The Founders of TPTB which fell the Once Great American Empire...
1. Samuel Prescott Bush (1863 -1948)
Samuel Bush
Early Days
The founder of the modern Bush dynasty was Samuel Prescott Bush, an Ohio steel executive, whose Buckeye Steel Castings Co. business projects included making parts for the Harriman railway empire. Before becoming President of Buckeye (1905-1927), Samuel Bush held a railroad position in Pennsylvania. He was the son of the Rev. James Smith Bush and Harriet Fay. Samuel graduated from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1884, and ten years later married Flora Sheldon, with whom he had four surviving children, Prescott, Mary, Margaret and James. Of these his son Prescott Sheldon Bush was to be his father's dynastic successor. Samuel's money was not to give him immunity from personal tragedy however, for his wife Flora was to be killed when struck by a car in 1920. Samuel later remarried Martha Bell Carter of Milwaukee.
For many years Samuel was a leading member of the National Association of Manufacturers, and for a time was President of the Ohio Manufacturer's Association. Later he was to be an advisor to the disastrous Depression-era President Herbert Hoover on business and unemployment issues. He began the Bush family's abiding interest in golf, baseball, tennis and football. His old company Buckeye Steel endured for many years, but under new ownership filed for bankruptcy reorganization in Dec. 2002.
After the US entered World War I in April 1917, Samuel Bush obtained a position as head of the War Industries Board's Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section. This is surprising, considering he had no background in armaments. There was a hidden logic. As an apparent 'cleanskin' suitable for a sensitive official position, Bush already had powerful patrons eager to put his name forward. We can note for example Frank and Percy Rockefeller, whose famous family had moved to gain control of the Remington Arms Company in 1914. (Frank Rockefeller, a brother of clan head John D. Rockefeller, was the previous President of Buckeye Steel).
Then there was a certain George Sheldon, a director of the huge Bethlehem Steel Corp., which like Remington benefited enormously from World War I. George Sheldon was also a vice-president of the Navy League, which was subsidised by steel & arms makers to agitate for a massive naval expansion advantageous to them.
Finally, the War Industries Board was itself headed by Bernard M. Baruch, a Wall St. speculator who had close personal and business ties to E.H. Harriman, father of the closest friend of Bush's son Prescott at Yale. Sometimes the associations of their children can bring advancement to parents just as readily as the reverse. In Samuel Bush's later years he was to remain closely associated with the high-flying Baruch. In the America of the day, big money stuck together closer than clotted cream.
So the link between the Bushes, war, patriotism and profits was now firmly established through an informal network of influence. It has continued ever since.
The Merchants of Death
The period following the Civil War in the US and the Franco-Prussian War in Europe opened both a great general industrial expansion and the largest explosion of arms manufacturing ever known until the modern era. It was a time of huge fortunes being built by ruthless industrialists and bankers. These gentlemen, later styled the "robber barons" by historians, look little better than gangsters in retrospect. However many of them founded family dynasties whose descendants were to become not only rich but also eminently respectable. In some cases, like that of the Carnegies and the Rockefellers, much of their fortunes were later to be used worldwide for considerable good. In other cases, like the Bush family, the further accumulation of money and power remained the primary goal.
The most evil aspect of the unregulated free-for-all that characterised the 1865 -1914 period of rapid industrial expansion was the development of an arms trade which did not just sell weapons but actively promoted war tensions and conflict to do so. The "trick of the trade" then for the arms manufacturers was to manufacture not just munitions but also regular "threats" and war scares. The idea was to keep populations supportive of greater expenditures on arms, and to prevent effective political challenge to those who advocated spending ever more taxes on weapons.
Fear was in fact the greatest weapon the arms dealers peddled. And they had no compunction about firing it from the shortest range possible. An example of their cynicism in action was shown as early as 1879, when the Remington Arms Co. was selling ammunition to both Russia and Turkey when they were at war with each other. Closer to home, they sold rifles to Cuban revolutionaries and at the same time ammunition to the Spanish Govt. fighting them.
Remington later topped this when Colombia and Venezuela were at war, but both states were also facing civil insurrections. There Remington achieved a quadruple sales bonanza by having all four parties firing at each other with Remington rifles loaded with Remington UMC bullets.
In Bullets we Trust
Beginning in 1894 an international arms cartel was formed, enabling leading arms manufacturers to jointly exploit markets worldwide without the annoyance of risking undercutting each other's profits. Disguised under the innocuous title of the Harvey United Steel Co., the "Harvey Syndicate" brought together many leading arms majors. The largest of these were UK firms Vickers Ltd. & Armstrong-Whitworth; from Germany Krupps and Dillingen, France's huge Schneider Co., Italy's Terni and from the USA Bethlehem Steel. Some of the companies had numerous national subsidiaries or associated businesses with interlocking directorships, and behind them stood big bankers such as John Pierpont Morgan. The companies sold in all markets to friend or potential foe, without reservation. Yet within their home countries each put their efforts forward as the essence of patriotism.
Arms panics in 1889 & 1892-3 created by agents of the weapons manufacturers resulted in huge surges of military spending in Britain and France, kicking off a corresponding rise in Germany. This tactic was regularly and successfully repeated, often by the deliberate preading of false or misleading information about what potential or actual enemies were doing. Weapons agents sallied back and forth between national leaders and governments, intentionally provoking them in turn. The resulting arms race made Europe a "powderkeg" ready for the fatal conflagration that occurred in 1914, the most disastrous and bloody war in all human history.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Modern Day Warfare via American Capitalisim
One of the crucial pillars of support for today's Dollar System is Washington's control of the International Monetary Fund, commonly known as the IMF. The way this actually works is carefully disguised, behind a facade of technocrats and economic theory of free market ideology. In reality, the IMF is a modern era collection agency for the Dollar Empire. It collects its tribute, through major international banks, who use the dollars to further extend the power of American financial and corporate hegemony, in effect the driving motor of what is globalization.
Ironically, though the IMF is a main prop of the Dollar System, it's nominally headed by a European, today a German, Horst Koehler, and before him, by a Frenchman, Michel Camdessus. The real power is carefully concealed behind the facade. Under the constitution of the IMF, no major decision is possible without 85% support of the board of directors. The United States, which drafted the original IMF charter at Bretton Woods New Hampshire in 1944, made sure it had the decisive veto control with an 18% vote share. That veto remains to today. Insiders know well that the IMF is run by Washington. It is no accident that its headquarters is also there.
The IMF was originally created in the 1944 Bretton Woods New Hampshire international monetary conference, called by President Roosevelt to set up a postwar monetary and trade system. It was intended as a fund to support stability of currencies and trade of the postwar European allied countries. At that time Washington held the vast bulk of world gold reserves and expected to lend dollars to rebuild Europe. The original IMF idea was to pool a share of reserves of member states, which any single state could then borrow, in event of a short term payments crisis, to stabilize their currency. Ten years after the Great Depression, the major industrial nations, including the USA, were concerned with creation of a stable, growing Europe, not least as an export market for US products. The first member to borrow was Great Britain after the war. The last European state was Italy in 1977.
The IMF was given sharper teeth in 1980s
Since 1977, no European or G7 country has gone to the IMF to borrow. Instead they have borrowed from private banks or issued state debt. They know all too well how destructive the IMF conditions are. By the end of the 1970s some people were suggesting the IMF had outlived its role, much as some argue with NATO after the end of the Cold War. Washington had other ideas for the IMF however.
The role of the IMF changed dramatically in the early 1980s, under US pressure. Instead of serving as a stabilizing fund for industrial countries of Europe or Japan, the IMF became the decisive agency controlling economic policy of underdeveloped countries. What evolved since the first Latin American debt crises of the early 1980s, was an entirely new role for the IMF to act as policeman to collect dollar loans for private New York and international banks. The IMF became the driving motor for what came to be called "globalization."
After the first oil price rise of 400% in the 1970s, many developing countries such as Brazil, Argentina, or most of Africa, borrowed heavily to finance needed oil imports, or trade deficits. They borrowed dollars from major international banks operating in the London Eurodollar market. London was the center for, in effect, the recycling of the large sums of petrodollars from Arab OPEC countries to US and other major banks.
The major banks took the new oil dollars and immediately relent them at a nice profit, to countries like Argentina or Egypt. Before the 1970s Argentina had been a fast-growing economy developing modern industry, agriculture and a rising standard of living for its people. It had almost no foreign debt. Ten years later, the country was under control of the IMF and foreign banks. The US changed the rules, in the process causing the very debt crisis it promised to fix in the first place.
In October 1979, a dramatic shock occurred for the debtor countries. Overnight their cheap dollar loans cost them 300% more interest charge. Paul Volcker of the Federal Reserve Bank in the US, unilaterally changed US interest policy to force the dollar higher against other currencies. The effect was to raise US interest rates 300% and rates in the London bank market by even more. The bank loans to Argentina and other countries had been made in "floating" rate agreements. If the key international rate in the London bank market, LIBOR, was low, Argentina would pay a low rate on its dollar loans. But when it suddenly rose 300% in 1979-1980, many countries suddenly faced a payments crisis.
It took until 1982 for the crisis to reach default level. At that point, Washington demanded the IMF be brought in to police a debt collection process on developing debtor nations. This came to be called the Third World Debt Crisis. The impression was created that countries like Argentina were guilty for mismanagement. In reality, whatever political corruption may have existed in the debtor countries, the corruption of the IMF system and the petrodollar recycling was far greater. The Volcker interest rate shock completed the package of destruction of living standards on behalf of dollar debts.
How did the IMF act in the third world debt crisis? Here is where it becomes clear that the role of the IMF was to support the dollar hegemony of the United States, and not to help poor countries get through a temporary debt problem.
The 'Washington Consensus'
The IMF has been described by some as a sledge hammer of neo-colonialism. That is too mild, as 19th Century British or European colonialism, however harsh, never managed to accomplish the extent of devastation and destruction of health and living standards the IMF has done since the 1970s.
The IMF operates as a supranational agency to take control over helpless debtor states, to impose economic policies that force the country ever deeper into debt, while opening the market to foreign, often US capital and global corporate exploitation. The fact that debtor countries never get out of their dollar debt, only deeper in, is deliberate. IMF policy in fact insures this. The dollar debt is a major prop of the dollar system and of private international banks. When that debt is repaid, banks lose power and credit contracts. So long as debt grows, bank credit can grow, the paradox of modern banking.
The tip-off that the real purpose of the IMF is quite different from its public claims, is that despite repeated proof of the destructiveness of its policies, called "conditionalities," the IMF has never changed the method it uses in a target country. There is a reason for that.
Take Argentina as a case in point. In early 2002 Argentina defaulted on repaying $141 billion in foreign dollar debt. One of the most devastating economic collapses in modern history ensued. The IMF was crucial. In early 2000 Argentina had turned to the IMF for emergency credit to prevent a collapse of its currency, then fixed to the strong US dollar. As the dollar rose, Argentina found its exports trade collapsing. The country went into recession. The IMF stepped in with a $48 billion "rescue" package. But there were conditions.
First the government had to agree to severe IMF-dictated cuts in government spending before it would get any money. State subsidies on food for low income were ended, triggering food riots. Interest rates exploded in a vain effort to convince foreign banks and bondholders to not sell. That only worsened the economic depression. State companies were forced to privatize to raise money and "promote free market" liberalization. The Buenos Aires water system was sold for pennies to Enron, as was a pipeline going from Argentina to Chile.
Washington insisted all the while that Argentina hold to its fixed currency value, arguing that the trust of foreign bondholders and creditors was the priority. Meanwhile the country sank into its worst depression in memory, as millions lost jobs, and bank accounts were in the final stage frozen, so ordinary citizens could not even draw savings for life necessities.
What exactly does the IMF do when it comes into a crisis country that asks for emergency lending to overcome a debt or currency crisis? The IMF always uses the same program, regardless of whether it is Russia or Argentina, Zimbabwe or South Korea, all very different cultures, economies and situations. The IMF demands are often referred to as the Washington Consensus, the name given in 1990 by a US economist and IMF backer, John Williamson, to describe the IMF method of attack.
IMF medicine almost always includes demands to privatize state industries, to slash public spending even on health and education, devalue the national currency against the dollar, and open the country to free flow of international capital-both in and, especially, out.
First the IMF demands the government in question sign a secret Memorandum of Understanding with the IMF, in which it agrees to a list of "conditionalities", the pre-condition for getting any penny of IMF aid. Under today's globalized free capital markets, banks do not invest in a country that does not have the IMF seal of approval. So the IMF role is far more than giving some emergency loan. It determines if a country gets any money from any source at all-World Bank, private banks and other.
The conditions of an IMF deal are always the same. Privatization of state industries is top on the list. The effect of privatization with a cheap Peso or Ruble currency is that foreign dollar investors are able to buy up the prime assets of a country dirt cheap. Often the politicians involved in the country get corrupted by the lure of under-the-table deals in privatizing their national assets. Foreign multinationals can grab profitable mining, oil, or other national treasures with their dollars.
The case of the Yeltsin government in Russia is classic, with dollar billionaires emerging overnight on the looting of national assets via IMF-dictated privatization. The Clinton Administration backed the process fully. They knew it turned Russia into a dollar zone, and that was the intent.
The second demand of the IMF is that a country liberalize, that is open, its financial and banking markets to foreign investors. This allows high-profile speculators like George Soros or Citibank or Credit Suisse to come into a country, run up asset prices in a speculation, take huge profits, as in Thailand in the mid-1990s, and quickly sell, then exit with huge gains, as the local economy collapses behind them. Then Western multinationals can come in after, and take prime assets at very low cost.
This is what happened to Asia in the 1990s. The IMF and US Treasury, which actually determines US IMF policy, began strong pressure on the fast-growing East Asia "Tiger" economies in 1993, to remove national controls on capital flows. They argued it would help Asia get large sums of money to invest. What it did was give US pension funds and big banks a huge new market for speculation. Too much money flowed in, and an unhealthy real estate bubble grew. It burst when Soros and other US speculators deliberately pulled the plug in 1997, triggering the Asia crisis. The end result was that for the first time, Asian economies were forced to turn to the IMF to be rescued.
But the IMF did not "rescue" any Asian economy in 1998. It rescued international banks and hedge fund speculators. In Indonesia, the IMF demanded the government raise interest rates to 80%, on the argument that would keep foreign investors from leaving, and stabilize the situation. In fact, as critics like Joseph Stiglitz charged at the time, the IMF interest rate demands guaranteed a full-blown collapse of the Indonesian and other Asian banking systems.
Once the IMF got control of South Korea, one of the strongest industrial economies in the world, it demanded breakup of large industry conglomerates, charging "corruption" and "crony capitalism." In fact, Washington hoped to weaken a growing competitor and open the door for US companies like GM or Ford to take over. In part it worked, until Korea and other regional economies were strong enough to re-impose national controls. Malaysia openly defied the IMF demands and imposed currency controls during the crisis. The damage to Malaysia was minimal as a result, a great embarrassment to the IMF.
The next step for IMF conditions, is the demand a country turn to "market-based" domestic prices. This is code for eliminating government subsidies or price controls. Often developing countries have state-subsidized fuel or food or other necessities for their people. In 1998 the IMF demanded, for example, that Indonesia remove state food subsidies for the poor. The idea of "market-based price" is itself a fiction. A market is man-made. The market in Switzerland or Denmark or Japan is different from the market in Cuba or Cameroon. What the IMF is after is a slashing of state budgets to minimize the state role in the economy and make a target country defenseless against foreign takeover of its key assets. The government share in the fragile economy is cut also, in order to insure foreign banks get their "pound of flesh."
Finally the IMF demands the country devalue its currency, and massively, often by 60-70% or more. Here the argument is that this will make its exports "more competitive" and bring more income to repay the foreign dollar debts. This is a crucial part of the IMF Washington Consensus medicine. If, say, Chile devalues the Peso in half, or the Republic of Congo, it must export twice as many tons of copper to earn the same dollar of export surplus. For the giant multinationals in the industrial world, it means the cost of raw materials has become cheaper by half.
Over the past twenty years since the IMF stepped in to play the major role in reorganizing developing countries, world raw materials prices have been dramatically depressed, even though demand has risen. The reason is that countries of Africa, Latin America and elsewhere are mainly raw materials exporters, and their commodities, like oil, are all exported in dollars. They need to earn dollars to repay dollar debts. The IMF policies have driven their raw material prices, measured in dollars, drastically lower. This has been deliberate, but is never admitted. The IMF is an agency of American dollar domination of the global economy, not an agency to help developing countries.
The IMF's Bloody Record
None of this is exaggeration, unfortunately. IMF defenders claim that "market liberalization" has resulted in major economic growth over the past 20 years in developing countries. The reality is opposite. In a study done by Joseph Stiglitz when he was at the World Bank, between 1989 and 1997 the GDP of every country in the former Soviet Union had fallen to levels of 30% to 80% of that before the collapse of state controls, with the sole exception of Poland. The level in Russia was only 60% that in 1989. GDP had collapsed 40%, and unemployment went from 2 million to 60 million. The rapid privatization without adequate legal and institutional safeguards such as unemployment insurance or health insurance, led to social catastrophe comparable to wartime. IMF demands to free capital movement allowed new Russian dollar oligarchs such as Berezovsky to plunder billions of dollars and put it into secret bank accounts in Cyprus or Liechtenstein, while they bought luxury villas in Monte Carlo.
The IMF record in Africa is as outrageous and destructive. In Zimbabwe, the IMF demanded the government privatize certain state companies and cut subsidies on food, education and health care to get IMF aid. The government complied with most demands, and then the IMF accused it of funding the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, using that as an excuse to deny giving Zimbabwe loans. In Kenya the IMF earlier demanded that specific individuals be named to the government of Moi, people friendly to Western interests. Washington then charged these governments being "corrupt," which conveniently blinds Western opinion from realizing the moral travesty taking place under IMF auspices.
Forever deeper into debt ...
Take the official World Bank debt statistics and it becomes obvious that the IMF game is to support the dollar. The first debt crisis in the Third World erupted in 1982. The IMF stepped in to "stabilize" the debt problem. Since then, the foreign debts of developing countries have risen exponentially. In Argentina, the earlier "success" of the IMF, foreign debt stood at $62 billion in 1990. In 2000 it was $146 billion. Brazil's foreign debt has gone from $120 billion to $240 billion in the same time. Iran, isolated from the IMF system by US sanctions, is one of the few developing countries which has managed to reduce its foreign debt.
The total foreign dollar debt of all low and middle income countries rose from $1.4 trillion in 1990 to $2.5 trillion in 2000, almost double. In most cases, the unpayable interest costs on the debts were merely added to the amount of principal owed foreign lenders, at compound interest rate, of course. With compound interest charges often 10% to 15% per year, the debt grows exponentially.
The result is a Ponzi debt pyramid, in which the more a country pays, the more it owes. Bankers call it "interest capitalization." It is no different from the plight of a poor shopkeeper debtor who is forced to turn to a mafia loan shark to survive and ends up paying more and more at ever more interest, until he is bankrupt and the mafia takes all his possessions. The IMF and banks know only some 80% of Third World debts can ever be repaid. They care only about the legal fiction and the ability to use the debt as a lever to grab assets cheaply. According to the World Bank, between 1980 and 1986, for a group of 109 debtor countries, payment of interest alone to the creditors on foreign debts totaled $326 billion. Repayment of principal on the same debts totaled another $322 billion, for a combined capital flow out to the New York and other creditor banks, in debt service, of $658 billions on an original debt of $430 billion. Yet, despite this enormous effort, these 109 debtors still owed the banks a sum of $882 billion in 1986. This was because of the pyramid effect of compound interest, interest capitalization and Volcker's floating rate policy.
In 1990 the developing world repaid some $150 billion in interest on dollar debt, three times all aid received. This was a huge boost to the dollar credit system, which lends on the basis of assuming it will be repaid the entire $2.5 trillion third world debt. The IMF allows that myth to continue. Occupied Iraq today must still "honor" billions in debts of the Hussein era, many to the former Soviet Union, despite its devastated situation. Russia is still forced to admit billions in debt from the Soviet era to Western agencies. Under the IMF system, debt is more sacred than human life.
The vicious trick in all IMF-led "debt restructuring," is that so long as a debtor is able to pay interest on its loans, the creditor banks in New York or London or elsewhere do not have to declare their loan in default. Even if they know it never will be repaid, they treat it as if it were a fully good credit, and use it as capital collateral for further bank lending. The banking system of the dollar world is to a major degree propped up by the pyramid of unpayable third world loans from Africa to Indonesia to Argentina to Croatia.
There has been a dramatic slowdown in economic growth in developing economies over the past two decades since the IMF was brought in to police the debtor states in 1982. There is a direct link. In Latin America, if we take per capita GDP growth, there was a growth of 75% between 1960 and 1980. In the following 20 years to 2000, per capital GDP grew a mere 6%.
In Sub-Sahara Africa, per capita GDP grew by 36% in the two decade period to 1980. Then, it fell by a staggering 15% the next two decades. According to the World Bank itself, some 300 million Africans, almost half of the Continent, survive on less than ? 0.65 a day. IMF-dictated cuts in national health care have resulted in rising infant mortality across the Continent. In 2002 Malawi underwent famine. It coincided with the April 2002 decision by the IMF to suspend Malawi on allegations of "corruption." The IMF had ordered Malawi's government to sell its grain reserves in order to repay a South African bank loan of the National Food Reserve Agency. The IMF also ordered export of maize to service debt, ignoring a developing famine crisis. The IMF piously denied it played any role in the famine crisis however.
For Arab states, including Algeria, Morocco, GDP growth per capital swung from a plus 175% between 1960-1980 to a minus 2% in the following two decades, a staggering collapse.
The only apparent exception to this negative trend is East Asia including China. Here growth was faster between 1980 and 2000. But the reason is the including of China, which saw a 400% increase in GDP and accounts for 83% of the region's population. China has adamantly refused any dealings with the IMF, and runs a controlled state-guided economy with full currency controls, hardly an IMF model state.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Isn't it nice to be able to Screw Your former
Hank 'The Hammer' Paulson - the most dangerous man in America
The most powerful man in America today is not President Bush. Not that He is running the US anyway.
Nor is it the two political candidates seeking to replace him.
It's the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Hank Paulson.
Calling the shots: U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson
For make no mistake, it is the U.S. Treasury Secretary who is calling all the shots on the credit crunch crisis.
At the word of this former banker, the American taxpayer has committed hundreds of billions of dollars to save some firms (such as insurance giant AIG) and let others (such as Lehman's) go to the wall.
So who is Hank Paulson, and what gives him the right to play God with the world's banking system?
Paulson, 62, was brought up in suburban Illinois, where he won a reputation as a tough, sporting child.
He was an American Football hero at high school and university, and it was on the football field that this 6ft 2in bear of a man won the Hammer nickname.
He still works out every day and one former colleague says: 'Hank comes across as a big, tough, redneck.'
In fact, his parents were Christian Scientists - who believe in healing through prayer, and often refuse modern medical treatments.
He inherited their faith, of which he says: 'Christian Science is a religion in which you emphasise love as opposed to fear.'
Today, his daughter writes for the Christian Science Monitor magazine, and Paulson doesn't smoke or drink.
After graduating from Harvard Business School, Paulson's first job was as a junior assistant to one of Richard Nixon's aides, who soon afterwards went to jail for his part in the Watergate scandal.
So the Hammer returned to Chicago, joined the investment bank Goldman Sachs and began a meteoric ascent up its corporate ladder, supported by his wife, Wendy, whom he met at university, and their two children.
Away from office life, he was obsessed by animals and his children were brought up with raccoons, squirrels, alligators, lizards, a tarantula and snakes for company.
Perhaps his colleagues should have noted his particular interest is in birds of prey, 'because they are at the top of the food chain'.
Certainly, Paulson was a successful corporate predator and in 1999 rose to the top of his particular food chain, becoming chief executive of Goldman Sachs, America's most successful and elitist merchant bank. He kept the job for eight years.
Along the way, he was paid the huge bonuses that came with being one of Wall Street's Masters of the Universe, with a personal fortune estimated to be approaching £400million.
But he was far from a typical chief executive, preferring to go birdwatching than socialising, and promising that most of his money would be left to conservation projects.
Then in 2006, he had a call from George Bush's chief of staff, who wanted him to become the new Secretary of the Treasury.
In one way, it was no surprise. He had been a Republican donor and keen supporter of the President.
But Paulson wasn't keen on the job offer. The last two Treasury Secretaries hadn't had much influence.
He drove a hard bargain, saying he'd come only if he were made the President's chief economic policymaker. Bush agreed.
Initially, Paulson also struggled to make an impact. Like any banker he wanted less regulation - but didn't get it.
He wanted a new deal on welfare spending - but no one else in the White House was interested. And in the early days of the credit crunch, he appeared slow to respond.
And then, last March, the investment bank Bear Stearns told the Treasury that it was about to go broke. Paulson took charge at once.
Bush calls him 'my wartime general', and has delegated unprecedented authority to him over the banking crisis.
Paulson persuaded the President that the taxpayer had to give a £15billion guarantee to JP Morgan, another bank, as an incentive to take over Bear Stearns.
Earlier this month, he made an even bigger commitment on behalf of the taxpayer when the giant mortgage lenders Fannie May and Freddie Mac were effectively nationalised, adding more billions - no one knows exactly how much - to the U.S. national debt.
This, Paulson insisted, was the final bail-out.
So when two more huge Wall Street banks - Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch - got into trouble, he told them that there would be no more taxpayers' money.
As a direct consequence, Lehman went broke, and Merrill had to sell itself for a song to Bank of America.
But then on Tuesday night, he was forced to go back on his word, offering the largest bail-out yet - £43billion of public money - to the ailing insurance giant, AIG.
Unlike Lehman, apparently, AIG was simply too big to be allowed to fail.
There are a number of ironies about this. First, can it really be right that a man who, until two years ago, was running a Wall Street bank himself is now deciding which of his former competitors gets to survive, and which goes to the wall?
Then there is the spectacle of one of the prophets of the free market spending billions of pounds of other people's money to sort out the problem he had a major hand in creating.
Next, according to some, there is the concern that by effectively nationalising companies such as AIG, he is penalising the shareholders while providing a lifeline to their employees.
In doing so, he has been accused of helping out his former colleagues at the expense of those who provide the funding to make the financial system work.
Other critics don't like to see an unelected official wielding such power, with one senator claiming that 'he's acting like the finance minister of China'.
And lastly, there is sight of a man worth £400million enslaving future generations of American taxpayers to a massive never ending financial liability.
As even he admits: 'I think we'll be dealing with the housing issue for maybe years after I've left.'
No one in Washington is openly attacking Paulson. No doubt his actions will be questioned and debated late
The most powerful man in America today is not President Bush. Not that He is running the US anyway.
Nor is it the two political candidates seeking to replace him.
It's the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Hank Paulson.
Calling the shots: U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson
For make no mistake, it is the U.S. Treasury Secretary who is calling all the shots on the credit crunch crisis.
At the word of this former banker, the American taxpayer has committed hundreds of billions of dollars to save some firms (such as insurance giant AIG) and let others (such as Lehman's) go to the wall.
So who is Hank Paulson, and what gives him the right to play God with the world's banking system?
Paulson, 62, was brought up in suburban Illinois, where he won a reputation as a tough, sporting child.
He was an American Football hero at high school and university, and it was on the football field that this 6ft 2in bear of a man won the Hammer nickname.
He still works out every day and one former colleague says: 'Hank comes across as a big, tough, redneck.'
In fact, his parents were Christian Scientists - who believe in healing through prayer, and often refuse modern medical treatments.
He inherited their faith, of which he says: 'Christian Science is a religion in which you emphasise love as opposed to fear.'
Today, his daughter writes for the Christian Science Monitor magazine, and Paulson doesn't smoke or drink.
After graduating from Harvard Business School, Paulson's first job was as a junior assistant to one of Richard Nixon's aides, who soon afterwards went to jail for his part in the Watergate scandal.
So the Hammer returned to Chicago, joined the investment bank Goldman Sachs and began a meteoric ascent up its corporate ladder, supported by his wife, Wendy, whom he met at university, and their two children.
Away from office life, he was obsessed by animals and his children were brought up with raccoons, squirrels, alligators, lizards, a tarantula and snakes for company.
Perhaps his colleagues should have noted his particular interest is in birds of prey, 'because they are at the top of the food chain'.
Certainly, Paulson was a successful corporate predator and in 1999 rose to the top of his particular food chain, becoming chief executive of Goldman Sachs, America's most successful and elitist merchant bank. He kept the job for eight years.
Along the way, he was paid the huge bonuses that came with being one of Wall Street's Masters of the Universe, with a personal fortune estimated to be approaching £400million.
But he was far from a typical chief executive, preferring to go birdwatching than socialising, and promising that most of his money would be left to conservation projects.
Then in 2006, he had a call from George Bush's chief of staff, who wanted him to become the new Secretary of the Treasury.
In one way, it was no surprise. He had been a Republican donor and keen supporter of the President.
But Paulson wasn't keen on the job offer. The last two Treasury Secretaries hadn't had much influence.
He drove a hard bargain, saying he'd come only if he were made the President's chief economic policymaker. Bush agreed.
Initially, Paulson also struggled to make an impact. Like any banker he wanted less regulation - but didn't get it.
He wanted a new deal on welfare spending - but no one else in the White House was interested. And in the early days of the credit crunch, he appeared slow to respond.
And then, last March, the investment bank Bear Stearns told the Treasury that it was about to go broke. Paulson took charge at once.
Bush calls him 'my wartime general', and has delegated unprecedented authority to him over the banking crisis.
Paulson persuaded the President that the taxpayer had to give a £15billion guarantee to JP Morgan, another bank, as an incentive to take over Bear Stearns.
Earlier this month, he made an even bigger commitment on behalf of the taxpayer when the giant mortgage lenders Fannie May and Freddie Mac were effectively nationalised, adding more billions - no one knows exactly how much - to the U.S. national debt.
This, Paulson insisted, was the final bail-out.
So when two more huge Wall Street banks - Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch - got into trouble, he told them that there would be no more taxpayers' money.
As a direct consequence, Lehman went broke, and Merrill had to sell itself for a song to Bank of America.
But then on Tuesday night, he was forced to go back on his word, offering the largest bail-out yet - £43billion of public money - to the ailing insurance giant, AIG.
Unlike Lehman, apparently, AIG was simply too big to be allowed to fail.
There are a number of ironies about this. First, can it really be right that a man who, until two years ago, was running a Wall Street bank himself is now deciding which of his former competitors gets to survive, and which goes to the wall?
Then there is the spectacle of one of the prophets of the free market spending billions of pounds of other people's money to sort out the problem he had a major hand in creating.
Next, according to some, there is the concern that by effectively nationalising companies such as AIG, he is penalising the shareholders while providing a lifeline to their employees.
In doing so, he has been accused of helping out his former colleagues at the expense of those who provide the funding to make the financial system work.
Other critics don't like to see an unelected official wielding such power, with one senator claiming that 'he's acting like the finance minister of China'.
And lastly, there is sight of a man worth £400million enslaving future generations of American taxpayers to a massive never ending financial liability.
As even he admits: 'I think we'll be dealing with the housing issue for maybe years after I've left.'
No one in Washington is openly attacking Paulson. No doubt his actions will be questioned and debated late
Thursday, February 07, 2008
When the U.S. Treasury economic collapse is no longer containable
What you are about to read is NOT a fantasy. It is what is happening right NOW. Take your time read it slow. Re-read it if you must. I have and the implication is staggering.
Part #1
Renowned Funds Manager Juilan Robertson Predicts Global Economic Collapse
There was an interview on CNBC of the renowned funds manager Julian Robertson. He is one of the greatest of the old-timers. 53 years on the Street. He manages the Robertson group of funds. They used to call him, still do call him ´Never Been Wrong´ Robertson. He has predicted every economic cycle, every debacle, every bull market, and every bearmarket. Of course, he´s a very old man now. But his reputation on the Street is like nothing you could imagine. When the segment of his interview was through, his comments alone took the Dow Jones down 50 points. Just on his comments alone.That´s how powerful this man´s reputation is.Robertson was actually a teary-eyed, an old man.
When Ron Insana asked him about his predictions, he said that he´s worried about the speculative bubble in housing and the fact that more than 1/4 of all consumer spending is now sustained by thatbubble, plus the fact that 20 million citizens could lose their homes in a collapse of the speculative bubble in housing, and that the Fed and, indeed, central banks worldwide would act in concert out of desperation to reinflate the globaleconomy in the process, creating an inflationary spiral unheralded in the economic history of the planet.
Insana then asks, what will happen? " "Utter global collapse." Not simply economic collapse; complete disintegration of all infrastructure and of all public structures of governments. Utter, utter collapse. That the end is collapse of simply epic proportion.In 10 years time, he said, whoever is still alive on the planet will be effectively starting again.And the comments were so negative.
I´ve never heard anything like it. From a guy who was 53 years on the Street. This is Julian Robertson, the renowned Republican. And yet he blamed everything on ´the Bushonian Cabal,´ that the Cabal has now consolidated power and money on the planet to the maximum extent possible.
That the planet´s net liquidity--that is, net free cash flow--is now a negative number. That the planet is not simply sinking into a sea of red ink; it is already sunk. The people just don´t realize it yet.The enormity of it was such that he said that the Bush-Cheney regime--calls them ´the Bush-Cheney regime´ (I swear this guy must listen to me)--the Bush-Cheney regime is preparing the nation for transition from democracy into dictatorship because a dictatorship will be necessary to control, not civil unrest.
That isn´t what he said. He said that it will be necessary to control, in 5 years´ time, food and water riots.He said the federal government, that part of Patriot II Act, the internal exile, that the government is going to have to build now huge detention compounds on federal lands, probably in the West where the land is available, to potentially house 50 million or more citizens that will be in financial ruin.
Don’t believe it can happen here in America? Here is a link for the Concentration camps which they started building in the 1980’s . They are manned, staffed, up and running just waiting for the first people to enter.
http://www.flyingsnail.com/Dahbud/femaconcentrationcamps.html
If you enter one of theses the only way out will be in a body bag.
Food production will fall. And any further effort to control environmental destruction will be abandoned. Inflation will run into the double and eventually triple digits. People will be carrying around U.S. dollars in wheelbarrows like Germany.
AND THE LORD SAID…
“In the last days a day’s wages for a loaf of bread…”And he finally ended his comments by saying that he hopes that he is not alive to see this. And he looks at Ron Insana and he said, "The ´lucky´ ones are the ones who are my age now."
Total collapse of public infrastructure. Total collapse of medical care systems.All public pension plans, Social Security will collapse. All corporate pension plans will collapse.
I´ve never heard anything like it. But he backed that up with some fabulous statistics that I have pointed out before in various articles.
What he did is he did it all in literally one statement literally.
14% of all real estate transactions now being interest-only mortgages, and another 14% of people now, that, when they bought their homes, originated more than 100% of the purchase price in the mortgage and then borrowed further.
What he talked about is he globalized it a lot more than I have in the past by saying that the American consumer is effectively now supporting the rest of the planet, which is true; that consumption rates in all other nations are falling, have fallen to the point that the tax revenues to governments, that the business and industries those nation states are providing is now a net negative number relative to total debt service and public cost, that this existsin virtually every nation state on the planet now.
And he pointed out, more importantly, and I´m trying to think how we imply this or how we express this to the people, what extraordinary times we are living in and how the destruction of the planet has been engineered by the Bushonian Cabal from1980 to 1992, and then from 2001 to present, which has effectively destroyed the economic liquidity of the planet.
And it was absolutely extraordinary.When Insana asked him, you know, he said he had sold all of his real estate and he was moving into one of the new super-secure compounds for wealthy Republicans for when the ´barbarians will be at the gate.´
He said, "Ron, those barbarians will be potentially a third of the American population."Ron asked, "What are your friends doing?"
The implication being wealthy Republicans. And, this is interesting, he said everyone that he knew that had a home worth more than a million dollars in the United States has sold it. They have sold all of their landholdings.
They have liquidated all U.S. securities.
They have bought a townhouse or something in one of the new ultra-high secure semi-secretRepublican compounds with the barbed wire and the machine guns. And then they also own a home, like, in the Cayman Islands or somewhere in the Caribbean.
He spoke of the new Republican high-security compounds that are being built throughout theCaribbean, and even in Switzerland.And this is what he points to: He said the new wave, or where the wealthy Republicans are going in their housing--and he´s right.
It tells you much about what the wealthy Republicans think of where this planet is going: that they all want to livein these ultra-high security communities that haven´t even been built yet.And we´re talking about not simply the guards at the gate. We´re talking about communities the security of which have never been built before.
He´s referring to is these new gated communities that are being built with the 18-foot high walls and the machine-gun-toting guards and underground food lockers, cryogenic food lockers, and their own power plants, their own water. But it bespeaks volumes of where the top 10% of the nation feel the planet is going.The only thing that keeps popping into my mind is - what is it going to look like in ten years´ time?
What comes to mind is the final 30-second shot in the movie Rollover. The famed movie Rollover with Kris Kristoferson and Jane Fonda.The final 30-second shot when the decision was made, when Hume Cronyn is standing in his office in the Citi Bank building in New York with its 30-foot vaulted ceilings and mahogany paneling. He´s got the phone in his hand and he´s talking to thegroup of bankers, the 13 Gnomes, he called them, in Switzerland, that have the last remaining free cash flow in the world.He says, on the telephone...
"Pull the plug."
Then he lights up a cigar and pours himself a glass of brandy. And he looks down on the street. He´s 20 floors up. It´s all plate glass window. It was actually shot at the Citi Bank building. And he looks down the street.
It´s winter.
December.
Absolutely bitter cold, 3 feet of snow on the ground.
And all is dark.
The power´s gone.
No more power.
Everything has begun to collapse.
And the wind, you hear this frigid wind whistling through the canyons of the streets around Wall Street, which have become canyons. And there´s a few people there in tattered rags,with steel drums, burning stuff to keep warm.
It shows them,
they keep dumping in U.S. currency to keep the fire going.
And then at the end it shows down between Wall and Broad, there´s like 2 or 3 hundred people, there´s a food riot in progress.And Hume is sitting there looking out of his plate glass window with a cigar in his mouth.The very final scene:
You see the food riots.
Then you see the police come in in these ultra-high-tech-looking riot control, hover vehicles. They´re all black matte with dark red digitized writing that says "State Security."
And they start gassing the crowd.
And then it shows the Citi Bank executive helicopter coming down on top of the 57th floor of thebuilding to pick up Hume. He gets in the helicopter. The pilot actually asks him, "Where are we going?" And he said, "Oh, to my executive compound." The pilot points in the front seat of the helicopter and he said, "We have a case of the 1961vintage Rothschild `61. Mr. Chairman, we secured an extra case for you."Then they fly over where the food riots are. And there´s no power. And there´s trash blowing through the streets. And some of the telephone poles have come down.And they swing over the harbor and most of the boats are swamped or sunk or all grungy.
This is what Robertson´s words reminds me of. ---
* AL MARTIN is an independent economic-political analyst with 25 years of experience as a trader on NYMEX, CME, CBOT andCFTC. As a former contributor to the Presidential Council of Economic Advisors, Al Martin is considered to be a source ofindependent analysis for financially sophisticated and market savvy investors.After working as a broker on Wall Street, Al Martin was involved in the so-called "Iran Contra" Affair as a fundraiser for the Bush Cabal from the covert side of government aka the US Shadow Government.His memoir,
"The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider,"
( [link to www.almartinraw.com)] provides an unprecedented look at the frauds of the Bush Cabal during the Iran Contra era.
His weekly column, "Behind the Scenes in the Beltway," is published weekly on Al Martin Raw.com, which also publishes a bimonthly newsletter called "Whistleblower Gazette."Al Martin´s new website "Insider Intelligence" ( [link to www.insiderintelligence.com)] will provide a long term macro-view ofworld markets and how they are affected by backroom realpolitik.
Part II
Restrictive Release DOA. Doc# 694195-AQ series1A
Protocols for Economic Collapse in America
Events to follow will be headed up by the U.S. Treasury. This is to occur when the economic collapse is no longer containable.
This document is the face document from the public 6900 series of protocols. The underlining force protocols are class 1A level Top Secret and above.
It would start with declaring a force majeure, which would immediately be interpreted by the marketplaces as a de facto repudiation of debt. Then the SEC and the various regulatory exchanges would anticipate the market’s decline, hour by hour -- when Japan’s markets opened the next day, what would happen when the European markets, and all the inter-linkages of the global markets. On the second day, US Special Forces would be dropped in by parachute in the cities where the twelve Federal Reserve district banks are located.The origin of these protocols comes from the Department of Defense. This is contingency planning for a variety of post-collapse scenarios. Those scenarios would include, obviously, military collapse, World War III, in other words, and its aftermath. What we’re talking about now is aftermath -- how the aftermath would be handled.One does not necessarily know how the events would transpire that would cause the collapse, whether it’s military collapse or economic collapse. In World War III, it would become obvious -- when the mushroom cloud started to appear over cities.Economic collapse scenarios were always premised on the basis of a US declaration of force majeure on debt service. It’s a very extensive scenario. The scenarios are all together, i.e., military, economic, political and social complete destabilization leading to collapse. Then they break down individual scenarios. In the economic collapse scenario, the starting point would be the United States Treasury declaring a force majeure on debt service, which is de facto repudiation, and that’s how it would be interpreted by the world’s capital marketplaces. Then the scenario goes on from there. The US Treasury would obviously declare a force majeure sometime after the European markets had settled down. In other words, they had gone out on the day, which means 11:38 a.m. EDT, our time. They’d wait until the European markets closed, and the US markets had been open for a couple of hours. That’s when they’d determine how to begin the process of unwinding or controlling the collapse to the best extent possible, mainly because they know that the greatest hedge pressure would be people seeking to use other markets to hedge their long exposure in the United States and that the US would be the biggest seller in all the rest of the world’s markets. Therefore you would want to declare the force majeure when the rest of the world’s markets closed. The declaration of force majeure would be precipitated by the declaration that the United States is no longer able to service its debt. That’s pretty simple. Who makes that decision? The Treasury Department. The President does not make that decision. The Secretary of the Treasury does. He has that authority.You might ask -- wouldn’t he have his arm twisted not to do that?The answer is that if there isn’t any money left to service the debt, it doesn’t make any difference what the current regime might want to do.The day of reckoning is now coming. What has happened in the interim, from 2001 to present, is dynamic, global economic deterioration. The economic deterioration visited upon the United States by Bushonomics is not a localized event. It is, in fact, global. We have a planet now that is sinking into a sea of red ink.The United States is consuming 80% of the planet’s savings rate to finance its debt. The central banks of Germany, Japan and Saudi Arabia are no longer the powerhouses they used to be. Their reserves have now been substantially depleted. They can, therefore, no longer hide the fact that they own a certain number, likely in the trillions of dollars, of U.S. Treasury debt that isn’t being serviced, because they can’t hide it through bookkeeping tricks anymore because their reserves are so depleted.Therefore somebody has covertly been putting demands on the Bush-Cheney regime for payment. Why do you think 2900 metric tons of gold is depleted from U.S. inventory since March of `01?Why do you think that $2 billion in currency seized from Iraq last May is now unaccounted for?Someone is putting demands on the Bush-Cheney regime. Someone is saying to the Bushonian Cabal that -- You’ve got to start servicing this debt because we, foreign central banks, are in nations - European and Asian - whose reserves are now nearly exhausted.Who could be putting that kind of pressure on them?It has to be coming from whoever is organizing this thing at the very top, which I would tend to think has got to be most likely a cabal of people that would involve Henry Kissinger, James Baker, George Schultz, possibly William Simon. It would be somebody at the very top that is familiar with how to do this. It would have to be someone familiar with finances.So would this be one faction of a cabal blackmailing or forcing another faction? No, it’s not really blackmailing. It’s being done out of desperation. The German, Japanese and Saudi central banks are saying to the Bushonian cabal, You’ve got to start servicing this debt because we don’t have the reserves to cover you anymore. We can no longer make it appear that the debt is being serviced because our own reserves are so substantively depleted. Therefore you must begin to cover this debt. If you don’t, then, at some point, we will have to publicly admit in order to save our own necks -- that we were the end buyers of a lot of stealth debt, a lot of debt that your Treasury issued illegally and has never serviced. That would then expose the whole cabal.The Kissinger-Baker faction are at the top of how this was done on the economic side of the equation. They were not the original insiders so much, but the managers of the conspiracy from the U.S. Treasury, to wit, the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve role-play the part.Take Henry Kissinger. It may not have occurred to anyone why in the last 3 years Henry Kissinger has been back in Washington more than he has in the last 30 years. And why are all these quiet meetings in Washington with alleged senior Bush-Cheney regime officials, as foreign news services endlessly put it. It’s because Kissinger is the point man. He’s the one that is telling them the disposition of other foreign central banks.Kissinger would probably also be involved in transfer or hypothecation of any assets from the cabal. In other words, they’re being stolen from the American people by the Bush-Cheney regime and the Bushonian Cabal, and they are being used to hypothecate, transfer, service, or otherwise carry this debt held by certain foreign central banks.The process of unraveling has already begun because of ever-spiraling Bushonian budget deficits. The Bush-Cheney regime, even in its overt policies (now they’re overt political, economic, social and military policies) is generating $600-billion-plus deficit per year, which is consuming 80% of the planet’s net savings rate.It doesn’t have the slack. In other words, it can’t refinance stealth debt by issuing more stealth debt anymore. Nor can they bleed money out of the system like they could in the 1980s by hiding it when the overt policies of the Bush-Cheney regime are already producing a budget deficit of 6% of Gross Domestic Product. There is no other mechanism that they could use anymore to hide expansion of debt that could be used to service said stealth debt, and they are, frankly, running out of assets that they can steal from the American people.So the proverbial day of reckoning is coming. The Bush-Cheney regime (and I give them credit for this) are telling the American people what’s coming, knowing the American people are too stupid to understand. They are telling the American people about the re-institution of the Gold Confiscation Act and the sudden scrapping of the Treasury’s emergency post-collapse gold note scheme to maintain domestic liquidity.David Walker, US Comptroller General and chief of the GAO has said that should the Bush-Cheney regime be re-ensconced into power and, hence, the scourge of Bushonomics persist, that the United States could no longer service its debt beyond 2009. They’re not hiding it from anybody anymore. They are telling you what’s happening. Now, what does that mean? The key is in what Walker is saying when he says the debt can no longer be serviced. I’ve been asked this on the radio shows. People have noticed what Walker said because he’s out in the news more often than he used to be. It’s unusual for the Comptroller General of the United States, which is a rather arcane position, to be out in the news so much.It simply means that when he says the United States will no longer be able to sustain Bushonian budget deficits, he means that by 2009, if Bush-Cheney have a second term in office, the United States will be consuming 100% of the planet’s savings rate to finance Bushonian budget deficits.Therefore, if the planet can no longer generate any more liquidity to lend to the United States, one of three things have to happen: A) There has to be a sudden and dramatic reduction in federal spending. There are only two places that can come from. There would have to be an immediate $100-billion cut in defense spending, which would end any hopes the Republicans had of getting into office for years to come because it would destroy any confidence the NFWCs (Naïve Flag Waving Crowd) had in them. Or you would have to scrap the multi-trillion-dollar Bushonian tax cuts for the Republican rich, something that’s equally unpalatable.The other option, B, as Paul O’Neill mentioned, is a dramatic increase in the rate of federal income taxation from the current nominal rate of 28% to 65%, which is what the Treasury Department estimated would be required post-2009 to provide the U.S. Treasury with sufficient revenues to continue to service debt.The third option, or C, becomes the declaration of a force majeure on credit service of U.S. Treasury debt by the United States Treasury, which is tantamount and would be accurately construed as de facto debt repudiation by the United States of America.There are other signs to look for. They’re not going to happen now, but if Bush-Cheney is re-elected, you’ll begin to see more signs that the end is coming. I know a lot of people may disagree, but you wait and see. If Bush-Cheney has a second term, see if they do not institute some currency expatriation control. See if that doesn’t come in the way Nixon tried it in May-June of 1971.In the second term, there will be some sort of currency expatriation control in the United States, but there will also be loopholes that will allow the large money to escape. The restrictions will apply to the 10- and 20-thousand-dollar people. It ain’t going to apply to the 10- and 20-million-dollar people. It would be self-defeating to do that.When that day comes, in other words, when the U.S. Treasury declares a force majeure on debt, it wouldn’t be broad-cast on mainstream media. There’s no sense because the American people don’t even understand what it means. But the announcement would actually be put on the Federal Reserve wire system, which would, of course, immediately be picked up by all media outlets anyway.The U.S. Treasury would declare a force majeure on debt after the Asian and European markets closed, probably at 12:30 p.m. EDT. The reason why that hour was always selected is because Asian and European markets close. It’s also the lunch hour for the markets. It’s when you’re going to have the fewest people on the floor of the exchanges. That would be the ideal time to make such an announcement.A few seconds after that announcement was made, all United States markets, both equities debt and commodities i.e., stock, bonds, commodities, that have trading collars or permissible daily limits would all be limit-offered with pools. Limit-offered means that there are more sellers at the limit i.e., limit down, than there are buyers.So-called ‘pools’ would immediately begin to form, probably a thousand contracts every few minutes. ‘Limit-offered with pools’ - this is trader language. Pools to sell 2,000 lots, 3,000 lots. That means, the number of sellers over and above the available buyers at the limit-offered price. That would begin to build.By 1:00, the news would begin to sink in because it would take awhile before panic selling would arise from the public. This news is being released at lunch hour.A lot of the American people initially would not even understand the temerity of the news. You would see professional selling first, and as that professional selling intensified over the afternoon, the SEC, the CFTC, NASDAQ, and various market regulatory authorities would begin to institute certain emergency market protocols. This would be the installation of the so-called ‘declaration of fast market conditions,’ for instance; the declaration of ‘no more stop orders,’ the declaration of ‘fill at any price,’ etc. in a desperate bid to maintain liquidity.That first day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and related indices on a percentage basis would lose about 20% of their value by the close of business that day. The real impact would come overnight when the American people found out what this was all about and when it was explained to them.At 7:30 a.m. EDT, the Tokyo markets would open, and no price would be affixed for probably three or four hours into the session due to the avalanche of selling. Once prices were established, the government of Japan would close all of its financial markets. Europe would not even open. All European governments would close all capital exchanges the next day.The United States would, in order to accommodate global electronic trading, attempt to open the market on the second day, which they would do, regardless of price, just to maintain some liquidity. At the end of Day Two, the Dow Jones and related indices, would have lost two thirds of their value, and prices would be set accordingly.On Day Three, the New York Stock Exchange, the SEC and other related agencies would recommend to the United States Treasury and the Federal Reserve that all markets be closed. That would be on the morning of Day Three. Eleven a.m., the Federal Reserve would then order all domestic banks closed. All of the twelve Federal Reserve district banks would (30 minutes later) have special U.S. forces parachuted in and around them to secure whatever gold bullion reserves they had left.Day Three, 9:00 p.m., the President of the United States would declare a state of martial law. All financial transactions would come to an end. The Treasury would act to formally de-monetize the U.S. dollar and declare it worthless.This would be totally unprecedented. In the past, collapses have been temporary and have been brought back up. But what we’re talking about now is the end.These protocols that I’m referring to aren’t even all that secret. They were publicly available all through the Clinton era. These are Treasury protocols that were instituted mostly in the late 1970s when the Treasury and Federal Reserve began to feel that it was important to have an emergency-collapse protocol in place.What precipitated the timing of this was the inflationary spiral of the late 1970s. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve were both concerned that this inflationary spiral, which was occurring not only domestically but globally, might lead to a global, uncontrollable hyper-inflation that the Federal Reserve or major central banks could not stop by traditional means, i.e., by raising interest rates and contracting money supply.There was also the recognition, of course, that global central reserve bank bullion inventories had been so depleted over the previous 30 years that any re-institution of a species currency, even on a temporary basis, and even within a regional or individual nation-state basis, was no longer possible.This is an analogy. In a military scenario, it’s like the President of the United States pushing the final red button -- the commit button. The Treasury Secretary of the United States has a similar mechanism. It’s called the yellow button, the commit button. The Secretary of Defense has the same system. This is what happens. Computer program starts to institute these protocols. Imagine the complexity of trying the manage all this. I think it’s going to happen all simultaneously. There are hundreds of different agencies involved, both domestically and internationally. In order to maintain liquidity for as long as possible, it has to be extremely well-coordinated, and there must be existing collapse protocols that can be used.The reason I was familiar with them was because I used to see the U.S. Treasury 6900 Series Collapse Protocol, 6903, 6904 there’ll be A, B, and so on which keyed in to the Department of Defense to be incorporated within the Department of Defense’s own World War III scenario and various types of military/ political/ social instability/ war/ pestilence, chaos, etc. scenarios.All federal agencies had individual collapse protocols that ultimately got coordinated through the Department of Defense. Obviously, the Department of Defense would be the ultimate coordinator because it would need to have special forces available, on a stand-by basis, ready, that could quickly parachute into areas all over the country, into the cities particularly, to secure federal properties and assets.And that’s literally how it would begin. By the end of the third day, it would be all over -- a state of martial law. We’re not talking about war, now; this is just economic collapse.There’s no military implication here, no political, no social implication or policy directive thereunto. This is strictly economic collapse. By the end of Day Three, effectively, all banks in the world will be shut down, all paper currencies will become valueless. Martial law would be declared. There would be no continuing transactions, at least for a period of time, of commodities. All providers of fuels and foods would be shut down automatically.They have this in great detail too. U.S. Department of Defense Special 117th Assault Unit would parachute in to seize control of the cattle yards in Oklahoma City. This is how well it’s planned. In other words, economic collapse would automatically involve expansive military action and control.By the end of the third day, when you no longer have a domestic medium of exchange, you have to have secured food and fuel stocks. You’ve got to have troops that have secured distribution points where there is food and fuel stocks, warehouses, tanks, etc. Otherwise people are just going to go get them, and the people have to know that if they try to go break into that store and steal that loaf of bread, they’re going to be shot.Protocols for environmental disasters are called ‘scaling-circle scenarios.’ ‘Scaling circles’ is a Department of Defense euphemism. It’s also used in FEMA, OEM and other emergency management services. In environmental catastrophes, which are going to become national or global, it’s got to start someplace. It’s going to start in one very small, specific area. Therefore what happens is that the immediate force containment is the greatest in the first circle, to try to contain the spread of the disaster and keep it within that circle.The environmental problem, to whatever extent it’s possible, before it spreads, will be neutralized or mitigated, in order to keep that catastrophe within that circle, or, if it is likely that it is to escape that circle, to attack whatever it is in such a fashion as to mitigate its strength and its ability to contaminate or otherwise affect other areas.In the case of earthquakes, for instance, affecting the west coast, beginning at Mt. Rainier and moving southward -- that’s a different type of scenario. That does not include as much Department of Defense involvement. It includes separate protocols, wherein mostly FEMA and OEM act as the senior coordinating agencies between municipal, county and state disaster and containment, which is called Disaster and Containment Units. Federal troops would only be brought in for the purposes of maintaining control.In a military or economic collapse situation, National Guard units would provide any spare help they could in combating whatever the problem is. Federal troops would be used in order to have the specific authority simply to shoot anyone. There are plans for all sorts of scenarios. The economic-disaster scenario is the one I always found the most intriguing because it is the one that is least understood by the American people.Military control would be necessary when lines begin to form at the banks, people trying to access their money. But that wasn’t even anticipated as a big problem. Lines would form at the banks, but it was not even envisioned until sometime on Day Three because the American people wouldn’t get it. It would be announced that the stock markets are down 2000 or 3000 points, and since we’ve always been taught they’ll come back, the people would still be buying stocks.You could count on everybody remaining in ignorance all the way down because the American people have never been taught Economics 101. The American people wouldn’t realize the full extent of it until the markets were closed on the third day, or until the time when they went down to cash a check and the bank was closed with soldiers out in front. Then they would go down and see the gas station’s closed. They see the local supermarket has been shuttered, and there’s federal troops in front of it. Then they might begin to catch on. And remember -- it’s not just federal troops. In emergency-collapse protocols, even before the declaration of a formal state of emergency or a state of martial law, the local military authorities within any given county or jurisdiction have the ability to essentially militarize anyone, that is, any civilian. This would be more than just deputizing civilians. It’s federal. In other words, they would have the ability to militarize and give military authority to a civilian force. This would include not only police and the sheriffs and state police, but all local law enforcement that exists below the state level would be immediately militarized. They wouldn’t take just anybody like they did in Iraq. It would be like the military when they call for volunteers. Then they’d have everybody and their brother-in-law volunteering, waving around the American flag and so on.You’ve got a lot of pickup-driving guys in this country with the gun racks in the back and the Confederate flag flying. So you start waving the American flag in front of their face and say, Hey, you’re going to get your chance you always wanted -- to fit your potbelly inside an army uniform and carry a gun and shoot people. How appealing would that be?And besides, if you do this, then you’re going to get to eat.In other words, this is how it would unfold over three days, but, in fact, very few Americans would know what to do about it or how to take any precautions. They wouldn’t have a clue because they don’t understand enough about economics to know what is happening. So that’s what it is -- Economic Armageddon. If the Bush-Cheney regime is re-installed into power, that is effectively what Comptroller General David Walker is saying.In conclusion, since there is very little the people of the United States can do to protect themselves. We’re not going to make any suggestions of how to protect yourselves because there’s very little you can do.We could tell you to go out and buy gold coins and bury them in the coffee can in the back yard and go to your nearest survivalist store, but, frankly, that’s useless. In the last analysis, it’s a lot of hype. There is very little the average US citizen could do.The only thing that can prevent this, as the Comptroller alluded to when he was asked by Barbara Walters, How do we prevent reaching the problem by 2009? He said simply, "A change of regimes."So how do you prevent it? Don’t vote for Bush and Cheney -- and hope that Bush does not use his emergency powers to cancel or postpone the election by edict, powers which you, the flag-waving citizens, have given him.All flag-waving citizens, be warned. If you want to vote for Bush-Cheney again, make sure you got plenty of Spam on hand.Here’s an interesting and humorous aside. A couple of days ago, Hormel Foods, which makes Spam, announced that in the last six months there have been record sales of Spam in the United States the survivalists’ food of choice. After all, they pride themselves on the fact, as the spokesman for Hormel said, "It is the only food product you can buy with an expiration that’s 50 years."When everything goes to hell, when all that man has created has turned to dust again, the final legacy is going to be Spam. It will be the last surviving item -- when the anthropologists of 20 thousand years from now are digging sites and they see these enormous mountains of unopened cans of Spam They’ll have monuments to the past out of Spam.So if Bush-Cheney has a second term in office, there will be some sort of currency restriction, like Nixon did in 1971. On April 13, 2004, Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary John Boine talked about potential currency restrictions. He used the word that’s going to fuel the flames of the survivalist and gloom-and-doom collapse people.It’s very, very telling that the U.S. Treasury may institute a restriction on the amount of U.S. dollars that can be converted into gold.Furthermore, he intimated (and I suspected that this was coming, although this wouldn’t actually become law until Bush-Cheney was in office for second term one way or another) that the Bush-Cheney regime determines that the Gold Confiscation Act gives to Treasury the power for so-called forced disclosure of gold holdings.I’m not quite sure of the language of the Gold Confiscation Act from 1933. It just says, "compelled", as in citizens are lawfully compelled to redeem gold for script. I don’t think there was any such provision, which he was inferring that there is. That was FDR’s "Raw Deal" of 1934, when people were coerced into giving up their gold. But nowhere in this act does it specifically authorize the Treasury to mandate citizens to report their gold holdings. So if this gets any press at all, particularly within the circles of gold bugs and so on, watch out.Furthermore, on Washington Journal they were talking about how FEMA has recommended to the Office of Homeland Security to have increased restrictions regarding citizen hoarding of long-term food and fuel supplies. That’s pretty sinister too.What they’re talking about is the purchase of long-term so-called stores of survival food. FEMA was talking about some sort of restriction preventing people from accumulating food stores; putting it simply, that’s what it means. The second point was to increase restrictions that already exist.FEMA was recommending even tighter restrictions on citizens building their own private property underground storage tanks for the purposes of long-term storage of fuel. The real intent of this is is threefold: a) to restrict citizens’ ability to hoard food; b) restrict citizens’ ability to hoard long-term storage of fuel; c) the forced identification of citizens to reveal food and fuel stocks they may be hoarding.And that, in my opinion, is the real essence. The Bush-Cheney regime was scared of having the FEMA angle put into the equation because they knew what it means and how people would interpret it.They have tried to use environmental legislation to restrict people’s ability to build fuel storage facilities on their own property -- to get around what the true intent of that was.But the bigger picture is that if you start to limit citizens’ ability to hoard fuel and food and shake them up by potential forced identification of gold holdings or forced redemption.In other words, what you don’t want is citizens who have the ability to store a lot of food and fuel and to own gold because they would be able to resist state control in the future.You’ve got to have every citizen on a rationing card to control the civilian population. You can’t have citizens out there hoarding food and fuel because then people can say to government,"I ain’t taking a rationing card, baby, with my national ID card. I don’t have to. You can’t control me through food and fuel and ever-worthless paper currency."I used to make fun of these people. But now, things have come full circle on this debate. The Bush-Cheney regime is making it increasingly clear through their small changes in policy. Not a lot of people monitor these decisions, but I do. And the pattern is becoming increasingly clear.In fact, I would believe that those of the survivalist mentality (the food, fuel, the gold coins in the coffee can in the back yard) people who think that way will be ultimately vindicated - if George Bush has a second term in office.
Part #3
Plunge Protection Team Rescues Market on 1/23Reposted from writer unknown During the last half of ’07 the Plunge Protection team [link to en.wikipedia.org] Sooner than later, however, it became apparent that the subprime and credit markets were in deep trouble. And the PPT has stepped in several times in the past few weeks to prevent the appearance of catastrophe. But time is running out.The most recent, conspicuous rescue happened at approximately 1:32 on 1/23/’08 as the market started to make a miraculous turnaround, about 10 minutes before W appeared on the air and proclaimed that the American economy is sound. If you doubt the assertion, check the ticker for yesterday and watch the markets climb for no clearly rational reason. Especially because global markets were down significantly.On the one hand the Fed is stepping in to prevent serious damage, which protects investors, and may even make the Fed a penny or two in profits, though, on average, that’s not likely. Yet, by interfering with natural market forces, the Fed is maintaining a safety blanket - wittingly or unwittingly - for firms who would otherwise have to revitalize on their own, if possible.Worse, however, is that the Fed is printing money beyond the growth indicators that permit reasonable funding. In other words, the Fed is seriously inflating the currency and devaluing the dollar.Sadly, these efforts, although in a more controlled manner, could’ve helped home owners on the verge of foreclosure, firms on the verge of recession, and finacial institutions on the verge of collapse if they were performed no later than 4Q ’06 and continued through ’07. It’s now a day late and billions of dollars short.Aside from economic exigencies, these conditions exist because of the woeful "War on Terror" since the Neocons are being forced to prop up the illusion of U.S. supremacy while the empire is in decline. It’s tough to face down your enemy when they know there won’t be many more "smart bombs" on the way. The markets have been a key indicator - far more meaningful than the Surge - of America’s might.Had the Administration, Wall Street, and the media - particularly outlets like CNBC - explored and truthfully presented the severe problems with America’s broken economy, rather than cheerfully and deceitfully insisting everything’s dandy, these problems may have been resolved with a much greater degree of proficiency. But America is now drowning in a sea of lies and can’t fathom what’s happening on an overall basis. Too many people in too many arenas pitching bull to the masses can’t now go back and retract their tales. The damage has been done.At this point, deceit is the greatest threat to America’s democracy. Overall trust in officials and authority is rapidly declining, as is all too apparent on sites such as this one. Politicians such as Bill Clinton ruthlessly fabricate stories and foment conflict in order to further their interests. He’s not alone for sure.This is not a testamonial for Ron Paul, whose stock has also gone down after it was revelaed his newsletter exhibited racial bias for years. Nonetheless, Paul has been the only candidate who has accurately outlined the scope of the overall problems as well as prescribed the appropriate solutions to solve them, beginnning with an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.None of the other Republicans come close. Romney’s at best a distant second. On the other side of the aisle, Clinton has no clue, especially since it was Bill’s pro-NAFTA and big business stance that in part produced much of the grief now being felt from one coast to the other. To a great extent, the country needs an antidote to the globalization promoted by the Clintons, which has radically reduced incomes and job opportunities.Obama may have the agility to sit and listen to all the powers and reach a successful middle ground, but it won’t be easy. And Edwards, who is a noble soul plagued by the homeless and helpless, is, unfortunately, pitching two Americas. One that by now won’t listen to him for very long and the other, the Federal government, which is already overextended. How’s it going to help a deeply troubled economy?In the not too distant future the PPT is going to run out of tricks simply because a large infusion of capital to bolster the markets is going to trigger an exit from the dollar. That’s a turning point that will have grave repercussions for decades, if not centuries to come
Let’s look at what happened recently in the Finical World Economy
The E.U. injects 325 Billion into the European Markets to keep the E.U. from going into a liquidity crisis. 12-16-07
CNBC declares Jan the worst month for the US stock market since pre-1950 America. 12-20-08
One of the largest frech Banks Société Générale loses $7 billion in trading fraud. 1-23-08
AMEX FLOOR WIDE TRADING HALT 1-23-08
(Yeah, right. They are going to play with the hardware in the middle of the day and switch over to something else "just for the hell of it"?? Risking the loss of how much money in fees and commissions plus the potential lawsuits for big investor not able to access or sell or buy during their INTENTIONALLY imposed down time? Yeah, they're that stupid. Nope. They are NOT. This was/is intentional. It's not a mere switching over of equipment. NOT AT ALL. I promise there will be many more trading stops...The PPT has been working to stem the tide of sell orders from last week.This is expected to continue unabated...one way to stop trading is to "make up some excuse" while the books are settled ... er manipulated ....There are many sellers and only PPT as buyers. I expect trading to be limited during the near future...watch for power outages or computer glitches...Recall, that the rulers have an extra ten minutes at the end of each trading day to put their orders in...the stated close is NOT really the actual close time...)
Front page of Times/picayune 1-24-2007
President BUSH offers a 150 BILLION stimulus package for the faltering economy.
(What’s wrong with the economy? I thought everything was rosy?)
Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and UBS together stand to lose 45 percent of the total worth 1-26-08
Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's to cut the AAA credit ratings of all three lending institutions, Whitney said. The banks suffered $61 billion of the industry's $133 billion in losses from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.``When it becomes clear, as we expect it will, that more and larger, much larger losses are on the horizon, we believe the market will take another turn for the worse,'' said Whitney.
Front page of Times/picayune 1-29-2007
The Democrats want to now add another 32 billion with a B to the already unaffordable stimulus package. Where are they going to get the money? Easy they will just keep printing paper money, further devaluing the US dollar.
Banks May very soon declare a write down ( LOSS ) of $70 Billion 1-30-08Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., UBS AG and other banks will post another $70 billion in write downs (Losses) Theses are the losses that they can not hide from the public. Just how much is being lost or is already gone that we do not know about?
US Gold Reserves have been depleted by as much as 2.6 metric tons since 2002. 12-30-08
Jan. 30 (New York Times) – The council for fiscal Government spending has reported that mysteriously 2.6 metric tons of US gold has gone missing from US Gold reserves. The US Treasury is saying nothing and remaining tight lipped about where the gold has gone.
Part #1
Renowned Funds Manager Juilan Robertson Predicts Global Economic Collapse
There was an interview on CNBC of the renowned funds manager Julian Robertson. He is one of the greatest of the old-timers. 53 years on the Street. He manages the Robertson group of funds. They used to call him, still do call him ´Never Been Wrong´ Robertson. He has predicted every economic cycle, every debacle, every bull market, and every bearmarket. Of course, he´s a very old man now. But his reputation on the Street is like nothing you could imagine. When the segment of his interview was through, his comments alone took the Dow Jones down 50 points. Just on his comments alone.That´s how powerful this man´s reputation is.Robertson was actually a teary-eyed, an old man.
When Ron Insana asked him about his predictions, he said that he´s worried about the speculative bubble in housing and the fact that more than 1/4 of all consumer spending is now sustained by thatbubble, plus the fact that 20 million citizens could lose their homes in a collapse of the speculative bubble in housing, and that the Fed and, indeed, central banks worldwide would act in concert out of desperation to reinflate the globaleconomy in the process, creating an inflationary spiral unheralded in the economic history of the planet.
Insana then asks, what will happen? " "Utter global collapse." Not simply economic collapse; complete disintegration of all infrastructure and of all public structures of governments. Utter, utter collapse. That the end is collapse of simply epic proportion.In 10 years time, he said, whoever is still alive on the planet will be effectively starting again.And the comments were so negative.
I´ve never heard anything like it. From a guy who was 53 years on the Street. This is Julian Robertson, the renowned Republican. And yet he blamed everything on ´the Bushonian Cabal,´ that the Cabal has now consolidated power and money on the planet to the maximum extent possible.
That the planet´s net liquidity--that is, net free cash flow--is now a negative number. That the planet is not simply sinking into a sea of red ink; it is already sunk. The people just don´t realize it yet.The enormity of it was such that he said that the Bush-Cheney regime--calls them ´the Bush-Cheney regime´ (I swear this guy must listen to me)--the Bush-Cheney regime is preparing the nation for transition from democracy into dictatorship because a dictatorship will be necessary to control, not civil unrest.
That isn´t what he said. He said that it will be necessary to control, in 5 years´ time, food and water riots.He said the federal government, that part of Patriot II Act, the internal exile, that the government is going to have to build now huge detention compounds on federal lands, probably in the West where the land is available, to potentially house 50 million or more citizens that will be in financial ruin.
Don’t believe it can happen here in America? Here is a link for the Concentration camps which they started building in the 1980’s . They are manned, staffed, up and running just waiting for the first people to enter.
http://www.flyingsnail.com/Dahbud/femaconcentrationcamps.html
If you enter one of theses the only way out will be in a body bag.
Food production will fall. And any further effort to control environmental destruction will be abandoned. Inflation will run into the double and eventually triple digits. People will be carrying around U.S. dollars in wheelbarrows like Germany.
AND THE LORD SAID…
“In the last days a day’s wages for a loaf of bread…”And he finally ended his comments by saying that he hopes that he is not alive to see this. And he looks at Ron Insana and he said, "The ´lucky´ ones are the ones who are my age now."
Total collapse of public infrastructure. Total collapse of medical care systems.All public pension plans, Social Security will collapse. All corporate pension plans will collapse.
I´ve never heard anything like it. But he backed that up with some fabulous statistics that I have pointed out before in various articles.
What he did is he did it all in literally one statement literally.
14% of all real estate transactions now being interest-only mortgages, and another 14% of people now, that, when they bought their homes, originated more than 100% of the purchase price in the mortgage and then borrowed further.
What he talked about is he globalized it a lot more than I have in the past by saying that the American consumer is effectively now supporting the rest of the planet, which is true; that consumption rates in all other nations are falling, have fallen to the point that the tax revenues to governments, that the business and industries those nation states are providing is now a net negative number relative to total debt service and public cost, that this existsin virtually every nation state on the planet now.
And he pointed out, more importantly, and I´m trying to think how we imply this or how we express this to the people, what extraordinary times we are living in and how the destruction of the planet has been engineered by the Bushonian Cabal from1980 to 1992, and then from 2001 to present, which has effectively destroyed the economic liquidity of the planet.
And it was absolutely extraordinary.When Insana asked him, you know, he said he had sold all of his real estate and he was moving into one of the new super-secure compounds for wealthy Republicans for when the ´barbarians will be at the gate.´
He said, "Ron, those barbarians will be potentially a third of the American population."Ron asked, "What are your friends doing?"
The implication being wealthy Republicans. And, this is interesting, he said everyone that he knew that had a home worth more than a million dollars in the United States has sold it. They have sold all of their landholdings.
They have liquidated all U.S. securities.
They have bought a townhouse or something in one of the new ultra-high secure semi-secretRepublican compounds with the barbed wire and the machine guns. And then they also own a home, like, in the Cayman Islands or somewhere in the Caribbean.
He spoke of the new Republican high-security compounds that are being built throughout theCaribbean, and even in Switzerland.And this is what he points to: He said the new wave, or where the wealthy Republicans are going in their housing--and he´s right.
It tells you much about what the wealthy Republicans think of where this planet is going: that they all want to livein these ultra-high security communities that haven´t even been built yet.And we´re talking about not simply the guards at the gate. We´re talking about communities the security of which have never been built before.
He´s referring to is these new gated communities that are being built with the 18-foot high walls and the machine-gun-toting guards and underground food lockers, cryogenic food lockers, and their own power plants, their own water. But it bespeaks volumes of where the top 10% of the nation feel the planet is going.The only thing that keeps popping into my mind is - what is it going to look like in ten years´ time?
What comes to mind is the final 30-second shot in the movie Rollover. The famed movie Rollover with Kris Kristoferson and Jane Fonda.The final 30-second shot when the decision was made, when Hume Cronyn is standing in his office in the Citi Bank building in New York with its 30-foot vaulted ceilings and mahogany paneling. He´s got the phone in his hand and he´s talking to thegroup of bankers, the 13 Gnomes, he called them, in Switzerland, that have the last remaining free cash flow in the world.He says, on the telephone...
"Pull the plug."
Then he lights up a cigar and pours himself a glass of brandy. And he looks down on the street. He´s 20 floors up. It´s all plate glass window. It was actually shot at the Citi Bank building. And he looks down the street.
It´s winter.
December.
Absolutely bitter cold, 3 feet of snow on the ground.
And all is dark.
The power´s gone.
No more power.
Everything has begun to collapse.
And the wind, you hear this frigid wind whistling through the canyons of the streets around Wall Street, which have become canyons. And there´s a few people there in tattered rags,with steel drums, burning stuff to keep warm.
It shows them,
they keep dumping in U.S. currency to keep the fire going.
And then at the end it shows down between Wall and Broad, there´s like 2 or 3 hundred people, there´s a food riot in progress.And Hume is sitting there looking out of his plate glass window with a cigar in his mouth.The very final scene:
You see the food riots.
Then you see the police come in in these ultra-high-tech-looking riot control, hover vehicles. They´re all black matte with dark red digitized writing that says "State Security."
And they start gassing the crowd.
And then it shows the Citi Bank executive helicopter coming down on top of the 57th floor of thebuilding to pick up Hume. He gets in the helicopter. The pilot actually asks him, "Where are we going?" And he said, "Oh, to my executive compound." The pilot points in the front seat of the helicopter and he said, "We have a case of the 1961vintage Rothschild `61. Mr. Chairman, we secured an extra case for you."Then they fly over where the food riots are. And there´s no power. And there´s trash blowing through the streets. And some of the telephone poles have come down.And they swing over the harbor and most of the boats are swamped or sunk or all grungy.
This is what Robertson´s words reminds me of. ---
* AL MARTIN is an independent economic-political analyst with 25 years of experience as a trader on NYMEX, CME, CBOT andCFTC. As a former contributor to the Presidential Council of Economic Advisors, Al Martin is considered to be a source ofindependent analysis for financially sophisticated and market savvy investors.After working as a broker on Wall Street, Al Martin was involved in the so-called "Iran Contra" Affair as a fundraiser for the Bush Cabal from the covert side of government aka the US Shadow Government.His memoir,
"The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider,"
( [link to www.almartinraw.com)] provides an unprecedented look at the frauds of the Bush Cabal during the Iran Contra era.
His weekly column, "Behind the Scenes in the Beltway," is published weekly on Al Martin Raw.com, which also publishes a bimonthly newsletter called "Whistleblower Gazette."Al Martin´s new website "Insider Intelligence" ( [link to www.insiderintelligence.com)] will provide a long term macro-view ofworld markets and how they are affected by backroom realpolitik.
Part II
Restrictive Release DOA. Doc# 694195-AQ series1A
Protocols for Economic Collapse in America
Events to follow will be headed up by the U.S. Treasury. This is to occur when the economic collapse is no longer containable.
This document is the face document from the public 6900 series of protocols. The underlining force protocols are class 1A level Top Secret and above.
It would start with declaring a force majeure, which would immediately be interpreted by the marketplaces as a de facto repudiation of debt. Then the SEC and the various regulatory exchanges would anticipate the market’s decline, hour by hour -- when Japan’s markets opened the next day, what would happen when the European markets, and all the inter-linkages of the global markets. On the second day, US Special Forces would be dropped in by parachute in the cities where the twelve Federal Reserve district banks are located.The origin of these protocols comes from the Department of Defense. This is contingency planning for a variety of post-collapse scenarios. Those scenarios would include, obviously, military collapse, World War III, in other words, and its aftermath. What we’re talking about now is aftermath -- how the aftermath would be handled.One does not necessarily know how the events would transpire that would cause the collapse, whether it’s military collapse or economic collapse. In World War III, it would become obvious -- when the mushroom cloud started to appear over cities.Economic collapse scenarios were always premised on the basis of a US declaration of force majeure on debt service. It’s a very extensive scenario. The scenarios are all together, i.e., military, economic, political and social complete destabilization leading to collapse. Then they break down individual scenarios. In the economic collapse scenario, the starting point would be the United States Treasury declaring a force majeure on debt service, which is de facto repudiation, and that’s how it would be interpreted by the world’s capital marketplaces. Then the scenario goes on from there. The US Treasury would obviously declare a force majeure sometime after the European markets had settled down. In other words, they had gone out on the day, which means 11:38 a.m. EDT, our time. They’d wait until the European markets closed, and the US markets had been open for a couple of hours. That’s when they’d determine how to begin the process of unwinding or controlling the collapse to the best extent possible, mainly because they know that the greatest hedge pressure would be people seeking to use other markets to hedge their long exposure in the United States and that the US would be the biggest seller in all the rest of the world’s markets. Therefore you would want to declare the force majeure when the rest of the world’s markets closed. The declaration of force majeure would be precipitated by the declaration that the United States is no longer able to service its debt. That’s pretty simple. Who makes that decision? The Treasury Department. The President does not make that decision. The Secretary of the Treasury does. He has that authority.You might ask -- wouldn’t he have his arm twisted not to do that?The answer is that if there isn’t any money left to service the debt, it doesn’t make any difference what the current regime might want to do.The day of reckoning is now coming. What has happened in the interim, from 2001 to present, is dynamic, global economic deterioration. The economic deterioration visited upon the United States by Bushonomics is not a localized event. It is, in fact, global. We have a planet now that is sinking into a sea of red ink.The United States is consuming 80% of the planet’s savings rate to finance its debt. The central banks of Germany, Japan and Saudi Arabia are no longer the powerhouses they used to be. Their reserves have now been substantially depleted. They can, therefore, no longer hide the fact that they own a certain number, likely in the trillions of dollars, of U.S. Treasury debt that isn’t being serviced, because they can’t hide it through bookkeeping tricks anymore because their reserves are so depleted.Therefore somebody has covertly been putting demands on the Bush-Cheney regime for payment. Why do you think 2900 metric tons of gold is depleted from U.S. inventory since March of `01?Why do you think that $2 billion in currency seized from Iraq last May is now unaccounted for?Someone is putting demands on the Bush-Cheney regime. Someone is saying to the Bushonian Cabal that -- You’ve got to start servicing this debt because we, foreign central banks, are in nations - European and Asian - whose reserves are now nearly exhausted.Who could be putting that kind of pressure on them?It has to be coming from whoever is organizing this thing at the very top, which I would tend to think has got to be most likely a cabal of people that would involve Henry Kissinger, James Baker, George Schultz, possibly William Simon. It would be somebody at the very top that is familiar with how to do this. It would have to be someone familiar with finances.So would this be one faction of a cabal blackmailing or forcing another faction? No, it’s not really blackmailing. It’s being done out of desperation. The German, Japanese and Saudi central banks are saying to the Bushonian cabal, You’ve got to start servicing this debt because we don’t have the reserves to cover you anymore. We can no longer make it appear that the debt is being serviced because our own reserves are so substantively depleted. Therefore you must begin to cover this debt. If you don’t, then, at some point, we will have to publicly admit in order to save our own necks -- that we were the end buyers of a lot of stealth debt, a lot of debt that your Treasury issued illegally and has never serviced. That would then expose the whole cabal.The Kissinger-Baker faction are at the top of how this was done on the economic side of the equation. They were not the original insiders so much, but the managers of the conspiracy from the U.S. Treasury, to wit, the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve role-play the part.Take Henry Kissinger. It may not have occurred to anyone why in the last 3 years Henry Kissinger has been back in Washington more than he has in the last 30 years. And why are all these quiet meetings in Washington with alleged senior Bush-Cheney regime officials, as foreign news services endlessly put it. It’s because Kissinger is the point man. He’s the one that is telling them the disposition of other foreign central banks.Kissinger would probably also be involved in transfer or hypothecation of any assets from the cabal. In other words, they’re being stolen from the American people by the Bush-Cheney regime and the Bushonian Cabal, and they are being used to hypothecate, transfer, service, or otherwise carry this debt held by certain foreign central banks.The process of unraveling has already begun because of ever-spiraling Bushonian budget deficits. The Bush-Cheney regime, even in its overt policies (now they’re overt political, economic, social and military policies) is generating $600-billion-plus deficit per year, which is consuming 80% of the planet’s net savings rate.It doesn’t have the slack. In other words, it can’t refinance stealth debt by issuing more stealth debt anymore. Nor can they bleed money out of the system like they could in the 1980s by hiding it when the overt policies of the Bush-Cheney regime are already producing a budget deficit of 6% of Gross Domestic Product. There is no other mechanism that they could use anymore to hide expansion of debt that could be used to service said stealth debt, and they are, frankly, running out of assets that they can steal from the American people.So the proverbial day of reckoning is coming. The Bush-Cheney regime (and I give them credit for this) are telling the American people what’s coming, knowing the American people are too stupid to understand. They are telling the American people about the re-institution of the Gold Confiscation Act and the sudden scrapping of the Treasury’s emergency post-collapse gold note scheme to maintain domestic liquidity.David Walker, US Comptroller General and chief of the GAO has said that should the Bush-Cheney regime be re-ensconced into power and, hence, the scourge of Bushonomics persist, that the United States could no longer service its debt beyond 2009. They’re not hiding it from anybody anymore. They are telling you what’s happening. Now, what does that mean? The key is in what Walker is saying when he says the debt can no longer be serviced. I’ve been asked this on the radio shows. People have noticed what Walker said because he’s out in the news more often than he used to be. It’s unusual for the Comptroller General of the United States, which is a rather arcane position, to be out in the news so much.It simply means that when he says the United States will no longer be able to sustain Bushonian budget deficits, he means that by 2009, if Bush-Cheney have a second term in office, the United States will be consuming 100% of the planet’s savings rate to finance Bushonian budget deficits.Therefore, if the planet can no longer generate any more liquidity to lend to the United States, one of three things have to happen: A) There has to be a sudden and dramatic reduction in federal spending. There are only two places that can come from. There would have to be an immediate $100-billion cut in defense spending, which would end any hopes the Republicans had of getting into office for years to come because it would destroy any confidence the NFWCs (Naïve Flag Waving Crowd) had in them. Or you would have to scrap the multi-trillion-dollar Bushonian tax cuts for the Republican rich, something that’s equally unpalatable.The other option, B, as Paul O’Neill mentioned, is a dramatic increase in the rate of federal income taxation from the current nominal rate of 28% to 65%, which is what the Treasury Department estimated would be required post-2009 to provide the U.S. Treasury with sufficient revenues to continue to service debt.The third option, or C, becomes the declaration of a force majeure on credit service of U.S. Treasury debt by the United States Treasury, which is tantamount and would be accurately construed as de facto debt repudiation by the United States of America.There are other signs to look for. They’re not going to happen now, but if Bush-Cheney is re-elected, you’ll begin to see more signs that the end is coming. I know a lot of people may disagree, but you wait and see. If Bush-Cheney has a second term, see if they do not institute some currency expatriation control. See if that doesn’t come in the way Nixon tried it in May-June of 1971.In the second term, there will be some sort of currency expatriation control in the United States, but there will also be loopholes that will allow the large money to escape. The restrictions will apply to the 10- and 20-thousand-dollar people. It ain’t going to apply to the 10- and 20-million-dollar people. It would be self-defeating to do that.When that day comes, in other words, when the U.S. Treasury declares a force majeure on debt, it wouldn’t be broad-cast on mainstream media. There’s no sense because the American people don’t even understand what it means. But the announcement would actually be put on the Federal Reserve wire system, which would, of course, immediately be picked up by all media outlets anyway.The U.S. Treasury would declare a force majeure on debt after the Asian and European markets closed, probably at 12:30 p.m. EDT. The reason why that hour was always selected is because Asian and European markets close. It’s also the lunch hour for the markets. It’s when you’re going to have the fewest people on the floor of the exchanges. That would be the ideal time to make such an announcement.A few seconds after that announcement was made, all United States markets, both equities debt and commodities i.e., stock, bonds, commodities, that have trading collars or permissible daily limits would all be limit-offered with pools. Limit-offered means that there are more sellers at the limit i.e., limit down, than there are buyers.So-called ‘pools’ would immediately begin to form, probably a thousand contracts every few minutes. ‘Limit-offered with pools’ - this is trader language. Pools to sell 2,000 lots, 3,000 lots. That means, the number of sellers over and above the available buyers at the limit-offered price. That would begin to build.By 1:00, the news would begin to sink in because it would take awhile before panic selling would arise from the public. This news is being released at lunch hour.A lot of the American people initially would not even understand the temerity of the news. You would see professional selling first, and as that professional selling intensified over the afternoon, the SEC, the CFTC, NASDAQ, and various market regulatory authorities would begin to institute certain emergency market protocols. This would be the installation of the so-called ‘declaration of fast market conditions,’ for instance; the declaration of ‘no more stop orders,’ the declaration of ‘fill at any price,’ etc. in a desperate bid to maintain liquidity.That first day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and related indices on a percentage basis would lose about 20% of their value by the close of business that day. The real impact would come overnight when the American people found out what this was all about and when it was explained to them.At 7:30 a.m. EDT, the Tokyo markets would open, and no price would be affixed for probably three or four hours into the session due to the avalanche of selling. Once prices were established, the government of Japan would close all of its financial markets. Europe would not even open. All European governments would close all capital exchanges the next day.The United States would, in order to accommodate global electronic trading, attempt to open the market on the second day, which they would do, regardless of price, just to maintain some liquidity. At the end of Day Two, the Dow Jones and related indices, would have lost two thirds of their value, and prices would be set accordingly.On Day Three, the New York Stock Exchange, the SEC and other related agencies would recommend to the United States Treasury and the Federal Reserve that all markets be closed. That would be on the morning of Day Three. Eleven a.m., the Federal Reserve would then order all domestic banks closed. All of the twelve Federal Reserve district banks would (30 minutes later) have special U.S. forces parachuted in and around them to secure whatever gold bullion reserves they had left.Day Three, 9:00 p.m., the President of the United States would declare a state of martial law. All financial transactions would come to an end. The Treasury would act to formally de-monetize the U.S. dollar and declare it worthless.This would be totally unprecedented. In the past, collapses have been temporary and have been brought back up. But what we’re talking about now is the end.These protocols that I’m referring to aren’t even all that secret. They were publicly available all through the Clinton era. These are Treasury protocols that were instituted mostly in the late 1970s when the Treasury and Federal Reserve began to feel that it was important to have an emergency-collapse protocol in place.What precipitated the timing of this was the inflationary spiral of the late 1970s. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve were both concerned that this inflationary spiral, which was occurring not only domestically but globally, might lead to a global, uncontrollable hyper-inflation that the Federal Reserve or major central banks could not stop by traditional means, i.e., by raising interest rates and contracting money supply.There was also the recognition, of course, that global central reserve bank bullion inventories had been so depleted over the previous 30 years that any re-institution of a species currency, even on a temporary basis, and even within a regional or individual nation-state basis, was no longer possible.This is an analogy. In a military scenario, it’s like the President of the United States pushing the final red button -- the commit button. The Treasury Secretary of the United States has a similar mechanism. It’s called the yellow button, the commit button. The Secretary of Defense has the same system. This is what happens. Computer program starts to institute these protocols. Imagine the complexity of trying the manage all this. I think it’s going to happen all simultaneously. There are hundreds of different agencies involved, both domestically and internationally. In order to maintain liquidity for as long as possible, it has to be extremely well-coordinated, and there must be existing collapse protocols that can be used.The reason I was familiar with them was because I used to see the U.S. Treasury 6900 Series Collapse Protocol, 6903, 6904 there’ll be A, B, and so on which keyed in to the Department of Defense to be incorporated within the Department of Defense’s own World War III scenario and various types of military/ political/ social instability/ war/ pestilence, chaos, etc. scenarios.All federal agencies had individual collapse protocols that ultimately got coordinated through the Department of Defense. Obviously, the Department of Defense would be the ultimate coordinator because it would need to have special forces available, on a stand-by basis, ready, that could quickly parachute into areas all over the country, into the cities particularly, to secure federal properties and assets.And that’s literally how it would begin. By the end of the third day, it would be all over -- a state of martial law. We’re not talking about war, now; this is just economic collapse.There’s no military implication here, no political, no social implication or policy directive thereunto. This is strictly economic collapse. By the end of Day Three, effectively, all banks in the world will be shut down, all paper currencies will become valueless. Martial law would be declared. There would be no continuing transactions, at least for a period of time, of commodities. All providers of fuels and foods would be shut down automatically.They have this in great detail too. U.S. Department of Defense Special 117th Assault Unit would parachute in to seize control of the cattle yards in Oklahoma City. This is how well it’s planned. In other words, economic collapse would automatically involve expansive military action and control.By the end of the third day, when you no longer have a domestic medium of exchange, you have to have secured food and fuel stocks. You’ve got to have troops that have secured distribution points where there is food and fuel stocks, warehouses, tanks, etc. Otherwise people are just going to go get them, and the people have to know that if they try to go break into that store and steal that loaf of bread, they’re going to be shot.Protocols for environmental disasters are called ‘scaling-circle scenarios.’ ‘Scaling circles’ is a Department of Defense euphemism. It’s also used in FEMA, OEM and other emergency management services. In environmental catastrophes, which are going to become national or global, it’s got to start someplace. It’s going to start in one very small, specific area. Therefore what happens is that the immediate force containment is the greatest in the first circle, to try to contain the spread of the disaster and keep it within that circle.The environmental problem, to whatever extent it’s possible, before it spreads, will be neutralized or mitigated, in order to keep that catastrophe within that circle, or, if it is likely that it is to escape that circle, to attack whatever it is in such a fashion as to mitigate its strength and its ability to contaminate or otherwise affect other areas.In the case of earthquakes, for instance, affecting the west coast, beginning at Mt. Rainier and moving southward -- that’s a different type of scenario. That does not include as much Department of Defense involvement. It includes separate protocols, wherein mostly FEMA and OEM act as the senior coordinating agencies between municipal, county and state disaster and containment, which is called Disaster and Containment Units. Federal troops would only be brought in for the purposes of maintaining control.In a military or economic collapse situation, National Guard units would provide any spare help they could in combating whatever the problem is. Federal troops would be used in order to have the specific authority simply to shoot anyone. There are plans for all sorts of scenarios. The economic-disaster scenario is the one I always found the most intriguing because it is the one that is least understood by the American people.Military control would be necessary when lines begin to form at the banks, people trying to access their money. But that wasn’t even anticipated as a big problem. Lines would form at the banks, but it was not even envisioned until sometime on Day Three because the American people wouldn’t get it. It would be announced that the stock markets are down 2000 or 3000 points, and since we’ve always been taught they’ll come back, the people would still be buying stocks.You could count on everybody remaining in ignorance all the way down because the American people have never been taught Economics 101. The American people wouldn’t realize the full extent of it until the markets were closed on the third day, or until the time when they went down to cash a check and the bank was closed with soldiers out in front. Then they would go down and see the gas station’s closed. They see the local supermarket has been shuttered, and there’s federal troops in front of it. Then they might begin to catch on. And remember -- it’s not just federal troops. In emergency-collapse protocols, even before the declaration of a formal state of emergency or a state of martial law, the local military authorities within any given county or jurisdiction have the ability to essentially militarize anyone, that is, any civilian. This would be more than just deputizing civilians. It’s federal. In other words, they would have the ability to militarize and give military authority to a civilian force. This would include not only police and the sheriffs and state police, but all local law enforcement that exists below the state level would be immediately militarized. They wouldn’t take just anybody like they did in Iraq. It would be like the military when they call for volunteers. Then they’d have everybody and their brother-in-law volunteering, waving around the American flag and so on.You’ve got a lot of pickup-driving guys in this country with the gun racks in the back and the Confederate flag flying. So you start waving the American flag in front of their face and say, Hey, you’re going to get your chance you always wanted -- to fit your potbelly inside an army uniform and carry a gun and shoot people. How appealing would that be?And besides, if you do this, then you’re going to get to eat.In other words, this is how it would unfold over three days, but, in fact, very few Americans would know what to do about it or how to take any precautions. They wouldn’t have a clue because they don’t understand enough about economics to know what is happening. So that’s what it is -- Economic Armageddon. If the Bush-Cheney regime is re-installed into power, that is effectively what Comptroller General David Walker is saying.In conclusion, since there is very little the people of the United States can do to protect themselves. We’re not going to make any suggestions of how to protect yourselves because there’s very little you can do.We could tell you to go out and buy gold coins and bury them in the coffee can in the back yard and go to your nearest survivalist store, but, frankly, that’s useless. In the last analysis, it’s a lot of hype. There is very little the average US citizen could do.The only thing that can prevent this, as the Comptroller alluded to when he was asked by Barbara Walters, How do we prevent reaching the problem by 2009? He said simply, "A change of regimes."So how do you prevent it? Don’t vote for Bush and Cheney -- and hope that Bush does not use his emergency powers to cancel or postpone the election by edict, powers which you, the flag-waving citizens, have given him.All flag-waving citizens, be warned. If you want to vote for Bush-Cheney again, make sure you got plenty of Spam on hand.Here’s an interesting and humorous aside. A couple of days ago, Hormel Foods, which makes Spam, announced that in the last six months there have been record sales of Spam in the United States the survivalists’ food of choice. After all, they pride themselves on the fact, as the spokesman for Hormel said, "It is the only food product you can buy with an expiration that’s 50 years."When everything goes to hell, when all that man has created has turned to dust again, the final legacy is going to be Spam. It will be the last surviving item -- when the anthropologists of 20 thousand years from now are digging sites and they see these enormous mountains of unopened cans of Spam They’ll have monuments to the past out of Spam.So if Bush-Cheney has a second term in office, there will be some sort of currency restriction, like Nixon did in 1971. On April 13, 2004, Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary John Boine talked about potential currency restrictions. He used the word that’s going to fuel the flames of the survivalist and gloom-and-doom collapse people.It’s very, very telling that the U.S. Treasury may institute a restriction on the amount of U.S. dollars that can be converted into gold.Furthermore, he intimated (and I suspected that this was coming, although this wouldn’t actually become law until Bush-Cheney was in office for second term one way or another) that the Bush-Cheney regime determines that the Gold Confiscation Act gives to Treasury the power for so-called forced disclosure of gold holdings.I’m not quite sure of the language of the Gold Confiscation Act from 1933. It just says, "compelled", as in citizens are lawfully compelled to redeem gold for script. I don’t think there was any such provision, which he was inferring that there is. That was FDR’s "Raw Deal" of 1934, when people were coerced into giving up their gold. But nowhere in this act does it specifically authorize the Treasury to mandate citizens to report their gold holdings. So if this gets any press at all, particularly within the circles of gold bugs and so on, watch out.Furthermore, on Washington Journal they were talking about how FEMA has recommended to the Office of Homeland Security to have increased restrictions regarding citizen hoarding of long-term food and fuel supplies. That’s pretty sinister too.What they’re talking about is the purchase of long-term so-called stores of survival food. FEMA was talking about some sort of restriction preventing people from accumulating food stores; putting it simply, that’s what it means. The second point was to increase restrictions that already exist.FEMA was recommending even tighter restrictions on citizens building their own private property underground storage tanks for the purposes of long-term storage of fuel. The real intent of this is is threefold: a) to restrict citizens’ ability to hoard food; b) restrict citizens’ ability to hoard long-term storage of fuel; c) the forced identification of citizens to reveal food and fuel stocks they may be hoarding.And that, in my opinion, is the real essence. The Bush-Cheney regime was scared of having the FEMA angle put into the equation because they knew what it means and how people would interpret it.They have tried to use environmental legislation to restrict people’s ability to build fuel storage facilities on their own property -- to get around what the true intent of that was.But the bigger picture is that if you start to limit citizens’ ability to hoard fuel and food and shake them up by potential forced identification of gold holdings or forced redemption.In other words, what you don’t want is citizens who have the ability to store a lot of food and fuel and to own gold because they would be able to resist state control in the future.You’ve got to have every citizen on a rationing card to control the civilian population. You can’t have citizens out there hoarding food and fuel because then people can say to government,"I ain’t taking a rationing card, baby, with my national ID card. I don’t have to. You can’t control me through food and fuel and ever-worthless paper currency."I used to make fun of these people. But now, things have come full circle on this debate. The Bush-Cheney regime is making it increasingly clear through their small changes in policy. Not a lot of people monitor these decisions, but I do. And the pattern is becoming increasingly clear.In fact, I would believe that those of the survivalist mentality (the food, fuel, the gold coins in the coffee can in the back yard) people who think that way will be ultimately vindicated - if George Bush has a second term in office.
Part #3
Plunge Protection Team Rescues Market on 1/23Reposted from writer unknown During the last half of ’07 the Plunge Protection team [link to en.wikipedia.org] Sooner than later, however, it became apparent that the subprime and credit markets were in deep trouble. And the PPT has stepped in several times in the past few weeks to prevent the appearance of catastrophe. But time is running out.The most recent, conspicuous rescue happened at approximately 1:32 on 1/23/’08 as the market started to make a miraculous turnaround, about 10 minutes before W appeared on the air and proclaimed that the American economy is sound. If you doubt the assertion, check the ticker for yesterday and watch the markets climb for no clearly rational reason. Especially because global markets were down significantly.On the one hand the Fed is stepping in to prevent serious damage, which protects investors, and may even make the Fed a penny or two in profits, though, on average, that’s not likely. Yet, by interfering with natural market forces, the Fed is maintaining a safety blanket - wittingly or unwittingly - for firms who would otherwise have to revitalize on their own, if possible.Worse, however, is that the Fed is printing money beyond the growth indicators that permit reasonable funding. In other words, the Fed is seriously inflating the currency and devaluing the dollar.Sadly, these efforts, although in a more controlled manner, could’ve helped home owners on the verge of foreclosure, firms on the verge of recession, and finacial institutions on the verge of collapse if they were performed no later than 4Q ’06 and continued through ’07. It’s now a day late and billions of dollars short.Aside from economic exigencies, these conditions exist because of the woeful "War on Terror" since the Neocons are being forced to prop up the illusion of U.S. supremacy while the empire is in decline. It’s tough to face down your enemy when they know there won’t be many more "smart bombs" on the way. The markets have been a key indicator - far more meaningful than the Surge - of America’s might.Had the Administration, Wall Street, and the media - particularly outlets like CNBC - explored and truthfully presented the severe problems with America’s broken economy, rather than cheerfully and deceitfully insisting everything’s dandy, these problems may have been resolved with a much greater degree of proficiency. But America is now drowning in a sea of lies and can’t fathom what’s happening on an overall basis. Too many people in too many arenas pitching bull to the masses can’t now go back and retract their tales. The damage has been done.At this point, deceit is the greatest threat to America’s democracy. Overall trust in officials and authority is rapidly declining, as is all too apparent on sites such as this one. Politicians such as Bill Clinton ruthlessly fabricate stories and foment conflict in order to further their interests. He’s not alone for sure.This is not a testamonial for Ron Paul, whose stock has also gone down after it was revelaed his newsletter exhibited racial bias for years. Nonetheless, Paul has been the only candidate who has accurately outlined the scope of the overall problems as well as prescribed the appropriate solutions to solve them, beginnning with an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.None of the other Republicans come close. Romney’s at best a distant second. On the other side of the aisle, Clinton has no clue, especially since it was Bill’s pro-NAFTA and big business stance that in part produced much of the grief now being felt from one coast to the other. To a great extent, the country needs an antidote to the globalization promoted by the Clintons, which has radically reduced incomes and job opportunities.Obama may have the agility to sit and listen to all the powers and reach a successful middle ground, but it won’t be easy. And Edwards, who is a noble soul plagued by the homeless and helpless, is, unfortunately, pitching two Americas. One that by now won’t listen to him for very long and the other, the Federal government, which is already overextended. How’s it going to help a deeply troubled economy?In the not too distant future the PPT is going to run out of tricks simply because a large infusion of capital to bolster the markets is going to trigger an exit from the dollar. That’s a turning point that will have grave repercussions for decades, if not centuries to come
Let’s look at what happened recently in the Finical World Economy
The E.U. injects 325 Billion into the European Markets to keep the E.U. from going into a liquidity crisis. 12-16-07
CNBC declares Jan the worst month for the US stock market since pre-1950 America. 12-20-08
One of the largest frech Banks Société Générale loses $7 billion in trading fraud. 1-23-08
AMEX FLOOR WIDE TRADING HALT 1-23-08
(Yeah, right. They are going to play with the hardware in the middle of the day and switch over to something else "just for the hell of it"?? Risking the loss of how much money in fees and commissions plus the potential lawsuits for big investor not able to access or sell or buy during their INTENTIONALLY imposed down time? Yeah, they're that stupid. Nope. They are NOT. This was/is intentional. It's not a mere switching over of equipment. NOT AT ALL. I promise there will be many more trading stops...The PPT has been working to stem the tide of sell orders from last week.This is expected to continue unabated...one way to stop trading is to "make up some excuse" while the books are settled ... er manipulated ....There are many sellers and only PPT as buyers. I expect trading to be limited during the near future...watch for power outages or computer glitches...Recall, that the rulers have an extra ten minutes at the end of each trading day to put their orders in...the stated close is NOT really the actual close time...)
Front page of Times/picayune 1-24-2007
President BUSH offers a 150 BILLION stimulus package for the faltering economy.
(What’s wrong with the economy? I thought everything was rosy?)
Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and UBS together stand to lose 45 percent of the total worth 1-26-08
Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's to cut the AAA credit ratings of all three lending institutions, Whitney said. The banks suffered $61 billion of the industry's $133 billion in losses from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.``When it becomes clear, as we expect it will, that more and larger, much larger losses are on the horizon, we believe the market will take another turn for the worse,'' said Whitney.
Front page of Times/picayune 1-29-2007
The Democrats want to now add another 32 billion with a B to the already unaffordable stimulus package. Where are they going to get the money? Easy they will just keep printing paper money, further devaluing the US dollar.
Banks May very soon declare a write down ( LOSS ) of $70 Billion 1-30-08Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., UBS AG and other banks will post another $70 billion in write downs (Losses) Theses are the losses that they can not hide from the public. Just how much is being lost or is already gone that we do not know about?
US Gold Reserves have been depleted by as much as 2.6 metric tons since 2002. 12-30-08
Jan. 30 (New York Times) – The council for fiscal Government spending has reported that mysteriously 2.6 metric tons of US gold has gone missing from US Gold reserves. The US Treasury is saying nothing and remaining tight lipped about where the gold has gone.
The Economy is doing just fine thank you!
From the Desk of Robert D Anding III
I beg you to take notice of what is truly, factually, and daily occurring in the US and world finical markets. I warn you now, there is information which can not be distributed openly, however if anyone is willing they can find the loose strings and weave them into a recognizable canvas.
The deliberate dismantling of the current world finical system need not catch you off guard. The choice is yours!
The Economy is doing just fine thank you!
February 6, 2008Retailers Taking Their Medicine and Turning Cautious Over GrowthRetail Industry Experts Say Closing Stores and Pulling Back is the Right Move in this MarketThe past couple months in retail real estate have been laden with more store closing announcements and news of retailers slowing expansion plans than we've seen in a long time. However, two retail real estate strategy executives, a Wall Street retail analyst and a leading Texas retail real estate broker, confide that closing stores and turning cautious over expansion plans may be the best thing for retailers to be doing right now.Announcements over the last couple months include Movie Gallery closing another 400 stores; Charming Shoppes closing 150 stores and cutting expansion plans by 50%; Starbucks closing 100 stores and slowing expansion plans by 34%; Ann Taylor shuttering 117 stores and slowing store growth; Boston Market evaluating its real estate opportunities; Buffet Holdings sorting out its underperformers; Sprint Nextel closing 125 stores and 4,000 distribution points; Cost Plus World Market closing 18 stores; Liz Claiborne closing 54 Sigrid Olsen stores; New York & Company axing the Jasmine Sola brand and its 32 stores; Ethan Allen closing 12 stores; PacSun closing all of its 173 demo stores; and Talbots exiting its kids and men's lines through closure of 78 stores.Others include Rite Aid exiting Nevada by closing 28 stores; Macy's closing nine stores; Krispy Kreme expecting many franchisees to close stores; Kirkland's Home likely closing 130 stores; CompUSA's remaining 103 stores being disposed of; Rent-A-Center closing 280 stores; Sofa Express closing 44 stores in bankruptcy; 84 Lumber closing 12 stores; Home Depot closings some call centers; Levitz Furniture disposing of 76 stores in bankruptcy; Pep Boys closing 31 stores; Lifetime Brands closing 30 stores; Big A Drugs liquidating its 21 stores; and more.
Hey lets see who is doing just fine!
Wickes Furniture Files For BankruptcyPORTLAND, Ore. -- Wickes Furniture filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Monday.Company officials said the business was hit hard by the slump in the housing market, gas prices and a slowing economy overall.Wickes has more than 40 stores across the country. Six of them are in Oregon.
St.Louis, Chrysler had recently let go off its second shift at their plant. 850 have lost their jobs (announced today) at Macy's mid west headquarters here in down town St.Louis. Sprint is closing many of its stores very quietly nationally.
Granite City Steel closed its plant just last year.
Olin Corporation, in East Alton was bought out (parent company in Clayton) by out of town conglomerate, resulting in very serious major job loss locally.
[link to www.federalreserve.gov]
The Federal Reserve just released this week’s data. This happens every Thursday at approximately 4:30.
Last weeks release showed for the first time ever a -negative balance for 'non borrowed reserves' (2nd column). This is the first time ever this has happened.
(About the Release: The H.3 release provides data on aggregate reserves of depository institutions, including required reserves, total reserves, excess reserves, non-borrowed reserves, and borrowings by depository institutions from the Federal Reserve's discount window. The release also provides data on the monetary base, which includes currency and reserves. The release is published weekly. Current and historical data are also available from the Economic Bulletin Board of the U.S. Department of Commerce.)Look at the February 7, 2008 release!
The Federal Reserve is not publishing this week’s data in the current release.
Why?
Why?
Why?
There can only be one reason and that is the deliberate destruction of the US economy is almost complete. The FEDREAL RESERVE is now out of worthless paper. The same worthless Fed Reserve notes NO ONE wants to buy.
Hidden info:
Another MAJOR hint about this pending crisis is when you do a 'Google News' search on 'federal reserve non borrowed reserves' there is not a single result. There is literally a complete MSM 'blackout' about this. Not only is the fact that last week they were in the negative, now you have nothing about the omitted data.
From a very informed source who does not wished to be named:
The FEDERAL RESERVE BANK has more then -3 billion dollars in NEGATIVE fractional assets.
Meaning they are IN DEBT, with NO ONE, willing to continue to buy worthless US issued Monetary Bonds. IF you do not know what Fractional Reserve lending is, well you must have slept through your US economics class. Me, I never graduated high School, I had to learn the hard way, I read a book.
Oh Robert, you are just so over the top with all this vitriol!
[link to business.timesonline.co.uk]
Excerpt:Fears for bond insurance market put Federal Reserve on red alert [02/07/2009]
Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, yesterday acknowledged that the bank is worried about the impact of an impending implosion of bond insurers on the US economy.
In a letter published yesterday, Mr Bernanke said that the Fed is “closely monitoring” problems with US bond insurers: “Given the adverse effects that problems of financial guarantors can have on financial markets and the economy, we are closely monitoring developments,”
Mr Bernanke said in the letter to Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat who chairs a House of Representatives sub-committee that oversees capital markets and the insurance industry.
Mr Bernanke was joined in his concerns by David Viniar, the chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs, who gave warning yesterday that some key mortgage bond insurers could collapse. He predicted that Wall Street bailouts would be able to satisfy ONLY SOME (caps are the OP's)of the need for extra cash.
Tick Tock
Tick Tock
I beg you to take notice of what is truly, factually, and daily occurring in the US and world finical markets. I warn you now, there is information which can not be distributed openly, however if anyone is willing they can find the loose strings and weave them into a recognizable canvas.
The deliberate dismantling of the current world finical system need not catch you off guard. The choice is yours!
The Economy is doing just fine thank you!
February 6, 2008Retailers Taking Their Medicine and Turning Cautious Over GrowthRetail Industry Experts Say Closing Stores and Pulling Back is the Right Move in this MarketThe past couple months in retail real estate have been laden with more store closing announcements and news of retailers slowing expansion plans than we've seen in a long time. However, two retail real estate strategy executives, a Wall Street retail analyst and a leading Texas retail real estate broker, confide that closing stores and turning cautious over expansion plans may be the best thing for retailers to be doing right now.Announcements over the last couple months include Movie Gallery closing another 400 stores; Charming Shoppes closing 150 stores and cutting expansion plans by 50%; Starbucks closing 100 stores and slowing expansion plans by 34%; Ann Taylor shuttering 117 stores and slowing store growth; Boston Market evaluating its real estate opportunities; Buffet Holdings sorting out its underperformers; Sprint Nextel closing 125 stores and 4,000 distribution points; Cost Plus World Market closing 18 stores; Liz Claiborne closing 54 Sigrid Olsen stores; New York & Company axing the Jasmine Sola brand and its 32 stores; Ethan Allen closing 12 stores; PacSun closing all of its 173 demo stores; and Talbots exiting its kids and men's lines through closure of 78 stores.Others include Rite Aid exiting Nevada by closing 28 stores; Macy's closing nine stores; Krispy Kreme expecting many franchisees to close stores; Kirkland's Home likely closing 130 stores; CompUSA's remaining 103 stores being disposed of; Rent-A-Center closing 280 stores; Sofa Express closing 44 stores in bankruptcy; 84 Lumber closing 12 stores; Home Depot closings some call centers; Levitz Furniture disposing of 76 stores in bankruptcy; Pep Boys closing 31 stores; Lifetime Brands closing 30 stores; Big A Drugs liquidating its 21 stores; and more.
Hey lets see who is doing just fine!
Wickes Furniture Files For BankruptcyPORTLAND, Ore. -- Wickes Furniture filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Monday.Company officials said the business was hit hard by the slump in the housing market, gas prices and a slowing economy overall.Wickes has more than 40 stores across the country. Six of them are in Oregon.
St.Louis, Chrysler had recently let go off its second shift at their plant. 850 have lost their jobs (announced today) at Macy's mid west headquarters here in down town St.Louis. Sprint is closing many of its stores very quietly nationally.
Granite City Steel closed its plant just last year.
Olin Corporation, in East Alton was bought out (parent company in Clayton) by out of town conglomerate, resulting in very serious major job loss locally.
[link to www.federalreserve.gov]
The Federal Reserve just released this week’s data. This happens every Thursday at approximately 4:30.
Last weeks release showed for the first time ever a -negative balance for 'non borrowed reserves' (2nd column). This is the first time ever this has happened.
(About the Release: The H.3 release provides data on aggregate reserves of depository institutions, including required reserves, total reserves, excess reserves, non-borrowed reserves, and borrowings by depository institutions from the Federal Reserve's discount window. The release also provides data on the monetary base, which includes currency and reserves. The release is published weekly. Current and historical data are also available from the Economic Bulletin Board of the U.S. Department of Commerce.)Look at the February 7, 2008 release!
The Federal Reserve is not publishing this week’s data in the current release.
Why?
Why?
Why?
There can only be one reason and that is the deliberate destruction of the US economy is almost complete. The FEDREAL RESERVE is now out of worthless paper. The same worthless Fed Reserve notes NO ONE wants to buy.
Hidden info:
Another MAJOR hint about this pending crisis is when you do a 'Google News' search on 'federal reserve non borrowed reserves' there is not a single result. There is literally a complete MSM 'blackout' about this. Not only is the fact that last week they were in the negative, now you have nothing about the omitted data.
From a very informed source who does not wished to be named:
The FEDERAL RESERVE BANK has more then -3 billion dollars in NEGATIVE fractional assets.
Meaning they are IN DEBT, with NO ONE, willing to continue to buy worthless US issued Monetary Bonds. IF you do not know what Fractional Reserve lending is, well you must have slept through your US economics class. Me, I never graduated high School, I had to learn the hard way, I read a book.
Oh Robert, you are just so over the top with all this vitriol!
[link to business.timesonline.co.uk]
Excerpt:Fears for bond insurance market put Federal Reserve on red alert [02/07/2009]
Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, yesterday acknowledged that the bank is worried about the impact of an impending implosion of bond insurers on the US economy.
In a letter published yesterday, Mr Bernanke said that the Fed is “closely monitoring” problems with US bond insurers: “Given the adverse effects that problems of financial guarantors can have on financial markets and the economy, we are closely monitoring developments,”
Mr Bernanke said in the letter to Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat who chairs a House of Representatives sub-committee that oversees capital markets and the insurance industry.
Mr Bernanke was joined in his concerns by David Viniar, the chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs, who gave warning yesterday that some key mortgage bond insurers could collapse. He predicted that Wall Street bailouts would be able to satisfy ONLY SOME (caps are the OP's)of the need for extra cash.
Tick Tock
Tick Tock
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Just Being Silly.....
The biggest object in our solar system is now Comet 17P/Holmes...
AND...
Comet 17P/Holmes is growing and expanding by the day. and still no images, no main stream media, no news reports, no explanation fromNASA, the Dept. of Defense, FEMA, nothing, nada, zip, zero, bup-kiss! Lets look at the sheer magnitude of what has happened in a a veryshort time.
The comet, asteroid, meteor, whatever 'IT' is, the thing is now BIGGER then the SUN!
The Hubble Space based telescope, The Spitzer Telescope, Germany'smost advanced deep space orbital telescope, and the Earth's biggestand most well funded land-base telescope Palomar Observatory are ALL missing in action, why? I can tell you this, several of the NSA's Covert series of high gain photo sats have been re-tasked to investigate this 'THING.'
Lets look at the numbers, shall we:
Comet 17P / Holmes is 1 409,918km,
The SUN is 1391,000km,
Jupiter 142,984kn,
The Earth 12,756km.
Anyone feeling insignificant?
When asked why nothing was being said about this situation, a specialist in Planetary Tectonic Magnetics who currently works for ************* in a sensitive field said: "You know why? Things are not yet in place to deal with the people part of the equation." I asked "what does that mean?" He replied "if it got out People would freak-out and panic..."
You ask dear reader..."What does that mean?" Well, lets see what is NOT being said.
So, here we are....11/10/2007....
There is a massive fire Ball in the sky growing daily in size. Growing, so big infact, that 'IT' is now bigger then the SUN! 'The Power That Be' are saying NOTHING. Not a word but, here are some interesting side notes about what is NOT being said.....
Try and connect the dots.......
In 2006 out of NO where, suddenly...The Norwegian government began constructing a global vault for seeds on Svalbard, halfway between theNorwegian mainland and the North Pole. Crop seeds from the entireworld will be put into frozen storage.
Wow..a place to store seeds incase of what....? Umm...something, say a massive impact by a cometwhich wipes out all the plant life for several years while the fires burn out and the insuing dust cloud settles.
Then you have in 2005...Engineers in the UK have started a three year,Fast track study into ways of intercepting or deflecting asteroids,comets, and meteors that might smash into the planet.The idea is thatthe engineers will only consider methods that could practically be implemented using......
Also in 2005 The European Space Agency is putting together a missionto see how well current technology could handle the threat of anasteroid-comet-meteor impact. The ESA is calling for spacecraft designproposals from the space industry, and early in 2006 it will selecttwo to be developed further. The final mission design will be chosenin early 2007, but the launch date has yet to be confirmed.
Also in 2005 Japan's Aero-Space Agency launched The HAYABUSA(MUSES-C)Mission which will investigate an Earth bound incoming object, such asan asteroid-meteor-comet also known as an earth-approaching type.Through this mission, Japan's Institute of Space and AstronauticalScience (ISAS) intends to establish the technology to intercept theEarth bound incoming object and bring back samples of the surface toearth (sample return).
Also in 2005 America's own NASA launched it's own Deep impact Probe. PASADENA,Calif. - NASA fine-tuned a space probe's final dive toward its comettarget Sunday, at the climax of a suicide mission that scientistshoped would provide new insight into the origins of the solarsystem.The 820-pound (373-kilogram) copper probe was on course tointercept Tempel 1, a pickle-shaped comet half the size of Manhattan,and smash a hole in it so scientists could get their first peek at theheart of one of the icy celestial bodies.
I am sure this is all just a big coincidence.
A silly fluke.
After all, I am absolutely SURE that the Major Governments of theworld spent BILLIONS of dollars trying to figure out how to stop, knock off course, or blow up, a comet just for the FUN of IT. I mean isn't government spelled backwards...FUN...FUN...FUN!
They love fun, their all about fun! After all you can't spell government without FUN!
I mean come on it's not like ALL of the World's Major Governments got together and began spending massive amounts of money, EACH and SEPARATELY, on exactly the same thing....to stop, knock off course, or blow up, a comet, AT EXACTLY the same time.
What would the odds ofthat be? Can you say 10 to the 50th power.
I mean it's not like THEY ALL had the SAME EXACT TIME FRAME.
OR that THEY all wanted to have the ANSWER, at the LATEST, by 2007-early 2008.
Come on, that would be crazy! Sheer lunacy!
AND!!!
To top it OFF, it's not like suddenly, one of the MAJOR GOVERNMENTS began to plan for the unthinkable and began building a DOOMSDAY SEED VAULT. That way after every living thing is killed off of the face of the earth, by say a COMET, they would have the seeds on hand to start over.
There no way all those random occuerances could happen at the exact same time unless there was a real-serious-pressing-life threatening-world altering, history making, high, VERY HIGH, probabiltiy, that indeed SOMETHING was Ummm....what's the phrase I am looking for?
Oh, yes
A Massive Comet whoes main body is composed of an outer core of ice with a dense inner core of Iron and Nickel Bromide. The unexpected density was so great that 2 American Nukes were unable to damage it significantly, or alter it's present IN-BOUND trajectory. On it's present course 'IT' is to strike the Earth with a high degree of absoulte certainty. The Nothern Hemisphere is the most likely strike zone, unless course alteration is achived in the next few weeks.
Now, I am just being silly!
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