, etc. They say this was brought about by indiscriminate spending beyond our means, then they borrow as much as China et al will give then print even more to pay it back. How is that different from using one loan to pay off another??



Obama gave a speech a little while back. I'll try to find it. He mentioned that we need to get away from this culture of maxing out our credit cards and living beyond our means, then said the way to fix it is to improve healthcare and education. WTF?? I thought the way to fix living beyond our means was to cut back on our spending and building and staying within a budget.



When's the government going to cut back on spending, Mr. President?
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Accountable;1174085 wrote: When's the government going to cut back on spending, Mr. President?


For how long will they continue? For as long as you and any other citizen will allow them to.
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Yesterday's Democrats:



"One man with courage makes a majority."

- Andrew Jackson



"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt



"The buck stops here."

- Harry S. Truman



"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

- John F. Kennedy





Today's Democrats:



"It depends what your definition of 'Sex' is?"

- Bill Clinton



"That Obama - I would like to cut his NUTS off."

- Jesse Jackson



"Those rumors are false ...... I believe in the sanctity of marriage."

- John Edwards



"I invented the Internet"

- Al Gore



"The next Person that tells me I'm not religious, I'm going to shove my rosary beads up their ASS."

- Joe Biden



"America is--is no longer, uh, what it--it, uh, could be, uh what it was once was...uh, and I say to myself, 'uh, I don't want that future, uh, uh for my children.' "

- Barrack Obama



"I have campaigned in all 57 states."

- Barrack Obama



"You don't need God anymore, you have us Democrats."

- Nancy Pelosi (said back in 2006)



"Paying taxes is voluntary."

- Sen. Harry Reid



"Bill is the greatest husband and father I know. No one is more faithful, true, and honest than he."

- Hillary Clinton (said back in 1998)





HOW LUCKY CAN WE BE TO HAVE SUCH BRILLIANT MINDS IN CHARGE OF OUR GREAT COUNTRY?!



"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."
"If America Was A Tree, The Left Would Root For The Termites...Greg Gutfeld."
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BTS;1174262 wrote: Yesterday's Democrats:



"One man with courage makes a majority."

- Andrew Jackson



"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt



"The buck stops here."

- Harry S. Truman



"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

- John F. Kennedy





Today's Democrats:



"It depends what your definition of 'Sex' is?"

- Bill Clinton



"That Obama - I would like to cut his NUTS off."

- Jesse Jackson



"Those rumors are false ...... I believe in the sanctity of marriage."

- John Edwards



"I invented the Internet"

- Al Gore



"The next Person that tells me I'm not religious, I'm going to shove my rosary beads up their ASS."

- Joe Biden



"America is--is no longer, uh, what it--it, uh, could be, uh what it was once was...uh, and I say to myself, 'uh, I don't want that future, uh, uh for my children.' "

- Barrack Obama



"I have campaigned in all 57 states."

- Barrack Obama



"You don't need God anymore, you have us Democrats."

- Nancy Pelosi (said back in 2006)



"Paying taxes is voluntary."

- Sen. Harry Reid



"Bill is the greatest husband and father I know. No one is more faithful, true, and honest than he."

- Hillary Clinton (said back in 1998)





HOW LUCKY CAN WE BE TO HAVE SUCH BRILLIANT MINDS IN CHARGE OF OUR GREAT COUNTRY?!



"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."




Bush's Bushisms were far more entertaining.

I know this is sacred ground but Reagan :eek: had quite a few too.
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"America is--is no longer, uh, what it--it, uh, could be, uh what it was once was...uh, and I say to myself, 'uh, I don't want that future, uh, uh for my children.' "

- Barrack Obama



was the teleprompter broken that day?? :p
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Housing Bubble Smackdown: Bigger Crash Ahead

Mike Whitney

Global Research

April 21, 2009

Due to the lifting of the foreclosure moratorium at the end of March, the downward slide in housing is gaining speed. The moratorium was initiated in January to give Obama’s anti-foreclosure program—which is a combination of mortgage modifications and refinancing—a chance to succeed. The goal of the plan was to keep up to 9 million struggling homeowners in their homes, but it’s clear now that the program will fall well-short of its objective.

Another 20 percent carved off the aggregate value of US housing means another $4 trillion loss to homeowners.



In March, housing prices accelerated on the downside indicating bigger adjustments dead-ahead. Trend-lines are steeper now than ever before–nearly perpendicular. Housing prices are not falling, they’re crashing and crashing hard. Now that the foreclosure moratorium has ended, Notices of Default (NOD) have spiked to an all-time high. These Notices will turn into foreclosures in 4 to 5 months time creating another cascade of foreclosures. Market analysts predict there will be 5 MILLION MORE FORECLOSURES BETWEEN NOW AND 2011. It’s a disaster bigger than Katrina. Soaring unemployment and rising foreclosures ensure that hundreds of banks and financial institutions will be forced into bankruptcy. 40 percent of delinquent homeowners have already vacated their homes. There’s nothing Obama can do to make them stay. Worse still, only 30 percent of foreclosures have been relisted for sale suggesting more hanky-panky at the banks. Where have the houses gone? Have they simply vanished?

600,000 "DISAPPEARED HOMES?"

Here’s a excerpt from the SF Gate explaining the mystery:

"Lenders nationwide are sitting on hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes that they have not resold or listed for sale, according to numerous data sources. And foreclosures, which banks unload at fire-sale prices, are a major factor driving home values down.

"We believe there are in the neighborhood of 600,000 properties nationwide that banks have repossessed but not put on the market," said Rick Sharga, vice president of RealtyTrac, which compiles nationwide statistics on foreclosures. "California probably represents 80,000 of those homes. It could be disastrous if the banks suddenly flooded the market with those distressed properties. You’d have further depreciation and carnage."

In a recent study, RealtyTrac compared its database of bank-repossessed homes to MLS listings of for-sale homes in four states, including California. It found a significant disparity - only 30 percent of the foreclosures were listed for sale in the Multiple Listing Service. The remainder is known in the industry as "shadow inventory." ("Banks aren’t Selling Many Foreclosed Homes" SF Gate)

If regulators were deployed to the banks that are keeping foreclosed homes off the market, they would probably find that the banks are actually servicing the mortgages on a monthly basis to conceal the extent of their losses. They’d also find that the banks are trying to keep housing prices artificially high to avoid heftier losses that would put them out of business. One thing is certain, 600,000 "disappeared" homes means that housing prices have a lot farther to fall and that an even larger segment of the banking system is underwater.

Here is more on the story from Mr. Mortgage "California Foreclosures About to Soar…Again"

"Are you ready to see the future? Ten’s of thousands of foreclosures are only 1-5 months away from hitting that will take total foreclosure counts back to all-time highs. This will flood an already beaten-bloody real estate market with even more supply just in time for the Spring/Summer home selling season…Foreclosure start (NOD) and Trustee Sale (NTS) notices are going out at levels not seen since mid 2008. Once an NTS goes out, the property is taken to the courthouse and auctioned within 21-45 days….The bottom line is that there is a massive wave of actual foreclosures that will hit beginning in April that can’t be stopped without a national moratorium."

JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Fannie Mae have all stepped up their foreclosure activity in recent weeks. Delinquencies have skyrocketed foreshadowing more price-slashing into the foreseeable future. According to the Wall Street Journal:

"Ronald Temple, co-director of research at Lazard Asset Management, expects home prices to fall 22% to 27% from their January levels. More than 2.1 million homes will be lost this year because borrowers can’t meet their loan payments, up from about 1.7 million in 2008." (Ruth Simon, "The housing crisis is about to take center stage once again" Wall Street Journal)

Another 20 percent carved off the aggregate value of US housing means another $4 trillion loss to homeowners. That means smaller retirement savings, less discretionary spending, and lower living standards. The next leg down in housing will be excruciating; every sector will feel the pain. Obama’s $75 billion mortgage rescue plan is a mere pittance; it won’t reduce the principle on mortgages and it won’t stop the bleeding. Policymakers have decided they’ve done enough and are refusing to help. They don’t see the tsunami looming in front of them plain as day. The housing market is going under and it’s going to drag a good part of the broader economy along with it. Stocks, too.

Housing Bubble Smackdown: Bigger Crash Ahead
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Change you have been told to believe in: A closer examination of Barack Obama’s foreign policy

Freedom of Information

April 17, 2009

“What you want in a media system is ostensible diversity that conceals actual uniformity”

- Joseph Goebbels

The election of Barack Obama has been rightly heralded across the world as a defining moment in the history of the United States. The election of the nation’s first black president is symbolic of the progress made in terms of attitudes towards racial harmony and acceptance in a country where less than fifty years previously basic rights and entitlements were routinely denied to non-white people, and a dehumanising structure incorporating segregation and separation kept people permanently excluded from any sort of meaningful political representation according to their ethnicity.

Obama’s victory has cued an outpouring of elation and hope both among the American people and abroad, which says much for the disastrous two-term presidency that preceded his victory. For many Americans and those of the younger generations in particular, the election of the Democratic candidate represents a rejection of eight years of George W. Bush’s neoconservative rule. The Bush administration was characterised by callous militarism, total disregard for international consensus on matters such as war and torture and policies that have progressively eroded civil and constitutional rights within the United States.

Bush left office with plummeting approval ratings, his hugely unpopular policies having engendered overwhelming anti-American sentiment internationally and created a climate of fear and intimidation in the United States that has undermined the preservation of freedom of speech and justice. The wars started by Bush’s administration have taken an enormous toll; an ORB survey estimates that more than a million Iraqis had died by August 2007 following the 2003 invasion of that country, in addition to the millions of displaced, and American military casualties since Bush took office now number more than 5,000, with over 100,000 soldiers estimated wounded.

Public opinion demanded an end to the wars of aggression, the torture and warrantless wiretapping. The American people cried out for an end to the no-bid contracts for Halliburton and a halt to the intimate relationship with the highest echelons of elected power enjoyed by big business. People had had enough of a government which seemed to revel in trampling on the country’s core values, and under whose rule those suspected of being enemies of the state are now guilty until proven innocent. It was in this context that Barack Obama was elected; indeed his campaign could be succinctly represented by one word: “Change”.

Those who elected Obama on anti-war grounds, however, had not read the small print. Indeed, Obama’s status as a champion of pacifism can be attributed in no small part to the stance taken by his Republican opponent during the campaign; compared to John McCain’s overt belligerence, Obama became the candidate of peace by default. Whereas McCain hypothesised that American military involvement in Iraq could continue for “a hundred years”, Obama affirmed in September 2007 that, “[t]here is no military solution in Iraq and there never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year - now.”

In July 2008, Obama said that a previous commitment and campaign pledge to complete a full withdrawal of combat troops within 16 months could be “refined” at a later date, and following his inauguration he indeed extended the timetable for the prospective pullout to between 19 and 23 months. Obama’s current position is that a “residual force” of up to 50,000 troops will be left in the country after this 23-month period has elapsed – giving rise to consternation from anti-war activists and from some within the Democratic Party. There are currently 142,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and therefore the proposed 50,000-strong residual force represents more than one third of the American forces currently serving in the country. Under an agreement signed between George W. Bush and the Iraqi government in 2008, all U.S. troops must be out of Iraq by December 31st 2011.

Aside from the somewhat confused stance with regards to the Iraq pullout, President Obama has been criticised by opponents of the ‘war on terror’ for pledging to almost double the number of U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan. His proposal to supplement the existing force of 36,000 with an additional 30,000 troops – presumably consisting in no small part of soldiers who have already served in Iraq – contradicts statements made in July 2008, in which Obama had suggested increasing the U.S. presence in Afghanistan by just 7,000. Since taking office, Obama has already dispatched an additional 17,000 U.S. troops to the country.

The newly elected President wasted no time whatsoever in continuing another policy inherited from his predecessor; attacks by unmanned drones inside Pakistani territory. In September 2008, Obama called the first attacks carried out by the government of George W. Bush inside Pakistan a “small step in the right direction.” Susan Rice, top foreign policy advisor to Obama’s campaign, said of the raids – undertaken without approval from Islamabad - that the U.S. had a right “Not to invade. Not to take over Pakistan’s sovereignty, but to take out that target as an act of self-defence”. Obama stated publicly as far back as July 2007 that he had no qualms whatsoever about using military force against “al-Qaeda” in Pakistan, even without consultation with the Pakistani government, provoking outrage in a country that has been a key strategic ally of the United States during the ‘war on terror’. Following his inauguration, Obama did not dawdle in making good on those threats.

The new President carried out the first such strike just three days into his term in office on January 23 2009, killing 22 people inside Pakistani territory and provoking huge protests in the tribal heartlands of North & South Waziristan. The total number of unauthorised U.S. raids inside Pakistani territory since August 2008 now stands at more than 30. Pakistani officials were quick to condemn these attacks as violations of their national sovereignty, pointing out that many civilians have been killed by missiles fired from unmanned drones since the raids began last summer, and emphasising that in terms of winning hearts and minds in the region such aggressions are counter productive to say the least.

Another potential sphere of conflict following Obama’s electoral success is Iran. In a statement made before the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – widely considered to be the most powerful lobby group representing the interests of any foreign nation in Washington - in March 2007, Obama called Iran “a threat to all of us” and received a standing ovation from the crowd in attendance as he said global leaders must do “whatever it takes” to stop Iran from enriching uranium – refusing to rule out a recourse to force, and called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad “reckless, irresponsible and inattentive”.

In an address to the Iranian people given in March 2009, Obama appeared to change tack somewhat, declaring, “The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right - but it comes with real responsibilities.” This apparent reference to Iran’s nuclear programme, which the Persian state claims is purely for civilian and not military purposes, reiterates the line taken by the Bush administration. Earlier in the month Barack Obama had extended U.S. sanctions against Iran that began under Bill Clinton in 1995 and had been continued throughout the presidency of George W. Bush, claiming that Iran poses a threat to U.S. “national security”. The sanctions would have expired automatically had Obama not extended them for another 12 months. In an address to the U.S. congress, the new President stated, “The actions and policies of the government of Iran are contrary to the interests of the United States in the region and pose a continuing and unusual and extraordinary threat”. Obama’s refusal to rule out using force against Iran and his decision to extend American sanctions has not gone unnoticed in Tehran. “Unlimited sanctions which still continue and have been renewed by the United States are wrong and need to be reviewed”, said President Ahmadinejad in response to Obama’s message to the Iranian people. “By fundamentally changing its behaviour America can offer us a friendly hand,” he added. A fundamental change in behaviour does not look on the cards however, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed as much when he stated, “the opportunity for success in is probably more in economic sanctions [in Iran & North Korea] than it is in diplomacy”

One area of U.S. foreign policy that the newly elected President is coming under increasing pressure to act on is the United States’ controversial relationship with Israel, particularly in the wake of evidence that the Israeli military committed war crimes during the 23-day Gaza war. Barack Obama maintained a deafening silence throughout the Israeli onslaught, which was carried out in the period between his election and his inauguration, even though the then President-elect was vocal in his condemnation of the attacks in Mumbai, and gave numerous statements regarding the global financial crisis during the same period.
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In his aforementioned address to AIPAC in March 2007, Barack Obama stated, “We must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs”. The then senator’s performance at the forum received a rave review from the Washington correspondent of Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, who remarked that Obama “sounded as strong as Clinton, as supportive as Bush, as friendly as Giuliani. At least rhetorically, Obama passed any test anyone might have wanted him to pass. So he is pro-Israel. Period.”

Israel has been the largest recipient of foreign aid from the United States since the Second World War, receiving approximately $3 billion per year in grants since 1985. In August 2007 under the government of George W. Bush, the U.S. signed an agreement pledging Israel $30 billion in armaments over the next decade. 26.3% of the money may be spent on arms produced by Israeli manufacturers, with the rest being earmarked for the purchase of weapons and military equipment from U.S. arms producers. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. Undersecretary of State who signed the deal during Bush’s presidency called it an “investment in peace”, saying that, “peace cannot be made without strength”.

Some of the appointments the new President has made since taking office have also done little to assuage those who fear there is little difference between his policies and those of his predecessor. Obama decided to retain Robert Gates as Defense Secretary, who picks up where he left off in the same position to which George W. Bush appointed him. Obama has appointed Rahm Emanuel, a former investment banker and one-time volunteer in the Israeli army, as his Chief of Staff. Emanuel is a particularly polemic figure in the context of the economic downturn because of his strong ties to Wall Street – he has been one of Congress’ top recipients of Wall Street contributions since his congressional election in 2002. Indeed, Rahm Emanuel was the top House recipient in the 2008 election cycle of contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms and the securities/investment industry – putting him at odds with Obama’s frequent criticism of Wall Street’s financial institutions, although Obama himself also took large contributions from the securities and investment industries.

Despite Obama’s affirmation that none of his appointees would be placed in positions that, “directly and substantially related to their prior employer, for two years”, the new President has selected William J. Lynn III as deputy Defense Secretary. This has provoked outrage among peace campaigners and anti-war activists, as Lynn served as head of government relations for arms manufacturer Raytheon, where he was also a top executive, prior to his selection by Obama, prompting accusations of a conflict of interest. In November 2007, Obama announced that,

“I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists and won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president.”

However just weeks into his administration that is already starting to look like dated campaign rhetoric. Other notable lobbyists appointed to high-level positions by Obama include former lobbyist for investment banking giant Goldman Sachs Mark Patterson who has been selected as Chief of Staff at the Treasury, Attorney General Eric Holder who formerly lobbied for the now bankrupt telecommunications firm Global Crossing Ltd. and Mona Sutphen, who lobbied for a number of corporate clients including Angliss International, who has been selected as deputy White House Chief of Staff.

Finally, one of the first high-profile ‘changes’ Obama made after taking office was to sign an order that many media outlets reported would close the United States’ detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba within a year and return America to “the moral high ground” in the ‘war on terror’. Such reports were premature however, and skated over the fact that Obama has signed executive orders since taking office that preserve and protect the controversial practice of rendition; secret abduction and transfer of prisoners and ‘terror suspects’ to “countries that cooperate with the United States”. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials even stated that there might be an “expansion” of the practice of rendition given that other avenues for ‘interrogation’, such as the transfer of suspects to Guantanamo Bay, have been closed by the government. Obama administration officials confirmed that the orders to shut the CIA’s network of secret prisons “do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis”, according to the LA Times. Suspects who have been held in secret prisons have given harrowing accounts in recent years of brutal torture experienced at these ‘black world’ camps in countries such as Algeria and Poland, and under executive orders signed by Obama such treatment of detainees will be allowed to continue.

It is frequently stated that Obama and his administration must be given time before judgement can be passed; that perhaps Obama is holding back his more radical policies until he is able to gain a stronger grounding that will enable him to better implement real change. However, in the face of the available information, this looks like wishful thinking. Barack Obama has unquestionably softened the rhetoric used in comparison with his predecessor, who seemed unmoved by his overwhelming unpopularity and by consistent opposition to his unethical policy decisions. Obama is a much more palatable figure than the likes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney; he is more charismatic, more charming and clearly more intelligent than the man he has replaced as president, and this has evidently endeared him to many in the U.S. and around the world. The underlying problem is that, as notorious neoconservative commentator Ann Coulter observed whilst commenting on Obama’s handling of issues of ‘national security’, “we ought to be gloating because he seems to be continuing the policies of George Bush”.

Smooth rhetoric aside, as of yet there is precious little that distinguishes President Obama from his Republican forerunner in terms of foreign policy and the rolling out of a draconian police state within the United States. It is looking increasingly unlikely with each passing day that those who were wooed by the most expensive presidential campaign in U.S. history and swept Barack Obama into the White House on an unprecedented wave of popular fervour will stand up and hold the new President to account for the flagrant violations of his campaign’s principles that are already piling up within the first hundred days of his term in office.

http://www.infowars.com/change-you-have ... gn-policy/
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What the World needs now more possibly than at any other time in history, is for good people to stand up and do something. As Edmund Berke once said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Think about that statement for a second. In order for Evil to triumph, Good people have to do nothing. The two go hand in hand. What the World, and all of the nations around the World need most right now, is REAL hope and REAL change. Not manufactured hope and change. Not hope and change promised to us from corrupt politicians. But the kind of hope and change that comes from inside of each and every single good hearted good natured person in the World.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. Edmund Burke

The bottom line is, and we all know it's true, is that we have given too much power over to our governments and our politicians. And unfortunately these governments and politicians have become intoxicated by that power. And if we want things to change, we have to dissolve some of that power.

Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to any thing but power for their relief. Edmund Burke

All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts. Edmund Burke



People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous. Edmund Burke

A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution. Edmund Burke
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U.S. Initial Jobless Claims Rose to 640,000 Last Week

Bob Willis

Bloomberg

April 23, 2009

The number of Americans filing first-time applications for unemployment insurance rose last week to 640,000 as forecast, while total benefit rolls reached a record, indicating the labor market continues to deteriorate.

Initial jobless claims increased by 27,000 in the week that ended April 18, from a revised 613,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The number of people staying on jobless-benefit rolls rose by 93,000 to 6.14 million, the 12th straight week the figure has set a record.

Job losses may continue all year even as the longest recession in the postwar era shows signs of reaching a trough. The release indicates employment cuts may come close to topping 650,000 for a record fifth straight month in April because today’s report covers the week of the monthly payroll survey.

http://www.infowars.com/us-initial-jobl ... last-week/
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CFR Corporate Members Get Lion's Share of Bailout Funds



Written by Thomas R. Eddlem



Newspapers are fixated upon $160 million in bonuses given to American International Group (AIG) executives. And it’s nice to know where the millions are going (note: the bonuses could have been cancelled had the federal government let the company go bankrupt, as officials should have). But where are the trillions in TARP, TALC and Federal Reserve Bank bailout funds going?

The man in charge of administering the bailouts is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who served as a staff member of the New York City-based Council on Foreign Relations before being hired in 2003 to head the New York City branch of the Federal Reserve Bank (Fed). As the vice chairman of the Fed’s Open Market Committee, Geithner is probably a poor choice to get the nation out of it’s current economic mess. He served as Alan Greenspan’s number two man at the Fed, so Geithner is as responsible as anyone for facilitating the severity of the real estate and financial bubble and its subsequent collapse. After all, the Fed was the driving force behind the asset bubble, inflating the bubble larger and larger through artificially low interest rates and an inflationary easy-money policy.

Under Geithner and his predecessor (former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry “Hank” Paulson), the majority of bailout funds have been awarded to high-level donors to Geithner's former employer: the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Here’s a survey of TARP bailout awards to the CFR’s corporate members (there are a total of only a little more than 200 corporate members at all levels):

Among the “Founders,” those who give $100,000 or more to the CFR, can be found:

* American Express Company: $3.389 billion TARP

* Goldman Sachs: $10 billion TARP, plus a separate Federal Reserve bailout and more than $13 billion of the allotment to AIG (below)

* Merrill Lynch: $45 billion through its corporate parent, Bank of America, which is also a CFR Premium corporate member, plus $6.8 billion of AIG’s bailout funds

“President’s Circle” CFR members ($60,000 or more) received the following bailout funds:

* American International Group (AIG): $182 billion in total TARP/TALF funds to date

* Citibank: $50 billion TARP

* Morgan Stanley: $10 billion TARP

Premium members ($30,000 or more to CFR):

* Bank of New York/Mellon Corporation: $3 billion TARP

* Freddie Mac: Sharing with Fannie Mae $1.25 trillion — that’s $1,250 billion — in mortgage securities being purchased from the Federal Reserve Bank

* Chrysler: $4 billion TARP, plus $1.5 billion TARP for Chrysler Financial

* JP Morgan Chase: $25 billion TARP

* CIT Group: $2.33 billion TARP

That’s a total of more than $1 trillion in bailout funds for CFR corporate members, easily the lion’s share of the total bailout funds awarded to date. CFR Membership seems to have its benefits, and then some.

So why is no one asking questions about why most of the funds are going to the former employers of our Treasury secretaries? Perhaps because many of the entities who should ask "why" are also CFR corporate members. Among the financial press, the CFR counts among its members Bloomberg, General Electric (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC), News Corporation (Fox, Fox Business), Standard and Poor's, ABC News, Time Warner (CNN, Time magazine, etc.), Moody's, and McGraw Hill (book publishers).

Somebody should ask the question why the same people who brought us this financial crisis are now bringing us the "cure," and why that cure necessarily involves financing former employers of the people making the decisions.

CFR Corporate Members Get Lion's Share of Bailout Funds
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Bank Lending Keeps Dropping



Oxdown Gazette

April 22, 2009



This Wall Street Journal article confirms a milestone of what Krugman, Galbraith, Stiglitz, Prins and many others have been predicting. The TWELVE TRILLION that is being floated to insolvent US banks is essentially being looted in the paper economy. As Hugh has pointed out so often, it is not getting into the real economy and it will not be there when the paltry $787 billion in stimulus runs out in 2010.

For Wall Street Journal subscribers, the article contains a very helpful spread sheet sortable by TARP recipient.

"Bank Lending Keeps Dropping: Analysis of Treasury Data Paints Starker Picture Than Official Government Snapshots"

Lending at the biggest U.S. banks has fallen more sharply than realized, despite government efforts to pump billions of dollars into the financial sector.

According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Treasury Department data, the biggest recipients of taxpayer aid made or refinanced 23% less in new loans in February, the latest available data, than in October, the month the Treasury kicked off the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The total dollar amount of new loans declined in three of the four months the government has reported this data. All but three of the 19 largest TARP recipients with comparable data originated fewer loans in February than they did at the time they received federal infusions.

On a related matter, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has done a nice piece on Elizabeth Warren’s visit to Milwaukee on April 29.

"Is rescue of banks stabilizing economy? Panel seeks local input on U.S. fiscal efforts"

[...]The panel often criticizes TARP’s lack of transparency. Its chair, Harvard University law professor Elizabeth Warren, complains that the Treasury often blocks requests for information. "It is difficult for Congress and the American public to have confidence in an initiative for which so much money is at stake and so little key information is available," Warren told a congressional committee this month.

The stop in Milwaukee, scheduled at the UWM Student Union and open to the public, will be the panel’s third hearing outside the capital. It previously held public hearings near Las Vegas and Baltimore. Both of those, however, focused on home foreclosure issues.[...]

In my opinion it is critical that Ms. Warren receive a very strong showing of support. Lacking subpoena power, public support is the only leverage she and her panel have.

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/4863
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Betrayal of the People By Wall Street, Banks, and Government



Bob Chapman

The International Forecaster

April 27, 2009

This past January, before the new president was inaugurated, in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the US and China, a conference was held by the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs and the Kissinger Institute on China. Former President Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, Brent Snowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski led the US delegation.

As the charlatan Timmy Geithner tells us, “Never before in modern times has so much of the world been simultaneously hit by a confluence of economic and financial turmoil such as we are living through.” No kidding Dick Tracy.



Mr. Brzezinski proposed at that conference that a US-China G-2 be formed. He stated a long list of international problems that China could help the US find solutions for, such as the global financial crisis, climate change, North Korean and Iranian nuclear ambitions, tension in India and Pakistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Behind Zbig’s proposals are his perpetual efforts to act to the disadvantage of Russia, so that a western power base can be built in Eastern Europe and down into the Middle East and over into West Asia. This is really what Iraq and Afghanistan are all about. He cited China’s rapid growth of the past 20 years and reminded China that it would have taken years longer without the expansion of US-China trade relations. He said there should be interdependence, yet relations still were those of unending US provocation and hostility.

On the other hand Larry Summers, Mr. Obama’s top economic advisor and director of the White House National Economic Council, has proposed a multilateral approach to deal with multilateral global economic problems that would involve a new grouping larger than the Group of Seven richest nations with advanced economies. This, of course, is in opposition to Brzezinski’s approach.

It looks like Summers has the upper hand at the moment, even though Brzezinski brought Mr. Obama to his present position.

China faces 30 million unemployed workers and inflation that will soon be close to 20% again. Demonstrations are widespread and often lead to violence and death. China, like the US and UK is taking the easy way out for the moment, but in time they will suffer hyperinflation and eventually deflationary depression. That will lead to a major challenge of Chinese Communist leadership.

Among that 30 million unemployed are bright college graduates who have been unable to find work for a year and they will be joined by 7 million more in 2009. Government expects 8% GDP growth in 2008 and 2009, and we see 6% at best. That represents a time bomb of civil disorder for the government. That would only produce six million new jobs each year leaving 20 million unemployed rural migrant laborers out of work for two years at least.

At the top of the heap are the party members that make large incomes and have access to large loans that do not really have to be repaid. The income disparity is enormous as are job opportunities. This has not gone unnoticed by the public, which displays simmering anger, particularly regarding massive corruption and illegal farmland seizures by private developers, who pay off party members to circumvent the law. Government believes things will work out fine, but we do not. One important problem is declining consumer spending that has been prevalent for ten years, which portends a slowing economy. High-income citizens invest and do not consume what they could and the poor cannot do anything other than to exist.

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s communist answer is for China to adapt a full employment objective and an income policy financed by sovereign credit in order to fund such a program. We find it of interest that he didn’t recommend using US dollars to finance such a project, but to go into debt to do so. Either that or demand payment for exports in yuan. That would, of course, make the yuan stronger and make Chinese goods for export more expensive, which would cut exports and GDP and put more people out of work.

The communists exercising power as a class of aristocracy want to maintain that position without revolution. They want peaceful rising global influence, but they have to remember how they came to power – by killing over 1 billion of their fellow citizens. The average still sees the blood on their hands. World deflationary depression will bring revolution to China and the destruction of communism; just as the Illuminati’s dream of world government will come to no good end.

The Congressional Budget Office, CBO, sees a fiscal deficit of 13% of GDP in 2009 and 10% in 2010, based on a strong recovery from stimulus and other massive spending. At that rate the ratio of government debt to GDP would be 80% by 2018. As a guideline we cite the eurozone Maastricht guideline of fiscal debt limits of 3% of GDP.

Financial history tells us fiscal and monetary profligacy brings about inflation - in today’s case, hyperinflation. Instead of purging the system and facing the music, governments worldwide are increasing money and credit at an exponential rate and lowering interest rates to zero. The outcome is guaranteed. Do not forget those sterilized ominous increases in commercial bank reserves sitting over at the Fed will be converted into faster money growth at a ratio of 10 to 1. M2 is already up 15% and M3, our original version, at about 18%. Do not think for one second that the Fed will reduce the excessive stock of money and credit. They can’t, because if they do the financial system will collapse.

It should be noted that many prime rated mortgage accounts of big hitters who haven’t made their mortgage payments for several months have not been contacted by their lenders – banks. The reason is upkeep, inventory and real estate taxes – all of which banks will have to assume if they take over the house. That means default rates are much higher than statistics show. These good loans now have a 50% default rate for subprime and ALT-A loans and prime loans will soon reach that level. We are seeing a complete looting of the system before they collapse it. Our corporate structure and are government are being run by crooks.

Regarding the stress test, it is apparent that most major banks won’t pass the test. They are insolvent and will have to be nationalized. It is no wonder the market was manipulated up to 8200 on the Dow, which was in anticipation of such news. This is a dire situation because banks will be forced to adhere to a higher fee structure. Banks will also have to set aside more funds to meet the requirements of the FDIC. The banks have no cushion for such legitimate demands. What are they going to do when the jumbo and prime loan defaults hit 50%?

Wells Fargo, as many others did committed fraud in their earnings statement. Wait until next quarter. They have 41% of their mortgages in California and 50% of their portfolio is in pay-option ARMs, which are entering a bulge period of resets and are widely considered to be the most toxic of the first lien mortgages.

As tax revenue plunges for all government entities, billions in additional debt will have to be funded. That means higher real interest rates.

The spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs is rising exponentially as unemployment gets set to exceed 20%. Who pray tell will buy all this debt? The Fed, of course, as monetization flourishes. It is a nightmare as government spending has risen 33% in just six months.

Sadly and tragically we predicted all this chapter and verse. As the charlatan Timmy Geithner tells us, “Never before in modern times has so much of the world been simultaneously hit by a confluence of economic and financial turmoil such as we are living through.” No kidding Dick Tracy. Where were you nine years ago when we predicted all this? This guy is dumber than dumb. If you want to know who is to blame you need not go any further than our Illuminist banks and Wall Street.

Treasuries continue to sit on the 200 DMA and we have auctions for 2, 5 and 7-year paper coming next week. If that line is broken they’ll be lots of selling. If the offerings are larger than expected you can anticipate heavy Fed involvement in the market.

Large-scale layoffs rose again in March: 2,933 more mass layoffs of 50 or more workers. This brought the total number of people who lost their jobs in this manner to 299,388, the highest on a record that dates to 1995.

Since the recession officially began in December 2007 (it began in February 2007), layoffs now total 31,414 since the start of the recession.

In desperation GM wants to exchange $1 billion in bonds for common stock. If they cannot pay interest on bonds or redeem them what good is common stock? This is an attempt by derivative writers to avoid paying much more in credit default swaps. They will only have to wait 39 days to see what is going to happen.

The Federal government is now spending about double what they are collecting in taxes.

Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis was told by Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson to shut up about the “material adverse change,” that took place at Merrill Lynch before their merger. This is called strong-arm tactics in the underworld. Lewis was told if he did not follow orders his board would be disbanded and the management team would be fired. That is extortion as well. Lewis should have pulled the plug on this riff raff, but he didn’t have the guts to do so – what a wimp. He shafted the shareholders.

The bottom line now is BoA will be sued by every shareholder for accepting such a losing deal forced on them by government and for accepting this deal and not disclosing material information and lying.

There will now be a run on Bank of America because the liability is unpayable.

NY State AG Andrew Como has released a letter that will lead to lawsuits against BoA, Lewis, Bernanke and Paulson for fraud. The rats are trapped in a corner and are turning on each other.

The frugality trend has just begun, which will take us back to a lifestyle much like that of the 1940s and 1950s. the vast populace hasn’t gotten it yet. People do not view the current recession as a major economic phenomenon or as a major event. They believe government won’t let it happen, they will save us. They are incapable of thinking the unthinkable.

Unemployment of almost 20% is producing a downward spiral of negative growth. 85% of Americans have no clue as to what lies ahead. Until the system is purged there will be no recovery.

It will be interesting to see how little Timmy deals with Goldman Sachs’ TARP desertion. NYSE data shows Goldman traded 5 times as much volume for themselves compared to customer and agency orders in program trading. Huge short interest stocks were the largest market gainers and the cost to borrow shares to short have soared and it is almost impossible to get stock, because illegally the brokerage houses have called in share loans on financial stocks. How’s that for rigging the market?

New Rules Let Bank Increase Capital Reserves By $4 Billion: The increase could make a critical difference in the federal government’s evaluation of the company’s ability to withstand a deepening recession, accounting experts said.

After the FASB change, which allows banks to substitute their own judgment in some cases, Wells Fargo decided market prices were too low by more than $4 billion, and it returned that amount to its capital pool.

Something was curiously absent from Wells Fargo’s triumphant first-quarter earnings material: Any statement that the bank would try and quickly pay back government capital. 49% of Wells Fargo’s $119 billion of core home-equity loans are now on properties where the combined loan-to-value ratio is over 90%, up from 43% in the fourth quarter. With risks like these, don’t expect Wells Fargo to repay the taxpayers anytime soon.

The starkly different fates of the neighboring banks show how the U.S. government’s approach to dealing with the industry’s worst crisis in a generation has shifted. The decision to allow only one of the two banks to survive has fueled criticism that regulators are picking winners and losers, without disclosing their criteria for making the calls. That, in turn, has shaken the confidence of bankers and private investors trying to decide whether to wade into the troubled sector.

With spending on unemployment insurance and other safety- net programs rising, the deficit is already at a record $956.8 billion six months into the fiscal year. To help close that gap, the Treasury Department has more than quadrupled borrowing, pushing the government deeper into debt.

“Tax receipts are just collapsing,” said Chris Ahrens, head of interest-rate strategy at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut, one of 16 primary dealers required to bid at Treasury auctions. The need to sell more debt “is a big issue in the Treasury market and it is ongoing. The surging budget deficit is the primary cause.” The government will have to sell $2.4 trillion in new bills, notes and bonds in fiscal 2009, according to UBS.

When Warren Buffett speaks, it’s usually worth paying attention. This time, the Oracle of Omaha is voicing concerns about the ability of some battered local and state governments to pay off their debts.

The WSJ notes that hedge funds are competing with end-users for homes. This boosts home sales data but it is a distortion of reality because the homes are not moving into ‘end user’ hands.

The Fed monetized another $7B (3s & 4s) on Thursday. The Treasury auction $8B of TIPS. Who’s the patsy?

Morgan Stanley notes that with 40% of S&P 500 reporting earnings, 77% of non-financial companies have met or beat earnings expectations but only 28% have met or beat revenue expectations, Cost cutting is the theme for Q1. But as we have cautioned, cost cutting will be more difficult in coming quarters.

Gold is back above $900. Though most of the western world is ignoring the Taliban’s attempt to take over Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal, some people are acutely aware of the gravity of the situation.

The Fed’s balance sheet surged to $2.2 trillion due to its monetization of $94.5B in securities for the week ended on Wednesday. The Fed bought an astounding $75B of mortgage-backed securities (MBS).

Last month West Coast real estate rose 3.6% says CNBC, as foreclosures rose 80% in California.

As American citizens bailout the financial system we see bonuses being handed out to incompetents, who caused the problems – companies like Merrill Lynch and AIG should not be giving bonuses. Politicians have expressed outrage but nothing will be done about it. We have also found out government was complicit in the hiding of the Merrill Lynch bonuses. It shows you what kind of government and financial institutions we have. At any price fellow Illuminists have to be bailed out or falsely rewarded. At AIG alone derivative traders received $165 million in taxpayer funds. It is no coincidence that Senator Obama received $103,000 from AIG – his biggest campaign contribution. Treasury’s Tiny Tim Geithner engineered all this even when he was at the NY Fed. Then there are the bonuses for Fannie and Freddie employees who lost $100 billion. these were performance bonuses and did not have to be paid – government paid them anyway. Adding frosting to the cake, 12 of the TARP recipient companies owe millions of dollars in back taxes, out of 23. We wonder how much is owed by the other 450 companies?

There is no question that Wall Street, banking and government have betrayed the American people. The question is how long will it be before Americans forcibly take their government back? All 3 branches, Executive, Judicial and Legislative are controlled from behind the scenes by Illuminists.

We are all now paying for the sellout of Congress that began years ago. The main cogs in this horrible machine were the 1999 passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which eliminated The Glass-Steagall Act and the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, both of which allowed Wall Street to run rampant.

Betrayal of the People By Wall Street, Banks, and Government
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Top Senate Democrat: bankers “own” the U.S. Congress



Sen. Dick Durbin, on a local Chicago radio station, blurted out an obvious truth about Congress that, despite being blindingly obvious, is rarely spoken: "And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place." The blunt acknowledgment that the same banks that caused the financial crisis "own" the U.S. Congress — according to one of that institution’s most powerful members — demonstrates just how extreme this institutional corruption is.

The ownership of the federal government by banks and other large corporations is effectuated in literally countless ways, none more effective than the endless and increasingly sleazy overlap between government and corporate officials. Here is just one random item announcing a couple of standard personnel moves:

Goldman Sachs' new top lobbyist was recently the top staffer to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., on the House Financial Services Committee chaired by Frank. Michael Paese, a registered lobbyist for the Securities Industries and Financial Markets Association since he left Frank's committee in September, will join Goldman as director of government affairs, a role held last year by former Tom Daschle intimate, Mark Patterson, now the chief of staff at the Treasury Department. This is not Paese's first swing through the Wall Street-Congress revolving door: he previously worked at JP Morgan and Mercantile Bankshares, and in between served as senior minority counsel at the Financial Services Committee.

Top Senate Democrat: bankers "own" the U.S. Congress - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Dick Durbin: Banks "Frankly Own The Place"
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Economy on the Ropes



MIKE WHITNEY

Counterpunch

Saturday, May 2, 2009



The economy continued to shrink in the first quarter of 2009 at an annual pace of 6.1 percent, making it the worst recession in more than 50 years. Gross Domestic Product slipped into negative territory from January to March for back-to-back quarters of negative 6 per cent growth. The news of falling GDP was preceded on Tuesday by a dismal housing report which showed that housing prices have continued their historic downward plunge with only modest slowing in the tempo of doom. Since their peak in July 2006, housing prices have dropped 31 per cent, falling 18.6 per cent in the last year alone. The rate of decline has decelerated slightly but — on their present trajectory — prices are on target to tumble 45 to 50 per cent from their 2006 highs. Another 20 per cent loss in home equity means another $4 trillion loss for US homeowners.

The news on the employment front is equally bleak. In the week ending April 25, initial jobless claims increased by another 631,000, bringing the 4-week moving average to 637,000. Ongoing unemployment claims are now at 6.27 million, an all time record.

According to the Associated Press:“Unemployment rates rose in all of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas for the third straight month in March… The Labor Department reported Wednesday all 372 metropolitan areas tracked saw jobless rates move higher last month from a year earlier.”

Consumer spending also fell more than forecast, with purchases decreasing 0.2 per cent in March and wages and benefits rising at the slowest pace in three decades.

GDP is falling, unemployment is soaring and business and residential investment are at their nadir. Even so, the stock market has continued its seven-week surge, on signs that the market may be bottoming.

Although the bad news continues to mount, Northern Trust economists Asha Bangalore and Paul Kasriel have issued a report “US Economic and Interest Rate Outlook” asserting that the worst is over and that the huge quarterly contractions to GDP should gradually improve ending in positive growth by the forth quarter of this year. Kasriel is a first-rate economist and his work should be taken seriously. Still, whether there is a uptick in business activity in the near-term or not, deeper economic problems persist. There is no doubt, however, that Fed chief Ben Bernanke’s massive injections of liquidity have had an effect on stabilizing the financial system and reviving the sluggish economy. The Fed chief has committed or loaned $13 trillion in public funds to avoid an impending disaster and to restart speculation in the equities markets.

Barron’s Randall W. Forsyth provides an original account of Bernanke’s intervention:

“The Federal Reserve has been roundly castigated in some quarters — even former high officials of the central bank — for its aggressive and unprecedented steps to combat the credit crisis. But data just released by the Bank for International Settlements suggest that, if anything, the expansionary measures taken by the Fed (and in concert with the Treasury) were dwarfed by the record contraction in the global banking system brought on by the crisis. According to the BIS, which acts as a central bank for central banks, total bank claims shrank by $1.8 trillion in the fourth quarter, or 5.4 per cent, to $31 trillion. This was the largest decline ever recorded.

“In other words, there never has been a global run on the banking system such as was seen in the final three months of 2008, which followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the near-collapse of American International Group in September. The numbers serve to confirm the extent of the tsunami the swept through the world’s financial system….

…Unlike in the 1930s, when central banks actually aided and abetted the collapse of the banking system, today’s leaders responded to the unprecedented crisis in the fourth quarter with equally unprecedented force…..

“To be sure, banks, including the I-banks, have benefited from the actions of the Fed and the Treasury. But that is separate from the question of the macroeconomic impact of their actions.

“Those who contend that the expansion of central bank balance sheets is inflationary ignore the contraction of balance sheets in the banking system, as well as the so-called shadow banking system of assets and liabilities not recorded on banks’ books. …The new BIS data bear out the justification for the Fed’s actions, notwithstanding the critics’ claims.” (”Fed Fights a Record Global Bank Run”, Randall W. Forsyth, Barrons)

While Bernanke may have avoided a global bank-run, the bleeding continues in housing, business investment, manufacturing, industrial capacity, and global trade. Every sector is falling precipitously with no end in sight. Even worse, nothing has been done to remove the trillion dollars of toxic assets from the banks’ balance sheets which is causing credit to tighten even more.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has failed to take advantage of the uptick in investor confidence to resolve the problem of underwater banks. Instead, he has stubbornly stuck with his Public Private Investment Program (PPIP) which has made less than $6 billion in transactions so far. Unless the banks are restored to health and their balance sheets repaired, a sustainable recovery will not be possible. According to Bloomberg, 6 of the 19 largest banks (which contain 75 per cent of the system’s total assets) are insufficiently capitalized.

Geithner continues to nibble at the edges, using unreliable accounting maneuvers instead of addressing the problem head-on and forcing a debt-to-equity swap that would recapitalize the banks by giving bond holders a haircut. Geithner thinks that if he stalls long enough, the rotten assets will regain their original value and the banks will be fine. He’s ignoring the fact that many of the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) are collateralized with fraudulent loans to borrowers who have no way of paying the money back. The losses need to be accounted for and written down while there’s still a glimmer of optimism in the market. The IMF believes that the losses on securitized assets may reach $4 trillion by the end of 2010 and that banks will be on the hook for roughly 61 per cent of the writedowns. Nonperforming loans at the big banks are skyrocketing. “Bank of America Corp. bad assets increasing 229 percent to $25.7 billion. Problem assets at New York-based Citigroup Inc. rose 128 percent to $27.4 billion, and San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co.’s jumped 180 percent to $12.6 billion.” (Bloomberg)

There’s no way to sweep losses of this magnitude under the rug.

In an article in the Financial Times, economics editor Martin Wolf fleshes-out the projected costs of the financial system bailout:

“These are not the only sums required. Governments have so far provided up to $8,900bn in financing for banks, via lending facilities, asset purchase schemes and guarantees. But this is less than a third of their financing needs. On the assumption that deposits grow in line with nominal GDP, the IMF estimates that the “refinancing gap” of the banks – the rollover of short-term wholesale funding, plus maturing long-term debt – will rise from $20,700bn in late 2008 to $25,600bn in late 2011, or a little over 60 per cent of their total assets. This looks like a recipe for huge shrinkage in balance sheets. Moreover, even these sums ignore the disappearance of securitized lending via the so-called “shadow banking system”, which was particularly important in the US.” (Fixing bankrupt systems is just the beginning”, Martin Wolf, Financial Times)

Fixing the banking system will be a continual drain on public resources ensuring that any rebound will be slow and any recovery weak. Even if the equities markets show signs of life, the real economy will stumble listlessly from one quarter to the next unable to make up the losses from unemployment and under-consumption. Working people will feel as if they are in the grips of another Great Depression whether GDP shows marginal gains or not. Housing prices will stay flat for a decade or more, plundered 401ks will force older workers to stay on at their jobs longer than they planned, and reduced credit-availability will force consumers to set aside more of their wages in savings accounts. 10 per cent unemployment and 10 per cent personal savings is the nightmare scenario that economists dread. The 10-10 combo will send the economy into a deflationary tailspin regardless of “green shoots” in the stock market or other fleeting intimations of hope. In a bifurcated system, where most of the public resources go to the banks and investor class, the underlying economy is bound to slip into severe inertia. The Fed has become the guarantor of investor class entitlement while the working stiff gets table-scraps.

This is from an article “Income Gaps hit record levels in 2006, new data show”:

”New data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that in 2006, the top 1 percent of households had a larger share of the nation’s after-tax income, and the middle and bottom fifths of households had smaller shares, than in any year since 1979, the first year the CBO data cover. As a result, the gaps in after-tax incomes between households in the top 1 percent and those in the middle and bottom fifths were the widest on record.

“Taken together with prior research, the new data suggest greater income concentration at the top than at any time since 1929.”

Among the CBO’s findings was that “The average after-tax income of the top 1 percent of the population more than tripled, from $337,000 to over $1.2 million. (An increase 256 per cent) while “The average after-tax income of the poorest fifth of the population rose only from $14,900 to $16,500″ (an increase of 11 per cent.)

The CBO shows that the same inequality thrives in the tax system which is blatantly regressive: “Households in the bottom fifth of the income spectrum received tax cuts averaging $20″ whereas “within the top 1 percent, those with incomes exceeding $1 million received tax cuts averaging $118,000.” (”New data show the rich-poor gap tripled between 1979 and 2006.” Center on Budget and Policy priorities, Arlen Sherman)

Growing inequality–now more flagrant than ever given the government bailouts and preferential treatment of financial institutions–is feeding an anger which is spreading across America. Timothy Geithner has become the face of a thoroughly corrupted system run by money-grubbing speculators, avaricious banksters and shyster fund managers. He has become a lightening-rod for all manner of criticism which should be directed at the inherent flaws of a system which provides obscene riches to crafty tycoons and securities fraudsters while the people who shine the rich folks’ limos or build their homes find themselves perusing the want ads the end of an unemployment line.

The real economy is sinking fast and, with it, any hope for a quick recovery. Policymakers are completely at a loss. The public knows that things are worse than they are being told.

Mike Whitney: Economy on the Ropes
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International Monetary Fund Slowly Taking Over as Global Economic Regulator and Banker



Washington’s Blog

Saturday, May 2, 2009



AP writes:

The Group of 20 countries have made the [IMF] the linchpin in their efforts to combat the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression

Analysis: IMF relevant again, will big plans work?

The Washington Post notes:

Global financial chiefs agreed yesterday to reshape the International Monetary Fund, moving to broaden its mission …

washingtonpost.com

The IMF, which in recent years had become largely an advisory body to nations in crisis, will now be charged with aggressive monitoring of the global economy. Underscoring that role, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said yesterday that Washington had consented to a rigorous IMF review of the U.S. financial system for the first time since the fund was created at the end of World War II.

(Actually, the IMF began the review last year - under the condition that the results not be released until Bush was out of office).

So the IMF appears to have become the world’s global financial cop.

The IMF will also, apparently, sell treasury-like bonds to raise money for loans it makes to ailing countries. This ties into statements some time ago by an economist that investors would eventually buy IMF bonds as a safe-haven investment, thus quickening the shift away from the dollar and American treasuries as reserve currency and safe-haven investments.

As previously noted, the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights currency may replace the dollar as world reserve currency.

Indeed, the Telegraph’s lead financial writer Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues that “the world is a step closer to a global currency, backed by a global central bank, running monetary policy for all humanity.”

Washington's Blog: International Monetary Fund Slowly Taking Over as Global Economic Regulator and Banker
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Leaked Agenda: Bilderberg Group Plans Economic Depression



Paul Joseph Watson

Prison Planet.com

Wednesday, May 6, 2009







On the eve of the 2009 Bilderberg Group conference, which is due to be held May 14-17 at the 5 star Nafsika Astir Palace Hotel in Vouliagmeni, Greece, investigative reporter Daniel Estulin has uncovered shocking details of what the elitists plan to do with the economy over the course of the next year.

The Bilderberg Group meeting is an annual confab of around 150 of the world’s most influential powerbrokers in government, industry, banking, media, academia and the military-industrial complex. The secretive group operates under “Chatham House rules,” meaning that no details of what is discussed can ever be leaked to the media, despite editors of the world’s biggest newspapers, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Financial Times, being present at the meeting.

According to Estulin’s sources, which have been proven highly accurate in the past, Bilderberg is divided on whether to put into motion, “Either a prolonged, agonizing depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline and poverty … or an intense-but-shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable economic world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency.”

The information takes on added weight when one considers the fact that Estulin’s previous economic forecasts, which were based on leaks from the same sources, have proven deadly accurate. Estulin correctly predicted the housing crash and the 2008 financial meltdown as a result of what his sources inside Bilderberg told him the elite were planning based on what was said at their 2006 meeting in Canada and the 2007 conference in Turkey.

Details of the economic agenda were contained in a pre-meeting booklet being handed out to Bilderberg members. On a more specific note, Estulin warns that Bilderberg are fostering a false picture of economic recovery, suckering investors into ploughing their money back into the stock market again only to later unleash another massive downturn which will create “massive losses and searing financial pain in the months ahead,” according to a Canada Free Press report.

Annual Elite Conclave, 58th Bilderberg Meeting to be held in Greece, May 14-17

According to Estulin, Bilderberg is assuming that U.S. unemployment figures will reach around 14% by the end of the year, almost doubling the current official figure of 8.1 per cent.

Estulin’s sources also tell him that Bilderberg will again attempt to push for the enactment of the Lisbon Treaty, a key centerpiece of the agenda to fully entrench a federal EU superstate, by forcing the Irish to vote again on the document in September/October despite having rejected it already, along with other European nations, in national referendums.

“One of their concerns is addressing and neutralizing the anti-Lisbon treaty movement called “Libertas” led by Declan Ganley. One of the Bilderberger planned moves is to use a whispering campaign in the US media suggested that Ganley is being funded by arms dealers in the US linked to the US military,” reports CFP.

Daniel Estulin, Jim Tucker, and other sources who have infiltrated Bilderberg meetings in the past have routinely provided information about the Bilderberg agenda that later plays out on the world stage, proving that the organization is not merely a “talking shop” as debunkers claim, but an integral planning forum for the new world order agenda.

Indeed, just last month Belgian viscount and current Bilderberg-chairman Étienne Davignon bragged that Bilderberg helped create the Euro by first introducing the policy agenda for a single currency in the early 1990’s. Bilderberg’s agenda for a European federal superstate and a single currency likely goes back even further.

Bilderberg-chairman: ‘Bilderberg helped create the Euro’

EUobserver / 'Jury's out' on future of Europe, EU doyen says

A BBC investigation uncovered documents from the early Bilderberg meetings which confirmed that the European Union was a brainchild of Bilderberg.

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/bbc_rad ... erberg.mp3

In spring 2002, when war hawks in the Bush administration were pushing for a summer invasion of Iraq, Bilderbergers expressed their desire for a delay and the attack was not launched until March the following year.

Bilderberg Split on Iraq War

In 2006, Estulin predicted that the U.S. housing market would be allowed to soar before the bubble was cruelly popped, which is exactly what transpired.

YouTube - The Obama Deception - Bilderberg Crash The Economy

In 2008, Estulin predicted that Bilderberg were creating the conditions for a financial calamity, which is exactly what began a few months later with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Bilderberg has routinely flexed its muscles in establishing its role as kingmaker. The organization routinely selects presidential candidates as well as running mates and prime ministers.

Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were both groomed by the secretive organization in the early 1990’s before rising to prominence.

Barack Obama’s running mate Joe Biden was selected by Bilderberg luminary James A. Johnson, and John Kerry’s 2004 running mate John Edwards was also anointed by the group after he gave a glowing speech at the conference in 2004. Bilderberg attendees even broke house rules to applaud Edwards at the end of a speech he gave to the elitists about American politics.

Bilderberg Luminary To Select Obama's Running Mate

Bilderberg 'performance' key to Edwards VP pick

The choice of Edwards was shocking to media pundits who had fully expected Dick Gephardt to secure the position. The New York Post even reported that Gephardt had been chosen and “Kerry-Gephardt” stickers were being placed on campaign vehicles before being removed when Edwards was announced as Kerry’s number two.

"Post" Tabs Wrong Horse

A 2008 Portuguese newspaper report highlighted the fact that Pedro Santana Lopes and Jose Socrates attended the 2004 meeting in Stresa, Italy before both going on to become Prime Minster of Portugal.

Several key geopolitical decisions were made at last year’s Bilderberg meeting in Washington DC, again emphasizing the fact that the confab is far more than an informal get-together.

Portuguese Newspaper Admits Bilderberg Kingmaker Power

As was reported at the time, Bilderberg were concerned that the price of oil was accelerating too fast after it hit $150 a barrel and wanted to ensure that “oil prices would probably begin to decline”. This is exactly what happened in the latter half of 2008 as oil again sunk below $50 a barrel. We were initially able to predict the rapid rise in oil prices in 2005 when oil was at $40, because Bilderberg had called for prices to rise during that year’s meeting in Munich. During the conference in Germany, Henry Kissinger told his fellow attendees that the elite had resolved to ensure that oil prices would double over the course of the next 12-24 months, which is exactly what happened.

Secret Bilderberg Agenda To Microchip Americans

Also at last year’s meeting, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice formalized plans to sign a treaty on installing a U.S. radar base in the Czech Republic with Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg.

Rice Formalized Missile Defense Policy At Bilderberg

Rice was joined at the meeting by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who reportedly encouraged EU globalists to get behind an attack on Iran. Low and behold, days later the EU threatened Iran with sanctions if it did not suspend its nuclear enrichment program.

Iran Threatened After Gates Bilderberg Visit

There was also widespread speculation that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s “secret meeting,” which was accomplished with the aid of cloak and dagger tactics like locking journalists on an airplane to keep them from tracking the two down, took place at the Bilderberg meeting in DC.

Hillary & Obama In Secret Bilderberg Rendezvous

It remains to be seen what kind of mainstream media press coverage Bilderberg 2009 will be afforded because, despite the proven track record of Bilderberg having a central role in influencing subsequent geopolitical and financial world events, and despite last year’s meeting being held in Washington DC, the U.S. corporate media oversaw an almost universal blackout of reporting on the conference, its attendees, and what was discussed.

U.S. Corporate Media Blackout On Bilderberg Meeting

Once again, it will be left to the alternative media to fill the vacuum and educate the people on exactly what the globalists have planned for us over the coming year.

Leaked Agenda: Bilderberg Group Plans Economic Depression
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Local community responds to the Obama Deception screening and street action

We Are Change Ohio

May 13, 2009

On May 9th 2009 We Are Change Ohio hosted a screening of the Obama Deception in Dayton Ohio at the Neon movie theater. Many fresh faces showed up to the event and there was several interviews of first time viewers of the film to get their take on it. All in all the event went well and they were able to educate many local citizens of the city.

Local community responds to the Obama Deception screening and street action
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U.S. Economy: Retail Sales Unexpectedly Fall for Second Month



Courtney Schlisserman

Bloomberg

May 13, 2009

Retail sales in the U.S. unexpectedly dropped in April for a second month, indicating that rising unemployment is prompting consumers to conserve cash.

The 0.4 percent decrease followed a revised 1.3 percent drop in March that was larger than previously estimated, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Other reports showed companies continued to cut stockpiles as demand slowed, and climbing oil costs pushed up prices for imported goods.

Fewer jobs, falling home values and the biggest loss of household wealth on record may limit consumers’ ability to spend for years, analysts said. Stocks dropped for a third day as the reports indicated any recovery from the worst recession in at least half a century is likely to be subdued.

“It looks like consumers are losing momentum heading into the second quarter and that is a very worrisome development,” said Carl Riccadonna, an economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York. “They have very significant headwinds and number one among them is that the labor market is far from turning the corner.”

U.S. Economy: Retail Sales Unexpectedly Fell in April (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
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Yep, I have watched it. Have you seen 'Under Siege' yet?



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~Quoth the Raven, Nevermore!~
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Raven;1188457 wrote: Yep, I have watched it. Have you seen 'Under Siege' yet?



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Not yet Raven. Was it good?
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