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Edmond Burke in March 22, 1775 with his Speech on Conciliation with America:
“. . . Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government–they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation–the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces toward you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have, the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have; they can have it from Spain; they may have it from Prussia. But until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is the true Act of Navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire. . . Let us get an American revenue as we have got an American empire. English privileges have made it all that it is; English privileges alone will make it all it can be.”
Stupidity is not the answer
Unless one gets paid to post that way
To keep the scam going on
In sheoples minds..
Zionism vs Judaism
British Landmark Case ~ Rothschild Zionism Is Not Abrahamic Judaism!!
The Banking Cabal Invented State Zionism (State Of Israel) Usurping Judaism's (Jew) Non-State Identity.
Just As They Invented Communism, Marxism, Fascism, Nationalism, Socialism, Usurping Other Nation State Identities For Economic Upheaval So As To Institute Centralization Of Money To Their Banks. End Of NWO Story!
http://politicalvelcraft.org/2013/04/09/breaking-cnn-goldman-sachs-the-rothschild-zionist-matrix-landmark-case-rothschildism-delineated-from-abrahamic-judaism/
In landmark case on Israel and Jewish identity, British tribunal says anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism
It is something we have to all deal with now....
Shermann
That shoulda happened 100 years ago...
The theft from the American prosperity of the common man amounts to 1.5 QUADRILLION FRNs to date...
I'm afraid your Dad was as duped as the rest of us.
He was taking it in the shorts just like everyone else.
I'm very sorry that happened.
EVERY man and woman with children or a pet project in America COULD have a had an inheritance and fortune to pass on toward the future of the nation, IF we weren't thwarted at every twist and turn.
What kind of prosperity would that have built?
Instead, we are a nation and People in decline...
Ask yourselves the hard questions.
Is this REALLY circumstances? An accident? Law of nature? An economic inevitability?
By no means....
It is utter fraud and theft. Plain and simple.
American Empire - Glenn Greenwald (VIDEO)
http://www.xrepublic.tv/node/9278
Shermann
Unfortunately, that's been happening over 100 years now.
The majority have been boiling frogs all their lives.
Slowly but Surely, they are Indeed Waking Up ... My Dad always said that People Really Wake Up when their Wallet is affected!!!
Shermann
They would if they knew. And they are waking up...
Horrifying it is ... Yet few seem to care as our republic is being sold to the highest bidder piece by piece.
Shermann
Horrifying, isn't it?
Usa Inc – Exposing The Thieves Who Stole Our Government(VIDEO)
http://xrepublic.tv/node/9201
Shermann
I'm not into all that, but they must be on a suicide mission.
That's really getting out of touch with the Will of the People.
Fascist republicans pass bill in House to cut funding for the DOJ unless they crack down on legal state mandated weed.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/31/house-approves-measure-to-cut-funding-for-feds-unless-they-crack-down-on-legal-weed/
So much for states rights and individual freedoms under the Bill of Rights. If the DEA, corporations, for profit prisons, and drug cartels want legal weed destroyed they bow to their masters wish!
We Have Just Witnessed The Biggest Plunge In Global Trade Since 2009, Physical And Economic Chaos Continue To Breakout Across The World As Time Continues To Rapidly Tick Away Prior To The Next Big Event. (VIDEO)
Tons of News Here!!!
http://investmentwatchblog.com/we-have-just-witnessed-the-biggest-plunge-in-global-trade-since-2009-physical-and-economic-chaos-continue-to-breakout-across-the-world-as-time-continues-to-rapidly-tick-away-prior-to-the-next-big-eve/
Shermann
Virginia Proposal Would Limit How Many People You Can Have Visit Your House
http://12160.info/page/2649739:Page:1464864
Kenric Ward) A plan to ban “frequent and large gatherings at neighborhood homes” is a lawsuit waiting to happen, a Fairfax County supervisor predicts. Officials will get an idea Wednesday when public-comment hearings begin in Virginia’s most populous county. “I believe the county is risking a lawsuit and/or aconstitution challenge by interfering with peoples’ right to assemble,” Supervisor Pat Herrity said in a statement. The proposed zoning ordinance limits “group assembly” at residences to 49 people a day. Such gatherings “shall not occur more frequently than three times in any 40-day period.” more http://govtslaves.info/virginia-proposal-limit-many-people-can-visit-house/#sthash.4QIJCCNs.sfju
Dr. Stan Monteith, 35 year orthopedic surgeon, declares Boston bombing victim was ACTING.
http://fauxcapitalist.com/2013/05/10/dr-stan-monteith-a-35-year-orthopedic-surgeon-on-jeff-baumans-leg-amputations-i-believe-that-this-young-man-was-an-
Ron Paul: Nevada Standoff Symptom Of Increasing Authoritarianism
http://www.fitsnews.com/2014/04/21/ron-paul-nevada-standoff-symptom-increasing-authoritarianism/
By Ron Paul || The nation’s attention has for the past few weeks been riveted by a standoff in Nevada between armed federal agents and the Bundys, a ranching family who believe the federal government is exceeding its authority by accessing “fees” against ranchers who graze cattle on government lands. Outrage over the government’s use of armed agents to forcibly remove the Bundys’ cattle led many Americans to travel to Nevada to engage in non-violent civil disobedience in support of the family.
The protests seem to have worked, at least for now, as the government appears to have backed off from direct confrontation. Sadly, some elected officials have inflamed the situation by labeling the Bundys and their supporters “domestic terrorists,” thus justifying any future use of force by the government. That means there is always the possibility of another deadly Waco-style raid on the Bundys or a similar group in the future.
In a state like Nevada, where 84 percent of the land is owned by the federal government, these types of conflicts are inevitable. Government ownership of land means that land is in theory owned by everyone, but in practice owned by no one. Thus, those who use the land lack the incentives to preserve it for the long term. As a result, land-use rules are set by politicians and bureaucrats. Oftentimes, the so-called “public” land is used in ways that benefit politically-powerful special interests.
Politicians and bureaucrats can, and will, arbitrarily change the rules governing the land. In the 19th currently, some Americans moved to Nevada because the government promised them that they, and their descendants, would always be able to use the federally-owned land. The Nevada ranchers believed they had an implied contract with the government allowing them to use the land for grazing. When government bureaucrats decided they needed to restrict grazing to protect the desert tortoise, they used force to drive most ranchers away.
By contrast, if the Nevada land in question was privately owned, the dispute over whether to allow the ranchers to continue to use the land would have likely been resolved without sending in federal armed agents to remove the Bundys’ cattle from the land. This is one more reason why the federal government should rid itself of all federal land holdings. Selling federal lands would also help reduce the federal deficit.
It is unlikely that Congress will divest the federal government’s land holdings, as most in government are more interested in increasing government power then in protecting and restoring private property rights.
A government that continually violates our rights of property and contract can fairly be descried as authoritarian. Of course, the politicians and bureaucrats take offense at this term, but how else do you describe a government that forbids Americans from grazing cattle on land they have used for over a century, from buying health insurance that does not met Obamacare’s standards, from trading with Cuba, or even from drinking raw milk! That so many in Washington D.C. support the NSA spying and the TSA assaults on our privacy shows the low regard that too many in government have for our rights.
History shows us that authoritarian systems, whether fascist, communist, or Keynesian, will inevitably fail. I believe incidents such as that in Nevada show we may be witnessing the failure of the American authoritarian warfare-welfare state — and that of course would be good. This is why it so important that those of us who understand the freedom philosophy spread the truth about how statism caused our problems and why liberty is the only solution.
Mega oil field discovered in southern Russia
OOPS - The Petro Dollar just sunk more!!!
http://rt.com/business/oil-field-astrakhan-discovery-948/
A new oil field with roughly 300 million tons of oil and 90 billion cubic meters of gas has been discovered in the Astrakhan region of Russia.
“The field’s reserves are unprecedented, this discovery confirms the high potential of the Astrakhan region in terms of these major discoveries,” Sergey Donskoy, Russia’s Natural Resources Minister said on Wednesday.
The field, called “Velikoe” (The Great) was discovered by the AFB Oil and Gas Company, which will likely seek out larger partners to develop it.
Two likely candidates are Rosneft, Russia’s state-owned and largest producer, and Lukoil, the country’s second biggest producer.
"According to experts, given the lack of large land deposits, project participation will likely come from all major industry players. The most probable partners are Rosneft and Lukoil, which already have projects in neighboring regions,” Uralsib Capital analyst Aleksey Kokin told mail.ru.
MH370 cell phone call exposing 9/11 cover up.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/04/14/358474/mh370-call-exposing-911-coverup/
URGENT! Nevada militia is mobilizing! Cliven Bundy ranch (VIDEO)
Pay Attention Folks!!!
IMF “Shock Treatment” For Ukraine: Collapse Of The Standard Of Living
http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/imf-shock-treatment-ukraine-collapse-standard-living/
On March 27, Ukraine’s interim coalition government announced concrete policy measures as part of its agreement with the IMF: a 50 percent increase of the retail price of gas coupled with the deregulation of the foreign exchange market.
The hike in gas prices is required by the IMF as part of an 18 Billion dollar pledge, which was approved on March 27. The IMF has demanded that retail gas and heating tariffs be raised “to full cost recovery.”
It is worth recalling that following the instatement of a coalition government on February 23, the interim (puppet) prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk casually dismissed the need to negotiate with the IMF.
Yatsenyk intimated that Ukraine will “accept whatever offer the IMF and the EU made” (voice of russia.com March 21, 2014)
Prior to the conduct of negotiations pertaining to a draft agreement, Yatsenyuk had already called for an unconditional acceptance of the IMF package: “We have no other choice but to accept the IMF offer”.
In surrendering to the IMF, Yatsenyuk was fully aware that the proposed reforms would brutally impoverish millions of people, including those who protested in Maidan.
In an address to Parliament on March 27, following the confirmation of the IMF’s pledged $18 billion loan, prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk warned that Ukraine was “on the brink of the economic and financial bankruptcy”.
The proposed “‘solution” includes a significant increase in income taxes, a freeze on wages, curtailment of old age pensions and higher energy prices. “We have no choice but to tell Ukraine the truth,” said Yatsenyuk.
?
State energy company Naftogaz announced this week that household gas prices would rise 50 percent beginning May 1 in what it said was part of efforts to make utility costs economically viable for the state by 2018. Some analysts have estimated prices might have to double for consumers.
The first increase in the price of gas is scheduled to take place in early May, a few weeks prior to the May 25 elections.
The May 2014 increase in the retail price of gas is part of a phasing out of government subsidies over a period of 4 years demanded by the IMF as part of the loan agreement.
The increase in fuel and transportation prices will inflate costs of production. Combined with the impact of the devaluation of the hryvnia, it will have an immediate impact on the retail prices of essential commodities. Moreover, the phasing out of subsidies on basic food staples is also contemplated as part of the IMF framework.
If adopted, the IMF package will trigger a significant overall increase in the prices of essential consumer goods, thereby contributing to the impoverishment of a population which has already been impoverished.
Under the Yanukoych government, Ukraine purchased more than half its natural gas from Russia’s Gazprom at 30 percent below its market value as part of a bilateral agreement with the Russian Federation. In addion to IMF guidelines, the repeal of this agreement will have an immediate on the retail price of gas. And in all likelihood, the real price of fuel and transportation will increase by more than the 50 percent target demanded under the IMF agreement.
Deregulation of the Forex Market: Collapse of the hryvnia
The IMF package is also conditional upon the of deregulation of the foreign exchange market and the lifting of government controls on forex transactions and capital movements. The IMF has demanded that the Central Bank put an end to its “support” of Ukraine’s national currency the Hryvnia.
Under present conditions, a deregulated forex market based on “enhanced exchange rate flexibility” will open the door to a highly profitable speculative trade in the currency markets, which will contribute to exacerbating the countries indebtedness, while pushing the hryvnia to the floor.
Given the virtual absence of central bank reserves, this decline of the hryvnia could even occur prior to the implementation of the IMF program.
Devastating Social Impact
The adoption of an IMF loan agreement is required as a precondition for the release of bilateral financial support from the EU and US. The
EU has confirmed financial support of the order of 1.6 billion euro.
In apparent liaison with the IMF, the US Congress has approved a bill to aid Ukraine. The Congressional decision was also announced on March 27.
A $1 billion in loan guarantees is granted “to help stabilize Ukraine’s economy” [aka impoverish]. The bill would also authorize “assistance for democracy, governance and civil society programs” [aka support to ultra right wing groups] and “enhanced security cooperation”. The latter would imply channeling financial support to the National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU) which is headed by Andriy Parubi, co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda). The National Guard, which constitutes a civilian militia is under the helm of Dmitry Yarosh, leader of the Right Sector, which is also supported by Washington.
In a bitter irony, without acknowledging the central role of Neo-Nazi appointees in the coalition government, the US Congressional initiative calls for measures directed against:
?
“those who are responsible for human rights abusesagainst anti-government protesters [former government of Yanukovych] and those responsible for undermining the peace and sovereignty of the Ukraine. (Fox New, March 27, 2014, emphasis added)
Debt Repayment
It should be understood that the IMF money will not enter the country. It is earmarked for the reimbursement of Ukraine’s short term debt. It’s fictitious money.
The combined impact of currency devaluation and the removal of fuel subsidies will trigger inflation. The austerity measures will enforce a freeze in nominal wages, leading to a collapse in real earnings.
The IMF pledge was announced on March 27. the 27 of March, coinciding with a neo-Nazi Right Sector assault of the Parliament building, demanding the resignation of the Minister of the Interior.
?
The protesters threaten to break into the parliament if their demands are not met, journalists report from the scene. The Rada’s security has concentrated in front of the entrance to the building and prepared water cannons, urging the journalists inside not to approach the windows looking onto the Constitution Square.(RT, March 27, 2014)
On March 28, the Ukrainian parliament adopted legislation which was “proposed by the IMF to secure an international financial aid package”.
?
It took two readings of the bill for 246 MPs out of 321 registered to approve the austerity measures outlined in the legislation dubbed “On prevention of financial catastrophe and creation of prerequisites for economic growth.”
Ahead of the vote, Ukrainian self-imposed Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk told the Parliament that it had “no other choice but to accept the IMF offer,” as country fiscal gap in 2014 is projected to reach $26 billion. Ukraine’s Finance Ministry says it needs $35 billion over the next two years to avoid default.
“The country is on the edge of economic and financial bankruptcy,” Yatsenyuk said. “This package of laws is very unpopular, very difficult, very tough. Reforms that should have been done in the past 20 years.” (RT, March 28, 2014)
Contrary to Yatsenyuk’s statement, there is continuity with a track record of IMF-World Bank reforms imposed on Ukraine since the collapse of the USSR.
The Ukrainian people should understand that this agreement reached with the IMF will have devastating social implications. This government integrated by Neo-Nazis has betrayed the people of Ukraine.
It is not acting on behalf of the people of Ukraine, it is obeying orders emanating from Washington and Brussels. The IMF economic package is an act of economic warfare. Its acceptance by the self proclaimed government is an act of treason.
—————–
Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2014
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, globalresearch.ca
Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism”(2005). His most recent book is entitled Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011). He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. He can be reached at crgeditor@yahoo.com
How the government lies about job statistics (VIDEO)
Mike Maloney: We Don't Have Free Markets Or Capitalism (VIDEO)
http://libertycrier.com/mike-maloney-we-dont-have-free-markets-or-capitalism/?utm_source=The+Liberty+Crier&utm_campaign=a6d7e382e1-The_Liberty_Crier_Daily_News_3_29_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_600843dec4-a6d7e382e1-284729081
Shermann
James Rickards – Fed Insolvent, Dollar Will Collapse 90% or More (VIDEO)
There is Tons of Info Here!!!
http://investmentwatchblog.com/james-rickards-dollar-going-to-collapse-80-or-90-or-more/
Shermann
Consciousness After Death: Strange Tales From the Frontiers of Resuscitation Medicine
Sam Parnia practices resuscitation medicine. In other words, he helps bring people back from the dead — and some return with stories. Their tales could help save lives, and even challenge traditional scientific ideas about the nature of consciousness.
“The evidence we have so far is that human consciousness does not become annihilated,” said Parnia, a doctor at Stony Brook University Hospital and director of the school’s resuscitation research program. “It continues for a few hours after death, albeit in a hibernated state we cannot see from the outside.”
Resuscitation medicine grew out of the mid-twentieth century discovery of CPR, the medical procedure by which hearts that have stopped beating are revived. Originally effective for a few minutes after cardiac arrest, advances in CPR have pushed that time to a half-hour or more.
New techniques promise to even further extend the boundary between life and death. At the same time, experiences reported by resuscitated people sometimes defy what’s thought to be possible. They claim to have seen and heard things, though activity in their brains appears to have stopped.
It sounds supernatural, and if their memories are accurate and their brains really have stopped, it’s neurologically inexplicable, at least with what’s now known. Parnia, leader of the Human Consciousness Project’s AWARE study, which documents after-death experiences in 25 hospitals across North America and Europe, is studying the phenomenon scientifically.
Parnia discusses his work in the new book Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death. Wired talked to Parnia about resuscitation and the nature of consciousness.
Wired: In the book you say that death is not a moment in time, but a process. What do you mean by that?
Sam Parnia: There’s a point used to define death: Your heart stops beating, your brain shuts down. The moment of cardiac arrest. Until fifty years ago, when CPR was developed, when you reached this point, you couldn’t come back. That led to the perception that death is completely irreversible.
But if I were to die this instant, the cells inside my body wouldn’t have died yet. It takes time for cells to die after they’re deprived of oxygen. It doesn’t happen instantly. We have a longer period of time than people perceive. We know now that when you become a corpse, when the doctor declares you dead, there’s still a possibility, from a biological and medical perspective, of death being reversed.
Of course, if someone dies and you leave them alone long enough, the cells become damaged. There’s going to be a time when you can’t bring them back. But nobody knows exactly when that moment is. It might not just be in tens of minutes, but in over an hour. Death is really a process.
'The idea that electrochemical processes in the brain lead to consciousness may no longer be correct.'
Wired: How can people be brought back from death?
Parnia: Death is, essentially, the same as a stroke, and that’s especially true for the brain. A stroke is some process that stops blood flow from getting into the brain. Whether it’s because the heart stopped pumping, or there was a clot that stopped blood flow, the cells don’t care.
Brain cells can be viable for up to eight hours after blood flow stops. If doctors can learn to manipulate processes going on in cells, and slow down the rate at which cells die, we could go back and fix the problem that caused a person to die, then re-start the heart and bring them back. In a sense, death could become reversible for conditions for which treatments become available.
If someone dies of a heart attack, for example, and it can be fixed, then in principle we can protect the brain, make sure it doesn’t experience permanent cellular death, and re-start the heart. If someone dies of cancer, though, and that particular cancer is untreatable, then it’s futile.
Wired: Are you talking about bringing people to life days or weeks or even years after they’ve died?
Parnia: No. This is not cryogenics. When you die, most of your cell death occurs through apoptosis, or programmed cell death. If your body is cold, the chemical reactions underlying apoptosis are slower. Making the body cold slows the rate at which cells decay. But we’re talking about chilling, not freezing. The process of freezing will damage cells.
Wired: You also study near-death experiences, but you have a different term for it: After-death experience.
Parnia: I decided that we should study what people have experienced when they’ve gone beyond cardiac arrest. I found that 10 percent of patients who survived cardiac arrests report these incredible accounts of seeing things.
When I looked at the cardiac arrest literature, it became clear that it’s after the heart stops and blood flow into the brain ceases. There’s no blood flow into the brain, no activity, about 10 seconds after the heart stops. When doctors start to do CPR, they still can’t get enough blood into the brain. It remains flatlined. That’s the physiology of people who’ve died or are receiving CPR.
Not just my study, but four others, all demonstrated the same thing: People have memories and recollections. Combined with anecdotal reports from all over the world, from people who see things accurately and remember them, it suggests this needs to be studied in more detail.
Wired: One of the first after-death accounts in your book involves Joe Tiralosi, who was resuscitated 40 minutes after his heart stopped. Can you tell me more about him?
Parnia: I wasn’t involved in his care when he arrived at the hospital, but I know his doctors well. We’d been working with the emergency room to make sure they knew the importance of starting to cool people down. When Tiralosi arrived, they cooled him, which helped preserve his brain cells. They found vessels blocked in his heart. That’s now treatable. By doing CPR and cooling him down, the doctors managed to fix him and ensure that he didn’t have brain damage.
When Tiralosi woke up, he told nurses that he had a profound experience and wanted to talk about it. That’s how we met. He told me that he felt incredibly peaceful, and saw this perfect being, full of love and compassion. This is not uncommon.
People tend to interpret what they see based on their background: A Hindu describes a Hindu god, an atheist doesn’t see a Hindu god or a Christian god, but some being. Different cultures see the same thing, but their interpretation depends on what they believe.
Wired: What can we learn from the fact that people report seeing the same thing?
Parnia: At the very least, it tells us that there’s this unique experience that humans have when they go through death. It’s universal. It’s described by children as young as three. And it tells us that we should not be afraid of death.
Wired: How do we know after-death experiences happen when people think they do? Maybe people misremember thoughts from just before death, or just after regaining consciousness.
Parnia: That’s a very important question. Do these memories occur when a person is truly flatlined and had no brain activity, as science suggests? Or when they’re beginning to wake up, but are still unconscious?
The point that goes against the experiences happening afterwards, or before the brain shut down, is that many people describe very specific details of what happened to them during cardiac arrest. They describe conversations people had, clothes people wore, events that went on 10 or 20 minutes into resuscitation. That is not compatible with brain activity.
It may be that some people receive better-quality resuscitation, and that — though there’s no evidence to support it — they did have brain activity. Or it could indicate that human consciousness, the psyche, the soul, the self, continued to function.
Wired: Couldn’t the experiences just reflect some extremely subtle type of brain activity?
Parnia: When you die, there’s no blood flow going into your brain. If it goes below a certain level, you can’t have electrical activity. It takes a lot of imagination to think there’s somehow a hidden area of your brain that comes into action when everything else isn’t working.
These observations raise a question about our current concept of how brain and mind interact. The historical idea is that electrochemical processes in the brain lead to consciousness. That may no longer be correct, because we can demonstrate that those processes don’t go on after death.
There may be something in the brain we haven’t discovered that accounts for consciousness, or it may be that consciousness is a separate entity from the brain.
Electrical activity in the brain as a heart enters cardiac arrest. Image: Kano et al./Resuscitation
Wired: This seems to verge on supernatural explanations of consciousness.
Parnia: Throughout history, we try to explain things the best we can with the tools of science. But most open-minded and objective scientists recognize that we have limitations. Just because something is inexplicable with our current science doesn’t make it superstitious or wrong. When people discovered electromagnetism, forces that couldn’t then be seen or measured, a lot of scientists made fun of it.
Scientists have come to believe that the self is brain cell processes, but there’s never been an experiment to show how cells in the brain could possibly lead to human thought. If you look at a brain cell under a microscope, and I tell you, “this brain cell thinks I’m hungry,” that’s impossible.
It could be that, like electromagnetism, the human psyche and consciousness are a very subtle type of force that interacts with the brain, but are not necessarily produced by the brain. The jury is still out.
Wired: But what about all the fMRI brain imaging studies of thoughts and feelings? Or experiments in which scientists can tell what someone is seeing, or what they’re dreaming, by looking at brain activity?
Parnia: All the evidence we have shows an association between certain parts of the brain and certain mental processes. But it’s a chicken and egg question: Does cellular activity produce the mind, or does the mind produce cellular activity?
Some people have tried to conclude that what we observe indicates that cells produce thought: here’s a picture of depression, here’s a picture of happiness. But this is simply an association, not a causation. If you accept that theory, there should be no reports of people hearing or seeing things after activity in their brain has stopped. If people can have consciousness, maybe that raises the possibility that our theories are premature.
Wired: What comes next in your own research?
Parnia: In terms of resuscitation, we’re trying to non-invasively measure what happens in the brain, in real-time, using a special sensor that allows us to detect any impending danger and intervene before extensive damage is done.
On the question of consciousness, I’m interested in understanding the brain-based modulators of consciousness. What helps a person become conscious or unconscious? How can we manipulate that to help people who look like they’re unconscious? And I’m studying how consciousness can be present in people who’ve gone beyond the threshold of death. All we can say now is that the data suggests that consciousness is not annihilated.
Brandon Keim
Brandon is a Wired Science reporter and freelance journalist. Based in Brooklyn, New York and sometimes Bangor, Maine, he's fascinated with science, culture, history and nature. (Twitter | Google+)
Fukushima class actions could wipe out GE.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/03/12/66052.htm
I certainly hope so!
The Mont Order – Did This Secret Society “Design” History?
MARCH 10, 2014
By Jamie Goodwin
A fascinating new conspiracy theory has come to the surface, with apparent concrete documentary evidence indicating the existence and awesome power of an ancient cult.
The cult is the Mont Order, which can now be found with a simple Google search. The Mont Order conspiracy theory was recently discussed in an article at British alternative news site Weird Wiltshire, where it was described as an occult group operating in Britain. At first, some of the unusual claims about this group will be hard to believe, but serious evidence available does seem to support those claims and it merits discussion.
For one thing, the Order and a number of sources describing it are convinced that it is the oldest and most arcane society in the world. It seems to equate its background with the mythic Prometheus, and puts forward goals that coincide with the bloody days of the French Revolution, the origins of the modern world, and hostile forms of globalization.
~Age of the Mont Order~
How exactly the Mont Order came to exist is never clearly explained, and nor is the origin of the sources describing the Order. The Mont “Bible”, disclosed online under the title of the Work of Mont, places the founding of the Order before all civilization, part of a supernatural rite taking place shortly after the creation of the universe itself. This violates everything we know about history and science, obscuring the real nature of the Mont Order behind a supernatural veil to such an extent that we may never determine where or when the Order first came into existence.
No specific location appears special to the Order, either, although there is mention of commandments that send the Order out of the public and insist that the group should avoid attracting unwanted attention. There is also mention of a “Tower” in which the Order gathered at one time, although it is never made clear what this is and it may be little more than a parable.
Even if we dismiss the Order’s claims about its existence, OCRT (Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance) points out that the belief is held strongly by members of the Order. The idea that the Order preceded all other groups and philosophies allows the Order to dismiss them, and this is a decisive part of the philosophy of the group. The Mont Order feels its judgment is superior to all others, and therefore feels entitled to manipulate society from its enduring position of knowledge.
~The Mont Order in history~
The Mont Order sees itself as responsible for the course of history. It confirms in its religious writings that it emerged from hiding to influence some of the notorious but defining events of the French Revolution. Cult researcher Arnold Isen has used this to link the Mont Order with the similarly named Montagnards; a group encouraging violence and thought to be responsible for the infamous Reign of Terror in France.
In a well-written article, Isen explains the “power cult” of the Mont Order in terms of the array of evidence proving its existence, submitting that even in the modern day, “the Order is a power”. Indeed, the OCRT report and testimony from a former member of the Mont Order as recently as January 2014 both go out of their way to confirm that the Mont Order does exist, at least in the sense of being a religious sect. Both sources have been checked, leaving no doubt that the Mont Order does presently exist in some form or another.
~Manipulation explained: the art of Order~
Explaining how to essentially manipulate world events, the Work of Mont reveals the complex methodology of “splitting of history”, boldly proclaiming, “We have crafted the past, and the future is the empty canvas made for us.” By making this proclamation, the Order is effectively laying claim to all of history as its designer, in much the same way religious people have ascribed the creation of the universe to God.
How does the Order shape the course of history? According to the Work of Mont, the group appears to support destructive events that take the forms of such horsemen as violence, revolution or plague. These events include the violence of the French Revolution, which the Order quite brazenly claims responsibility for. Before this, there was the Black Death in Europe. Even more boldly, the Order records a verse in its book suggesting that Mont followers sacked Rome. The Order seems to regard these actions as necessary to restore “equilibrium” or “balance”. Such a philosophy is even more fanatically reflected in the Mont mantra, “Inheritance, Equilibrium and Order”.
Based on what the Order claims to have done, we can speculate that the destructive event must be one of “inheritance,” which could indicate some form of circulation of what the Order sees as justice, i.e. the destruction or dispossession of the people who are better off (as in the French Revolution). Alternately, the Mont Order may simply be referring to its own “inheritance”, as Isen speculates, with the idea of justice or equality merely being a veil to hide the Order’s quest for power over the world.
~Inheritance, Equilibrium and Order~
When the Order refers to “splitting of history”, this appears to simply be a reference to the Order emerging, although whether this description reveals something about the act itself or is simply a poetic metaphor remains unknown. The Order reports everything in its book from the point of view of a rich-poor divide, or with one side serving as an oppressor and the other as a liberator.
In the Mont “Temporal Code” that comprises some 46 different commandments in the Work of Mont, the Order encourages its followers to take the side of the poor at all times. The Order reports the existence of a division between rich and poor as the worst obscenity in the world, describing it as the “One Violation” and appointing its followers to take an oath to eliminate it all costs.
Attached to this vision is the Order’s apparent support for the disintegration of national boundaries, which the Order alleges to give rise to “false vessels” allowing inequality (“disequilibrium” in Mont phraseology) to survive and be protected by political power. The Mont Order’s search for a world devoid of boundaries is consistent with the ongoing patterns of globalization and other politics. If it is anything resembling what it claims to be, the world may not yet be safe from this ancient Order.
God damn it, I sure hope not.
But if'n they dooooo,... let's send all the clueless Neo-Libs who wanna suck Obama's skinny black appendage and all the idiotic Neo-Cons who think they're fighting for anything other that the profitability of some ubër-wealthy corksuckers working to annihilate the human race.
Ukraine: “The war will be nuclear”, by Paul Craig Roberts
Posted on March 8, 2014 by Montecristo
The looting of Ukraine has begun. Putin faces a dilemma. If he responds forcefully to further American provocations, it will lead to nuclear war.
http://www.darkmoon.me/2014/ukraine-the-war-will-be-nuclear-by-paul-craig-roberts/
According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington’s stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine’s poor.
It is Greece all over again.
Before anything approaching stability and legitimacy has been obtained for the puppet government put in power by the Washington orchestrated coup against the legitimate, elected Ukraine government, the Western looters are already at work. Naive protesters who believed the propaganda that EU membership offered a better life are due to lose half of their pension by April. But this is only the beginning.
The corrupt Western media describes loans as “aid.” However, the 11 billion euros that the EU is offering Kiev is not aid. It is a loan. Moreover, it comes with many strings, including Kiev’s acceptance of an IMF austerity plan.
Remember now, gullible Ukrainians participated in the protests that were used to overthrow their elected government, because they believed the lies told to them by Washington-financed NGOs that once they joined the EU they would have streets paved with gold. Instead they are getting cuts in their pensions and an IMF austerity plan.
The austerity plan will cut social services, funds for education, layoff government workers, devalue the currency, thus raising the prices of imports which include Russian gas, thus electricity, and open Ukrainian assets to takeover by Western corporations.
Ukraine’s agriculture lands will pass into the hands of American agribusiness. What remains of the country will be thoroughly looted by the West.
The other part of the Western plan hasn’t worked out very well either.
Washington’s Ukrainian stooges lost control of the protests to organized and armed ultra-nationalists. These groups, whose roots go back to those who fought for Hitler during World War 2, engaged in words and deeds that sent southern and eastern Ukraine clamoring to be returned to Russia where they resided prior to the 1950s when the Soviet communist party stuck them into Ukraine.
At this time of writing it looks like Crimea has seceded from Ukraine. Washington and its NATO puppets can do nothing but bluster and threaten sanctions.
The White House Fool has demonstrated the impotence of the “US sole superpower” by issuing sanctions against unknown persons, whoever they are — against people responsible for returning Crimea to Russia, where it belonged about 200 years before. According to Solzhenitsyn, a drunk Khrushchev (who happened to be of Ukrainian ethnicity) moved the southern and eastern Russian provinces of the Crimea into Ukraine.
Having observed the events in western Ukraine, those Russian provinces now want to go back home. To where they initially belonged. To the Russian federation. Just as South Ossetia wanted nothing to do with Georgia.
Washington’s stooges in Kiev can do nothing about Crimea except bluster.
Under the Russian-Ukraine agreement, Russia is permitted 25,000 troops in Crimea. The US/EU media’s deploring of a “Russian invasion of 16,000 troops” is either total ignorance or complicity in Washington’s lies.
Obviously, the US/EU media is corrupt. Only a fool would rely on their reports. Any media that would believe anything Washington says after George W. Bush and Dick Cheney sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN to peddle the regime’s lies about “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,” is clearly a collection of bought-and-paid for whores.
In the former Russian provinces of eastern Ukraine, Putin’s low-key approach to the strategic threat that Washington has brought to Russia has given Washington a chance to hold on to a major industrial complex that serves the Russian economy and military. The people themselves in eastern Ukraine are in the streets demanding separation from the unelected government that Washington’s coup has imposed in Kiev. Washington, realizing that its incompetence has lost Crimea, had its Kiev stooges appoint Ukrainian oligarchs, against whom the Maiden protests were partly directed, to governing positions in eastern Ukraine cities.
These oligarchs have their own private militias in addition to the police and any Ukrainian military units that are still functioning.
The leaders of the protesting Russians are being arrested and disappeared.
Washington and its EU puppets, who proclaim their support for self-determination, are only for self-determination when it can be orchestrated in their favor. Therefore, Washington is busy at work suppressing self-determination in eastern Ukraine.
This is a dilemma for Putin.
His low-key approach has allowed Washington to seize the initiative in eastern Ukraine.
The oligarchs Taruta and Kolomoyskiy have been put in power in Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk, and are carrying out arrests of Russians and committing unspeakable crimes, but you will never hear about their crimes from the US prostitute media.
Note by Lasha Darkmoon
Kolomoyskiy is President of the European Jewish Congress. Only a few days ago Putin called him “an incredible swindler”. This Jewish oligarch has seized power in Dnepropetrovsk which happens to contain the biggest Jewish center in the whole of Europe. It also contains the giant Yuzhmash industrial complex where the USSR’s intercontinental missiles were made, among them the dreaded “Satana” which could completely alter the face of New York.
As for Taruta, he is one of the financial sponsors of the “antisemitic” Right Sector and extremist Svoboda party. Donetsk, one of the richest industrial areas in Ukraine, has now fallen into his rapacious hands.
(With full ackkowledgements to my learned friend “Asthor”, an expert in all things Russian).
Washington’s strategy is to arrest and deep-six the leaders of the secessionists so that there are no authorities left to request Putin’s intervention.
If Putin has drones, he has the option of taking out Taruta and Kolomoyskiy.
If Putin lets Washington retain the Russian provinces of eastern Ukraine, he will have demonstrated a weakness that Washington will exploit. Washington will exploit that weakness to the point that Washington forces Putin into war.
The war will be nuclear.
EU leaders draw up plans to send gas to Ukraine if Russia cuts off supply
This is Total Propaganda - Europe gets 60% of its natural gas from Russian Pipelines that run through the Ukraine - OOPS
http://xrepublic.tv/node/7816
EU leaders are rapidly drawing up plans to send some of their stocks of Russian gas back to Ukraine and other eastern European countries that need it, if Vladimir Putin reacts to western sanctions over the Crimea crisis by starving the continent of energy. Russia’s largest gas producer, Gazprom, said on Friday that Kiev had missed a deadline to pay $440m for gas received in February and threatened to cut off the country’s supply if it did not make the payment. Gazprom provides Ukraine with around half its gas, and other countries in eastern and southern Europe, including Poland and Greece, reportedly have low stocks of gas. Although Gazprom said the threat to Kiev would not affect the supply to the rest of Europe, western leaders are steeling themselves for a possible battle with Moscow over energy supplies. At least half of the Russian gas that is piped to Europe passes through Ukraine. Gazprom last cut off supplies to Ukraine in early 2009, leading to a slump in the supply of Russian gas to Europe. “Either Ukraine makes good on its debt and pays for current supplies, or there is risk of returning to the situation of early 2009,” Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said on Friday, adding that Ukraine now owed $1.89bn in unpaid bills. The move to consider reversing Russian gas flows comes amid growing pressure in Washington to exploit the huge boom in US gas – extracted through fracking technologies – to begin global exports, providing a counter-weight to Moscow’s influence. Although it is the largest producer of natural gas, the US does not currently export its supplies, and the construction of a handful of export terminals will not be completed until at least 2015. But Barack Obama’s administration considering moves to accelerate a drive to export its energy, weakening Putin’s leverage in the future. In Brussels on Thursday, European leaders engaged in detailed discussions about the feasibility of switching the flow of gas in eastern Europe’s pipelines. Storage reserves in Europe, particularly Germany and Hungary, which have ample supplies, could be used to pump gas back towards Ukraine. - See more at: http://xrepublic.tv/node/7816#sthash.1q0koVtF.dpuf
The Far Right Hijacked The Term Libertarian - Jesse Venture & Judge Andrew Napolitano (VIDEO)
http://xrepublic.tv/node/7789
Shermann
Battles Escalate, Spanning Borders at Syria-Lebanon Frontier
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch!!!
http://news.antiwar.com/2014/03/06/battles-escalate-spanning-borders-at-syria-lebanon-frontier/print/
The fighting continues to pick up around the Syrian border town of Yabroud, the last rebel-held town on the border with Lebanon. The fighting is escalating all the time, as both sides get reinforcements from across the increasingly meaningless border.
The Sunni town of Arsal, in Lebanon, has become a rebel haven, as they smuggle weapons into Syria regularly through that town. Hezbollah, meanwhile, continues to send more fighters for the Assad government’s side across the border.
The value of Lebanon as a smuggling route for the rebels is the primary target of the recent military offensive, and if the Syrian Army manages to retake Yabroud it will effectively shut the border to the rebels, weakening their hold in the region.
Rebels have treated border crossings across the country as particularly important, often fighting with one another over the control of crossings into Turkey, where they can demand a cut of any arms smuggled in by other factions.
The Quiet Coup of The Banksters Got Us Right Where They Want Us!!!
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/
The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.
One thing you learn rather quickly when working at the International Monetary Fund is that no one is ever very happy to see you. Typically, your “clients” come in only after private capital has abandoned them, after regional trading-bloc partners have been unable to throw a strong enough lifeline, after last-ditch attempts to borrow from powerful friends like China or the European Union have fallen through. You’re never at the top of anyone’s dance card.
The reason, of course, is that the IMF specializes in telling its clients what they don’t want to hear. I should know; I pressed painful changes on many foreign officials during my time there as chief economist in 2007 and 2008. And I felt the effects of IMF pressure, at least indirectly, when I worked with governments in Eastern Europe as they struggled after 1989, and with the private sector in Asia and Latin America during the crises of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Over that time, from every vantage point, I saw firsthand the steady flow of officials—from Ukraine, Russia, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, and elsewhere—trudging to the fund when circumstances were dire and all else had failed.
Every crisis is different, of course. Ukraine faced hyperinflation in 1994; Russia desperately needed help when its short-term-debt rollover scheme exploded in the summer of 1998; the Indonesian rupiah plunged in 1997, nearly leveling the corporate economy; that same year, South Korea’s 30-year economic miracle ground to a halt when foreign banks suddenly refused to extend new credit.
But I must tell you, to IMF officials, all of these crises looked depressingly similar. Each country, of course, needed a loan, but more than that, each needed to make big changes so that the loan could really work. Almost always, countries in crisis need to learn to live within their means after a period of excess—exports must be increased, and imports cut—and the goal is to do this without the most horrible of recessions. Naturally, the fund’s economists spend time figuring out the policies—budget, money supply, and the like—that make sense in this context. Yet the economic solution is seldom very hard to work out.
No, the real concern of the fund’s senior staff, and the biggest obstacle to recovery, is almost invariably the politics of countries in crisis.
Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason—the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit—and, most of the time, genteel—oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are the controlling shareholders. When a country like Indonesia or South Korea or Russia grows, so do the ambitions of its captains of industry. As masters of their mini-universe, these people make some investments that clearly benefit the broader economy, but they also start making bigger and riskier bets. They reckon—correctly, in most cases—that their political connections will allow them to push onto the government any substantial problems that arise.
In Russia, for instance, the private sector is now in serious trouble because, over the past five years or so, it borrowed at least $490 billion from global banks and investors on the assumption that the country’s energy sector could support a permanent increase in consumption throughout the economy. As Russia’s oligarchs spent this capital, acquiring other companies and embarking on ambitious investment plans that generated jobs, their importance to the political elite increased. Growing political support meant better access to lucrative contracts, tax breaks, and subsidies. And foreign investors could not have been more pleased; all other things being equal, they prefer to lend money to people who have the implicit backing of their national governments, even if that backing gives off the faint whiff of corruption.
But inevitably, emerging-market oligarchs get carried away; they waste money and build massive business empires on a mountain of debt. Local banks, sometimes pressured by the government, become too willing to extend credit to the elite and to those who depend on them. Overborrowing always ends badly, whether for an individual, a company, or a country. Sooner or later, credit conditions become tighter and no one will lend you money on anything close to affordable terms.
The downward spiral that follows is remarkably steep. Enormous companies teeter on the brink of default, and the local banks that have lent to them collapse. Yesterday’s “public-private partnerships” are relabeled “crony capitalism.” With credit unavailable, economic paralysis ensues, and conditions just get worse and worse. The government is forced to draw down its foreign-currency reserves to pay for imports, service debt, and cover private losses. But these reserves will eventually run out. If the country cannot right itself before that happens, it will default on its sovereign debt and become an economic pariah. The government, in its race to stop the bleeding, will typically need to wipe out some of the national champions—now hemorrhaging cash—and usually restructure a banking system that’s gone badly out of balance. It will, in other words, need to squeeze at least some of its oligarchs.
Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe a nice tax break, or—here’s a classic Kremlin bailout technique—the assumption of private debt obligations by the government. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk—at least until the riots grow too large.
Eventually, as the oligarchs in Putin’s Russia now realize, some within the elite have to lose out before recovery can begin. It’s a game of musical chairs: there just aren’t enough currency reserves to take care of everyone, and the government cannot afford to take over private-sector debt completely.
So the IMF staff looks into the eyes of the minister of finance and decides whether the government is serious yet. The fund will give even a country like Russia a loan eventually, but first it wants to make sure Prime Minister Putin is ready, willing, and able to be tough on some of his friends. If he is not ready to throw former pals to the wolves, the fund can wait. And when he is ready, the fund is happy to make helpful suggestions—particularly with regard to wresting control of the banking system from the hands of the most incompetent and avaricious “entrepreneurs.”
Of course, Putin’s ex-friends will fight back. They’ll mobilize allies, work the system, and put pressure on other parts of the government to get additional subsidies. In extreme cases, they’ll even try subversion—including calling up their contacts in the American foreign-policy establishment, as the Ukrainians did with some success in the late 1990s.
Many IMF programs “go off track” (a euphemism) precisely because the government can’t stay tough on erstwhile cronies, and the consequences are massive inflation or other disasters. A program “goes back on track” once the government prevails or powerful oligarchs sort out among themselves who will govern—and thus win or lose—under the IMF-supported plan. The real fight in Thailand and Indonesia in 1997 was about which powerful families would lose their banks. In Thailand, it was handled relatively smoothly. In Indonesia, it led to the fall of President Suharto and economic chaos.
From long years of experience, the IMF staff knows its program will succeed—stabilizing the economy and enabling growth—only if at least some of the powerful oligarchs who did so much to create the underlying problems take a hit. This is the problem of all emerging markets.
Becoming a Banana Republic
In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again). In each of those cases, global investors, afraid that the country or its financial sector wouldn’t be able to pay off mountainous debt, suddenly stopped lending. And in each case, that fear became self-fulfilling, as banks that couldn’t roll over their debt did, in fact, become unable to pay. This is precisely what drove Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy on September 15, causing all sources of funding to the U.S. financial sector to dry up overnight. Just as in emerging-market crises, the weakness in the banking system has quickly rippled out into the rest of the economy, causing a severe economic contraction and hardship for millions of people.
But there’s a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.
Top investment bankers and government officials like to lay the blame for the current crisis on the lowering of U.S. interest rates after the dotcom bust or, even better—in a “buck stops somewhere else” sort of way—on the flow of savings out of China. Some on the right like to complain about Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or even about longer-standing efforts to promote broader homeownership. And, of course, it is axiomatic to everyone that the regulators responsible for “safety and soundness” were fast asleep at the wheel.
But these various policies—lightweight regulation, cheap money, the unwritten Chinese-American economic alliance, the promotion of homeownership—had something in common. Even though some are traditionally associated with Democrats and some with Republicans, they all benefited the financial sector. Policy changes that might have forestalled the crisis but would have limited the financial sector’s profits—such as Brooksley Born’s now-famous attempts to regulate credit-default swaps at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in 1998—were ignored or swept aside.
The financial industry has not always enjoyed such favored treatment. But for the past 25 years or so, finance has boomed, becoming ever more powerful. The boom began with the Reagan years, and it only gained strength with the deregulatory policies of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Several other factors helped fuel the financial industry’s ascent. Paul Volcker’s monetary policy in the 1980s, and the increased volatility in interest rates that accompanied it, made bond trading much more lucrative. The invention of securitization, interest-rate swaps, and credit-default swaps greatly increased the volume of transactions that bankers could make money on. And an aging and increasingly wealthy population invested more and more money in securities, helped by the invention of the IRA and the 401(k) plan. Together, these developments vastly increased the profit opportunities in financial services.
Click the chart above for a larger view
Not surprisingly, Wall Street ran with these opportunities. From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent. Pay rose just as dramatically. From 1948 to 1982, average compensation in the financial sector ranged between 99 percent and 108 percent of the average for all domestic private industries. From 1983, it shot upward, reaching 181 percent in 2007.
The great wealth that the financial sector created and concentrated gave bankers enormous political weight—a weight not seen in the U.S. since the era of J.P. Morgan (the man). In that period, the banking panic of 1907 could be stopped only by coordination among private-sector bankers: no government entity was able to offer an effective response. But that first age of banking oligarchs came to an end with the passage of significant banking regulation in response to the Great Depression; the reemergence of an American financial oligarchy is quite recent.
The Wall Street–Washington Corridor
Of course, the U.S. is unique. And just as we have the world’s most advanced economy, military, and technology, we also have its most advanced oligarchy.
In a primitive political system, power is transmitted through violence, or the threat of violence: military coups, private militias, and so on. In a less primitive system more typical of emerging markets, power is transmitted via money: bribes, kickbacks, and offshore bank accounts. Although lobbying and campaign contributions certainly play major roles in the American political system, old-fashioned corruption—envelopes stuffed with $100 bills—is probably a sideshow today, Jack Abramoff notwithstanding.
Instead, the American financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital—a belief system. Once, perhaps, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Over the past decade, the attitude took hold that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. The banking-and-securities industry has become one of the top contributors to political campaigns, but at the peak of its influence, it did not have to buy favors the way, for example, the tobacco companies or military contractors might have to. Instead, it benefited from the fact that Washington insiders already believed that large financial institutions and free-flowing capital markets were crucial to America’s position in the world.
One channel of influence was, of course, the flow of individuals between Wall Street and Washington. Robert Rubin, once the co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, served in Washington as Treasury secretary under Clinton, and later became chairman of Citigroup’s executive committee. Henry Paulson, CEO of Goldman Sachs during the long boom, became Treasury secretary under George W.Bush. John Snow, Paulson’s predecessor, left to become chairman of Cerberus Capital Management, a large private-equity firm that also counts Dan Quayle among its executives. Alan Greenspan, after leaving the Federal Reserve, became a consultant to Pimco, perhaps the biggest player in international bond markets.
These personal connections were multiplied many times over at the lower levels of the past three presidential administrations, strengthening the ties between Washington and Wall Street. It has become something of a tradition for Goldman Sachs employees to go into public service after they leave the firm. The flow of Goldman alumni—including Jon Corzine, now the governor of New Jersey, along with Rubin and Paulson—not only placed people with Wall Street’s worldview in the halls of power; it also helped create an image of Goldman (inside the Beltway, at least) as an institution that was itself almost a form of public service.
Wall Street is a very seductive place, imbued with an air of power. Its executives truly believe that they control the levers that make the world go round. A civil servant from Washington invited into their conference rooms, even if just for a meeting, could be forgiven for falling under their sway. Throughout my time at the IMF, I was struck by the easy access of leading financiers to the highest U.S. government officials, and the interweaving of the two career tracks. I vividly remember a meeting in early 2008—attended by top policy makers from a handful of rich countries—at which the chair casually proclaimed, to the room’s general approval, that the best preparation for becoming a central-bank governor was to work first as an investment banker.
A whole generation of policy makers has been mesmerized by Wall Street, always and utterly convinced that whatever the banks said was true. Alan Greenspan’s pronouncements in favor of unregulated financial markets are well known. Yet Greenspan was hardly alone. This is what Ben Bernanke, the man who succeeded him, said in 2006: “The management of market risk and credit risk has become increasingly sophisticated. … Banking organizations of all sizes have made substantial strides over the past two decades in their ability to measure and manage risks.”
Of course, this was mostly an illusion. Regulators, legislators, and academics almost all assumed that the managers of these banks knew what they were doing. In retrospect, they didn’t. AIG’s Financial Products division, for instance, made $2.5 billion in pretax profits in 2005, largely by selling underpriced insurance on complex, poorly understood securities. Often described as “picking up nickels in front of a steamroller,” this strategy is profitable in ordinary years, and catastrophic in bad ones. As of last fall, AIG had outstanding insurance on more than $400 billion in securities. To date, the U.S. government, in an effort to rescue the company, has committed about $180 billion in investments and loans to cover losses that AIG’s sophisticated risk modeling had said were virtually impossible.
Wall Street’s seductive power extended even (or especially) to finance and economics professors, historically confined to the cramped offices of universities and the pursuit of Nobel Prizes. As mathematical finance became more and more essential to practical finance, professors increasingly took positions as consultants or partners at financial institutions. Myron Scholes and Robert Merton, Nobel laureates both, were perhaps the most famous; they took board seats at the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1994, before the fund famously flamed out at the end of the decade. But many others beat similar paths. This migration gave the stamp of academic legitimacy (and the intimidating aura of intellectual rigor) to the burgeoning world of high finance.
As more and more of the rich made their money in finance, the cult of finance seeped into the culture at large. Works like Barbarians at the Gate, Wall Street, and Bonfire of the Vanities—all intended as cautionary tales—served only to increase Wall Street’s mystique. Michael Lewis noted in Portfolio last year that when he wrote Liar’s Poker, an insider’s account of the financial industry, in 1989, he had hoped the book might provoke outrage at Wall Street’s hubris and excess. Instead, he found himself “knee-deep in letters from students at Ohio State who wanted to know if I had any other secrets to share. … They’d read my book as a how-to manual.” Even Wall Street’s criminals, like Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky, became larger than life. In a society that celebrates the idea of making money, it was easy to infer that the interests of the financial sector were the same as the interests of the country—and that the winners in the financial sector knew better what was good for America than did the career civil servants in Washington. Faith in free financial markets grew into conventional wisdom—trumpeted on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal and on the floor of Congress.
From this confluence of campaign finance, personal connections, and ideology there flowed, in just the past decade, a river of deregulatory policies that is, in hindsight, astonishing:
• insistence on free movement of capital across borders;
• the repeal of Depression-era regulations separating commercial and investment banking;
• a congressional ban on the regulation of credit-default swaps;
• major increases in the amount of leverage allowed to investment banks;
• a light (dare I say invisible?) hand at the Securities and Exchange Commission in its regulatory enforcement;
• an international agreement to allow banks to measure their own riskiness;
• and an intentional failure to update regulations so as to keep up with the tremendous pace of financial innovation.
The mood that accompanied these measures in Washington seemed to swing between nonchalance and outright celebration: finance unleashed, it was thought, would continue to propel the economy to greater heights.
America’s Oligarchs and the Financial Crisis
The oligarchy and the government policies that aided it did not alone cause the financial crisis that exploded last year. Many other factors contributed, including excessive borrowing by households and lax lending standards out on the fringes of the financial world. But major commercial and investment banks—and the hedge funds that ran alongside them—were the big beneficiaries of the twin housing and equity-market bubbles of this decade, their profits fed by an ever-increasing volume of transactions founded on a relatively small base of actual physical assets. Each time a loan was sold, packaged, securitized, and resold, banks took their transaction fees, and the hedge funds buying those securities reaped ever-larger fees as their holdings grew.
Because everyone was getting richer, and the health of the national economy depended so heavily on growth in real estate and finance, no one in Washington had any incentive to question what was going on. Instead, Fed Chairman Greenspan and President Bush insisted metronomically that the economy was fundamentally sound and that the tremendous growth in complex securities and credit-default swaps was evidence of a healthy economy where risk was distributed safely.
In the summer of 2007, signs of strain started appearing. The boom had produced so much debt that even a small economic stumble could cause major problems, and rising delinquencies in subprime mortgages proved the stumbling block. Ever since, the financial sector and the federal government have been behaving exactly the way one would expect them to, in light of past emerging-market crises.
By now, the princes of the financial world have of course been stripped naked as leaders and strategists—at least in the eyes of most Americans. But as the months have rolled by, financial elites have continued to assume that their position as the economy’s favored children is safe, despite the wreckage they have caused.
Stanley O’Neal, the CEO of Merrill Lynch, pushed his firm heavily into the mortgage-backed-securities market at its peak in 2005 and 2006; in October 2007, he acknowledged, “The bottom line is, we—I—got it wrong by being overexposed to subprime, and we suffered as a result of impaired liquidity in that market. No one is more disappointed than I am in that result.” O’Neal took home a $14 million bonus in 2006; in 2007, he walked away from Merrill with a severance package worth $162 million, although it is presumably worth much less today.
In October, John Thain, Merrill Lynch’s final CEO, reportedly lobbied his board of directors for a bonus of $30 million or more, eventually reducing his demand to $10 million in December; he withdrew the request, under a firestorm of protest, only after it was leaked to The Wall Street Journal. Merrill Lynch as a whole was no better: it moved its bonus payments, $4 billion in total, forward to December, presumably to avoid the possibility that they would be reduced by Bank of America, which would own Merrill beginning on January 1. Wall Street paid out $18 billion in year-end bonuses last year to its New York City employees, after the government disbursed $243 billion in emergency assistance to the financial sector.
In a financial panic, the government must respond with both speed and overwhelming force. The root problem is uncertainty—in our case, uncertainty about whether the major banks have sufficient assets to cover their liabilities. Half measures combined with wishful thinking and a wait-and-see attitude cannot overcome this uncertainty. And the longer the response takes, the longer the uncertainty will stymie the flow of credit, sap consumer confidence, and cripple the economy—ultimately making the problem much harder to solve. Yet the principal characteristics of the government’s response to the financial crisis have been delay, lack of transparency, and an unwillingness to upset the financial sector.
The response so far is perhaps best described as “policy by deal”: when a major financial institution gets into trouble, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve engineer a bailout over the weekend and announce on Monday that everything is fine. In March 2008, Bear Stearns was sold to JP Morgan Chase in what looked to many like a gift to JP Morgan. (Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan’s CEO, sits on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which, along with the Treasury Department, brokered the deal.) In September, we saw the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America, the first bailout of AIG, and the takeover and immediate sale of Washington Mutual to JP Morgan—all of which were brokered by the government. In October, nine large banks were recapitalized on the same day behind closed doors in Washington. This, in turn, was followed by additional bailouts for Citigroup, AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup (again), and AIG (again).
Some of these deals may have been reasonable responses to the immediate situation. But it was never clear (and still isn’t) what combination of interests was being served, and how. Treasury and the Fed did not act according to any publicly articulated principles, but just worked out a transaction and claimed it was the best that could be done under the circumstances. This was late-night, backroom dealing, pure and simple.
Throughout the crisis, the government has taken extreme care not to upset the interests of the financial institutions, or to question the basic outlines of the system that got us here. In September 2008, Henry Paulson asked Congress for $700 billion to buy toxic assets from banks, with no strings attached and no judicial review of his purchase decisions. Many observers suspected that the purpose was to overpay for those assets and thereby take the problem off the banks’ hands—indeed, that is the only way that buying toxic assets would have helped anything. Perhaps because there was no way to make such a blatant subsidy politically acceptable, that plan was shelved.
Instead, the money was used to recapitalize banks, buying shares in them on terms that were grossly favorable to the banks themselves. As the crisis has deepened and financial institutions have needed more help, the government has gotten more and more creative in figuring out ways to provide banks with subsidies that are too complex for the general public to understand. The first AIG bailout, which was on relatively good terms for the taxpayer, was supplemented by three further bailouts whose terms were more AIG-friendly. The second Citigroup bailout and the Bank of America bailout included complex asset guarantees that provided the banks with insurance at below-market rates. The third Citigroup bailout, in late February, converted government-owned preferred stock to common stock at a price significantly higher than the market price—a subsidy that probably even most Wall Street Journal readers would miss on first reading. And the convertible preferred shares that the Treasury will buy under the new Financial Stability Plan give the conversion option (and thus the upside) to the banks, not the government.
This latest plan—which is likely to provide cheap loans to hedge funds and others so that they can buy distressed bank assets at relatively high prices—has been heavily influenced by the financial sector, and Treasury has made no secret of that. As Neel Kashkari, a senior Treasury official under both Henry Paulson and Tim Geithner (and a Goldman alum) told Congress in March, “We had received inbound unsolicited proposals from people in the private sector saying, ‘We have capital on the sidelines; we want to go after [distressed bank] assets.’” And the plan lets them do just that: “By marrying government capital—taxpayer capital—with private-sector capital and providing financing, you can enable those investors to then go after those assets at a price that makes sense for the investors and at a price that makes sense for the banks.” Kashkari didn’t mention anything about what makes sense for the third group involved: the taxpayers.
Even leaving aside fairness to taxpayers, the government’s velvet-glove approach with the banks is deeply troubling, for one simple reason: it is inadequate to change the behavior of a financial sector accustomed to doing business on its own terms, at a time when that behavior must change. As an unnamed senior bank official said to The New York Times last fall, “It doesn’t matter how much Hank Paulson gives us, no one is going to lend a nickel until the economy turns.” But there’s the rub: the economy can’t recover until the banks are healthy and willing to lend.
The Way Out
Looking just at the financial crisis (and leaving aside some problems of the larger economy), we face at least two major, interrelated problems. The first is a desperately ill banking sector that threatens to choke off any incipient recovery that the fiscal stimulus might generate. The second is a political balance of power that gives the financial sector a veto over public policy, even as that sector loses popular support.
Big banks, it seems, have only gained political strength since the crisis began. And this is not surprising. With the financial system so fragile, the damage that a major bank failure could cause—Lehman was small relative to Citigroup or Bank of America—is much greater than it would be during ordinary times. The banks have been exploiting this fear as they wring favorable deals out of Washington. Bank of America obtained its second bailout package (in January) after warning the government that it might not be able to go through with the acquisition of Merrill Lynch, a prospect that Treasury did not want to consider.
The challenges the United States faces are familiar territory to the people at the IMF. If you hid the name of the country and just showed them the numbers, there is no doubt what old IMF hands would say: nationalize troubled banks and break them up as necessary.
In some ways, of course, the government has already taken control of the banking system. It has essentially guaranteed the liabilities of the biggest banks, and it is their only plausible source of capital today. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has taken on a major role in providing credit to the economy—the function that the private banking sector is supposed to be performing, but isn’t. Yet there are limits to what the Fed can do on its own; consumers and businesses are still dependent on banks that lack the balance sheets and the incentives to make the loans the economy needs, and the government has no real control over who runs the banks, or over what they do.
At the root of the banks’ problems are the large losses they have undoubtedly taken on their securities and loan portfolios. But they don’t want to recognize the full extent of their losses, because that would likely expose them as insolvent. So they talk down the problem, and ask for handouts that aren’t enough to make them healthy (again, they can’t reveal the size of the handouts that would be necessary for that), but are enough to keep them upright a little longer. This behavior is corrosive: unhealthy banks either don’t lend (hoarding money to shore up reserves) or they make desperate gambles on high-risk loans and investments that could pay off big, but probably won’t pay off at all. In either case, the economy suffers further, and as it does, bank assets themselves continue to deteriorate—creating a highly destructive vicious cycle.
To break this cycle, the government must force the banks to acknowledge the scale of their problems. As the IMF understands (and as the U.S. government itself has insisted to multiple emerging-market countries in the past), the most direct way to do this is nationalization. Instead, Treasury is trying to negotiate bailouts bank by bank, and behaving as if the banks hold all the cards—contorting the terms of each deal to minimize government ownership while forswearing government influence over bank strategy or operations. Under these conditions, cleaning up bank balance sheets is impossible.
Nationalization would not imply permanent state ownership. The IMF’s advice would be, essentially: scale up the standard Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation process. An FDIC “intervention” is basically a government-managed bankruptcy procedure for banks. It would allow the government to wipe out bank shareholders, replace failed management, clean up the balance sheets, and then sell the banks back to the private sector. The main advantage is immediate recognition of the problem so that it can be solved before it grows worse.
The government needs to inspect the balance sheets and identify the banks that cannot survive a severe recession. These banks should face a choice: write down your assets to their true value and raise private capital within 30 days, or be taken over by the government. The government would write down the toxic assets of banks taken into receivership—recognizing reality—and transfer those assets to a separate government entity, which would attempt to salvage whatever value is possible for the taxpayer (as the Resolution Trust Corporation did after the savings-and-loan debacle of the 1980s). The rump banks—cleansed and able to lend safely, and hence trusted again by other lenders and investors—could then be sold off.
Cleaning up the megabanks will be complex. And it will be expensive for the taxpayer; according to the latest IMF numbers, the cleanup of the banking system would probably cost close to $1.5 trillion (or 10 percent of our GDP) in the long term. But only decisive government action—exposing the full extent of the financial rot and restoring some set of banks to publicly verifiable health—can cure the financial sector as a whole.
This may seem like strong medicine. But in fact, while necessary, it is insufficient. The second problem the U.S. faces—the power of the oligarchy—is just as important as the immediate crisis of lending. And the advice from the IMF on this front would again be simple: break the oligarchy.
Oversize institutions disproportionately influence public policy; the major banks we have today draw much of their power from being too big to fail. Nationalization and re-privatization would not change that; while the replacement of the bank executives who got us into this crisis would be just and sensible, ultimately, the swapping-out of one set of powerful managers for another would change only the names of the oligarchs.
Ideally, big banks should be sold in medium-size pieces, divided regionally or by type of business. Where this proves impractical—since we’ll want to sell the banks quickly—they could be sold whole, but with the requirement of being broken up within a short time. Banks that remain in private hands should also be subject to size limitations.
This may seem like a crude and arbitrary step, but it is the best way to limit the power of individual institutions in a sector that is essential to the economy as a whole. Of course, some people will complain about the “efficiency costs” of a more fragmented banking system, and these costs are real. But so are the costs when a bank that is too big to fail—a financial weapon of mass self-destruction—explodes. Anything that is too big to fail is too big to exist.
To ensure systematic bank breakup, and to prevent the eventual reemergence of dangerous behemoths, we also need to overhaul our antitrust legislation. Laws put in place more than 100 years ago to combat industrial monopolies were not designed to address the problem we now face. The problem in the financial sector today is not that a given firm might have enough market share to influence prices; it is that one firm or a small set of interconnected firms, by failing, can bring down the economy. The Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus evokes FDR, but what we need to imitate here is Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting.
Caps on executive compensation, while redolent of populism, might help restore the political balance of power and deter the emergence of a new oligarchy. Wall Street’s main attraction—to the people who work there and to the government officials who were only too happy to bask in its reflected glory—has been the astounding amount of money that could be made. Limiting that money would reduce the allure of the financial sector and make it more like any other industry.
Still, outright pay caps are clumsy, especially in the long run. And most money is now made in largely unregulated private hedge funds and private-equity firms, so lowering pay would be complicated. Regulation and taxation should be part of the solution. Over time, though, the largest part may involve more transparency and competition, which would bring financial-industry fees down. To those who say this would drive financial activities to other countries, we can now safely say: fine.
Two Paths
To paraphrase Joseph Schumpeter, the early-20th-century economist, everyone has elites; the important thing is to change them from time to time. If the U.S. were just another country, coming to the IMF with hat in hand, I might be fairly optimistic about its future. Most of the emerging-market crises that I’ve mentioned ended relatively quickly, and gave way, for the most part, to relatively strong recoveries. But this, alas, brings us to the limit of the analogy between the U.S. and emerging markets.
Emerging-market countries have only a precarious hold on wealth, and are weaklings globally. When they get into trouble, they quite literally run out of money—or at least out of foreign currency, without which they cannot survive. They must make difficult decisions; ultimately, aggressive action is baked into the cake. But the U.S., of course, is the world’s most powerful nation, rich beyond measure, and blessed with the exorbitant privilege of paying its foreign debts in its own currency, which it can print. As a result, it could very well stumble along for years—as Japan did during its lost decade—never summoning the courage to do what it needs to do, and never really recovering. A clean break with the past—involving the takeover and cleanup of major banks—hardly looks like a sure thing right now. Certainly no one at the IMF can force it.
In my view, the U.S. faces two plausible scenarios. The first involves complicated bank-by-bank deals and a continual drumbeat of (repeated) bailouts, like the ones we saw in February with Citigroup and AIG. The administration will try to muddle through, and confusion will reign.
Boris Fyodorov, the late finance minister of Russia, struggled for much of the past 20 years against oligarchs, corruption, and abuse of authority in all its forms. He liked to say that confusion and chaos were very much in the interests of the powerful—letting them take things, legally and illegally, with impunity. When inflation is high, who can say what a piece of property is really worth? When the credit system is supported by byzantine government arrangements and backroom deals, how do you know that you aren’t being fleeced?
Our future could be one in which continued tumult feeds the looting of the financial system, and we talk more and more about exactly how our oligarchs became bandits and how the economy just can’t seem to get into gear.
The second scenario begins more bleakly, and might end that way too. But it does provide at least some hope that we’ll be shaken out of our torpor. It goes like this: the global economy continues to deteriorate, the banking system in east-central Europe collapses, and—because eastern Europe’s banks are mostly owned by western European banks—justifiable fears of government insolvency spread throughout the Continent. Creditors take further hits and confidence falls further. The Asian economies that export manufactured goods are devastated, and the commodity producers in Latin America and Africa are not much better off. A dramatic worsening of the global environment forces the U.S. economy, already staggering, down onto both knees. The baseline growth rates used in the administration’s current budget are increasingly seen as unrealistic, and the rosy “stress scenario” that the U.S. Treasury is currently using to evaluate banks’ balance sheets becomes a source of great embarrassment.
Under this kind of pressure, and faced with the prospect of a national and global collapse, minds may become more concentrated.
The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump “cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.” This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression—because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big. We face a synchronized downturn in almost all countries, a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances. If our leadership wakes up to the potential consequences, we may yet see dramatic action on the banking system and a breaking of the old elite. Let us hope it is not then too late.
Simon Johnson, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, was the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund during 2007 and 2008. He blogs about the financial crisis at baselinescenario.com, along with James Kwak, who also contributed to this essay.
Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk 3/2/14: Hagel's 'Defense Cuts' Are Smoke And Mirrors (VIDEO)
http://www.dailypaul.com/313581/ron-pauls-texas-straight-talk-3-2-14-hagels-defense-cuts-are-smoke-and-mirrors
Shermann
Gerald Celente on the Conspiracy Show talking about the dead bankers!! (VIDEO)
http://investmentwatchblog.com/gerald-celente-on-the-conspiracy-show-talking-about-the-dead-bankers/
Richard is joined by Gerald Celente to discuss the growing list of bankers who have died under mysterious circumstances. The official number of bankers who have died mysteriously is eight, but the number may be as high as 20, according to some estimates. Several of the bankers supposedly jumped from rooftops and a number of these deaths are tied to J.P. Morgan.
Shermann
The Swiss Federal Institute (SFI) in Zurich released a study entitled “The Network of Global Corporate Control” that proves a small consortiums of corporations – mainly banks – run the world. A mere 147 corporations which form a “super entity” have control 40% of the world’s wealth; which is the real economy. These mega-corporations are at the center of the global economy. The banks found to be most influential include:
• Barclays
• Goldman Sachs
• JPMorgan Chase & Co
• Vanguard Group
• UBS
• Deutsche Bank
• Bank of New York Melon Corp
• Morgan Stanley
• Bank of America Corp
• Société Générale
However as the connections to the controlling groups are networked throughout the world, they become the catalyst for global financial collapse.
James Glattfelder, complex systems theorist at the SFI explains: “In effect, less than one per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network.”
Using mathematic models normally applied to natural systems, the researchers analyzed the world’s economy. Their data was taken from Orbis 2007, a database which lists 37 million corporations and investors. The evidence showed that the world’s largest corporations are interconnected to all other companies and their professional decisions affect all markets across the globe.
George Sudihara, complex systems expert for SFI claims that this phenomenon is a common structure that could be found in nature. Comparing the manufactured reality of the financial markets to the ecosystems of the planet, Sudihara says that although the 147 corporations that rule the world through influence and interconnectedness are no more harmful than the natural cycles of our weather or animal kingdoms.
Yet because of the facts presented in the study, the financial crash of 2008 can be traced back to these tightly-knit networks. Future disasters can also be projected based on this analysis because of the “connectedness” of these influential entities which are only 147 corporations.
It is suggested the global capitalism could be a useful tool to make the markets more stable by simply acquiescing to control by the technocrats. The world’s transitional corporations (TNCs) guide the flow of all economies through influence and manipulation which created a structure of economic power. Most corporations are guided by the shareholders who use the companies to wield incredible power over the shift of economic consciousness. And the behavior of the system reflects the direction taken by those who fund the super entities.
Assumed by many that there was a complex architecture to the global economic power that caused financial systems to ebb and flow or crash and burn is not a scientific fact as evidenced in this study.
As the banking cartels force countries in the EuroZone into sovereign debt, there is a weakening of the many multi-national corporations around the world. Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase have financially gained while stocks are being unloaded in other markets.
This sovereign land-grab by the central banking cartels across Europe is mirrored in a recent Goldman Sachs report: “The more the Spanish administration indulges domestic political interests … the more explicit conditionality is likely to be demanded.” In other words the technocrats working for the Zionists are acquiring each country in the EuroZone.
The European Central Bankers agreed to give any nation in the Euro-Zone a bailout if they agreed to hand over the country to them under the guise of “new rules and conditions when applying for assistance.”
As America drifts downstream toward economic implosion, the Federal Reserve headed by Ben Bernanke has chosen a different approach. They unveiled QE3 last week as a pump and dump scheme to prop up the US dollar by printing cash that is backed by nothing, while purchasing the mortgage-backed securities from the same banks that created the scandal and acquiring land in a massive land-grab; the likes of which have never been seen in the US.
Simultaneously, the BRICs nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are buying gold to back their fiat currencies to avoid being caught up in the destruction of the technocrats as they march toward one world currency.
BRICs have become the anti-thesis to the banking cartels of the Zionist regime.
As these nations pair with Middle Eastern countries like Iran to trade gold for petrol instead of the US dollar as the global reserve currency, the Obama administration has begun a propaganda campaign against China involving a manufactured cyber-threat.
In Iran, the terrorist factions that do the bidding of the Zionists to topple governments by inciting fake revolutions have been deployed to Iran to stir-up trouble and blame the failing Ra-il which is being strategically destroyed by sanctions placed on the nation by the US. The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) coerced the US Congress to pass HR 1905 which further tighten the economic noose around Iran for the benefit of the Zionist-controlled Israeli government.
In April of this year, the BRICs nations met to agree upon a strategy that would liberate the countries of the world from the grip of the technocrats. The BRICs countries are pushing for peace, but not through force and occupation of other countries to obtain this goal.
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia had this to say about the United Nations and their obvious attempts at global governance through usurpation of powers over countries. “One of the priorities of BRICs for the years to come should be the strengthening and key role of the UN’s Security Council in maintaining international peace and security. And also ensuring that the UN is not used as a cover for regime change and unilateral actions to resolve conflict situations.”
A joint BRICs bank was discussed with vigor. It would serve as an alternative to central banks that abuse their power at the expense of nations worldwide. They hope to replace the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The IMF and World Bank are alarmed by this move and highly disapprove of it.
This is not shocking, considering that the central banks play a game of printing fiat that has no precious metals backing the paper.
Over 180 countries have signed onto the BRICs agreement as evidenced in their declaration. While the global Elite still hold power over the G5 countries, the rest of the world is standing up, severing their ties and making plans for a new world without them.
- See more at: http://www.occupycorporatism.com/swiss-study-shows-147-technocratic-super-entities-rule-the-world/#sthash.uVBkI59R.dpuf
Jesse Ventura on Edward Snowden (VIDEO)
"In Times of Universal Deceipt, Telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act" - Orwell - No Wonder Why Everyone Thinks that Jesse is Crazy!!!
http://investmentwatchblog.com/jesse-ventura-on-edward-snowden/
Shermann
Mastema – The ‘Persecutor’ of God
Christian texts are full of controversies regarding actions of God which could be perceived as harsh, or even revengeful. These controversies are also extended to other Biblical figures/beings, for example, the angel called ‘Mastema’. In Hebrew the word ‘mastemah’ means ‘hatred’ and ‘hostility’. Another translation suggests that the name comes from the word ‘Mastim’, which is the Hiphil participle of ‘Satam’ and it means ‘one who is adverse’. According to the book of Jubilees, Mastema was the chief of the spirits and very similar to what Christianity today promotes as ‘Satan’. Yet Mastema was under Gods’ commands, fulfilling his orders.
God in general is portrayed as having human-like behaviour showing not only love and affection but also aggression, revenge and even jealously. Some have argued that Gods characteristics could be said to match the profile of a dictator, especially when considering some of the accounts that are present in the Old Testament:
Behold, Abraham loveth Isaac his son, and he delighteth in him above all things else; bid him offer him as a burnt-offering on the altar, and Thou wilt see if he will do this command, and Thou wilt know if he is faithful in everything wherein Thou dost try him.- Book of Jubilee 16.16
A dictator wants his people to worship him and at the same time fear him; usually he shows his strength through acts of power in order to increase the fear and at the same time the belief in him. He will be aggressive to his competitors and most of the times he would either eliminate them or demonize them in the eyes of his followers. At the same time he will show affection and protect his country.
According to the book of Jubilees, ‘Prince’ Mastema was the one that suggested to God to test Abraham’s loyalty by asking him to offer Isaac to the altar. And according to the Old Testament, God listened to Mastema and did as he suggested.
Later on in the book of Jubilees, Mastema asks God to allow some of the spirits to stay with him so he could command them and help him to fulfil God’s commands. God again accepted his proposal and allowed him to keep one tenth of the spirits while the rest were condemned.
Lord, Creator, let some of them remain before me, and let them hearken to my voice, and do all that I shall say unto them; for if some of them are not left to me, I shall not be able to execute the power of my will on the sons of men; for these are for corruption and leading astray before my judgment, for great is the wickedness of the sons of men. - Book of Jubilees, 10.8
Continuing in the book of the Jubilees, Mastema helps the Pharaohs and the Egyptian sorcerers to stand up against Moses in Egypt.
And the prince of the Mastêmâ stood up against thee, and sought to cast thee into the hands of Pharaoh, and he helped the Egyptian sorcerers, and they stood up and wrought before thee. Book of Jubilees, 48.9
And at the same time it looks that he was the one that executed the plagues of God.
For on this night--the beginning of the festival and the beginning of the joy--ye were eating the Passover in Egypt, when all the powers of Mastêmâ had been let loose to slay all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh to the first-born of the captive maidservant in the mill, and to the cattle.Book of Jubilees, 49.2
It is clear that Mastema, or ‘Satan’ in modern Christianity, is not exactly an enemy of God, but rather a ‘prince’ of God that is responsible for punishing and bringing destruction to all of those that do not obey God and at the same time he is used to fulfil God’s plans. Mastema is for God what the army is for a Dictator. However, it seems that the perception of his role has been twisted to be an enemy of God, in order to be more compatible with the image of an all-loving God. The story of Mastema is another story that portrays an inconvenient reality that mainstream religion finds difficult to explain.
- See more at: http://www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-religions/mastema-persecutor-god-001018#sthash.lPoHaHdn.dpuf
And so it is. At the end of the day, the only way to defeat the parasitical Globalists is to reject their paradigm of politics, economics, finance, wars, their social engineering, tainted foods and medicines, their moral corruptions and other means designed and projected on us daily in an effort to keep us from what is wholesome and the light of love. Darkness flees before light.
Here Comes The Next Great Depression – Mike Maloney (VIDEO)
http://libertycrier.com/here-comes-the-next-great-depression-mike-maloney/?utm_source=The+Liberty+Crier&utm_campaign=e5ba1a96c3-The_Liberty_Crier_Daily_News_2_4_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_600843dec4-e5ba1a96c3-284729081
Shermann
How could he possibly?
LOL!
Attorney General Eric Holder can't explain constitutional basis for Obama's executive orders (VIDEO)
Would You Believe!!!
http://xrepublic.tv/node/7252
Shermann
X-22 Report for Today (VIDEO)
There is a Ton of Info Here!!!
http://investmentwatchblog.com/alert-high-probability-of-a-false-flag-event/
Shermann
mandating you off the roads?
2014-01-26 05:24:48 - SNOW STORM - USA
EDIS Code: SS-20140126-42452-USA
Date&Time: 2014-01-26 05:24:48 [UTC]
Continent: North-America
Country: USA
State/Prov.: State of Ohio,
Location: Paulding County,
City:
Description:
Paulding County Emergency Management has issued a Level 2 snow emergency. A county sheriff may, pursuant to Ohio Revised Code sections 311.07 and 311.08, declare a snow emergency and temporarily close the state roads and municipal streets within his/her jurisdiction when such action is reasonably necessary for the preservation of the public peace. Ohio Attorney General's Opinion 97-015, issued April 1, 1997, concluded that this authority includes state roads, county and township roads and municipal streets. Any person who knowingly hampers or fails to obey a lawful order of the sheriff declaring a snow emergency and temporarily closing highways, roads and/or streets within his/her jurisdiction may be subject to criminal prosecution under Ohio Revised Code Section 2917.13, "Misconduct at an emergency" or other applicable law or ordinance. A violation under that section is a misdemeanor of the fourth degree, punishable by a jail sentence not to exceed 30 days and/or a fine not to exceed $250. If the misconduct creates a risk of physical harm to persons or property, it is a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable by a jail sentence not to exceed 180 days and/or a fine not to exceed $1,000.
Posted:2014-01-26 05:24:48 [UTC]
OPERATION UNDERGROUND RAILROAD (O.U.R.)
O.U.R. Children | O.U.R. Responsibility
https://www.operationundergroundrailroad.org/about/
The original Underground Railroad was a network that existed in nineteenth century America to liberate African slaves. It consisted of secret routes, safe houses, and undercover operatives who would infiltrate the plantation, often pretending to be slaves themselves, then stealthily conduct the captives out of bondage. We often congratulate ourselves for having eradicated nineteenth century slavery. But it has not been eradicated. It is uglier than ever. Its victims today include nearly two million precious children in the world*. They are sex slaves. That is why we have resurrected the Underground Railroad and we have employed many of the original clandestine techniques.
These poor children are abused daily, thousands of them being imported every year into developed countries like the United States and Canada. These children range from toddlers to teenagers. People have been talking about this problem for some time. But these children don't need more talk. They need action. They need to be extracted from the hell they are living in. We know how to extract them. This is what we do. We rescue them and place them into safe havens where they can be rehabilitated. Then we go after the bad guys and break their organizations. Help us do this. Help us help the children.
We have gathered the world's experts in extraction operations and in anti-child trafficking efforts. They are former CIA, U.S. Special Agents, Navy SEALs, and Green Berets. They make up what we call the Underground Jump Team. While the United States government is leading the world in such operations, it is largely hindered by bureaucracy and jurisdictional limitations. If there is no U.S. statute being violated, then no U.S. action can be taken. Because most of these suffering children fall outside of U.S. jurisdiction and often find themselves kidnapped and abused in regions where the resources to save them are scarce, it is time for private citizens and organizations to rise up and help. It is our duty as a free and blessed people. If not us, who?
We have partnered with private software and data mining companies who have developed cutting edge tools to locate and detain international child trafficking organizations. Over the last decade these tools have led to the rescue of thousands of children and to the apprehension of thousands of pedophile captors. (Note: These tools do not violate privacy rights, as they only mine data that has been publically disseminated by those seeking to sell children.) Sadly, these tools have only been utilized in developed countries, leaving those infected nations with the most enslaved children to fend for themselves. Our Underground Jump Team will end this. Partnering with government jurisdictions throughout the world, we will provide these tools free of charge, and we will work side by side with our foreign partners until the children on the other end of that dark Internet line are liberated.
But it doesn't end there. Tapping into vast human intelligence resources developed over many years, our Jump Team will also locate the most active child sex rings in the world. Our Team will then rapidly deploy and, through a series of undercover sting operations, find and rescue these innocent children. Working hand in hand with our government partners, we will ensure that the perpetrators are held responsible and taken to a place where they can never hurt children again. The children will then be placed with the best shelters and institutions in the world to begin their rehabilitation. We stay with them through the entire process.
Our mission is straightforward: Using cutting-edge computer technology and human intelligence, we contract undercover teams of former CIA and Special Ops personnel to go into the darkest corners of the world to help local law enforcement liberate enslaved children and dismantle the criminal networks.
Common Law Community Training Manual
http://itccs.org/the-common-law-and-its-courts-a-community-training-manual/
Natural Liberty and the Basis of Common Law Courts: First Principles
1. Every man, woman and child is born and is by nature free, equal and sovereign, and possesses an inherent knowledge of what is true and right. Accordingly, no-one can be subordinated to another or to any external authority, since every person’s inherent wisdom and liberty makes them complete and sufficient creations in themselves, within a wider community of equals.
2. This personal sovereignty is a reflection of the wider Natural Law, whereby all life by nature is indivisible and placed in common for the survival and happiness of all. In any just society, this commonality endows all people with the unalienable right to establish among themselves their own governance, and defend themselves against any tyranny or violence, including that inflicted by external authorities. Any authority that rules unjustly and arbitrarily, without the free and uncoerced consent of the people, has lost its right to rule and can be lawfully overthrown. “Unjust government is not government but tyranny” – Plato
3. This Natural Law gives rise to customary Common Law whose purpose is to protect the inherent liberties and sovereignty of men and women in a community by maintaining equity and peace among them. The Common Law derives its authority from the people themselves, and from the capacity of the people to know what is just and to judge right and wrong for themselves. This capacity is expressed in a jury system of twelve freely chosen people who are the ultimate judge and authority under Common Law and its courts.
4. Historically, Common Law arose in England after the 11th century Norman Conquest as a bulwark in defense of the people against the arbitrary rule of self-appointed elites, especially monarchs and popes. The authority of these elites was derived unnaturally, from warfare, violent conquest and the theft of the earth, rather than from the consent of the community and its basis, the divine law of peace and equality. This elite rule arose most strongly in the Roman Empire and its descendent, the Church of Rome, under whose beliefs “god” is a dominator and conqueror (“domine“), and all people are “subjects” of the Pope.
5. Such a conquest-based rule of papal and kingly elites gave rise to a legal system known as Civil or Roman Law, and the belief that men and women are not endowed with the capacity for self-rule and wisdom. All law and authority is therefore derived externally, from statutes devised and imposed by a ruler, whether a pope, a monarch or a government. This system developed from Aristotelian philosophy and Roman property law in which creation is divided and human beings are treated as chattels and the possessions of others, and are thereby devoid of inherent liberties. The people are thus in every sense enslaved, cut off from the world given freely and in common to all. This slave system ranks and categorizes all people, and grants restricted “freedoms” (freithoms, or slave privileges) that are defined and limited through statutes issued by rulers.
6. Common and Civil (Roman) Law are therefore fundamentally opposed and are at war with each other. They cannot be reconciled, since they arise from two completely different notions of humanity and justice: Common Law knows life as a free gift given equally to all, while under Civil Law, life is a conditional privilege, and humanity is a managed slave populace. Accordingly, governments operate in practice according to Civil (statute) law and denigrate or ignore Common Law altogether through the rule of unaccountable judge-dominated courts.
7. The most extreme form of elite-based Civil/Roman Law is what is called Papal or Canon Law, which defines the Church of Rome as the only legitimate authority on earth to which all other laws, people and governments are subordinate. Canon law is self-governing and completely unaccountable to anything but itself. Behind its front of Christian rhetoric, Roman Catholicism is a neo-pagan cult based upon the late 3rd century Roman Emperor-worship system known as Sol Invictus, in which one sovereign entitled “God and Master” (Deus et Dominus) rules heaven and earth: specifically, the Pope. This tyrannical cult has not surprisingly caused more warfare, genocide, conquest and murder than any power in human history, and continues to constitute the single greatest threat to Common Law and human liberty.
8. The Church of Rome was the first and is the oldest corporation on our planet: a legal entity designed for the protection of tyrants, which nullifies the individual liability and responsibility of the elites for any crime or conquest they perpetrate. From Rome and the Vatican Incorporated has spread the contagion that now threatens to destroy our planet and our lives, as unaccountable corporate oligarchy everywhere subverts liberty and the health of our planet by subordinating all of life to profit and power.
9. At this very moment of corporate conquest and its subjugation of humanity, a counter-movement is arising to reassert the divine purpose and its operation through the Common Law, and to restore the earth and humanity to their natural being as a common body. This movement is foretold Biblically and in prophecy as the time when all people are returned to their natural equality, devoid of all divisions, privileges and oppression, in order live in harmony with creation and one another.
10. This restoration of humanity is a divine purpose, and begins by actively dis-establishing all existing authority and institutions derived from Roman civil law, and replacing them with a new governance under Common Law jurisdiction. The creation of that new Natural Law authority among a liberated humanity is the fundamental purpose of the Common Law Courts.
History was made on February 11, 2013, when the first Catholic Pope in history resigned from his office during peacetime in order to avoid arrest for protecting and aiding child raping priests.
Barely two weeks later, the same Pope Benedict, Joseph Ratzinger, was found guilty by the International Common Law Court of Justice for Crimes against Humanity , including child trafficking. And the Arrest Warrant that he had anticipated, and which provoked his resignation, was issued against him on February 25.
Evading justice inside the Vatican, Ratzinger is presently an international fugitive from the law – and a living example of the power of Common Law courts to successfully prosecute so-called “heads of state”.
The lawful verdict of the International Common Law Court of Justice was a “shot heard around the world”, and has spawned efforts in twenty one countries to establish similar popular courts of justice to reclaim the law from the wealthy and their compliant governments. (see www.itccs.org)
This is a place of open investigation and education for those who have, or are ready to break out of "the matrix" of the left/right paradigm. My hope is we will work together to present solid body of evidence exposing the gradual transformation of our Republic into a corporate oligarchy so we might also find the united means to take it back. To try to formulate grassroots solutions to the greatest threat to American sovereignty and indeed the very existence of our nation: The Globalist Agenda.
There is no left or right here. No Democrat or Republican. No Conservative or Liberal. The whole left/right paradigm is nothing more than a divide and conquer strategy perpetuated by the ruling class via mass media mind control to keep the masses fighting while the globalist agenda is implemented incrementally. No matter who is elected, or what party they hail from, the true agenda stays the same.
Our two party system has been co-opted by greedy multinational corporations and power hungry collectivists long bent on destroying the Constitutional United States and enslaving all of humanity in a new, global level feudalism. This system is commonly called The New World Order (NWO). Centralization is more than likely the enemy of liberty. Be wary of any such programs. Centralization diminishes choice, and diminished choice eventually eliminates competition. As John D. Rockefeller once said, "Competition is a sin!" Nothing could be farther from the truth. A healthy competition keeps the focus on the end user, in terms of quality and price.
This is a battle for your mind. This is a battle to destroy your will. This is a battle to take over your labor. We must end the gradual and systematic dismantling of government through the education of principles over issues. We must stop the centralized education process from usurping our children's future by limiting and destroying the wisdom of the ages, common sense and critical thinking. Knowledge alone is not enough. Wise application is the key.
We must through our OWN actions end the attacks by the pharmaceutical and genetic engineering industries that poison and devitalize our minds and bodies. We still have choice in these matters for the moment. Choose wisely!
At least for now, our war is one of ideas. Truth is our weapon. If we can liberate enough minds, the revolution will be a peaceful one. Enough people have already fought and died for this country; let us honor them by not squandering their sacrifice... sitting idly and watching quietly as our nation, along with our children's future, is extinguished.
(Thank to JDsStock for the editing.)
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