THE FEDERAL RESERVE IS TRAPPED

THE FEDERAL RESERVE IS TRAPPED

The Federal Reserve is now trapped. As you may know, this cartel of private bankers is buying up most of the U.S. Treasury debt. When they even just hinted that they might taper off their $85 billion per month buying of our U.S. Treasury bonds, the financial markets freaked out. Big Ben (Bernanke) was then forced to contradict himself and state that the economy was not really doing that well, and that the Federal Reserve may have to continue buying bonds and printing money perhaps to infinity. The markets did a 180 and headed for the moon..

Fundamentals no longer matter to market participants. Genuine price discovery is a thing of the past. The stock market is addicted to quantitative easing (the printing of more and more dollars) by its enabler, the Federal Reserve. Bad news for the economy becomes good news for the market because it means that the Fed will have to continue creating dollars which, of course, gives the addict (the stock market) what it must have. The benefit to the real economy is negligible. While the market may go up for a few more months, you know that it's going to end in tears as it always does when the fundamentals are dispensed with.

Yes, Ben is in a box. If he tapers off his bond purchases, the bond market will crash, taking the stock market with it. If he continues or even has to intensify his creation of paper dollars, then he risks a savage inflation which destroys the U.S. dollar and leads to the world losing confidence in our currency. It's all about the dollar after all. If Bernanke lets the dollar fall in order to pay back the remarkable Federal debt with cheaper greenbacks, then he risks the crucial advantages that the petrodollar and the reserve currency of the world give to the USA. What's a chairman to do? Probably retire and hand over the insoluble problem to someone else.

July 13, 2013



WE ARE SINKING INTO A POLICE STATE

WE ARE SINKING INTO A POLICE STATE

Those who are willing to give up some liberty for safety don't deserve either one.  Benjamin Franklin.

With this past week's revelations that the Executive Branch has an arrangement with the country's three largest phone companies to obtain the phone records of almost all Americans, only to have it further disclosed that the same Executive Branch has transformed the Bush - Cheney  warrantless intrusions  into the Prism program which allows the intelligence services to mine all of the country's major Internet providers by direct access to the companies'  servers in order to be able to obtain: email, videos, photos, voice-over-IP (Skype, for example) chats, file transfers, social networking details, and more, then is it possible that Americans can remain in denial that our country is plunging into a police state? Is it not curious that Homeland Security will be purchasing 1.6 billion blunt-nosed bullets and 2,750 light-armored tanks? It is undeniable that one definition of Fascism is the merger of state and corporate power.

When I voted for Candidate Obama is 2008, it was because he promised change from the embarrassments and encroachments of the Bush years. Even before Inauguration Day it was obvious to me that the upcoming President Obama would be just another puppet in a long string of puppet presidents who took their marching orders from the Federal Reserve and their cohorts on Wall Street.

Besides surrounding himself with a Wall Street Cabinet and advisors, his statements that he would not look back, only forward, was a tip off that he and his do-nothing attorney general would not go after the Bush-Cheney war crimes nor would they bring a single case against the banksters whose greed and outright fraud came as close as you can to bringing down the global financial system

Instead of change we got intensification. Obama signed a bill into law which allowed the U.S. military to arrest Americans and hold them without trial. Internments camps have been built that can currently hold 80,000 Americans without having to charge them with any crime.

And then there is the militarization of police forces throughout the country where on a recent occasion 100 square miles of Boston was placed under martial law while armored tanks roamed the streets......all in an effort to find a 19-year-old kid.

Wake up, America. Write articles, call your so-called representatives in Washington, utilize your social networks to organize a groundswell of opposition to what is happening in this country. Rediscover the words: civil disobedience.

June 16, 2013

GETTING OUT OF THE BANKING SYSTEM

GETTING OUT OF THE BANKING SYSTEM

The governments of the Western developed countries and that of Japan have become desperate. They are printing paper currency at the speed of light.  A financial catastrophe is being concealed from the public. My guess is it has to do with the one quadrillion plus dollars in over-the-counter derivatives. In any case, the central banks and the central planners are now out of control.

The public remains in its long term coma thanks to the propaganda machine of the mainstream press who assures everyone that everything is just fine. But it isn’t fine. The theft of depositors’ money in Cyprus is not a one-off phenomenon. Canada, New Zealand and other countries have passed laws that would enable them to do the same. Should a major bank fail, you could wake up one morning only to discover that the government has stolen money right out of your account and given it to the bank in order to save the institution. People vs. banks and governments is no contest. It is an adversarial relationship that inevitably will go from bad to worse.

But, you say, our bank accounts and our stock accounts are insured. Really?  The FDIC may have almost 1% of the total depositor funds with which to reimburse depositors. And unless you own your equity portfolio in your name with specific stock certificates, don’t even think that your stocks are safe. Most everyone’s portfolio of stocks is in street name. That means when the brokerage company goes bankrupt, your stocks go with them. The moral of this tale is: you don’t own what you can’t touch.

But none of that could happen here, you say? The Federal Reserve came on the scene in 1913. Had you placed your money in a checking account 100 years ago, each dollar would now be worth $0.04 cents. Now that’s what I call theft on a scale almost unimaginable. It’s done to Americans surreptitiously like the frog analogy. Place a frog in boiling water (Cyprus) and he’ll jump right out. But put him in warm water and gradually turn up the heat. He won’t notice it until it is too late.

With the endgame getting closer by the day, those few renegade individuals who actually think for themselves are getting out of the banking system while they can. As confidence is gradually lost in the authoritarians and their paper money Ponzi scheme, people with functioning brain cells will exit the system in astounding numbers. They will buy whatever you can’t print. What’s your plan?

April 9, 2011

GET USED TO FRACKING

                                                       GET USED TO FRACKING

About a month ago DR. Alan Chartok had a show about fracking on WAMC. For an hour people from all over the area called in to express their displeasure, their horror, on how this brutal method of extracting oil and gas from shale will destroy the ground water and in general poison the environment. I for one could not have agreed more with each of the callers. The toxic chemicals along with the unimaginable quantities of water necessary to carry out the horizontal drilling in order to get the fossil fuels trapped underneath the land will surely cause horrendous damage.

Since I was in the car driving up to Williamstown, I heard the entire show. And I could not believe that not one person seemed to understand the inevitability of widespread fracking. After all, the possibility of the United States becoming energy independent after years and years of sucking up to OPEC is so overwhelming, so game changing, that the issue is basically a done deal.President Obama is holding fifteen licenses to drill in the Bakken Shield of North Dakota, the Eagle Ford of Texas and the Monterey formation in California etc. All of the big bad oil companies are champing at the bit to get those licenses. But Obama is holding them close to his vest. They are, after all, worth a fortune each. And since the country is broke, Obama will indeed sell them, but not before he extracts his pound of flesh from the companies.

My guess is that the economic possibilities involved are so great in terms of not only energy independence, but the creation of thousands and thousands of jobs along with great wealth, that Obama will become a hero very much like FDR. And like Roosevelt, the American people may even want Obama to run for a third term. If he can't overthrow the 22nd amendment, there's always Michelle.

I know all that sounds crazy. And I will mourn with so many of you over the destruction that will surely be done to our land and water. But the economic potential is so great, it could literally lead to the re-emergence of this country. Lets face it, the economy and jobs versus the environment has never been a contest in America. Much to my chagrin, the writing is on the wall.

March 4, 2013

THE FEDERAL RESERVE: MODERN DAY ALCHEMISTS

                      THE FEDERAL RESERVE: MODERN DAY ALCHEMISTS

Back in the Middle Ages something called alchemy was attempted. It was a craft that took something ordinary, plentiful and of little value and tried to miraculously transform it into something rare,
precious and therefore valuable. Of course, we all know that the experiment failed.

But alchemy has returned to the world in the form of the Federal Reserve and its fellow central banks. Their goal is the same as the quacks of the Middle Ages. They are certain that they can create paper and turn it into something very special. Instead of calling it alchemy, since that would not sit well with even the comatose public, they call it quantitative easing, bond buying, inflation and employment targeting etc.. But the Federal Reserve’s alchemy is on steroids. It takes debt and magically turns it into something of value by declaring it an asset. As the governments of the Western developed world sink ever deeper into the debt abyss, these Central Banks "buy" this debt (government IOU's from technically insolvent nations) by the creation of electronic digits in a computer which they then credit to the too-big-to-fail banks. These banks then place this debt as an asset on their balance sheets which they use to make loans and therefore create more debt. Including the unfunded liabilities i.e. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the debt has been estimated to be near $220 trillion.

The insane number of dollars created have to find their way into something. This causes asset bubbles to blow up in stocks, commodities and bonds. (The U.S. Treasury bond bubble is the largest in financial history). Anyone with a functioning brain cell knows that all asset bubbles end badly. But the central banks only know one thing: keep increasing the quantity of paper money until inflation destroys the poor and the Middle Class. In the meantime, the bubbles may continue to expand thanks to the paper money creation and the main stream press which assures everyone not to worry because everything is OK. But it’s not OK. Nothing that caused the financial crisis in 2008 has been fixed or even addressed.

Modern-day alchemists are guaranteed to fail. All you have to do is to keep your eye on the Treasury
bond market and the U.S. dollar. When they start to plunge, head for your bunkers.

 February 9, 2013

THE LIE

When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe.  –Frederic Bastiat

Our culture’s basic foundation is now built on the lie. It starts in schools where cheating has become a way of life. Resumés have become fictions that bear no relation to the facts. Corporations distort their quarterly reports in order to attract gullible investors. The government lies on every economic report it issues in order to keep the American people in the dark about the real economy. It falsifies the reasons for going to war and by doing so wastes both blood and treasure. Presidents of the United States promise the people what they know they cannot deliver upon in order to get re-elected. Congress lies when it claims to represent the people who elected them. The mainstream media lies to protect the liars who own them.

What is it in the American psyche that predisposes the people to believe the lies?

My guess is that Americans have come down with an epidemic of complacency. Their center of the universe consciousness does not allow the vast majority to care about things outside of themselves. Others feel that there is nothing they can do about it and just give up.

When it comes to lying, there has been no example more blatant than the too-big-to-fail banks whose greed, fraud and mendacity brought down the global economy. Yet, the Obama administration has not initiated a single case against anyone on Wall Street.  How is that possible, you ask? Because just like the outrageous Republicans, the Democratic party is bought and paid for by the financial criminals.

Obama, the brilliant candidate, who tells the Middle Class what it wants to hear when he’s running for office, chooses Jacob Lew, a former Wall Street derivatives dealer as his nominee for Secretary of the Treasury. Isn’t it remarkable that Obama has surrounded himself with former Wall Street tycoons throughout his four years as president. His upcoming inauguration will be filled with inspiring rhetoric. But it is imperative to watch what he does, not what he says. Words lend themselves to lies. Executing those words into action is missing in action in the current American culture.

January 12, 2013

THE FISCAL CLIFF IS ANOTHER DIVERSION

THE FISCAL CLIFF IS ANOTHER DIVERSION

                                  “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand

our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe

  there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”   
Henry Ford

In my opinion, the so-called “fiscal cliff” is just another diversionary tactic to shift the main stream media and the public’s attention (not that the latter has any) away from  the real problems facing the financial system.

The fiscal cliff, whether the idiots in Washington let it happen or come to some agreement, will have little effect on the nation’s remarkable debt. It will only make a recessionary economy worse.

In any case, the fiscal cliff is irrelevant when compared to the unbelievable number of over-the-counter derivatives held by the four largest American banks, or to the bond market and dollar market asset bubbles.

Of the $230 trillion in derivative exposure, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank and Goldman Sachs hold 95%. These banks used to be commercial banks that took their depositors’ money and loaned it out to businesses and consumers. But the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the deregulation of derivatives by the Clinton administration in cahoots with the Republican party turned honest banks into gambling casinos who bet their own money and that of their depositors on any financial instrument they could leverage. You know what happened in 2008. Today the potential for disaster is many, many times larger.

This is what the Federal Reserve is really worried about. After announcing QE 3, the printing of money to buy U.S. Treasuries and the bad assets of the big banks, the Fed quickly doubled its QE purchases. The salient point to understand is that the Federal Reserve is not printing money to ignite the economy; they are merely continuing the bail outs of the too-big-to-fail banks and the U.S. Treasury.

Because a handful of fools and corrupt public officials deregulated the financial system, the Federal Reserve is forced to print paper currency on a scale never seen before in human history. How long will it be before the U.S. bond and dollar markets implode and inflation turns ugly? When a sovereign’s currency is destroyed, the country goes down with it. Anyone who possesses a brain cell of history knows that is what happened to the Roman Empire and all the other empires ever since.

Therefore, the entire economic policy of the USA is dedicated to saving four banks. By keeping interest rates at ridiculously low  levels, the rest of us in the real economy are deprived of interest income. We, especially our senior citizens, are forced into risky markets where possible disaster waits in ambush. Merry Christmas.

December 19, 2012