GoldfingerChronicles

Enough Is Enough

2012-01-25T13:33:00.001-10:00

The headline in WaPo, (Washington Post), Google announces privacy changes across products; users can’t opt out, http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-tracks-consumers-across-products-users-cant-opt-out/2012/01/24/gIQArgJHOQ_story.html?wpisrc=al_comboNE_b, I’ve had enough.

Google’s decision to begin combining data across ALL of its websites “to stitch together a fuller portrait of users”, who “won’t be able to opt out of the changes”, is the final straw.

So, I’ve moved goldfingerchronicles to WordPress. As soon as possible, I’ll be finding an alternative for YouTube/GeneKernan, as well as replacing my “Android” phone (though my number will remain the same).

After February 28, 2012, you'll have to find this blog at http://goldfingerchronicles.wordpress.com

Boycott Hollywood?

2012-01-21T11:27:00.002-10:00

Kudos to Karl Denninger and Market Ticker:

MPAA Publicly Threatens Politicians

Perhaps it's time for Americans to boycott the movies....

Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd (recall that Chris Dodd got a sweet, below-market mortgage rate for supporting the banksters that stole the economy - Blogmaster) really does not get what's happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News to explicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they'd better pass Hollywood's favorite legislation... or else:
Chris Dodd wrote..
"Those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,"
This certainly follows what many people assumed was happening, and fits with the anonymous comments from studio execs that they will stop contributing to Obama, but to be so blatant about this kind of corruption and money-for-laws politics in the face of an extremely angry public is a really, really, really tone deaf response from Dodd.

Well I have a solution to that: Americans need to boycott the MPAA.

That, my friends, means no more movies.

Look, I own a lot of DVDs. Like over 300 of them. I bought them all. I like movies in the theater too.

But I do not like this sort of threat, especially when what is being demanded is ineffective and does nothing to address the real issues when it comes to intellectual property and piracy.

The real problems are resolvable through trade sanctions -- and short of military action, only through that path. You cannot force another nation to adopt your laws, but you can prevent them from having free and unfettered access to your markets if they are going to behave, and allow their citizens to behave, in ways that you find offensive.

The corruption between "business" and Washington DC has always been present but this particular display is especially brazen, coming from a lobbyist and spokesperson who's last gig was screwing the American public when the banks ripped everyone off and then went and begged DC for a bailout.

To Doddering Dodd and the MPAA: That sound you hear is my wallet snapping shut.

Does "Gordon Gekko" Own Ass. Press?

2012-01-20T11:28:00.003-10:00

In a "news" story called "Republicans stand together to oppose piracy law", an unidentified ASSOCIATED PRESS "journalist" (if you can't figure out why he's unidentified, I can't explain) writes:

"Standing in near unison, the four remaining contenders seeking the Republican presidential nomination are condemning a proposed anti-online piracy law that its critics say is overly aggressive."

OK so far. The next paragraph begins "Mitt Romney says".

Paragraph 3 starts with "Newt Gingrich says...".

The fourth paragraph opens "Rick Santorum says..." (and we all know what "santorum" means).

But the last paragraph...WAIT!...That WAS the last paragraph.

Can YOU figure it out?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GOP_DEBATE_INTERNET?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-01-19-21-28-15

Speaking of Criminals...

2012-01-19T10:12:00.002-10:00

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

"Chase"d Out Of Court

2012-01-19T08:27:00.002-10:00

"Robo-signing, or the high-volume production of signed legal documents, has been a key element of the governmental and media foreclosure reviews. Chase's current pullback raises at least the possibility that at least some banks may have documentation problems in other business lines."

Full article at http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/177_7/jpmorgan-chase-consumer-debt-collection-1045606-1.html?zkPrintable=1&nopagination=1

About That Last Post...

2012-01-15T12:54:00.002-10:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLWnB9FGmWE&feature=player_embedded

The REAL Gordon Gekko?

2012-01-13T12:00:00.003-10:00

It was 1987. The height of the "me generation". Hippies and Yippies had become "Yuppies". Young. Upwardly mobile. Professional. The epitome was featured in the very popular movie, Wall Street. His name was Gordon Gekko.

Portrayed by actor Michael Douglas, Gekko was a "corporate raider". He would buy struggling companies, strip off and sell the assets, and then dump what little was left. Including employees.

In a tasty bit of irony, Douglas (one of my favorite actors) later portrayed "President Andrew Shepherd" in "The American President".

And in a perfect example of life imitating art, a real-life Gordon Gekko is running for Andrew Shepherd's real-life job, under the name Mitt Romney.

Gekko and Shepherd are fictional characters. The son of the late George Romney, Mexico-born former adversary of Barry Goldwater (and himself a candidate in 1968), Mitt Romney is all too real. And so is his corporate raider company, Bain Capital.

His single largest source of contributions (like that of the current occupier of 1600 Pennsy' Avenue) is Goldman Sachs. You might remember them. A former CEO of Goldman Sachs was Secretary of Treasury in 1998 when mortgage qualifications were "eased". Another former Gold Sachs CEO held that Office 10 years later when the inevitable, predictable, and predicted result of that "easing" came to roost upon all of us, in the form of a $700,000,000.00 "bailout".

Any bets on what happens if Gordon Gekko gets Andrew Shepherd's job?

Lieberman's Bill to Kick Off Internment Camps -- Puppet Masters -- Sott.net

2012-01-13T07:36:00.001-10:00

I was going to thank Joe Quinn for actually scribing "USA PATRIOT Act" correctly. It's particularly irritating to see those who anoint themselves "patriot", but either don't know, or deliberately misrepresent this attack - yes, ATTACK - on fundamental American principles. Lieberman's Bill to Kick Off Internment Camps -- Puppet Masters -- Sott.net: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/240118-Lieberman-s-Bill-to-Kick-Off-Internment-Camps#

I've often chided people when they say or write "Patriot Act", or even "USA Patriot Act". The level of ignorance that allows anyone to believe, even for a moment, that either of these mis-citations of the most Anti-American act of its time accurately describes this most-unpatriotic, ready-made act of treason boggles the mind. No patriotism exists, or was even contemplated, in "USA PATRIOT Act".

Quinn goes one better in laying out exactly how the Repugnants and Demonics came up with "USA PATRIOT Act":

"...the act's authors went to ridiculous lengths to make sure that the name of the act spelled out 'USA Patriot'. The name is a ten-letter acronym that stands for 'Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism'. 'Appropriate tools required'? Surely tools that are required are by definition appropriate? And how do you 'intercept terrorism'? And is merely 'obstructing terrorism' really enough? Aren't we meant to be defeating it, or at least smoking it out of its cave and rat and spider holes, disheveled beard and all."

Read Quinn's article. It's long, and might require some backtracking (your mind will rebel over what it's reading), but the FREEDOM of current and future generations depends, in part, on the knowlwdge Quinn imparts.

About that "Man Behind the Curtain" Thing...

2012-01-12T08:00:00.002-10:00

As sickening as it is, sometimes I just have to laugh. This..."news item"... touting the "inevitable" GSP candidate (hint: "Goldman Sachs Party), once again almost completely ignores Ron Paul! There's Goldman Sachs' puppet, and "the three musketeers". "Ron Paul, who finished second", is no more than an afterthought in this "fair and balanced" report.

Right.

"Faux News. As fair and balanced as Enron's books"

New Chief of Staff: Former Hedge Fund Exec. at Citigroup, Made Money Off Mortgage Defaults | The Weekly Standard

2012-01-11T10:13:00.000-10:00

What a suprise!

Obama's first chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once sat on the board of troubled federal mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Bill Daley, the president's chief of staff whose departure was announced today, was previously a top executive at financial firm J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. So of course there should be little surprise that Obama's latest chief of staff, announced today by the president himself, also has deep ties to the financial industry himself.

New Chief of Staff: Former Hedge Fund Exec. at Citigroup, Made Money Off Mortgage Defaults | The Weekly Standard

BREAKING NEWS!!! Google Masters Time Travel

2012-01-10T14:11:00.003-10:00

It appears that Google bought Diebold.

I don't mean stock in Diebold. I mean bought Diebold!

How else could Google know, the morning before the New Hampshire Primary, who won?

http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/apparent-google-glitch-shows-new-hampshire-primary-results-20120110?mrefid=related2.

WAIT! I've got this one!

Maybe Diebold bought Google. . .

Kudos to National Journal.

Stunned Admiration

2011-10-20T02:04:00.005-10:00

Take a close look at the image. This was published in 1912, one year before before the Federal Rerserve came into existence.

Now read these headlines from yesterday.

Bloomberg's Headline:

"Bank of America is dumping derivatives onto a subsidiary which is insured by the government – i.e. taxpayers."

Washington's Blog calls it:

"The Federal Reserve and Bank of America Initiate a Coup to Dump Billions of Dollars of Losses on the American Taxpayer"

Get the picture?

(whores, forgive me)

This Blog's Name and Subtitle Verified!!!!

2011-09-28T08:10:00.004-10:00

Headline: "GOLDFINGER RULES THE WORLD"

OK, so I paraphrased.

And no, it wasn't the headline at http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/bbc-victim-hoax-no-yes-men-154724196.htm that I paraphrased. I paraphrased the headline that got me there.
See: http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/News/097051-2011-09-28-governments-dont-rule-the-world-goldman-sachs-rules-the-world.htm

But what's at Yahoo is what's important. It's what Market Trader Alessio Rastani said that's important, although his comment at the 2:37 -2:41.

Anyone with a brain, and 2 active braincells, knows this to be true.

(Again, my apologies to whores, everywhere)

NY AG Schneiderman Under Attack

2011-08-24T15:37:00.002-10:00

Mr. Schneiderman & his staff, who are aggressively investigating fraudclosure and felony land record fraud, are being attacked and need our support.

Schneiderman wrote: "Our ongoing investigation into the housing crisis cannot be shut down to accommodate efforts to settle quickly and give banks and others broad immunity from further legal action. If you have any thoughts or concerns about this critical issue, please contact me at 1-800-771-7755, or send a message via Facebook or Twitter."

Here's how:

Phone
1-800-771-7755

Webmail
http://www.ag.ny.gov/online_forms/email_ag.jsp

Press Office
NYAG.Pressoffice@oag.state.ny.us

Twitter
http://twitter.com/#!/AGSchneiderman

Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/AGSchneiderman?sk=wall

(as for the tags, my apologies to whores everywhere)

Another Goldfinger Infiltration

2011-08-20T08:09:00.002-10:00

Reading yesterday (thanx, Denninger) that (R)epugnant California "representative"(?) Darrel Issa hired a Goldfinger infiltrator (in this instance, a "former" vice president of Goldman Sachs' commodity compliance group) to work for him on the House Oversight Committee, I wasn't really surprised. Goldfinger infiltrated the Executive Department a long time ago, putting its people (I think they're technically still people) in Treasury, and State, and having them run the Commodities Futures Trading Corporation, and the S.E.C.

I wasn't even surprised to find out that the same Goldfingerer left the S.E.C. Office of Enforcement in 2005 to work for Goldman Sachs (Goldfinger), lobbying his former colleagues on Goldfinger's behalf.

It's also not surprising that he went to work(?) as an economist at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, putting his law degree to good use (any guesses what law school he graduated from?). Who doesn't know that Goldfinger lawyers make the best economists?

No, none of that is surprising. The only surprising thing is that this Goldfingerer actually changed his name. Peter Simonyi took on his mother’s maiden name shortly after leaving Goldman Sachs in 2008, and became Peter Haller.

Now, he's "helping" work on stopping regulations on Goldfinger.

And you're not gonna do a f**king thing about it, are you?

Banned Commercial

2011-08-15T10:15:00.002-10:00

There's a reason you haven't seen this on your television.

Can you guess what that reason is?

Felonious Munk’s Wild Anti-Obama Rant

2011-08-11T09:22:00.002-10:00

WARNING: LIKELY OFFENSIVE (but remarkably appropriate) PROFANITY (but too "on point" to pass up!

16,000,000,000,000.00

2011-08-06T19:13:00.003-10:00

(Context provided by yesterday's post. Thanx to Larry Becraft)

The first ever GAO audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months. due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. While Americans were struggling to find jobs, the Federal Reserve had never even informed the United States Congress, let alone the rest of us, that $16 TRILLION (that's what 12 "0"'s means) dollars THAT DIDN'T EVEN EXIST was "spent" by the Federal Reserve between December 2007 and June 2010 to secretly bail out many of the world's megabanks, supercorporations, and governments.

The list of banks, corporations, and governments receiving the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 of the GAO Audit and follows:

Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion* ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)

The results were posted on Senator Bernie Sanders' webpage earlier this morning.

http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3

To place $16,000,000,000,000.00 (16 trillion) into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14,120,000,000,000.00 (14.12 trillion). The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is only $14,500,000,000,000.00 (14.5 trillion).

The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is only $3,500,000,000,000.00 (3.5 trillion). Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1,500,000,000,000.00 (trillion) deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.

Had enough, yet?

And What are YOU Gonna Do About It?

2011-07-16T13:48:00.003-10:00

Submitted to Zerohedge by George Washington on 07/16/2011 14:36 -0400

(The reason I decided to republish this now will be obvious from the next post)

"They’re Going to Cut Back the Bone and They’re Going to Keep the Fat, Basically. They’re Going to Try to Panic the Population into Acquiescing ... While Making Sure that They Pay the Pentagon, They Pay the Foreign Aid, They Pay Wall Street"
I pointed out last year that Ronald Reagan's budget director said that the tax cuts for the wealthy were "the biggest fiscal mistake in history".

I noted yesterday:(remember, this was July 16th)

Plugging the major holes in our economy is more important than either cutting spending or raising taxes.

And stopping bailouts and giveaways for the top .1% of the richest elite (which weaken rather than strengthen the economy, as shown here, here and here) and slashing spending on unnecessary imperial wars (which reduce rather than increase our national security, as demonstrated here and here) is what the budget really needs.

As I wrote last year:
Why aren't our government "leaders" talking about slashing the military-industrial complex, which is ruining our economy with unnecessary imperial adventures?

And why aren't any of our leaders talking about stopping the permanent bailouts for the financial giants who got us into this mess? And see this.

And why aren't they taking away the power to create credit from the private banking giants - which is costing our economy trillions of dollars (and is leading to a decrease in loans to the little guy) - and give it back to the states?
If we did these things, we wouldn't have to raise taxes or cut core services to the American people.
I pointed out the next month:
If there's any shortfall, all we have to do is claw back the ill-gotten gains from the fraudsters working for the too big to fails whose unlawful actions got us into this mess in the first place. See this, this, this, this and this.

Dennis Kucinich wrote in a post entitled "Debt Political Theater Diverts Attention While Americans’ Wealth is Stolen":

The rancorous debate over the debt belies a fundamental truth of our economy -- that it is run for the few at the expense of the many, that our entire government has been turned into a machine which takes the wealth of a mass of Americans and accelerates it into the hands of the few.

***

We have to realize what this country's economy has become. Our monetary policy, through the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, privatized the money supply, gathers the wealth, puts it in the hands of the few while the Federal Reserve can create money out of nothing, give it to banks to park at the Fed while our small businesses are starving for capital.

Mark my words -- Wall Street cashes in whether we have a default or not. And the same type of thinking that created billions in bailouts for Wall Street and more than $1 trillion in giveaways by the Federal Reserve today leaves 26 million Americans either underemployed or unemployed. And nine out of ten Americans over the age of 65 are facing cuts in their Social Security in order to pay for a debt which grew from tax cuts for the rich and for endless wars.

There is a massive transfer of wealth from the American people to the hands of a few and it's going on right now as America’s eyes are misdirected to the political theater of these histrionic debt negotiations, threats to shut down the government, and willingness to make the most Americans pay dearly for debts they did not create.

These are symptoms of a government which has lost its way, and they are a challenge to the legitimacy of the two-party system.

And Michael Hudson - who is as far from a knee-jerk conservative as possible - hits the same theme with both barrels blazing:

[Interviewer]: So, what do you think? Good versus evil. We’re playing out the debt struggle and the debt ceiling issue. And if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we’ll be in the apocalypse. What do you make of it all?

HUDSON: I think it’s evil working with evil.... If you have to choose between paying Social Security and Wall Street, pay our clients, Wall Street.

***

What’s inefficient? Paying for people on Medicaid. Got to cut it. What’s inefficient? Medicare. Got to cut it. What’s inefficient? Paying Social Security. What is efficient? Giving $13 trillion to Wall Street for a bailout. Now, how on earth can the administration say, in the last three years we have given $13 trillion to Wall Street, but then, in between 2040 and 2075, we may lose $1 trillion, no money for the people?

***

It’s not about the debt ceiling. It’s about making an agreement now under an emergency conditions. You remember what Obama’s staff aide Rahm Emanuel said. He said a crisis is too important to waste. They’re using this crisis as a chance to ram through a financial policy, an anti-Medicare, anti-Medicaid, anti—selling out Social Security that they could never do under the normal course of things.

***

They’re not going to cut back the war in Libya.

***

They’re going to have to decide what to cut back. So they’re going to cut back the bone and they’re going to keep the fat, basically. They’re going to say–they’re going to try to panic the population into acquiescing in a Democratic Party sellout by cutting back payments to the people–Social Security, Medicare–while making sure that they pay the Pentagon, they pay the foreign aid, they pay Wall Street.

[Interviewer]: Yeah. But what–I hear you. But what I’m–I’m saying, what could be an alternative policy? For example, don’t raise the debt ceiling. Number two, raise taxes on the wealthy. Number three, cut back military spending. I mean, there are ways to do this without having to borrow more money, aren’t there?

HUDSON: Of course.

***

Of course they could cut back the fat. Of course what they should do is change the tax system. Of course they should get rid of the Bush tax cuts. And the one good thing in President Obama’s speech two days ago was he used the term spending on tax cuts. So that’s not the same thing as raising taxes. He said just cut spending by cutting spending on tax cuts for the financial sector, for the speculators who count all of their income that they get, billions of income, as capital gains, taxed at 15 percent instead of normal income at 35 percent. Let’s get rid of the tax loopholes that favor Wall Street.

***

Mr. Obama has always known who has been contributing primarily to his political campaigns. We know where his loyalties lie now. And, basically, he promised change because that’s what people would vote for, and he delivered the change constituency to the campaign contributors...

Ready for it?

How Blessed Is the State That Thus Destroyeth the Car

2011-06-30T11:04:00.002-10:00

Published in the Mises Daily: Thursday, June 30, 2011 by Jeffrey A. Tucker. Republished with permission.

The modern state was born and built with the idea that it would bring material progress to the world.

How things have changed! Now the same state works to reverse progress in every possible way and even brag about the glorious things it is doing to make our lives more miserable.

It even has the chutzpah to tout that it alone can beat back our constant struggle to have a better life, and it expects us to thank our masters for this — and pay for the privilege.

These are thoughts that hit me as I read the New York Times report "Across Europe, Irking Drivers is Urban Policy." Yes, that's right: policies are not trying to make driving easier and less of a problem but harder and more of a problem so that people will abandon their cars and hoof it just like life before the invention of the wheel.

Now, truly, the ability to hop into a driver-directed steel contraption that can take us wherever we want to go at 200 miles per hour has to count as one of the great accomplishments in the history of mankind. The unleashing of human volition! For 100 years now, wherever we find progress, joy, and human fulfillment, we find the car. The car has very nearly conquered the great problems presented by the existence of scarcity of time and space, and made us able to achieve essential tasks. We work, live, shop, and travel where we want and get to each place in a fraction of the time it took our ancestors.

So what does the state do? It tries to stop it all. European governments are "creating urban environments openly hostile to cars," says the Times. "The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation."

Are European leaders even aware that they are merely reviving Chairman Mao's transportation plan? When he came to power in 1950, he declared China to be zixingche de guo, the Kingdom of Bicycles. The bike was one of three items that every citizen must own (the other two: a watch and a sewing machine). It was supposed to be a great symbol of equality and of the citizen's willingness to use their own muscle power to work for the triumph of socialism.

And so it is all over Europe, where streets are being closed, parking lots torn up, and fuel taxed to the point where it is unaffordable. In many places, speed limits are being reduced to a walking pace, and, in others, cars are being banned completely. The idea is not to build the great socialist utopia but rather to "save the environment" — and to heck with the actual well-being of human beings who pay the bills that make these states live and thrive.

And all of this for the environment? That's not the only reason. They also say that the roads are too narrow to handle high car traffic, since most date from before the car age. That's strange: city roads in the United States are also pre-car but Americans, like entrepreneur Brigham Young who built Salt Lake, thought to make them wide enough for covered wagons to make U-turns. Mostly, the real reason is that "urban planners" just don't like them and so they "generally agree that a rise in car commuting is not desirable for cities anywhere."

"These planners are secretly horrified by the sight of millions of people living well and doing their own thing."

The problem with "urban planners" — as Jane Jacobs saw — is that they do not think of people as individuals with interests who act according to their own plans with a resulting spontaneous order that makes cities great. Instead, they want to plan with a bird's-eye view of the place and force everyone to comply whether it makes people miserable or not. In the worst case, these planners are secretly horrified by the sight of millions of people living well and doing their own thing, and, like Chairman Mao, cry out for what they believe should be a more orderly system.

Armed with the power of the contemporary state — which is destroying prosperity and civilizational advance because, as it turns out, doing this is the only thing it is good at — the urban planners are accomplishing their goal, but to what end? Is reversing a century of progress a good way to make life better? The planners think so, because they have a different idea of what life should be like. They want the city to be more like an ant farm than a place for choosing, dreaming, and accomplishing. The static existence of workers and peasants under communism seems much more to their liking.

The NYT story suggests that it is very different in the United States, where the planners think cars are just fine. But this is not so. The war on the car dates back a half century. Not even the interstate highways were really built for cars. They were built for military trucks to roll around the country and control it in the event of an invasion or an uprising. The car has never really had friends in government. The car is a product of private markets, used by individuals to accomplish individual goals.

In talking about my new book, It's a Jetsons World, I've mentioned that if government didn't own the streets and so heavily regulate transportation innovation, we might already have flying cars by now. The claim can't be proven or disproven, but that's the way it is in a world lacking in verifiable claims about what might exist in the absence of government controls and punishments on innovation and production.

But think of how little progress is actually taking place even where the car is mildly tolerated.

A new Honda Accord zipped by me the other day, and I confused it for a Lexus, and a new Lexus zipped by that looked pretty much like my 1995 Accord, and then it occurred to me: is the car really improving or are we cycling through body styles the way we cycle through tie widths? That's what companies do in sectors in which consumers want only innovation in style but not structure (men's clothing). But that's not true in transportation. Yes, there are new safety features and cool built-ins in the new models. But why do the "concept cars" of the main carmakers never make it to the roads? And why do some people claim that the car has never been better than it was some 50 years ago? What innovations are we missing out on?

A vast central plan really does govern the production of cars for sale in the United States. There are Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, regulations on everything from tires to air conditioning, federal mandates on safety and engine size, and many thousands of other issues. There's not a part of the car that isn't subject to something or other, all the way down to the exact shape of the error lights in the dashboard. How much room for innovation really remains?

"They want regress and they are giving it to us good and hard."

It is as Bastiat said of the mixed economy. We will never know for sure what innovations never became a living part of our economic world because regulations hamstrung the innovators. We will never know for sure what kind of material blessings might have come our way had it not been for the daily looting of capital and creativity that takes place under the rule of Leviathan.

The government has always been the enemy of progress, even when it claimed to be its friend. In more recent history, we are hearing increasingly honest statements from the people in charge. They want regress and they are giving it to us good and hard. If this keeps up, the only land with real progress will be the one created in the digital universe, where the planners are either too slow or too stupid to regulate us back to the Stone Age they envision as their ideal.

You can subscribe to future articles by Jeffrey A. Tucker via the Mises.org RSS feed.
Read the article in its full glory at http://mises.org/daily/5421/How-Blessed-Is-the-State-That-Thus-Destroyeth-the-Car

Get the Guestroom Ready

2011-06-03T15:04:00.006-10:00

Another one I wish I'd written...from alt-market:

An Agent Of The King In Every Home

Friday, 03 June 2011 02:44 Brandon Smith

The legal concept of citizen privacy from government intrusion is unfortunately a very new one in the long strides of human history. The idea that government can be limited, or restricted in its powers by the people, and that certain realms of life can and should be off-limits to the prying eyes of bureaucracy, is rarely applied in any culture of any era. This is because most civilizations have been founded and ruled upon the principles of military dominance. There was no separation between the government and the armies it fashioned; the government WAS the military. That is to say, martial law was a way of life for society, privacy was a foolish dream, and daring to contest the fact usually led to one’s death.

The Magna Carta of 1215, which King John was essentially forced to support, established a foundation for civil liberties which would then be fought over for the next several centuries. Beginning in 1627, and the ‘Petition of Right’ in Britain, common citizens began demanding a separation between military and civilian life, as well as the dismantling of standing armies which at that time were being used by the corrupt oligarchy as a means to subdue the populace. The aristocracy called it “royal prerogative”. The masses called it tyranny. However, as we all know, such breaks in the suffocation of despotism are few and fleeting. Fractures in the Petition of Right were frequent, and the aptitude of government to make war (even when there is no call for war) became the common excuse for the rulership to degrade civilian legal protections and hurtle them back into the dark ages, where property is a novelty that the authorities violate at their leisure.

During the years leading up to the American Revolution, the British attempted to stifle the growing independent nature of the colonies by issuing laws such as the ‘Writs of Assistance’, bypassing rights to privacy and allowing officials to search homes and businesses at will without probable cause, supposedly in the name of “capturing smugglers”. Not fully satisfied with this intrusion on the lives of the colonists, King George and his cronies issued the ‘Quartering Acts’, which required all colonists to welcome soldiers sent to subjugate them into their homes and to their dinner tables. According to law, early Americans were not only forced to allow warrant-less searches of their homes, they also had to show hospitality to the goons sent to dirty their doorsteps!

The purpose of these actions by governments is to assert their control over a population. THAT – IS – ALL. Rationalizations are always made; usually in the name of “protecting the public from harm”, but the real name of the game is imperialism, and fear. When the establishment violates the line of citizen privacy, and gives its agents the legal free reign to enter your home at will, the message they are trying to send is: “Your property is our property. Your life is our business. The law does not protect you. The law is our weapon.” In other words: Resistance is futile.

The Revolutionary War and the U.S. Constitution should have been the final word on the matter of limited government and the inherent rights of individuals. But, the Founding Fathers only thwarted the elites for a time, and as long as such powerful minorities of men exist, there will always be new methods of tyranny, and new battles to be endured. Some may respond skeptically, claiming that our society today is a far cry from the age of British oppression and soldiers storming our living rooms and our pantries. I would have to disagree of course, after I stopped cringing at their ignorance.

The 4^th Amendment A Fond Memory…

Last month in a 3-2 decision that has shocked the independent media community but gone mostly unreported in the mainstream, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that citizens have no right to block an officer’s entry into their home, even if the officer does not have a warrant. The officer also does not have to give any clear indication as to why he wishes to enter your home, meaning he can enter without cause. Justice Steven David, one of the supporting judges stated:

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence…”

“We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”

http://www.fox59.com/news/wxin-indiana-supreme-court-critics-argue-landmark-indiana-ruling-violates-right-to-privacy-20110517,0,5143977.story

Keep in mind, this is the same Indiana court that decided in a previous case that an officer serving a warrant is not required to knock (make his presence known) before entering your home if he feels circumstances require it. So, to clarify; if an officer wishes to walk into your house, for any reason, he may do so, without a warrant, and without even knocking. You cannot block his path. You cannot close your door and lock it. You cannot kick his ass. You can’t even discuss the matter calmly with him before hand. He just walks in, and, he is legally protected.

Amazing…

While the Indiana Supreme Court did follow the decision by pointing out that a homeowner may protest an officer’s wrongful search through the courts after the fact, this is hardly any solace, and is almost adding insult to injury, since these are the exact courts that have decided our 4^th Amendment rights no longer apply. Obviously, once you allow authorities to savage your Constitutional freedoms, they are hardly going to let you punish them later through their own court system.

Indiana Sheriff Don Hartman Sr., in response to the court ruling, stated in an interview that he believed the decision gave him the power to conduct house to house warrant-less searches, an idea which he still defends:

http://www.mikechurch.com/Today-s-Lead-Story/in-sheriff-if-we-need-to-conduct-random-house-to-house-searches-we-will.html

This is just the latest of a string of court decisions across the country which expand the definitions of applied law. That is to say, there is a concerted and widespread effort by courts (especially federal courts) to broaden the accepted language of the law, so that, in fact, authorities can interpret the law to mean whatever they wish it to mean for whatever purpose fits their specific needs at the time.

Cell phones are fair game, according to courts in California, and police now have the ability to search your personal data when taken into custody, even if you have not been officially charged with a crime:

http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-01-04/bay-area/26357969_1_cell-phones-searches-police-department

The Supreme Court has ruled that cops are allowed to search your premises without a warrant if they “smell marijuana” and “hear evidence being destroyed”. Just out of curiosity, what does it sound like when evidence is being destroyed? Does the Supreme Court have the sound on file somewhere? Without a doubt, certain not quite-so-honorable police will take advantage of this ridiculous decision:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/us/17scotus.html?_r=1

New Mexico has ruled that officers may confiscate firearms from your vehicle during a traffic stop even if they have no reasonable cause to do so, trampling the 2^nd Amendment as well as the 4^th. Also in New Mexico (as in many states), if you have a conceal carry permit, you are supposed to announce to the officer that you have a weapon on your person. Meaning, now you have to let the traffic cop know that you have a firearm in the car and hope he doesn’t decide to take it away from you:

http://www.guns.com/nm-court-traffic-cops-can-seize-guns-even-if-no-law-has-been-broken.html

We saw the broadening tactic with the passage of the Food Safety Bill S. 510 and the immensely heightened powers of the FDA to regulate even the most minute farm activity. We also saw it in the railroading of Liberty Dollar founder Bernard von NotHaus by the Department of Justice when they used an obscure and loosely worded statute, essentially comparing the coinage of ANY alternative currency, no matter how distant in appearance to U.S. legal tender, to counterfeiting. Now, we are seeing the tactic applied to the 4^th Amendment itself, as law enforcement agents are given extreme prejudice to interpret their rules of engagement however they see fit. Such corruption has occurred despite the application of the 4^th Amendment, to be sure, but now, the ease at which it can occur and the lack of any redress by citizens is so pronounced, there can be only one outcome; police abuse on an incredible scale.

What we are witnessing is a time honored process exploited by autocrats the world over, now being utilized right here in America. What began with the passage of the FISA Bill and the expansion of government power to tap and monitor any American’s communications without a warrant, we are now seeing in our very neighborhoods. The law is being fogged and obscured until it is no longer clearly defined, which allows police and courts to operate within a vast grey area of legal chicanery. All social structures become warped in the wake of this process until we are no longer able to recognize that which is lawful, and that which is unlawful. In the end, we will discover that almost ANYTHING can be labeled “illegal” by the establishment in such an environment, and that no one, no matter how harmless and abiding, is safe from the storm.

Going Down In Flames…

I see where this is heading, and the destination is grim, but don’t take my word for it, just simply look at what is happening around you. The divide between law enforcement and the citizenry is growing. With the Department of Homeland Security now actively placing local police and sheriff’s departments in military training regiments, in military style gear, and even arming them with tanks and heavy machine guns (yes, tanks and .50 cal machine guns), it is becoming much harder to qualify local law enforcement as a civilian entity, rather than just another extension of the Department of Defense:

http://reason.com/blog/2008/09/01/sheriff-lotts-new-toy

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_16004590

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41912754/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/t/why-do-americas-police-need-armored-tank/

Even if military outfits like Northcom are not used openly as a standing army within the U.S., we already have a standing army in the form of men who were once called peace officers, whose mandate was once to “protect and serve”. Now, the words “to protect and serve” are disappearing from police cars nationwide, and we have a law enforcement community gearing up for war! The economic breakdown has exacerbated the situation even further. As states lose more and more funding due to the crashing municipal bond markets, they are now becoming completely dependent on federal cash. And, with federal cash, there are many unfortunate strings attached…

If you have been paying attention to police brutality cases over the past few years, then you have noticed a blatant trend towards swift and immediate unprovoked violence resulting in terminal consequences. When law enforcement is trained for combat, for attack, rather than defense, when they are conditioned to believe that the public is the enemy, and that they are somehow separate, or superior, very bad things begin to happen. Let’s take a short walk down memory lane…

Oscar Grant, 22, was shot in the back by police in Oakland, CA, while restrained and laying on the ground, pleading with officers that he had a four-year-old-daughter. The incident was caught on at least three separate cell phone cameras (which may have been one of the reasons why courts in CA are so keen on allowing warrant-less search and seizure of cell phones). The shooting officer, Johannes Mehserle, was eventually charged with involuntary manslaughter (???) serving a two year sentence and eligible for parole by the end of this year. If his actions had not been caught on video and disseminated across the web, who knows if he would have even been charged at all:

John T. Williams, 50, and nearly deaf in one ear, was shot by Seattle police for whittling a piece of wood while walking across the street. Officer Ian Birk exited his vehicle, claiming Williams was “acting strangely”, yelled at him to drop the knife, then giving him less than ten seconds to comply, fired several rounds from his weapon, killing the man. The officer later claimed that Williams walked towards him in a menacing fashion. Witnesses argued to the contrary. Note that Birk had already drawn his firearm as he exited the vehicle. Also note that Birk did not identify himself as a police officer as is required by law. Williams’ knife was also found folded shut by responding officers to the scene. Birk resigned due to public pressure, but was not charged with a crime:

And most recently, Jose Guerena, 26, and a former marine, was shot 60 times (a sign of undisciplined fire) in Pima County, Arizona, by a SWAT team entering his home also occupied by his wife and four-year-old son. Guerena’s wife stated that she had seen men through the window with guns, but that they could not be identified. Guerena grabbed his rifle (as most marines would) and told his family to hide. The Pima Sheriff’s Department has changed their story on this incident several times now, but this much is clear; the department claimed Guerena fired at them with his AR-15 as they entered the home. This was a lie. Guerena’s weapon had the safety still on after his death. When this fact was made public, Pima admitted that he never fired a shot. Pima claims that they have a warrant for the Guerena home, but have obtained a court order which had it sealed from the public. Why they had it sealed is unknown (did they even have the right house?). The Guerena raid was part of a neighborhood action, supposedly to bust a drug dealing operation in the area. No drugs were found in Guerena’s home. The reason why SWAT was necessary to serve the warrant in the first place is also still unclear:

My purpose in showing you these disturbing videos is not to make you hate cops. It is to illustrate a dangerous trend amongst our civil servants. Where we once had a few “bad apples” to contend with in our police departments, now we have official training handed down from the DOD which practically requires law enforcement officials to undergo a combat mindset, a psychology of aggression. In many cases, I believe, these officers are not doing what they do out of malice or ill intent. They are doing what they do because they are being TRAINED to do it. This is what happens when a society becomes militarized. It cannot be avoided, and it will only get worse from here on. Now imagine a violent element like this being given unlimited power to decide which homes they wish to enter and how they will enter them…

Why I Will Not Submit To A Warrant-less Search…

Constitutional values cannot defend themselves. They require the people to stand firm, and to never yield. Americans today have yielded far too much already, and at some point very soon, we’re going to have to make the hard choice on what is more important; our general safety and personal comfort, or our freedoms and the freedoms of future generations. Like the American Colonials, we have a system that does not serve our best interests, but the interests of an elite few. We are quickly losing our ability to dictate the terms of our own society, and our own destinies. Sadly, we are not yet presenting the determination that the colonials held in the face of this danger. Today, we are a nation mourning its own demise before it has even occurred. We have turned to reluctant compliance and submission. We are, frankly, whiny and pathetic.

This does not have to be.

While fantastic organizations like Oath Keepers are working hard to educate police and military on their sworn duty to uphold and defend Constitutional liberties, we as the citizenry must also show our support and resolve to see that the values and principles outlined in that historic document are not tarnished by apathy. The proverbial line in the sand must be drawn now, or not at all. This means, at the very least, non-compliance with unjust laws that defile our conscience, as well as our heritage.

The common response to this by naysayers would be: “You’ll comply when you have a gun in your face…”

That’s what naysayers throughout history have always said, though. They said it to the Founding Fathers, to Gandhi, and beyond. There will always be another gun to put in the faces of men who fight for the truth of a thing. There will always be men to point those guns at us. The question is, who will be more steadfast? Is the will to dominate really stronger than the will to be free? Can you ever control a people who do not fear you, even at the barrel of a gun? This is the mindset that brought this country to life, and it is a mindset we must rediscover, if we are to have any chance of survival.

You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com

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Know Anyone In Vegas? I'd Love To See The Line On This One

2011-04-29T14:53:00.002-10:00

I didn't write this. But I wish I had. As published on ZeroHedge:

A Letter To Congress

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/29/2011 17:13 -0400

from reader T. Willerson

Letter to congress

Dear Congressman:

It’s here: Your moment at the plate. You’ve whiffed more than a few … and, yes, we’re counting. But you’ve been gifted another at-bat, and the President’s tired. Seventh inning stuff is coming out of his teleprompter, and this full-count fastball will be straight, level, and slow. You won’t see another one like this for five years.

An embattled first term president is faced with an outcome that he must, at all costs, prevent, and he’s done very little ground work ahead of it. He is about to become the first President in American history to preside over a default on the national debt, unless you vote to let him raise the limit on the financial burden we leave our children. He would ultimately be crazy to deny any reasonable option, absolutely anything, rather than live with the outcome of his refusal. Politically speaking, he’s whispered a prayer to the Greek God of Imprudence and Fiscal Insanity, raised a one-finger salute to the nation’s savers through the sunroof of a stolen golden Beemer, and revved it toward the draw-bridge that you were elected to control.

Graphic by John Lohman

America’s debt has been moving straight up since the early 1980s. In the beginning it was ok. Debt is not, in itself, a bad thing, and a reasonable amount of leverage on the balance sheet can be positive for any entity, including the United States. But we’re well past that threshold. Researchers Reinhart and Rogoff, in their exhaustive recent work, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, show that, historically, when debt in an economy gets above .9x, or 90% of GDP, the interest burden creates a negative cycle from which nations struggle to recover. If we include the unfunded liabilities we’ve committed to in order to support programs like Medicare and Social Security, the United States of America’s financial obligations represent 8.7x, or 871% of GDP, almost 10x the amount that Reinhart & Rogoff determined lead to ultimate economic failure. In terms that are much easier to identify with, this comes to a debt of $1,386,340 for every family in the US! When you consider the average family’s ability to pay, it all begins to rhyme with those 2007 no - doc mortgages, doesn’t it? In fact, if the US was a corporation, we’d be in bankruptcy proceedings and you, kind sir, would be holding a pink slip, a legal summons, and a scrap of paper with Dick Fuld’s cell phone number on it for advice on staying out of jail – because the truth is that he is no more guilty than you, and you no less than him, and we can stop kidding ourselves whenever you’re ready.

But, politically, you ask… what can really be done? After all it’s always the other guy. You know, that, sniff - sniff…, mean congresswoman from a lunatic district who disagrees. It’s her fault. She doesn’t understand math. And she’s just intractable. Intractable! She believes that America’s social contract (I can’t find that in the constitution… ) is more important than the critically important task of shooting Tomahawk missiles at other parents’ kids to support… uhhm… different kids that we don’t really know, in a war that’s only sort of, well... a war. I mean, the nerve of that… woman. And there are others like her. And there’s an election coming up every two years. A bigger one every four. Wait… what in God’s name did that lunatic McCain just say? … Anyway, progress is too much to expect, and after a couple years of trying, you just… roll with the punches… do what you can… Right?

When it’s time for that morning look in the mirror, you tell yourself it’s harder than you thought. Too much of it seems bigger than the promises you made to get there. In the face of disagreement, in the thrall of tight votes and divided leadership, you simply can’t get it done the way you’d hoped. So you parse the polls, you chase the cameras, you fondle your constituents, and you wonder what the view looks like from the upper chamber. You ultimately retire to the lobbying job, with one hell of a pension, and live in a way that you despised before you realized what two kids in college, vacations in Europe, and a wife with a strappy Jimmy Choo habit would cost. You’ve kicked the proverbial can down the road, and maybe you tell yourself that it’s all our political system will allow. And so it goes.

Or you find your moment - that point of crisis when rare circumstances put the bat in your hand, and you have the leverage to make a change - the kind of change that’s identified by far more than a focus-grouped slogan; the kind that alters the course of history. You can do it by simply standing firmly for the principles upon which you were elected.

To blame you for catastrophe, legislators first have to explain the rejection of an acceptable alternative. Barack can load the teleprompter with the righteous indignation of his Father’s Dreams and level each syllable with a stage actor’s grace. The senate can whine and Harry Reid will triangulate desperately toward that elusive line between patriotism and pandering, sensitivity and simpering, missing every second and third step along the way. You’ll have to hold through the deluge because the bully pulpit wins the news cycle, but an administration bears the blame. Deflecting reporters is a privilege of the political class, but a President is beholden to history.

Certainly you could play for a single; just get a runner on base and hope like hell that the relief pitcher isn’t as strong as he’s been for the last ten years. You could pick and pry and get just enough to say you won; aim for destabilization in the next election, and keep looking for your next shot. You could bunt something unintelligible and complicated enough to confuse the anchorman and the AARP, pick the flowers from the fertilizer, and beseechingly extend the mess into the camera lens. You could head for the primrose path with a pension and the lobbying job, and wonder, in weak moments, what your grandparents would say about abdication of duty.

Or you could rise to the challenge and do something meaningful - something that would answer that cynical question, the one that is on the lips of a generation raised to mute sound bites and soapboxes with the bored sweep of a pointer finger, but whose votes elected this President. Their question: What does any of it really mean?

If not now… when? Whether you win the next election or not…whether the next news cycle gives you a boost or not…. Will you get this chance again? The President is in a bind that no speech, no dog-wagging war, no bill, and no mindless populism can change. His back is against the 2012 wall and this time the outcome is binary. He knows it. He absolutely has to have you help him raise the debt limit.

This is legacy stuff, and it doesn’t matter which side of the aisle you claim, so keep it simple. Leave out the social invasions. Stay out of bathrooms, bedrooms, churches, and doctor’s offices. Cancel the earmarks and the garbage. Skip the things that sound good but won’t work. Shoot straight and don’t strut. Do it early. Do it clearly and forcefully, but respectfully, and explain it with logic that doesn’t require lies. Deliver it in a way that leaves no doubt about your goals, your intent, or your resolve, and leave the cigars at home. Let your most aesthetic, most intelligent, most media-savvy person front it, and limit the bill to one page.

Send the President a bill that says Federal debt, in all forms and definitions, must be less than 60% of GDP by 2016, less than 50% by 2020, and less than 40% by 2024, or, in each of those years, a bi-partisan group will cut Federal Funding at the strategic, and line item level, until the goal is met. Furthermore, debt must stay below the benchmark thereafter, short of a Declaration of War or National Emergency supported by a two thirds vote of both houses of congress. And in the case of temporary exception, anything over the maximum must receive the same two-thirds vote each year or immediately go back to the limit via the same committee.

Barack will not like this choice, and he will thrash and froth. He’ll reload the teleprompter again and again in fiery waves of verbal and emotive genius that will make you question everything you believe, and, ultimately, your congressional reason d’être. But, in the end, a solution he hates will be better than having his name on the first and only default in the history of the United States.

So plant your feet and point your finger at the bleachers. Tell the President that you don’t intend to change a word because a default now is no different than a default later, and you’d rather see him get the credit. Give him a clear choice and a good look at the filthy cesspool that lies in wait on the other side of the decision, and let him decide whether to court disaster. Then take him to the wall.

Of Myth and Legend

2011-04-21T10:11:00.002-10:00

In 10 Examples That Should Convince Anyone That We No Longer Live In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave,

a writer posits that:

The things that you are about to read should make you mad. In fact, if none of these things make you mad there is a problem. Sadly, millions of Americans have actually embraced tyranny, and if you are not outraged by any of the items listed below than you are likely one of them.

my own added commentary is in red.

The American Dream
April 21, 2011

Do you know people that still believe that America is a free country? Do you have friends or family that are proud to live in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”? If you do, just show them this article. Of course, "showing it" to them will accomplish nothing. Most won't read it, if at all, before pointing out how wrong you are for your lack of faith. The things that you are about to read are enough to make the blood of any red-blooded American boil. We don’t live in a free country anymore. Instead, we live in a “Big Brother” police state control grid that is becoming more restrictive every single day. Most of our politicians seem to be control freaks that are obsessed with running every single little detail of our lives. These days there has to be a “rule” or a “regulation” for everything. The radical social engineers in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and communist China never even dared to try some of the things that are going on in America today. Indeed, more than a year before this country "entered" World War II, FDR had accomplished, "with the stroke(s) of a pen", nearly everything a totalitarian could want. We are all being treated little better than cattle and we are all being taught that it is best to just sit in our homes and absorb all of the television “programming” that is being provided for us. We even participate by assisting the government in inculcating the message in our young (which we "sold" into the "system" that FDR created), making certain that our kids know form birth that their lives and their bodies are not their own, and more importantly, that we, as parents have no power to protect them. Meanwhile, our public schools have become little more than prison grids. Our children are being taught to enjoy living as docile slaves in a world where imagination, liberty, freedom and adventure are all greatly discouraged.

Unfortunately, none of this is an exaggeration. Our politicians love to give speeches about “liberty” and “freedom”, but they always seem to have excuses to justify the endless parade of liberty-killing laws that they are imposing on all the rest of us.

Almost all of the freedoms listed in the Bill of Rights have been severely eroded. In fact, a number of them are almost totally gone at this point.

The things that you are about to read should make you mad. But they probably won't. Between the conditioning you've been subjected to and a lifetime of forced ingestion of fluoride to make you more docile, you might well be incapable of getting mad enough to take action. In fact, if none of these things make you mad there is a problem. Sadly, millions of Americans have actually embraced tyranny, and if you are not outraged by any of the items listed below than you are likely one of them.

The following are 10 examples that show that we no longer live in the land of the free and the home of the brave….

#1 According to the ACLU, state police in Michigan are using “extraction devices” to download data from the cellphones of motorists that they pull over. This is taking place even if those pulled over are not accused of doing anything wrong.

The following is how an article on CNET News describes the capabilities of these “extraction devices”….

The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information.

#2 In the state of New York, the Department of Health has designated wiffle ball, dodge ball, kick ball, freeze tag, red rover, frisbee tossing and tug of war as “risky recreational activities“. Any organization or program that allows kids to enjoy these games during the summer will now be subject to strict government regulation according to the New York Daily News….

Under the new rules, any program that offers two or more organized recreational activities – with at least one of them on the risky list – is deemed a summer camp and subject to state regulation.

Why this should be surprising escapes me. We were trained (for perspective, I'm a "boomer") to train our kids to pass on the training by insisting their children wear bicycle helmets, knee and elbow pads, etc., and even to train their babies that they must submit to being bound,(gagging will come later); tied down in their carseat, or "Mommy will get in trouble".

#3 At one public school in the Chicago area, children have been banned from bringing their lunches from home. Yes, you read that correctly. Students at that particular school are absolutely prohibited from bringing lunches from home. Instead, it is mandatory that they eat the food that the school cafeteria serves. Home-prepared lunches might omit "nutrients" that would further the conditioning to which we are all subjected.

#4 Would you like to have your face scanned and your ID recorded every time you attend a public event? Don’t laugh. The San Francisco Entertainment Commission is actually proposing a new rule which “would require all venues with an occupancy of over 100 people to record the faces of all patrons and employees and scan their ID’s for storage in a database which they must hand over to law enforcement on request.”

Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (AD)

#5 In Delaware, police and state government officials recently tore a basketball hoop right out of a family’s front yard and carted it away because it was “too close” to the street. They even extracted the pole for the basketball hoop out of the ground and took that away too.

#6 In Missouri of all places, two young girls named Abigail and Caitlin Mills were recently taught a lesson on how to be good citizens in the emerging totalitarian control grid going up all over the United States. After a complaint from a neighbor, the city of Hazelwood cracked down on the two girls and told them that they must stop selling girl scout cookies in their own front yard.

#7 As I have written about previously, federal bureaucrats have outlawed the incandescent light bulbs that we all grew up with and will be forcing us to switch over to new CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) light bulbs that are more expensive and that are actually worse for the environment. One new study conducted by scientists in Germany has shown that the new CFL light bulbs that we are being forced to use contain poisonous carcinogens that are likely cause cancer. In fact, the German scientists say that these CFL bulbs should be “kept as far away as possible from the human environment”. "Mercury grenades" are a more correct appellation for the devices. Don't believe it? Read the "instructions" on breakage cleanup.

#8 Many states are aggressively seizing “unclaimed” safe deposit boxes and are selling off the contents and using the money to pay state government bills. In the state of California, they are now going after safe deposit boxes if the owners have had “no contact” with the bank for just 3 years. Other states are being nearly as aggressive. If you have a safe deposit box that you have not opened in a while you need to go check on it right away. No different than "asset forfeiture", which you probably supported, since it was only taking the "ill-gotten gains" of drug dealers, etc. CAUTION: Don't buy too much cold medicine, or you, too, will be so classified, and it won't matter how recently you've accessed your "safety" deposit box (it's only a means of hiding incriminating stuff, anyway, right?).

#9 One Mississippi state judge recently issued an order for state officials to gather and deliver to him the names of every single child that is being homeschooled in the state. The frightening thing is that the judge did this all on his own. Nobody requested this information and there is no case pending for which this information would be required.

#10 The TSA had promised that they were going to stop groping little children at airports, but apparently that is not the case. For example, one 6 year old little girl made headlines recently when a TSA worker touched all of her private areas before allowing her to get on an airplane. Her parents were forced to stand aside and watch this outrage take place. Once again reinforcing that our kids' bodies are not their own, that they MUST allow sexual predators to molest them, and that parents have no power to protect them from the predators.

So what do all of you think about this list?

Ayn Rand, Prophetess?

2011-04-20T16:33:00.003-10:00

Many thanx to FreedomWorks

Nuff said.

Some Things You Just Have to See

2011-04-11T15:49:00.002-10:00

Like the calendar for the House Ways and Means Committee, Subcommittee on Social Security: http://waysandmeans.house.gov/Calendar/?EventTypeID=149&CatagoryID=4772

On Apr 13, 2011, the Subcommittee will examine the impacts of identity theft, the role of SSNs in abetting identity theft, and options to restrict its use. In addition, the role of the SSN in administering Social Security programs and how the Social Security Administration protects SSNs will be considered, along with legislative proposals to limit the use of SSNs.

Call your ... (ok, "representative") ... and tell him (or her) what limits you'd like to see.

The April 14 hearing will focus on the "progress" made and challenges created by E-Verify, including the potential burdens on employees, employers and the SSA. (How about burdens upon Liberty?) The Subcommittee will examine how the current shortcomings of the system could be improved to ease the verification process during this critical time of job creation. Finally, the Subcommittee will also review other proposals to expand employment eligibility verification, including enhancing the Social Security card with tamper-proof, counterfeit-resistant or biometric features and increasing enforcement through the sharing of taxpayer wage information.

STOP THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Damage Control

2011-04-09T07:56:00.000-10:00

They can't hide it anymore. Too many instances, in too many places, too... "public". What to do?
Damage control. Put it right there in front of everybody: Put it on 60 Minutes. If you haven't seen http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7361572n&tag=related;photovideo, it's worth the 14+ minutes.

Essentially, what I've been saying for nearly 8 years (and yes, I'm not the only one), e.g., that foreclosing banks are thieves; that they don't own the Note that their(?) mortgage supposedly secures; that they have no right to "foreclose"; has now been "exposed" by Scott Pelley.

Oh, sure, Courts (especially bankruptcy courts) have, over the last couple of years, have thrown out foreclosures and mortgages for just such reasons, but those were proclaimed (by the thieving class) as occasional mistakes. Besides, the "foreclosees" (victims) are just deadbeats, trying to get something for nothing, right?

But as of of April 3, 2011, everyone should be aware.

Of course, the subliminal message behind 60 Minutes' "exposé was "(psst!) You can settle with your bank...". You know, the bank that doesn't own your note; that has no standing to "foreclose" on you in the first place.

DON'T FALL FOR IT! You CAN challenge them. You CAN make them prove they own, AND HOLD, your note. You CAN make them prove standing.

DO IT! For your children. For your country.

HB 3808 Veto Override Attempt A Good Thing?

2010-11-17T09:04:00.003-10:00

Didn't hear about this in the "news"? Brian Williams didn't "make sense of it" for you? What a surprise.

Turns out that 2 days ago, the House of Reprehensibles decided to vote - TODAY - on overriding the possibly-ineffective "pocket veto" of the Bill that would require state courts to recognize out-of state notarizations.

http://4closurefraud.org/2010/11/16/action-alert-its-back-h-r-3808-interstate-recognition-of-notarization-act-of-2010/

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2267432

As outrageous as this is on its face, it occurs to me that this could have the exact opposite of the intended effect. The overwhelming evidence shows that "robosigners" (sic) have perjured themselves in order to facilitate fraud. In many cases, as already observed by state and federal courts, the same individual's signature appears as an "officer" (usually a "vice president"...how appropriate) of both the "Assignor" and "Assignee" on falsified mortgage transfers. Numerous deposition videos published on the net establish that these "robosigners" were not, in fact, "employed" by the shell companies for which they "signed".

Suppose this thing (the override) actually passes. Suppose that state courts are then required - BY FEDERAL LAW - to

"...recognize any notarization made by a notary public licensed by a State other than the State where the court is located when such notarization occurs in or affects interstate commerce..."

as the bankster/Masters have demanded of their "congressional" slaves.

Wouldn't that then require the state courts to recognize the signature notarized? The dual "Assignor"/"Assignee" signatures would - AS A MATTER OF FEDERAL LAW - be required to be recognized.

Wouldn't that then require the state courts to recognize the perjury?

Wouldn't that then require the state courts to recognize the fraud?

2010-11-14T13:23:00.001-10:00

The Real Life Social Network v2

View more documents from Paul Adams.

"Ringleader": How Ironically Appropriate

2010-11-08T13:42:00.002-10:00

A federal class action lawsuit has been filed accusing Ringleader Digital, a Delaware-based advertising company "hacked the mobile phones of millions of consumers" to create a database of customers' demographic information for the benefit of co-defendant major media networks AccuWeather, CNN, ESPN, FOX News, Go2 Media, Merriam-Webster, Travel Channel, and WhitePages.

According to the lawsuit, Ringleader "stamped" a "Unique Device Identifier" into customers' cell phones, compatible with iPhone, iPad, iTouch and PDAs and other devices, for the purpose of "Utilizing the advances in GPS technology, (so that) marketers can now determine the precise location of mobile users - within three feet."

Well, isn't this convenient. Now, "authorities" needn't concern themselves with the need for a warrant to "GPS-track" someone's car - for a month - or to obtain cell-phone records from the carrier. "Ringleader"'s corporate records, and/or those of Goldfinger operations CNN, ESPN, FOX News (and, no doubt, others) can be merely "requested"; all in the name of "security", of course.

Read more about this at http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/11/05/31652.htm

Goldfinger-CISCO's "Tele-presence"

2010-11-08T13:08:00.004-10:00

"Banks spying on your bills, rent payments, paychecks: report", http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/banks-spying-bills-rent-payments/ discusses the demise of the "plain old credit score" in favor of "ever more intrusive efforts by banks and credit agencies to gauge exactly what you're worth, and what you can pay."

Apparently, there are an estimated 40,000,000 people who have avoided falling into Goldfinger's many traps, and "have too little credit experience to generate a useful credit score", can still be "tracked" through rental-payment data and utility bills. AND...

"Raw Story reported this week on SocialMiner, a new software application from Cisco Systems that allows businesses to monitor social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The software has raised concerns over the prospect of employers spying on the personal lives of their employees."

Goldfinger-Government Recruits "Black Hats"

2010-11-05T08:31:00.005-10:00

(Remember, as you read this, that Goldfinger's operatives populate a significant percentage of federal executive departments)

Even as it continues its own attacks on rights once secured by the Bill of Rights, our out-of-control golem (look it up) now openly sends agents hacking conferences like Black Hat and DEF CON to recruit hackers.
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20101029_5627.php?oref=rss?zone=NGpopular

Feds aren't crashing the parties to infiltrate the hacker population anymore, at least most aren't. They're at these meetings to do some, pardon the pun, networking and to ask for help. And what once was an effort to avoid detention and possible arrest is now a game called "Spot the Fed". Get it right and win a t-shirt that reads, "I spotted the fed!" The fed gets an "I am the fed!" shirt.

Conferences like Black Hat and DEF CON have become fodder for television's "feds as heroes" genre, such as programs like CBS' "Numbers" (no longer in production). But reality, as is often the case, outperforms even factual fiction.

Take hacker Chris Paget. At a cost of only $1,500 in hardware, and with open source software, Paget was able to build a device that tricked cell phones in the vicinity into routing mobile phone calls through it as if it were a legitimate cell phone tower; calls which he was able to intercept and record. Warned he would be violating federal law if did a live demo of how the homemade device worked, Paget saw the warning as a "scare tactic," and went ahead anyway, with no repercussions. After all, the feds could really (yes, really) use something like that; especially when the commercially available version intelligence and law enforcement agencies use, the IMSI catcher, costs of times more.

The dark truth revealed in the government magazine article:

"There's no real difference between the skills needed to be a good defender and a good attacker," says James Lewis, senior fellow and director of the technology and public policy program at CSIS. "Think of it this way: Even though they teach cops how to drive fast, these are law enforcement skills."

NOTE: CSIS is the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"...a bipartisan Washington, D.C., foreign policy think tank. The center was founded in 1964 by Admiral Arleigh Burke and Ambassador David Manker Abshire, originally as part of Georgetown University. The formal affiliation between Georgetown and CSIS ended on July 1, 1987."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Strategic_and_International_Studies

"According to its mission statement, "CSIS provides strategic insights and policy solutions to decision makers in government, international institutions, the private sector, and civil society." The center conducts policy studies and strategic analyses on political, economic and security issues, focusing on technology, public policy, international trade and finance, and energy."

Did I mention that Goldfinger's operatives populate a significant percentage of federal executive departments?

Ain't Gonna Happen

2010-11-04T14:58:00.002-10:00

"Boehner vows to repeal Obama healthcare reforms". http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6A25DB20101103?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&rpc=22&sp=true

This is just more theater. More "terrorism", if you prefer. Now that the (s)election is over, and the power-players have sacrificed only those that were absolutely necessary, the game(s) will continue.
Boehner knows, as should any junior-high civics student (do they still teach it?), his "vow" is empty without a "House of Lords" that will go along.

This unconstitutional furthering of the "cradle to grave" police state (btw, "police", "policy", "politics", etc., all derive from the same root, so the whiners will please SHUT UP!), unnecessary as it was, will remain until the Supremes get the opportunity to recognize it for what it is.

Welcome Back, Carter - Season 2

2010-11-04T07:46:00.002-10:00

There was another aspect to the "Carter economy": Double-Digit interest rates...

http://www.businessinsider.com/rick-santelli-interest-rates-2010-11

Welcome Back, Carter

2010-11-03T16:43:00.002-10:00

You only thought things were getting more expensive. For those who lived through the Carter Administration's double-digit inflation: a reprise. As noted in Economic Policy Journal: http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/11/fed-gone-mad-total-supermoney-through.html:

"The dollar is now securely on the road to major devaluation. Price inflation at the consumer level by the end of 2011 will be well into double digits. Way, way into double digits."

Think I'll invest in wheelbarrows.

Hot Stock for the 21st Century

2010-11-03T08:51:00.003-10:00

“You’ve seen prison populations pretty consistently over the last three decades move up a couple percent a year…and from a business model perspective, it’s clearly good news,”

Get Out of the Way

2010-10-29T10:42:00.000-10:00

When a beast this big dies, its flailing tail does a lot of damage.

From http://news.goldseek.com/GoldenJackass/1288209233.php, this excerpt:

"The mortgage & foreclosure scandal could turn out to be the big US Bank tombstone epitaph, as bank revenues from mortgages halt, as home owners refuse to make mortgage payments, as court cases unfold in full view, as class action lawsuits prove racketeering at a systemic level, as MERS and REMICs are frozen by the courts from further activity.

Halliburton Responsible For Deepwater Disaster?

2010-10-28T21:39:00.000-10:00

What a surprise.

"As early as February, oil-field service giant Halliburton was getting poor results in lab tests of the recipe for the cement it was planning to use, according to evidence collected by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/28/AR2010102804124.html?hpid=topnews

Foreclosuregate Explained: Big Banks on the Brink

2010-10-28T15:48:00.000-10:00

From Truthout.org:

"One foreclosure expert estimates that just 6 to 7 percent of the loans made in the last three years can produce properly recorded title transfers from borrower to final lender."

http://www.truth-out.org/foreclosuregate-explained-big-banks-brink64621

The question is: Is a +93%chance that your "lender" CANNOT produce properly recorded title transfers worth a look?

http://bit.ly/a9aph4

You Just Can't Make Stuff Like This Up...

2010-10-27T15:58:00.000-10:00

From "ProseBeforeHos" (apparently, Marxists don't know how to spell "Pro's", or grasp that "pro's IS hos") http://www.prosebeforehos.com/article-of-the-day/06/29/how-goldman-sachs-took-over-the-american-economy/:

"By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush’s last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citi-group – which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There’s John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain’s sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There’s Joshua Bolten, Bush’s chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange. the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York – which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman – not to mention…"

Of course, they missed the Goldmanites in the State Department, SEC, CFTC, and everywhere else, but it's an otherwise decent re-write of Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article.

Worthy of note: The description of "a pattern that would repeat itself over and over again", e.g., "You take a dollar and borrow nine against it; then you take that $10 fund and borrow $90; then you take your $100 fund and, so long as the public is still lending, borrow and invest $900...".

This is EXACTLY how the Chicago Fed explained fractional reserve banking in its 1992 version of MODERN MONEY MECHANICS. (Available on scribd.com)

This Will Be Interesting...

2010-10-27T13:09:00.000-10:00

As noted on Zero Hedge, from Bloomberg:

"Mortgage-bond investors represented by Dallas lawyer Talcott Franklin will send letters to securities trustees complaining that they shouldn’t bear the costs of loan servicers’ so-called robo-signing. The reason for the ire? It is the noteholders who ended up having to pay legal fees associated with discoveries of rampant fraud...".

Mind you, it's becoming increasingly apparent that the REMICs never actually received an enforceable interest in the alleged notes.

More organic matter; bigger oscillating rotator.

We're Almost There...

2010-10-26T15:35:00.000-10:00

From http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=170351:

"Here's the problem: If the people get into their head that not only politicians can do this sort of thing and get away with it when it comes to things like traffic tickets, but banks can literally rob the people with predatory lending and then enlist the courts to screw them a second time in unjustly evicting them from their house, there is a point where they will snap.

"That point is where people vote from the rooftop."

"Shhh! We need time to arrange another attac...um, distraction."

2010-10-26T15:12:00.000-10:00

JPMorgan, BofA, and Citi, Plead To Keep Bailout Details Secret

An interesting claim byBofA, Citi and JPMorgan, et al:

"The central bank has never disclosed the identities of borrowers since the creation in 1914 of its Discount Window lending program, which provides short-term funding to financial institutions...".

So, if the Fed could "provide short-term funding to financial institutions" since 1914, why did "The Great Depression" even happen?

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/banks-fed-appeal-document-release-high-court-bailout-2010-10#ixzz13WAhW6ZI

Goldfinger Admits Goldfinger Bailout Plan Was to Benefit Goldfinger

2010-08-28T10:40:00.000-10:00

No longer concerned about "the public"*, or its opinions, "Treasury openly admitted that its only serious program purporting to help ordinary citizens was actually a cynical move to help Wall Street megabanks" (i.e., Goldfinger"). See: http://www.alternet.org/economy/147955/treasury_makes_shocking_admission%3A_program_for_struggling_homeowners_just_a_ploy_to_enrich_big_banks/

Freedom's Phoenix Website Back Online

2010-08-27T17:34:00.001-10:00

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Denial Doesn't Change the Facts

2010-08-19T13:10:00.000-10:00

The average American lives within a tiny box when it comes to the mechanics and motivations of finance. They think that their monetary desires and drives are exactly the same as a globalist’s. But, what they don’t realize is that the box they think in was BUILT by globalists.

Neithercorp Press» Blog Archive » The Purpose Behind Engineered Economic Collapse

411: Does Your Mobile Website Measure Up To The Best?

2010-08-12T03:20:00.001-10:00

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Thursday, August 12, 2010

Download Great Expectations: What Users Want From the Mobile Web Experience

Gomez has published new research that helps you understand how well your mobile Website needs to perform by providing benchmarks established by mobile performance leaders in four key verticals: search, retail, banking and airline.

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With Gomez's research, you can compare your own site's mobile Web performance to industry leaders.

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411: Download Your Guide to Writing Online News Releases

2010-08-03T08:56:00.001-10:00

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Tuesday, August 3, 2010

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"This Land Is..." Whose?

2010-07-28T10:36:00.000-10:00

"The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot."

http://market-ticker.org/archives/2533-Oh,-They-DO-Intend-To-Steal-From-You.html

You Didn't Really Think Goldfinger Wasn't Watching, Did You?

2010-07-21T07:32:00.000-10:00

You think a UAV won't be interested in you, innocent of any conceivable (even by the CIA) terrorist connections? Do not underestimate an all-seeing, suspicious government. "State police," writes Whitehead, "hope to send them up to capture images of speeding cars' license plates." And, in 2007, "insect-like drones were seen hovering over political rallies in New York and Washington, seemingly spying on protesters."

Drones in U.S. skies – to keep eye on us?

411: Secrets of Video Analytics: Two New Ooyala Webinars

2010-07-21T06:57:00.000-10:00

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Wednesday, July 21, 2010

GRAB VIEWERS & BOOST EARNINGS WITH ONLINE VIDEO

Ooyala Actionable Analytics Webinar Series

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Earning More with Actionable Analytics

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Alerts, Win an iPad, and other email news from Business Insider

2010-07-08T05:26:00.000-10:00

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Thursday, July 8, 2010

A brief update from the email team at Business Insider:

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411: Join Thrillist For A Chance To Win An iPad

2010-07-07T07:15:00.000-10:00

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Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Join Thrillist For A Chance To Win An iPad!

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Because Goldfinger Wants It That Way

2010-07-04T10:10:00.000-10:00

Columnist Paul Rubin asks, in an unexpected Wall Street Journal article (link below), why the EPA, the Coast Guard, and the Obama administration stand in the way of cleanup efforts in the Gulf of Mexico. He quite rightly laments that “the EPA is unwilling to grant a temporary waiver of its regulations” to allow available vessels to go about cleaning up as much oil as possible. He questions why the Obama administration won’t accept offers of assistance from other countries, or even “allow” more than 20 % of American skimmers to take care of business.

Rubin points out several possibilities as to why – like his predecessor, during and after Katrina – “solving the problem” seems to be omitted from Obama’s priority list. In a fit of candor I found remarkable (in a WSJ piece), Rubin actually acknowledged the simplest truth:

Because Goldfinger Wants It That Way.

Of course, he didn’t say that in so many words. As he put it:

“Finally there is the most pessimistic explanation—that the oil spill may be viewed as an opportunity, the way White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said back in February 2009, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Many administration supporters are opposed to offshore oil drilling and are already employing the spill as a tool for achieving other goals.”

Hmmm. Goldfinger’s Goldman Sachs division made a FORTUNE (again!) by selling a large block of its BP holdings not long before the Deepwater Horizon became news. Funny, how that "opportunity" enabled GS to make a killing in the market.

The Halliburton subsidiary (of Goldfinger) was curiously able to acquire "Boots and Coots", a company described as “doing” the cleanup (?), three weeks before most of us ever heard of Deepwater Horizon. Remarkable, the stroke of luck that Halliburton would acquire such a company a mere three weeks before an oil rig Halliburton operated on made such a mess...

Could it be that this is why Obama refuses all offers of help? Why EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers, and Coast Guard continue to drag their feet (when not actively resisting efforts by others)?

Yeah, I know…another crazy conspiracy theory. It’s only coincidence that these guys “get in” or “get out” at just the right time.

Every time.

Time after time.

After time.

After time.

After time.

(Note: one wonders if the author, who “held several senior positions in the federal government in the 1980s”, is any relation to Robert Rubin, of “U.S. Department of Goldfinger”…oops, “Treasure’…no, “Treasury”. Yeah, that's what they call it!)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575339650877298556.html

Business Insider For the iPhone is Here

2010-06-21T09:40:00.000-10:00

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Goldfinger's Pissed!

2010-06-11T13:09:00.000-10:00

"Pentagon investigators" (no doubt a euphemism for a "Special Ops" team) are, according to an article in the Daily Beast, Pentagon Manhunt, are "desperately" looking for Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Written by Philip Shenon, a former investigative reporter at The New York Times, and author of The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, the article quotes one "U.S. Official" as saying "We’d like to know where he is; we’d like his cooperation in this."

Yeah, right. Wikikeaks is, if the backstory is true, preparing to publish as many as 260,000 U.S. State Department diplomatic cables, which it is claimed "could do serious damage to national security". Although earlier stories expressed concern on State's part that "foreign officials" might actually discover what Ambassadors and embassy staff really think of them, I have little doubt that the "national security" concerns revolve around documentation of renditions and "black site" prisons where torture (and YES IT IS) and other war crimes were committed.

"His cooperation" is likely to be a euphemism for "terminate -- with extreme prejudice" which, of course, is itself a euphemism for "Kill that M#$%^&*". Daniel Ellsberg, famed for his courage in leaking "The Pentagon Papers", which he discovered when he worked for the Rand Corporation (the Vietnam Era's "Halliburton"), knows that Assange is in danger, remarking "you have to understand these guys never use the word ‘kill.’”

Ellsberg should know, having himself "been the target of a White House hit squad" in 1972, when "a dozen CIA assets from the Bay of Pigs, Cuban émigrés" were brought up from Miami with orders to “incapacitate [him] totally”, observed "Obama is now proclaiming rights of life and death, being judge, jury, and executioner of Americans without due process. No president has ever claimed that and possibly no one since John the First."

For my part, thanks, Julian.

Gene Kernan sent you this from FreedomsPhoenix.com

2010-06-07T15:53:00.001-10:00

The Myth of Teddy Roosevelt

2010-06-03T12:18:00.000-10:00

In an otherwise excellent article, Theodore Roosevelt and the Modern Presidency by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., we are reminded of Roosevelt, "the trust buster", who set out to save us from "the money interests". Would that that were true.

Roosevelt (as did his cousin, who followed, uncannily, his path to the Presidency), came from "the money interests". His well-heeled family was a part of the "upper crust" of New York society, and had been since his grandfather, Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt was a contemporary of Astor, and "Commodore" Vanderbilt. Rather than "crippling" the railroads and other industries with regulations and bureaucracy, he created the means by which those interests would infiltrate the federal government, and ultimately, transfer the liabilities of industry to the People, a process that has continued unabated to this day.

His Attorney General, Philander Knox, had been the attorney for a number of the "Captains of Industry", and indeed, instituted approximately half as many antitrust suits (in Roosevelt's 2 terms) as Taft's did (in one), resulting in Roosevelt's disfavor, and his candidacy in the "progressive" Bull Moose Party, throwing the election of 1912 to Wilson.

Wilson, upon entering office, appointed Philander Knox as Secretary of State, and Knox shepherded the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act (1913), and "certified" the ratification of the 16th Amendment, by which the liabilites of private industry would be steadily and increasingly shifted to the People.

Nevertheless, Woods' article does have a considerable amount of information, and is worth a read.

Goldfinger In Trouble?

2010-06-03T09:51:00.000-10:00

From Coin Update News : Gold and Silver Price Manipulation Efforts Failed This Week

"On Wednesday, it looks like the US government, which largely acts through its US and foreign trading partners, was unable to push down gold and silver prices below the critical $1,200 and $18 at the COMEX close! Where this manipulation tactic has worked for many months in a row, this time the surge in demand for physical gold and silver overcame the resistance.
"The failure this week of these manipulation efforts is a huge signal that we are closer to the day when the floodgates will give way and we see gold and silver prices surging more quickly and by greater percentages than we have seen in decades. "

http://news.coinupdate.com/gold-and-silver-price-manipulation-efforts-failed-this-week-0298/

Ellen Brown's Taking Back the Money Power

2010-05-27T14:04:00.000-10:00

Ellen Brown's article, "Taking Back the Money Power: How Hidden Pools of Government Money Could Help Save the Economy" http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19279, is well worth a read. I became aware of Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs) about a decade ago, when Walt Burien gave a presentation at the Arizona Breakfast Club. Walt's depth of knowledge led me to start looking for - and at - the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports for the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT (a redundant phrase, since "THE UNITED STATES" is nothing but government - as opposed to "these United States"...). Notably, in the latest financial report, the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT claims to have nearly the same "11 billion" in gold that it claimed in 1999, the first year I looked.

For example, on page 72 of the '99 report:

"“Gold” is valued at the statutory
price of $42.2222 per fine troy
ounce. As of Sep tem ber 30, 1999,
the num ber of fine troy ounces was
261,571,005. The mar ket value of
gold on the Lon don Fixing as of the
re port ing date was $299.00 per fine
troy ounce. Gold was pledged as
col lat eral for gold cer tif i cates is sued
to the FRBs to tal ing $11.0 bil lion.
See Note 14—Other Li a bil i ties."

While on page 63 of the '09 report:

"Gold is valued at the statutory price of $42.2222 per fine troy ounce. The number of fine troy ounces was
261,498,900 as of September 30, 2009, and 2008. The market value of gold on the London Fixing was $996 and
$885 per fine troy ounce as of September 30, 2009, and 2008, respectively. Gold totaling $11.1 billion and $11.0
billion as of September 30, 2009, and 2008, respectively, was pledged as collateral for gold certificates issued and
authorized to the FRBs by the Secretary of the Treasury and is included in Note 19—Other Liabilities."

Read them for yourself: http://www.gao.gov/financial/fy99cfs.pdf; http://www.fms.treas.gov/fr/09frusg/09frusg.pdf.

Notice that Goldfinger's Treasury Department apparently doesn't let the "Government Accountability (*ROFL*) Office" have them any more...

Department of Goldfinger...

2010-05-25T15:40:00.000-10:00

Barry Ritzholtz http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/05/10-most-corrupt-us-capitalists/ comments on the 10 Most Corrupt US Capitalists, published by Alternet http://www.alternet.org/story/146819/.
The Alternet article goes into more detail on each, but those identified include names most will remember:
1. Robert Rubin
2. Alan Greenspan
3. Larry Summers
4. Phil and Wendy Gramm
5. Jamie Dimon
6. Stephen Friedman
7. Robert Steel
8. Henry Paulson
9. Warren Buffett
10. Goldman Sachs:
-Joshua Bolton, chief of staff for George W. Bush, was a Goldman man
-Current New York Fed President William Dudley is a Goldman man
-Current Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler has been a responsible regulator under Obama, but he was a deregulatory hawk during the Clinton years, and worked at Goldman for nearly two decades before that.
-A top aide to Timothy Geithner, Gene Sperling, is a Goldman man
-Current Treasury Undersecretary Robert Hormats is a Goldman man
-Current Treasury Chief of Staff Mark Patterson is a former Goldman lobbyist
-Former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt is now a Goldman adviser
-Neel Kashkari, Henry Paulson’s deputy on TARP, was a Goldman man
-COO of the SEC Enforcement Division Adam Storch is a Goldman man
-Former Sen. John Corzine, D-N.J., was Goldman’s CEO before Henry Paulson
-Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., was a Goldman Vice President before he ran for Congress
-Former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., now lobbies for Goldman

If you've not heard this before, one reason (of many) might be "# 2's" wife: Andrea Mitchell of NBC.

The (Goldfinger) Department of State also has a number of "Goldies".

And now you know why I call this The Goldfinger Chronicles.

Graphic and Distrubing Images

2010-05-19T21:08:00.000-10:00

Courtesy of Calculated Risk: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/05/mortgage-delinquencies-by-period-and-by.html.

"we've never seen numbers this high before"

Screwing Goldfinger

2010-05-19T19:19:00.000-10:00

There are so few things we can do at this point in time to retain/maintain any kind of privacy. Goldfinger makes a LOT off of knowing what we do and when we do it, allowing the use of "predictive algorithms" to plan how to screw us next. I heartily support this effort to screw the screwer.

And If you Think This Was A "Mistake", I Have This Beachfront Property In Tibet...

2010-05-17T17:41:00.000-10:00

Google grabs personal info off of Wi-Fi networks - CNBC

I wonder who provided that "experimental software". NSA(T&T)?

HHAHAHAHA! Greece "Considering" Suing Goldfinger!

2010-05-17T17:23:00.000-10:00

Bloomberg story: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aDxF1YfeViEc

Somebody call Vegas. I want the line on plane crash/earthquake/volcano/"terrorist" strike.

‘Mummy’ Merkel battered as Germans lose faith in EU - Times Online

2010-05-17T17:19:00.000-10:00

For those who haven't quite grasped it yet, the goings on "over there" have to do with what went on - and continues - here. Remember that 553 BILLION that Bernanke sent to "foreign central banks" he couldn't identify (see my July 23 post, "Who Got 553,000,000,000.00? " )? Guess where $ #,000,000,000's more is/will be going?

‘Mummy’ Merkel battered as Germans lose faith in EU - Times Online

If You Only Knew (...or even wanted to)

2010-05-14T09:31:00.000-10:00

From Washington's Blog (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/05/700-billion-ha-real-costs-of-bailouts.html):

The Bailout of Big American Banks Has Cost Trillions More Than We've Been Told

Granted, the $700 billion dollar TARP bailout was a massive bait-and-switch. The government said it was doing it to soak up toxic assets, and then switched to saying it was needed to free up lending. It didn't do that either. Indeed, the Fed doesn't want the banks to lend.True, as I wrote in March 2009:
The bailout money is just going to line the pockets of the wealthy, instead of helping to stabilize the economy or even the companies receiving the bailouts:
Bailout money is being used to subsidize companies run by horrible business men, allowing the bankers to receive fat bonuses, to redecorate their offices, and to buy gold toilets and prostitutes
A lot of the bailout money is going to the failing companies' shareholders
Indeed, a leading progressive economist says that the true purpose of the bank rescue plans is "a massive redistribution of wealth to the bank shareholders and their top executives"
The Treasury Department encouraged banks to use the bailout money to buy their competitors, and pushed through an amendment to the tax laws which rewards mergers in the banking industry (this has caused a lot of companies to bite off more than they can chew, destabilizing the acquiring companies)And as the New York Times notes, "Tens of billions of [bailout] dollars have merely passed through A.I.G. to its derivatives trading partners".***In other words, through a little game-playing by the Fed, taxpayer money is going straight into the pockets of investors in AIG's credit default swaps and is not even really stabilizing AIG.
But the TARP bailout is peanuts compared to the numerous other bailouts the government has given to the giant banks.
And I'm not referring to the $23 trillion in bailouts, loans, guarantees and other known shenanigans that the special inspector general for the TARP program mentions. I'm talking about more covert types of bailouts.
Like what?
Guaranteeing a Fat Spread on Interest Rates
Well, as Bloomberg notes:
“The trading profits of the Street is just another way of measuring the subsidy the Fed is giving to the banks,” said Christopher Whalen, managing director of Torrance, California-based Institutional Risk Analytics. “It’s a transfer from savers to banks.”
The trading results, which helped the banks report higher quarterly profit than analysts estimated even as unemployment stagnated at a 27-year high, came with a big assist from the Federal Reserve. The U.S. central bank helped lenders by holding short-term borrowing costs near zero, giving them a chance to profit by carrying even 10-year government notes that yielded an average of 3.70 percent last quarter.
The gap between short-term interest rates, such as what banks may pay to borrow in interbank markets or on savings accounts, and longer-term rates, known as the yield curve, has been at record levels. The difference between yields on 2- and 10-year Treasuries yesterday touched 2.71 percentage points, near the all-time high of 2.94 percentage points set Feb. 18.
Harry Blodget explains:
The latest quarterly reports from the big Wall Street banks revealed a startling fact: None of the big four banks had a single day in the quarter in which they lost money trading.
For the 63 straight trading days in Q1, in other words, Goldman Sachs (GS), JP Morgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), and Citigroup (C) made money trading for their own accounts.
Trading, of course, is supposed to be a risky business: You win some, you lose some. That's how traders justify their gargantuan bonuses--their jobs are so risky that they deserve to be paid millions for protecting their firms' precious capital. (Of course, the only thing that happens if traders fail to protect that capital is that taxpayers bail out the bank and the traders are paid huge "retention" bonuses to prevent them from leaving to trade somewhere else, but that's a different story).
But these days, trading isn't risky at all. In fact, it's safer than walking down the street.
Why?
Because the US government is lending money to the big banks at near-zero interest rates. And the banks are then turning around and lending that money back to the US government at 3%-4% interest rates, making 3%+ on the spread. What's more, the banks are leveraging this trade, borrowing at least $10 for every $1 of equity capital they have, to increase the size of their bets. Which means the banks can turn relatively small amounts of equity into huge profits--by borrowing from the taxpayer and then lending back to the taxpayer.
***The government's zero-interest-rate policy, in other words, is the biggest Wall Street subsidy yet. So far, it has done little to increase the supply of credit in the real economy. But it has hosed responsible people who lived within their means and are now earning next-to-nothing on their savings. It has also allowed the big Wall Street banks to print money to offset all the dumb bets that brought the financial system to the brink of collapse two years ago. And it has fattened Wall Street bonus pools to record levels again.
Paul Abrams chimes in:
To get a clear picture of what is going on here, ignore the intermediate steps (borrowing money from the fed, investing in Treasuries), as they are riskless, and it immediately becomes clear that this is merely a direct payment from the Fed to the banking executives...for nothing. No nifty new tech product has been created. No illness has been treated. No teacher has figured out how to get a third-grader to understand fractions. No singer's voice has entertained a packed stadium. No batter has hit a walk-off double. No "risk"has even been "managed", the current mantra for what big banks do that is so goddamned important that it is doing "god's work".
Nor has any credit been extended to allow the real value-producers to meet payroll, to reserve a stadium, to purchase capital equipment, to hire employees. Nothing.
Congress should put an immediate halt to this practice. Banks should have to show that the money they are borrowing from the Fed is to provide credit to businesses, or consumers, or homeowners. Not a penny should be allowed to be used to purchase Treasuries. Otherwise, the Fed window should be slammed shut on their manicured fingers.
And, stiff criminal penalties should be enacted for those banks that mislead the Fed about the destination of the money they are borrowing. Bernie Madoff needs company.
There is another type of guaranteed spread that allows the giant banks to make money hand over fist. Specifically, the Fed pays the big banks interest to borrow money at no interest and then keep money parked at the Fed itself. (The Fed is intentionally doing this for the express purpose of preventing too much money from being lent out to Main Street. That's just dandy.)
The giant banks are receiving many other covert bailouts and subsidies as well.
Too Big As Subsidy
Initially, the fact that the giant banks are "too big to fail" encourages them to take huge, risky gambles that they would not otherwise take. If they win, they make big bucks. If they lose, they know the government will just bail them out. This is a gambling subsidy.
The very size of the too big to fails also decreases the ability of the smaller banks to compete. And - since the government itself helped make the giants even bigger - that is also a subsidy to the big boys (see this).
The monopoly power given to the big banks (technically an "oligopoly") is a subsidy in other ways as well. For example, Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said in September that giants like Goldman are using their size to manipulate the market:
"The main problem that Goldman raises is a question of size: 'too big to fail.' In some markets, they have a significant fraction of trades. Why is that important? They trade both on their proprietary desk and on behalf of customers. When you do that and you have a significant fraction of all trades, you have a lot of information."Further, he says, "That raises the potential of conflicts of interest, problems of front-running, using that inside information for your proprietary desk. And that's why the Volcker report came out and said that we need to restrict the kinds of activity that these large institutions have. If you're going to trade on behalf of others, if you're going to be a commercial bank, you can't engage in certain kinds of risk-taking behavior."
The giants (especially Goldman Sachs) have also used high-frequency program trading which not only distorted the markets - making up more than 70% of stock trades - but which also let the program trading giants take a sneak peak at what the real (aka “human”) traders are buying and selling, and then trade on the insider information. See this, this, this, this and this. (This is frontrunning, which is illegal; but it is a lot bigger than garden variety frontrunning, because the program traders are not only trading based on inside knowledge of what their own clients are doing, they are also trading based on knowledge of what all other traders are doing).
Goldman also admitted that its proprietary trading program can "manipulate the markets in unfair ways". The giant banks have also allegedly used their Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group (CRMPG) to exchange secret information and formulate coordinated mutually beneficial actions, all with the government's blessings.
In addition, the giants receive many billions in subsidies by receiving government guarantees that they are "too big to fail", ensuring that they have to pay lower interest rates to attract depositors.
Derivatives
And the government's failure to rein in derivatives or break up the giant banks also constitute enormous subsidies, as it allows the giants to make huge sums by keeping the true price points of their derivatives secret. See this and this.
Toxic Assets
And the PPIP program - which was supposed to reduce the toxic assets held by banks - actually increased them, and just let the banks make a quick buck.
Mortgages and Housing
PhD economists John Hussman and Dean Baker (and fund manager and financial writer Barry Ritholtz) say that the only reason the government keeps giving billions to Fannie and Freddie is that it is really a huge, ongoing, back-door bailout of the big banks.
Many also accuse Obama's foreclosure relief programs as being backdoor bailouts for the banks. (See this, this and this).
Foreign Bailouts
The big banks - such as JP Morgan - also benefit from foreign bailouts, such as the European bailout, as they are some of the largest creditors of the bailed out countries, and the bailouts allow them to get paid in full, instead of having to write down their foreign losses.
These are just a few of the secret bailouts programs the government is giving to the giant banks. There are many other bailout programs as well. If these bailouts and subsidies are added up, they amount to many tens - or perhaps even hundreds - of trillions of dollars.
And then there is the cost of debasing the currency in order to print money to fund these bailouts. The cost to the American citizen in less valuable dollars will be truly staggering.

Goldfinger the Proctologist

2010-05-13T11:21:00.001-10:00

Best read in conjunction with the immediately-preceding post (ok, all of them, maybe), the article once again points out that the banksters' crimes are presumed their targets' fault. Bear in mind, as you read these, that the next great health crisis is likely to be colon cancer, from all the smoke they're blowing up our...
The next 2,000-page bill data, financial, bill - Opinion - The Orange County Register

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Goldman Sachs' Operatives

2010-05-12T16:12:00.000-10:00

For details and an extensive list of references, see: http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/46267

ALTMAN, ROGER.
BERKOWITZ, HOWARD P.
BIDEN, JOE.
BRAINARD, LAEL.
BUFFETT, WARREN.
CLINTON, HILLARY.
CRAIG, GREGORY. (revolving door)
DONILON, THOMAS.
DUDLEY, WILLIAM C.
EFFRON, BLAIR W.
ELMENDORF, DOUGLAS.
EMANUEL, RAHM.
FARRELL, DIANA.
FRIEDMAN, STEPHEN.
FROMAN, Michael.
FUDGE, ANNE.
FURMAN, JASON.
GALLOGLY, MARK.
GEITHNER, TIMOTHY.
GENSLER, GARY.
GEPHARDT, RICHARD (aka "DICK") A.
GREENSTONE, MICHAEL (revolving door to Hamilton Project)
HAMILTON PROJECT, THE
HORMATS, ROBERT.
KAGAN, ELENA.
KASHKARI, NEEL.
KORNBLUH, KAREN.
LEW, JACOB (AKA "JACK") J.
LIDDY, EDWARD MICHAEL.
LIPTON, DAVID A.
MINDICH, ERIC
MURPHY, PHILLIP.
NIEDERAUER, DUNCAN.
OBAMA, BARACK H.
ORSZAG, PETER.
PATTERSON, MARK.
PERRY, RICHARD.
RATTNER, STEVE.
REISCHAUER, ROBERT D.
RIVLIN, ALICE.
RUBIN, JAMES.
RUBIN, ROBERT.
SHAFRAN, STEVEN.
SPERLING, GENE.
STORCH, ADAM.
SUMMERS, LARRY.
THAIN, JOHN.
TYSON, LAURA D’ANDREA.

Rape and Pillage Not Isolated to Goldman

2010-05-11T14:10:00.001-10:00

Message from sender:

They've come a long way from "John Pierpont"'s sale of inoperable rifles to Lincoln's Army...

Published on zero hedge (http://www.zerohedge.com)

JPMorgan Joins "Perfect 10" Club With Flawless Trading Quarter, Morgan Stanley Loses Money On Just 4 Days

By Tyler Durden

Created 05/11/2010 - 12:40

Yesterday we discussed the statistically impossible trading desk results of Goldman Sachs, which reported in its 10Q that it lost money on exactly 0 days last quarter, and was profitable on 63 out of 63 days. Today we find that the rape and pillage of the middle class was not isolated to Goldman, and that JP Morgan also had a flawless quarter. And if the odds of Goldman making 63 out of 63 are virtually impossible in any universe in which risk goes hand in hand with return (but in those in which monopolies are encouraged and bailed out), the coincidence of the two main firms that control the world having a perfect track record is impossible². And since things in reality tend to be zero sum, when everyone makes money, someone may be tempted to ask the question, just who is losing money? And the answer, dear taxpayers, and [Goldman|JPMorgan] clients, is you.

Source URL: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/jpmorgan-joins-perfect-10-flawless-trading-quarter-morgan-stanley-loses-money-just-4-days

Gene wants you to check out a video on Eyeblast.tv

2010-05-11T11:38:00.000-10:00

Attention Tea Partiers!

Check out the video "Tea Party Movement Not Realizing U.S. is Bailing Out Greece, Says CNBC Host" by clicking here http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/checker.aspx?v=Xd6USUaG6U

Kagan's Goldman Ties

2010-05-10T10:58:00.001-10:00

News Link
Entire Feb 2010 Issue of "American Behavioral Scientist" Devoted to State Crimes Against D
06-06-2010 coto2.wordpress.com
The prestigious 50-yr-old scholarly journal claims 9/11 was a State Crime Against Democracy (SCAD) typical of an ongoing, scientifically demonstrable pattern of many other such crimes. The entire issue lays out a new framework for further investigati

About That "Bent On World Empire" Thing...

Gene Kernan

Ultra-rich Megalomaniacs Bent On Ruling The World

2010-05-10T08:15:00.001-10:00

Message from sender:

Hmm. Goldfinger making "money" no matter what...
I'm shocked.

Published on zero hedge (http://www.zerohedge.com)

Unfuckingbelievable: Goldman Has Zero Trading Loss Days In Last Quarter

By Tyler Durden

Created 05/10/2010 - 07:54

If you ever wanted to see what monopoly looks like in chart form, here it is:

[1]

In the quarter ended March 31, Goldman made money on every single trading day. The firm did not record a loss of even $0.01 on even one day in the last quarter. That's 63 days profitable out of 63 trading days. The statistic probability of this event is itself statistically undefined. Goldman is now the market - or, in keeping with modern market reality, Goldman is the house, it controls the casino, and always wins. Congratulations America: you now have far, far better odds in Las Vegas that you have making money with your E-Trade account.

Source URL: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/unfuckingbelievable-goldman-has-zero-trading-loss-days-last-quarter

Links:
[1] http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/summers/Goldman Trading Days.jpg

(cue music) "That's Entertainment!"

2010-05-07T12:49:00.001-10:00

Message from sender:

God, I love good theater!

Published on zero hedge (http://www.zerohedge.com)

Euro Surges As Rumor That ECB Will Bail Out 1,100 European Banks Takes Hold

By Tyler Durden

Created 05/07/2010 - 10:29

Euro (and the market) surging on rumors that the ECB is preparing to bail out 1,100 banks in Europe. And with that the bailout moves officially to Europe. From the dealer community:

CHATTER OF NEWS ECB LOAN FACILITY GOING AROUND
Chatter of €600bn ECB loan facility to be announced over the weekend
Terms mentioned are 1% for 1 year loans to cover 1,100 banks
UNCONFIRMED - Euro is moving on this chatter

Imagine Lehman. Times 1,000. Now it gets fun.

Source URL: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/euro-surges-rumor-ecb-will-bail-out-1100-european-banks-takes-hold

A Note on the Sovereign Debt Crisis: Abandon Ship!

2010-05-06T15:38:00.001-10:00

Interesting how he refers to Goldfinger (in this case, the European Central Bank) as "feds"...

A Note on the Sovereign Debt Crisis: Abandon Ship!

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Freddie Mac asks for fresh 10.6 billion dollar bailout

2010-05-06T14:25:00.000-10:00

Gene Kernan (Gene@TheAmericanReublic.com) has sent you a Yahoo! Singapore News article
------------------------------------------------------------
Personal message:

Blah, blah, blah...

Freddie Mac asks for fresh 10.6 billion dollar bailout
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100505/tts-us-economy-property-finance-972e412.html

============================================================
Yahoo! Singapore News - http://sg.news.yahoo.com/

The World Should Now Be Considered in Revolution

2010-05-06T07:21:00.000-10:00

by Robert Wenzel

There is so much anger in the world, a government can really be confused as to who is after it.

Consider the range of anger right now. Completely different philosophies, completely different views of the world, but the Times Square bomber, the Tea Party movement, the Ron Paul movement and the protesters in Greece have one thing in common, a rejection of control by the global plotters.

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/05/world-should-now-be-considered-in.html

I'm Sure It's Just Coincidence...

2010-05-05T13:30:00.000-10:00

"Bureau of Land Management was doing a surprise inspection on oil rig 2 hours before it exploded".

It's not like "they" should want to distract us, or anything.
***

The Subprime Conspiracy: Was there a plan to blow up the economy? By Mike Whitney : Information Clearing House - ICH

2010-05-03T18:24:00.000-10:00

Under the category, "duh..."

The Subprime Conspiracy: Was there a plan to blow up the economy? By Mike Whitney : Information Clearing House - ICH

"Subrime" mortgages became possible - indeed, legally mandated - when Robert Rubin (of Goldman Sachs) was Secretary of the Treasury...under Clinton. Astsute individuals knew a screwing was coming. It was Clinton, after all.

Throughout the bush administration (and yes, the lower-case is deliberate - a manifestation of my opinion of that soon-to-be next-worst "president"), salesmen (called "mortgage brokers") sold mortgages to people they knew couldn't ultimately afford them, and then "sold" these mortgages (written on "flash" paper) to banks (who had to buy them by law, courtesy of Clinton/Rubin/Goldman Sachs).
The banks didn't want them (they knew it was "flash" paper), but they had to buy them by law, (courtesy of Clinton/Rubin/Goldman Sachs), so they packed them into boxes, and then "sold" the boxes to bigger banks (that didn't want them - they knew it was a box of "flash" paper), but they had to buy them by law, (courtesy of Clinton/Rubin/Goldman Sachs); so they packed the boxes onto pallets and sold the pallets to even bigger banks (that didn't want them - they knew they were pallets of boxes of "flash" paper), but they had to buy them by law, (courtesy of Clinton/Rubin/Goldman Sachs); so they packed the pallets into trucks and "sold" the trucks to even bigger banks (that didn't want them - they knew they were trucks full of pallets of boxes of "flash" paper), but they had to buy them by law, (courtesy of Clinton/Rubin/Goldman Sachs); so they called the trucks a fleet, and "sold" the fleet(s) to an even bigger bank (that actually DID want them - knowing they were fleets of trucks of pallets of boxes of "flash" paper), because (courtesy of Clinton/Rubin/Goldman Sachs) they could park the fleets of trucks of pallets of boxes of "flash" paper in a parking lot and "sell" shares of the parking lot to idiots called "investors".

On Auditing the Fed: The Doddering Senate by Gary North

2010-05-03T11:44:00.000-10:00

This well-written article makes a LOT clear, in terms that most people should be able to understand.

On Auditing the Fed: The Doddering Senate by Gary North

Opinion: Putting the Security Back in Social Security - AOL News

2010-05-03T08:05:00.000-10:00

In a "Special to AOL News", Opinion: Putting the Security Back in Social Security - AOL News, Pacific Research Institute's Robert P. Murphy suggests "Americans need to accept that Social Security is already broke." What Mr. Murphy (and all but a very few) fails to grasp is the actual purpose of "Social Security".

It should come as no suprise that "government programs" intend what they accomplish, and they almost always accomplish the exact opposite of their propaganda. "Social Security" was never intended to provide "security" to society; it was intended to "secure" government debt on the back of society.

"IL DUCE" Would Be Proud

2010-04-22T12:52:00.000-10:00

In as fine an example of telling us what we already know, as I've ever seen, National Public Radio "spins" the recent Pew polls (done in March, repeated in April - no doubt seeking higher numbers) at rpms far in excess of the fastest computer hard drive.

Noting that "the Pew poll shows a comparable level of dislike toward banks and financial institutions (22 percent positive, 69 percent negative). Large corporations do only slightly better (25 percent positive, 64 percent negative), a ratio that almost exactly matches the public scoring of the overall federal government (25 percent positive, 65 percent negative)."

No kidding. Pew's polls at least suggest that "the public" (defined by a federal court as "that vast multitude that includes the ignorant, the unthinking, and the credulous...") is coming to grips with the fact that "banks and financial institutions...[and]...[l]arge corporations" ARE the government, even if they can't quite yet admit it to themselves.

Article from RealClearPolitics

2010-04-17T16:31:00.001-10:00

Gene Kernan (Gene@TheAmericanRepublic.com) wanted to share the following link with you:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/04/16/nbc_reporter_to_black_man_at_tea_party_have_you_ever_felt_uncomfortable.html

They added this message:
My, my, how they try. Notice that Goldfinger\'s public relations arm keeps trying to infer that those opposed o overreaching government must be racist. Gotta be irritating when something like this happens...

The Cost Of Corporate Communism - a Zerohedge article

2010-04-15T15:01:00.000-10:00

Message from sender:

Well said.

Published on zero hedge (http://www.zerohedge.com)

Guest Post: The Cost Of Corporate Communism

By Tyler Durden

Created 04/15/2010 - 13:41

Lately I have been using the phrase "Corporate Communism" on my television show. I think it is an especially fitting term when discussing the current landscape in both our banking and health care systems. As Americans, I believe we reject communism because it historically has allowed a tiny group of people to consolidate complete control over national resources (including people), in the process stifling competition, freedom and choice. It leaves its citizens stagnating under the perpetual broken systems with no natural motivation to innovate, improve services or reduce costs. Lack of choice, lazy, unresponsive customer service, a culture of exploitation and a small powerbase formed by cronyism and nepotism are the hallmarks of a communist system that steals from its citizenry and a major reason why America spent half a century fighting a Cold War with the U.S.S.R.

Source URL: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-cost-corporate-communism-0

Fool.com: The "Money" Mob

2010-04-14T12:10:00.001-10:00

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It's really little comfort to hear "taht crazy shit you said years ag was true!"
=== END NOTES ===

I read two interesting thoughts last weekend. The first is from legendary 18th-century economic god Adam Smith -- father of free-market thinking -- who wrote this on the topic of regulating banks:

exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments, of the most free as well as of the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed.

The second came from JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon's annual letter to shareholders, which says a skill he strives for is the "Ability to face facts."

Amen to both
The outcome of banking gone wild is now well-known. Less obvious are the dramatic changes banks underwent since the 1980s that concluded with the collapse of 2008.

By looking back over the past 25 years, it's easy to highlight Smith's point of banks running roughshod over everyone else. And we can show this with cold, hard facts Dimon appreciates.

The three facts that put our current financial system in perspective are charts of profit growth, compensation growth, and relative size of today's biggest banks. I owe credit for the inspiration of these charts to a presentation in March by former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson. Let's look at each.

1. Money for nothin'
Every business, every corporation, and every consumer relies on banking in one way or another. That makes it a special industry, and it's why banks receive special treatment like backing from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It also makes it an industry that should be at least somewhat anchored to the rest of the economy. When the economy does well, banking does well; when the economy does poorly, so do banks.

That's roughly how it worked for most of the post-World War II period until the early 1980s -- profit growth among banks hugged close to the businesses they lent to. Then something strange happened:

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, author's calculations.

Let me explain this chart a little more. The Bureau of Economic Analysis tracks total corporate profits by industry going back to 1947. I took total financial profits, and total profits from all other industries, and calibrated both groups to "1" in 1947. So what this chart shows is the relative profit growth of banks compared with everyone else.

From 1947 until the mid-'80s, financial profits and all other profits were fairly correlated. Then in the mid '80s ... snap! ... financial-sector profits left everyone else in the dust.

There are two explanations for this. One, we've had consistently falling interest rates since the '80s, which is great for most businesses, but banks especially. Two, the '80s were deregulation central. As Simon Johnson and James Kwak explain in the book 13 Bankers:

[A broad] deregulatory trend begun in the administration of Jimmy Carter ... transformed into a crusade by Ronald Reagan. The eventual result was an out-of-balance financial system that still enjoyed the backing of the federal government --- what president would allow the financial system to collapse on his watch? -- without the regulatory oversight necessary to prevent excessive risk-taking.

Two big innovations that came from this were an explosion of derivatives, and the securitization of debt. As the past two years taught us, both products can be great in moderation yet deadly when used in excess -- which they usually are.

The reason excess within financial products became standard is simple: Bankers were getting fat and happy off these things even when clients lost money. That brings up chart No. 2.

2. Lifestyles of the rich and fortunate
There was nothing glamorous about banking for most of the post- World War II period. The leaders made fortunes and gained power -- as leaders of all industries do -- yet the lower workers were just average Joes making average wages.

As with profits, that changed abruptly in the '80s:

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, author's calculations.

In 1959, the average finance employee made $4,880 a year, while the average in all other sectors made $4,560. By 2006, the average finance worker made $82,200 compared with $52,800 for everyone else. Nice.

The practice of paying bankers ungodly sums just for showing up isn't the historic norm. It's really something that sprung up in the '80s with the advent of financial engineering and the outburst of subsidized profits.

Another thing we've become accustomed to that isn't historically ordinary is the size of the largest banks. That brings up chart No. ?3.

3. What too big to fail looks like

Source: Capital IQ (a division of Standard & Poor's), measuringworth.org, author's calculations.

This is the combined total assets of the four big commercial banks -- Citigroup (NYSE: C), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), and JPMorgan Chase -- as a percentage of gross domestic product. In 1992, the combined assets of these four banks amounted to 5.2% of GDP. By 2009, that number had increased tenfold, to 52% of GDP. The big jump came in the late '90s with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which allowed commercial banks to merge with investment banks. A second surge came in 2008 after surviving banks purchased their fallen neighbors.

This chart is particularly revealing because it thoroughly wrecks the claim -- made mostly by bank CEOs -- that megabanks must not be broken up because large companies like Apple and ExxonMobil absolutely need banks of today's size to conduct business. Eyeball the chart for three seconds and you realize how ludicrous this idea is. Big companies didn't struggle to raise capital in 1992. Or 1995. Or 2000. Or 2006. In fact, they thrived like never before. To suggest that reducing the size of big banks relative to GDP to where they were in, say, 1998, would somehow asphyxiate big businesses is comically refutable.

Don't shoot the messenger
These three charts don't tell the whole story, of course. You can gab away about how the Fed, Fannie and Freddie, China, the Democrats, the Republicans, the media, and whoever else you detest created the financial collapse. And please do.

What I hope they do is provide perspective. There's a growing group, without naming names, that acts like even the slightest smidge of financial reform will send us into a Socialist Stone Age. But when you see how dramatically and quickly the financial system skewed, you see how even significant reform would simply revert it back to where it was only a handful of years ago -- a time that was demonstrably more stable, produced higher growth, and, to the irony of all, represented the "old America" so many reform opponents want back.

Some say banks are making lots of money and paying themselves accordingly, but that's their right. That's capitalism. We encourage it. We cherish it. But as Adam Smith mentioned more than 200 years ago, it isn't capitalism if the misbehavior of a few bankers "endanger the security of the whole society." And that's exactly what happened in 2008.It wasn't capitalism. It was banks blowing up the economy. And a few of us are praying it'll soon end.

Check back every Tuesday and Friday for Morgan Housel's columns on finance and economics.

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Gene@TheAmericanRepublic.com has shared: Meredith Whitney: Obama credit card reform makes it "more expensive to be poor"

2010-04-14T10:39:00.001-10:00

So, if "people cut out of the banking system who can't get by without credit will turn to small financial shops, including predatory lenders..." what's the difference?
Meredith Whitney: Obama credit card reform makes it "more expensive to be poor" Source: money.cnn.com Meredith Whitney argues that credit will -- indeed must -- continue to contract. Yanking it away from consumers is one big way this will happen.

Gene@TheAmericanRepublic.com sent this using ShareThis.