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



A NEW LOW FOR A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

A NEW LOW FOR A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

So ends the worst presidential campaign in my lifetime. Literally billions of dollars were spent on ads demonizing both candidates. Running for the most important job in the world, neither man even mentioned the essential issues facing this country: the upcoming fiscal cliff that can throw the United States right back into deep recession, the too-big-to- fail banks gambling with over-the-counter derivatives totaling 1.1 quadrillion dollars while valuing their worthless assets at one hundred cents on the dollar and a Federal Reserve that is engaged in counterfeiting zillions of confetti money to prevent the system from collapsing. And then there’s Europe always on the brink. Truth was missing in action.

 The Right Wing crazies plummeted to a new low as they used religion and racism in a desperate attempt to bring down the man they have hated for four years. Their contempt for women was an outright disgrace. I felt I was living in a Third World Country controlled by billionaires who financed the shameful obliteration of a once democratic nation.

Yes, the better man won. He is a remarkable campaigner who only slipped up once when a different Romney showed up at the first debate. In fact, it’s difficult to know which Romney lost the election. How does one go about choosing?

But now the candidate has to become the president again. After all the Progressive speech making on the stomp, I fear he will turn to the Right and push for oil and gas extraction on a scale unimaginable and at the expense of the environment. And in his obsession with bipartisanism, I see him dealing with the opposition with olive branches instead of fight.

Maybe he’ll surprise us and throw some punches when the moment is right. Anything is possible.

November 8, 2012

OBAMA, ROMNEY CLUELESS ON ECONOMY

After gamely sitting through the carefully rehearsed performances that went by the name of debates, it became absolutely clear to me that neither of these guys has the slightest idea what to do about the ongoing economic crisis. In fact, politicians have only one idea, and that’s how to get re-elected. The same is true in Europe where their Union continues to come apart at the seams.

Politicians depend on central banks to print money to keep the global financial system from collapsing. Their counterfeiting debases the various fiat currencies and hurts the Poor and the Middle Class whose purchasing power erodes month after month..

No matter who wins the U.S. presidential election on November 6^th, there is simply no way our country will ever make good on its gargantuan debts and pile of IOUs that now total as much as $212 trillion. The debts will never be repaid.

Flooding the planet with “Monopoly money” will only cause more asset bubbles to blow up and then burst. At some point, even “ Boobus Americanus" will “get it” and lose confidence in the U.S. dollar. When that happens, they will be the last to turn to hard assets in a desperate attempt to preserve what will still be left of their savings.

With the Fiscal Cliff and a new higher debt ceiling looming, and neither party talking to the other, the endgame may be just around the corner. In any case let’s face it, we’re circling the drain. Rich old men protecting their property by sending young men to die in wars of their making.. Elections have become a charade. They give Americans the illusion of choice. The real looting in this country is the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. The owners of the country are now out in the open. The rest of us are in the back of the bus.

October 25, 2012