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Project Camelot: Interview with Karen Hudes – World Bank Whistleblower (VIDEO)
Very Long...Tons of Great Information...Well Worth the Watch...
http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/project-camelot-interview-with-karen-hudes-world-bank-whistleblower/52673
Shermann
Ben Swann Interviews G. Edward Griffin (VIDEO)
http://12160.info/video/ben-swann-interviews-g-edward-griffin?xg_source=activity
Shermann
Jesse Ventura Talks 2016 Election, Howard Stern and Government Lies (VIDEO)
There is Some Great Stuff Here!!!
http://xrepublic.tv/node/4614
Shermann
9-11 Cop Who Arrested Dancing Israelis Speaks Out on Dec 28, 2011
http://xrepublic.tv/node/4604
Shermann
Police is blaming “poor lighting” after two officers went to the wrong home in search of a possible burglar and ended up shooting a 72-year-old man dead in his garage
http://www.newsforage.com/2013/07/police-is-blaming-poor-lighting-after.html
Shermann
Lindsey Williams – K-Talk – Mills Crenshaw – July 2013 - VIDEO
Health Care and the Economy...Very Informative...
http://www.lindseywilliams.net/lindsey-williams-k-talk-mills-crenshaw-july-2013-post/
Lindsey Williams on K-Talk speaking with Mills Crenshaw on 22nd July 2013. A two-part show. First part talking about healthcare. Second part talking about the economy. Chaplain Williams also takes calls.
1st part: Pastor Williams and Dr. Rodrigo Rodriguez MD talking about healthcare. After January 1st 2014 healthcare system will never be the same again. The Obamacare bill was not a healthcare bill but the ultimate final control of the American people by the elite. The IBC Hospital & Health Center in Tijuana, Mexico is needed since 40% of healthcare professionals will leave. Pastor Williams talks about a list of doctors who have already closed their doors or have a date when they are closing their doors. He also talks about the gadget that the government is giving to all doctors that will tell them what they must prescribe for their patients, if they do not they can be jailed.
2nd part: Pastor Lindsey Williams discusses the economy. Silver up $1.04, Gold up $40 today (22nd July 2013). Pastor Williams says “they can’t keep it down any longer”. Its intentionally manipulated. Don’t sell gold or silver, the bottom has probably arrived. Gold is going to at least $3,000 an ounce. Silver is going to at least $75-$100 an ounce. Precious metals market is going back up, time to buy is now. Get out of paper. Also talks about trial run to crash all the currencies of the world and $441 Trillion in interest rate derivatives and banks gambling the security of nations while you sleep.
Pastor Williams also discusses his new DVD “Healing The Elite Way” which is the most important DVD he has ever made. It saved his life and this DVD may save yours. Available to order today.
Lindsey’s other DVD is also mentioned within this radio show it is called “New Signs of The Elite” and is available for 70% off
In light of the new revelations, Pastor Williams recommends that you get out of paper as soon as possible. Get into ‘tangibles’ such as gold, silver and other precious metals as well as land, seeds. Check out this exclusive article where Lindsey Williams and other reputable financial reporters tell us why the price of gold has been falling for several months and why its been manipulated
Pastor Lindsey Williams’ book “The Energy Non-Crisis” is now available on Amazon Kindle.
Chaplain Lindsey Williams’ book “To Seduce A Nation” is now available on Amazon Kindle.
Mills Crenshaw’s show can be listened to at the K-Talk website.
- See more at: http://www.lindseywilliams.net/lindsey-williams-k-talk-mills-crenshaw-july-2013-post/#sthash.4efxrTGp.dpuf
Revealed; The Men Who Own and Run the U S Government (VIDEO)
This one will send chills up your spine...
http://12160.info/video/revealed-the-men-who-own-and-run-the-u-s-government
Shermann
It Is Almost As If We Are Being Forced To Watch The Replay Of 2008 Crisis, Only This Time You Will Be Watched, Recorded and Tracked During The Economic Collapse, And The Rest of The World Is Preparing For WWIII (VIDEO)
http://investmentwatchblog.com/it-is-almost-as-if-we-are-being-forced-to-watch-the-replay-of-2008-crisis-only-this-time-you-will-be-watched-recorded-and-tracked-during-the-economic-collapse-and-the-rest-of-the-world-is-preparing/
Shermann
Role Reversal: How the US Became the USSR — Paul Craig Roberts
July 23, 2013
I spent the summer of 1961 behind the Iron Curtain. I was part of the US-USSR student exchange program. It was the second year of the program that operated under auspices of the US Department of State. Our return to the West via train through East Germany was interrupted by the construction of the Berlin Wall. We were sent back to Poland. The East German rail tracks were occupied with Soviet troop and tank trains as the Red Army concentrated in East Germany to face down any Western interference.
Fortunately, in those days there were no neoconservatives. Washington had not grown the hubris it so well displays in the 21st century. The wall was built and war was avoided. The wall backfired on the Soviets. Both JFK and Ronald Reagan used it to good propaganda effect.
In those days America stood for freedom, and the Soviet Union for oppression. Much of this impression was created by Western propaganda, but there was some semblance to the truth in the image. The communists had a Julian Assange and an Edward Snowden of their own. His name was Cardinal Jozef Mindszenty, the leader of the Hungarian Catholic Church.
Mindszenty opposed tyranny. For his efforts he was imprisoned by the Nazis. Communists also regarded his as an undesirable, and he was tortured and given a life sentence in 1949.
Freed by the short-lived Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Mindszenty reached the American Embassy in Budapest and was granted political asylum by Washington. However, the communists would not give him the free passage that asylum presumes, and Mindszenty lived in the US Embassy for 15 years, 79% of his remaining life.
In the 21st century roles have reversed. Today it is Washington that is enamored of tyranny. On Washington’s orders, the UK will not permit Julian Assange free passage to Ecuador, where he has been granted asylum. Like Cardinal Mindszenty, Assange is stuck in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London.
Washington will not permit its European vassal states to allow overflights of airliners carrying Edward Snowden to any of the countries that have offered Snowden asylum. Snowden is stuck in the Moscow airport.
In Washington politicians of both parties demand that Snowden be captured and executed. Politicians demand that Russia be punished for not violating international law, seizing Snowden, and turning him over to Washington to be tortured and executed, despite the fact that Washington has no extradition treaty with Russia.
Snowden did United States citizens a great service. He told us that despite constitutional prohibition, Washington had implemented a universal spy system intercepting every communication of every American and much of the rest of the world. Special facilities are built in which to store these communications.
In other words, Snowden did what Americans are supposed to do–disclose government crimes against the Constitution and against citizens. Without a free press there is nothing but the government’s lies. In order to protect its lies from exposure, Washington intends to exterminate all truth tellers.
The Obama Regime is the most oppressive regime ever in its prosecution of protected whistleblowers. Whistleblowers are protected by law, but the Obama Regime insists that whistleblowers are not really whistleblowers. Instead, the Obama Regime defines whistleblowers as spies, traitors, and foreign agents. Congress, the media, and the faux judiciary echo the executive branch propaganda that whistleblowers are a threat to America. It is not the government that is violating and raping the US Constitution that is a threat. It is the whistleblowers who inform us of the rape who are the threat.
The Obama Regime has destroyed press freedom. A lackey federal appeals court has ruled that NY Times reporter James Risen must testify in the trial of a CIA officer charged with providing Risen with information about CIA plots against Iran. The ruling of this fascist court destroys confidentiality and is intended to end all leaks of the government’s crimes to media.
What Americans have learned in the 21st century is that the US government lies about everything and breaks every law. Without whistleblowers, Americans will remain in the dark as "their" government enserfs them, destroying every liberty, and impoverishes them with endless wars for Washington’s and Wall Street’s hegemony.
Snowden harmed no one except the liars and traitors in the US government. Contrast Washington’s animosity against Snowden with the pardon that Bush gave to Dick Cheney aide, Libby, who took the fall for his boss for blowing the cover, a felony, on a covert CIA operative, the spouse of a former government official who exposed the Bush/Cheney/neocon lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Whatever serves the tiny clique that rules america is legal; whatever exposes the criminals is illegal.
That’s all there is to it.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/07/23/role-reversal-how-the-us-became-the-ussr-paul-craig-roberts/
-END-
U.S. a Lawless State - Paul Craig Roberts
24 July 2013 57 Comments
4By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts says, “The country is not being run by the President. It is being run by spy agencies and private interest groups, Wall Street and military security complex . . . They run the country.
The President is a puppet, a figurehead.” Dr. Roberts contends, “If you are a lawless state, which the United States is, it obeys no international law. It does not obey the Geneva Convention . . . It tortures people. It doesn’t obey the Constitution. It doesn’t obey anything. It does what it wants. . . . If you are a lawless state, you disguise yourself as a democracy.”
Former President Jimmy Carter agrees. Just last week, Carter said, “The U.S. has no functioning democracy at this moment.”
Why hasn’t the mainstream media picked up this astounding comment from a former Democratic President? Dr. Roberts says, “Five firms now own what used to be a large dispersed independent media. Nobody can open their mouth, they’d get fired. They have become a propaganda ministry for government and corporations.”
Dr. Roberts goes on to say, “My prediction or expectation is by winter, the second downturn of the Great Recession will be in place. Unemployment will explode, more foreclosures are coming. It’s going to be worse than the Great Depression.” Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with economist Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.
http://usawatchdog.com/u-s-a-lawless-state-paul-craig-roberts/
Sen Wyden Warns The US Could Become A "Surveillance State" With Govt Monitoring Your Every Move! (VIDEO)
http://xrepublic.tv/node/4561
Shermann
Paul Craig Roberts Interview on the Fed is Facing Collapse
http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2013/7/14_Dr._Paul_Craig_Roberts.html
Shermann
Quantitative Easing is actually Quantitative Looting (VIDEO)
Really Interesting Explanations!!!
Chris Hedges: “America is a Tinderbox” (VIDEO)
Hedges as an Old Time Democrat...
http://investmentwatchblog.com/chris-hedges-america-is-a-tinderbox/
Shermann
Keiser Report: Bankers' Brain Cells
http://12160.info/video/keiser-report-bankers-brain-cells-e472
In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert ask whether or not it will ever be possible to unwind quantitative easing as the parallel universe it has created sucks out interest payments and central bankers' brain cells.
They discuss the latest in a long line of market rigging - this time the traders who allegedly rigged QE.
Shermann
Occupy Interview Radio with Kevin Ryan Occupy 9/11 (AUDIO)
Great Interview...
http://911blogger.com/news/2012-04-27/occupy-interview-radio-kevin-ryan-occupy-911
Shermann
Excellent - Transcript of Lars Schall's interview with Pacific Alliance Group's William Kaye
Submitted by cpowell on Wed, 2013-07-17 05:39. Section: Daily Dispatches, 1:34a ET Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Here's an edited transcript of yesterday's interview by the German financial journalist Lars Schall of William Kaye, founder and managing director of the Pacific Alliance Group in Hong Kong, about the rigging of the gold market by Western central banks and their bullion bank agents.
The interview was undertaken for the German Internet site Metal Week and can be heard in full here -- https://www.metallwoche.de/clarification-of-william-kaye-re-german-us-gold-in-hong-kong-refineries/ -- and was summarized in yesterday's GATA Dispatch here: http://www.gata.org/node/12798
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
* * *
LARS SCHALL: Hello, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Lars Schall and I am now connected with the founder, vice chairman, and senior managing director of the Pacific Alliance Group of Companies in Hong Kong, William S. Kaye. Hello, Mr. Kaye.
WILLIAM KAYE: Yes, Lars. How are you?
SCHALL: I am doing very well. How are you?
KAYE: I am doing well.
SCHALL: OK, great. Recently you received quite some attention related to some statements that you made to King World News. Can you tell us a little bit about this topic, because I was obviously quite confused.
KAYE: I think for people who are confused the best solution is to go to King World News and actually listen for yourself to the interview and read the written blogs as well. I think they faithfully represent the commentary:
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/7/9_Gam...
I am a bit surprised at the attention that all this is getting, probably because to me it seems such an obvious state of the world. But it is causing a lot of excitement in the same sense that Ed Snowden revealing alleged secrets, and I didn't find anything that was revealed by WikiLeaks that I regarded as surprising. We expect the spying by the National Security Agency and so forth. I mean, that was all out there for people who were paying attention.
That story has been covered in numerous places. Maybe not in the mainstream media but it is all over the Internet. That information was known to be true before Snowden released it and thereby further confirmed it.
And I guess you could by analogy say the same thing about gold because there is a lot of factual information. For people who are interested in facts, and we are -- we are not conspiracy theorists -- when facts lead to conspiracies as an explanation, then we are open to that possibility as an explanation. And conspiracies do exist. As it relates to the interview itself, I think what caused the greatest controversy -- and it was puzzling to me -- was a statement that I made because our firm runs physical bullion itself. We have 1.1 metric tons stored safely at the Hong Kong International Airport. I made the statement that I deal with one of the biggest refineries here in Hong Kong.
It is a German company, by the way, Lars, by the name of Heraeus, which is headquartered right outside of Frankfurt. And based on being one of their best customers -- at least currently -- we were able to have discussions that would not be possible if that were not the case. One of those discussions evolved by asking out of curiosity where they got their gold from. Their response was “from all over, from everywhere, from all available sources.” And I said, “You mean recyclers, bullion banks, inventory from the Comex as well as central banks?” And they just acted surprised at that question and thought that was pretty idiotic and said, “We repeat -- we get it from all sources.”
They went on to confirm that they obviously had to mean central banks as well, though they would not identify any specific central bank. But they obviously were incorporating central banks in that statement because they added that they have to be able to get gold from central banks because central banks are the largest players in the industry, which is of course a fact.
So all I did was corroborate what are known facts, what I think is certainly known to people who are in the industry. But when you report it to the vast numbers of people who know little or nothing about the gold industry, it shakes them up.
SCHALL: I think people understood [from your interview] that German central bank gold that is stored at the New York Fed ends up in Hong Kong.
KAYE: I didn't say that. I just want to be very clear that I did not say that.
SCHALL: What are your thoughts in general related to the German gold?
KAYE: Well, here I am inferring, OK? So far I think we have dealt with facts. Now I am going to make an inference, which I think follows thoroughly and logically from those facts. But it is still an inference, OK? So I am trying to be as clear as I can.
I am inferring because all the facts point in this direction that there is little or no available "eligible" gold -- and I will return to what "eligible" means in a moment -- but there is little or no eligible gold left along the major Western central banks. The way I arrive at that is quite simple. The big smash on gold, which commenced on April 12 and has continued ever since -- the catalyst for that was the default by a major European bullion bank, ABN Amro, on their obligation to supply gold under contracts they had issued to their customers. They sent out effectively a "force majeure" in which they informed their client base that held their paper, which had been redeemable for gold on demand. They sent out a circular saying, "We no longer will allow you to redeem for gold on demand. You must redeem for cash. So whatever the paper price for gold is, you will get that price. Just tell us what currency you want it in."
So that was effectively a default. That was the first major bullion bank to engage in "force majeure."
Now this should have incited a buying panic. But it didn't. And the reason it didn't is that very quickly in the aftermath of this default, which received very little attention in the mainstream media, the smash on gold, the manipulation of paper gold, began in earnest.
Now again I am making an inference. I want to be clear: My strong belief is that the purpose of this raid was to preclude the likelihood that all the major bullion banks would have followed in ABN Amro's footsteps. This is important, because we do have a lot of corroborating evidence that it wasn't just ABN Amro that was running on empty as it related to gold inventories, and if you actually checked the data that it is publicly available, JP Morgan has record modern-era lows of gold inventories that they record in their warehouse versus the massive claims against that gold.
Similarly the Comex is running close to empty at the moment as well against massive paper claims that are outstanding on its gold.
So essentially gold inventory in the system that would be available to the bullion banks is running very close to empty.
That was the case in mid-April and it continues to be the case today.
Then the question becomes -- and all this is covered in the King World News interviews I have done as well as on the accompanying blogs -- What is when the essential feedstock that has allowed the prosecution of this manipulation and has been diluting of the exchange-traded funds, the largest of which by a factor is the SPDR Gold Trust, GLD on the New York Stock Exchange?
What is interesting about all that is the way these exchange-traded funds were set up by the banks themselves. In other words the exchange-traded funds were designed by the bullion banks to serve their purposes as any number of insiders, including a good friend of mine, who is a lawyer who wrote the language for several of these exchange-traded funds, have confirmed is exactly the case.
The setup is a highly unusual one for people who are not familiar with this industry. And that is that the only people who can legally deal, exclusively deal with the trusts themselves are 14 or 15 major bullion banks. That's it. So even if you had a billion dollars' worth of gold, or at least paper gold, held in certificates of GLD, you would not be able to redeem those shares yourself for physical gold. You would have to enlist the cooperation -- and they are entitled to either give it to you or not -- of one of the eligible major bullion banks like JP Morgan or Scotia Mocatta or whatever.
So the structure lends itself to enormous potential mischief and abuse and this is exactly what we are seeing, particularly since mid-April.
This gold trust has itself lost over 30 per cent of the gold it had at the beginning of 2013 alone. Gold has trended from the bullion banks, where it is held by HSBC in London, to places like here in Hong Kong -- I am sure I have some of that gold -- as well as places like the People's Bank of China in Beijing and importantly also to the Shanghai Gold Exchange, where we have seen extremely high and elevated buy-ins in recent weeks and months.
This is really what in a microcosm is happening, and for you listeners who cannot be bothered looking into the King World News site, the way it works is, the Fed and Bank for International Settlements, I strongly suspect, have to be involved. Again I am making an inference based on the notion that the bullion banks neither have the wherewithal financially, and even if they did they would be in violation of various rules, including the capital rules and maximum open position rules.
There has to be somebody else involved. And the only somebody else that checks all the boxes and would also have a strategic motive to want to be involved would be a major central bank like the Fed, probably acting in concert with the central bank to the central banks, the BIS.
So the conclusion we draw, because we feel that it is the only conclusion that can be drawn, is that the Fed and probably the BIS are backstopping this. The agents that are responsible for the actual design of the trading programs, the algorithms and the price-depression schemes, are the bullion banks themselves.
Now the reason all this kind of ties together and makes sense is that it's a win for both sides. The Fed and BIS benefit for sustaining for a bit longer the mythology that "quantitative easing" is responsible policy and that fiat currencies are strong. If gold would go in the other direction, hitting all-time highs, which in our estimation it would be, absent this manipulation scheme, this would disrupt the emperor. This would show that fiat currencies are suspect, that these policies are suspect, and interest rates, typical sovereign debt, would likely be much higher.
If people saw themselves losing purchasing power and saw gold skyrocket, there would be very little interest in the sovereign bonds of all these countries that if they didn't have digital printing presses backstopping them would all be bankrupt. So you can see why the Fed and the BIS would have a strategic agenda in engaging a scheme like this, and the bullion banks are engaging in the scheme for two reasons: First, the alternative is that they would all have gone the way of their comrade ABN Amro, which they don't want to do. And second and probably more importantly, it is a great scam for them. For this scheme creates tremendous trading opportunities because it is a controlled manipulation by the bullion banks.
We believe that in practice this uses the balance sheet of the Fed and possibly the BIS. The Comex features at strategic times during the day when gold is hammered lower. Now happens during New York Stock Exchange trading time. GLD, which has to trade by in lockstep with the paper gold price, goes down as well. Once the bullion banks are happy with having gotten GLD to the stress level of their choosing, they gobble up their shares in denominations of 100,000 each, about $12 million each, so we are not talking about retail being able to play this game.
Most institutions aren't interested in doing this but the bullion banks are, which is why over 30 percent of the physical bullion of GLD is already gone in 2013 alone. So when they are happy with creating a highly distressed price that is attractive to them, they buy up the shares at GLD and they contact Bank of New York Mellon, which is the fund's trustee, and they ask the bank to cancel their shares and put in notice of physical delivery of gold from HSBC, which is exactly what happens.
Then that gold leaves London and often travels out here, either directly into Shanghai or into China through Hong Kong, and all the data that is available confirms what I am saying. For instance Hong Kong publishes -- China does not – line items for both exports and imports every month to and from Hong Kong. So we actually have very good data on the elevated levels of gold that is re-exported out of Hong Kong into China. The biggest customers are the People's Bank of China, it goes to major jewelers like Chow Tai Fook that are doing a booming business, it goes to the Shanghai Gold Exchange, and so forth.
SCHALL: If you were calling the shots at the Deutsche Bundesbank, would you withdraw all German gold from New York and London?
KAYE: My presumption is that that gold isn't there. To satisfy any demands by the Bundesbank, the gold would have to be borrowed from somewhere else. It would have to be borrowed from the inventories that do exist, even though they are very low, at the Comex. It would have to be borrowed from JP Morgan, et al., and these guys hardly have enough gold for their own day-to-day purposes. So I am pretty skeptical that that would succeed and there are powerful reasons for believing that the Bundesbank already knows this.
These Central Banks talk to each other all the time and this is world-known and anyone can look to the WikiLeaks cables to confirm that. It is almost unfathomable that the Bundesbank would not know what the situation is. Now that leads to a second question: Why are they propagating this myth? The Bundesbank is not in the dark and they are not being lied to. And the officials there -- at least the senior officials -- know or should know what the real state of the world is and that the gold is gone while they are playing this game with the German people.
And the answer is that they don't know what else to do. They, like the Fed, have an incentive to manage the price of gold. They don't want any more stresses on the euro. And certainly gold going through the roof, as it did in 2011 when the euro was last under enormous stress, is not something that the Bundesbank wants. So I suspect that they are playing this game not because they want to lie to the German people. I think they are playing this game because they really don't know what else to do.
SCHALL: And so they pretend in this confidence game that it will take seven years to repatriate 300 tons of gold from the New York Fed?
KAYE: That is right and that itself points to the notion that they aren't serious about getting their gold back. Because why should it take seven years? It makes no sense. This quantity of gold could be delivered in less than seven weeks. It already should be back in Germany. If they were serious about getting it back and believe that they could get it back -- let's couple those two concepts because I think they are critical -- it may very well be that you have got well-meaning officials at the Bundesbank who, if they honestly believed that they could get the gold back in seven weeks, they would have insisted on seven weeks. So this is just another interesting point in the direction of the arguments I am making.
SCHALL: Now that there is a price smackdown, what are your thoughts on the fact that the big banks in the United States are now going long gold in the futures market?
KAYE: I think they have been very successful in managing this enormous manipulation. And for people who, like me, feel that all the evidence supports the notion that this is a bullion bank-engineered manipulation, this is very positive for the future price of gold. They have profited enormously from shorting gold, going back particularly to mid-April, when they became very serious, and now they have turned from being very net short to at least being somewhat net long. This is shown not only in the commitment of traders report; it is also shown in a much more constructive series of options.
You need to understand that the bullion banks have been profiting on the way down in multiple ways. They profited by shorting, for instance, the Comex gold contract and the SPDR Gold Trust trade on the New York Stock Exchange. They have also made money buying puts and selling calls on gold, knowing which direction gold was going to trade next. And of course that direction has been almost always down since April. This has generated enormous trading profits for these banks. JP Morgan, I think, reported 100 per cent profitable trading days and this [gold manipulation] would certainly account for the fact that they would have had 100 per cent profitable trading days on their proprietary desks. The same with Goldman Sachs and on and on.
Having run a proprietary desk for a number of years, I can tell you that that is not possible outside a rigged game, even a casino. I know the people at the Wynn Macau casino pretty well and I have talked to them and casinos are about as rigged as you can get, but a casino does have the appearance of randomness and chance to it. Even a casino like Wynn, basically one day out of roughly three or four, will have a losing day. Somebody will get lucky at the baccarat table even though the game would not be offered if the casino did not have a very large margin in its favor.
Taking "risk" on its proprietary trading desk JP Morgan has a better streak than Wynn Macau. You logically cannot account for that unless the game itself is rigged. And the bullion banks, I am alleging, are responsible for rigging the game in their favor and this is why they are immensely profiting.
Now the reason the Fed would be happy with this is you can also do this as a back-door method of recapitalization at these bullion banks. It wasn't that long ago -- in 2008, 2009 -- that we had a very controversial bailout directly by the Fed and Treasury Department in the United States of these banks. No one wants to see -- at least no one in a position of power and no one at the bullion banks -- a repeat of that controversial history and of course politically it would be very contentious.
Much better to engage in a bailout that is invisible to the vast majority of people. So you can view what is going on here in as a stealth recapitalization or further bailout of these same banks, only the public is not aware of it.
end
Keith Barron believes there will be a huge short covering rally in gold
(courtesy Keith Barron/Kingworldnews)
Hedges: Journalism Should Be About Truth, Not Career (VIDEO)
Chris Hedges is Always an Amazing Interview!!!
http://investmentwatchblog.com/hedges-journalism-should-be-about-truth-not-career/
Shermann
Bill Black: The Banks Have Blood On Their Hands
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/14/2013 19:48 -0400
Submitted by Adam Taggart via Peak Prosperity blog,
We invited Bill Black to return to explain whether the level of systemic risk due to fraud in our financial markets has improved or worsened since the dire situation he painted for us in early 2012. Sadly, it looks like abuse by the big players has only flourished since then.
In the US, our regulators have publicly embraced a "too big to prosecute" doctrine. We are restraining, underfunding and dismantling regulatory oversight in the interests of short-term stability for the status quo. Which as a criminologist, Black knows with certainty creates an environment where bad actors will act in their self-interest with assumed (and likely real, at this point) impunity.
If you can steal with impunity, as soon as you devastate regulation, you devastate the ability to prosecute. And as soon as that happens, in our jargon, in criminology, you make it a criminogenic environment. It just means an environment where the incentives are so perverse that they are going to produce widespread crime. In this context, it is going to be widespread accounting control fraud. And we see how few ethical restraints remain in the most elite banks.
You are looking at an underlying economic dynamic where fraud is a sure thing that will make people fabulously wealthy and where you select by your hiring, by your promotion, and by your firing for the ethically worst people at these firms that are committing the frauds. And so you have one of the largest banks in the world, HSBC, being the key ally to the most violent Mexican drug cartel, where they actually did so much business together that the drug cartel designed special boxes to put the cash in that they were laundering that fit exactly into the teller windows so that there would be no delay. This is the efficiency principle of drug laundering.
So these banks figuratively have the blood of over a thousand people on their hands. They are willing to fund people that murder and torture and behead folks. And they are willing to do that year after year, despite warnings from the regulators that they are doing this. And the regulators are not willing to actually take serious action until there has been “true devastation.”
And as time passes, our ability to bring effective justice -- should we want to -- atrophies:
I will tell you one of the things from being a former enforcement specialist: If you do not bring cases for year after year after year, it would be like a tennis player who stopped playing tournaments for ten years and never practices, and then he or she goes onto the court. What is going to happen?
They will get crushed by the opposition. So once you have given up enforcing the laws, I can tell you this with my lawyer hat on and former enforcement hat: You fear bringing these cases because you have allowed your skills to deteriorate so badly.
Given the sorry statements from officials like Lanny Breuer, who stepped down as#fdffff; line-height: 18.1875px;"> the DOJ Criminal Division Chief earlier this year (he headed up the investigation of the banks and mortgage companies) -- we may already be at this stage.
#fdffff; line-height: 18.1875px;">Black sees a natural end to this systemic rot: a day where the bad actors no longer trust one another, and the system implodes upon itself:
I can tell you as a criminologist and as a former financial regulator, this is what you need to know about fraud: Fraud involves me, the fraudster, getting you to trust me. And then I betray your trust for my financial gain. And so there is no more destructive asset against trust than elite fraud.
So yes, we have been running a system under which the fraudsters get incredibly wealthy. And now they get incredibly wealthy and they do not even get prosecuted. And if there is a civil case – actually, they get the worst of all worlds. It sounds large for propaganda purposes, but all of us in finance know it is trivial. It is often literally a week of income, where their income is massively increased by the frauds. The statistics show that there has been a general withdrawal of less sophisticated investors, in particular, from the marketplaces -- and it's because people do not trust the markets anymore.
Here is what people forget: After Lehman Brothers goes, the run that occurred was not Ma and Pa. The run that occurred that, for example, broke the buck in the money market mutual funds: that was a massive run of the most sophisticated financial players, where they were taking out hundreds of millions – or even tens of billions, in some cases –of money, in some cases, literally, in microseconds. In other words, bankers no longer trusted other bankers. And when that happens, markets do not simply become inefficient; they actually lock up. And that is what happened thousands of times after Lehman collapsed, because bankers would no longer trust other bankers’ evaluation of the assets.
And we have not even discussed derivatives to this point. Which is the not-800-pound gorilla, but the $8-trillion-ton-gorilla that is out there. So we already have the insanity of derivative trades in which both of us book a gain because we have different evaluations for the asset. So we have phenomenal paper gains that cannot be true. When the markets no longer trust each other, then those kinds of transactions do not work anymore, and there is no liquidity, and you are in the equivalent of trying to sell minority shareholder interest in a privately held corporation. How is that going to work out for you? Ever tried to do that?
So all across the globe, all across history, minority shareholders get completely screwed in that circumstance, when liquidity dries up. Well, the same thing can happen to much broader markets, including in particular the derivatives markets.
And if it does, when trust is interrupted, much less eroded, in the ways I have talked about it in the derivatives market, liquidity completely dries up. Anything that functions like a market-maker collapses, and you get whole financial systems that grind to a halt. And they do not happen just a few times. It can happen in thousands of markets roughly simultaneously.
You asked me earlier about Dodd Frank, and I said it had no coherent strategic vision. And a couple of the areas in which it had no coherent strategic vision we have talked about. It did not deal with the international competition-in-laxity. It did not deal with “too big to fail.” And it did not deal with derivatives. So I would say that was strike one, strike two, strike three.
Click the play button below to listen to Chris' interview with Bill Black (47m:23s):
" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=
end
Ducumentary on IRAN Iran Is Not the Problem; Stop War on IRAN
Well Worth the One Hour Watch!!!
David Stockman on Wall Street, The Federal Reserve, and The Great Deformation (VIDEO)
http://investmentwatchblog.com/david-stockman-on-wall-street-the-federal-reserve-and-the-great-deformation/
On June 25th the Reason Foundation presented a conversation with former budget director David Stockman about his recently published New York Times bestseller, The Great Deformation, hosted by Reason Editor-in-Chief Matt Welch.
In The Great Deformation, Stockman describes how Wall Street and the speculative classes have joined forces with the Federal Reserve to take the economy hostage by punishing savers, vastly inflating Main Street’s living costs, and fueling new financial bubbles.
At the same time, he argues, control of the federal budget has been surrendered to special interests that cling to every loophole in the tax code and block attempts at significant spending cuts. Stockman explains how this state of affairs arose over the course of the last eighty years, why this warped crony capitalism has betrayed so many of our hopes and dreams, and how we might be able to avert a looming economic crisis.
Shermann
Sen. Elizabeth Warren Introduces ’21st Century Glass-Steagall Act’ To Rein In Too-Big-To-Fail Banks
http://consumerist.com/2013/07/11/sen-elizabeth-warren-introduces-21st-century-glass-steagall-act-to-rein-in-too-big-to-fail-banks/
In response to the stock market crash of 1929, the Banking Act of 1933, also known as the Glass-Steagall Act, put up a wall between commercial banking and investment firms. That wall stood for more than 60 years until it was torn down by the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bilely Act, which allowed commercial banks to reap huge profits, but also resulted in financial institutions that were so large that, had they failed, they would bring down the entire economy with them. So when those banks began to crumble following the collapse of the housing bubble, we taxpayers were left with little option but to bail them out while our federally insured deposits were put at risk. Thus, Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts has introduced legislation that would reenact the regulations that were stripped away 14 years ago.
To make no bones about the nature of the bill, Sen. Warren has titled it the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act [PDF], and states clearly in the introduction that the legislation is intended “To reduce risks to the financial system by limiting banks’ ability to engage in certain risky activities and limiting conflicts of interest, to reinstate certain Glass-Steagall Act protections that were repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and for other purposes.”
The bill already has a bipartisan group of co-sponsors in Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), and Sen.Angus King, an independent legislator from Maine.
In simple terms, the new Glass-Steagall Act would separate banks with FDIC-insured savings and checking accounts from “riskier financial institutions” like investment banks, insurers, hedge funds, and private equity firms.
The bill also specifies what activities are considered the “business of banking” to prevent national banks from engaging in risky activities, and bars non-banking activities from being treated as “closely related” to banking. In the decades leading up to the end of Glass-Steagall, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency had allowed the divide between traditional banking and investment banking to be blurred by institutions who claimed that things like credit default swaps were simply part of the business of banking and not securities.
“Since core provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act were repealed in 1999, shattering the wall dividing commercial banks and investment banks, a culture of dangerous greed and excessive risk-taking has taken root in the banking world,” said Sen. McCain in a statement. “Big Wall Street institutions should be free to engage in transactions with significant risk, but not with federally insured deposits. If enacted, the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act would not end Too-Big-to-Fail. But, it would rebuild the wall between commercial and investment banking that was in place for over 60 years, restore confidence in the system, and reduce risk for the American taxpayer.”
Sen. Warren concedes that recent efforts to rein in banks’ risky actions have been fruitful, but she contends that the nation’s largest banks still present a hazard to the economy.
“The four biggest banks are now 30% larger than they were just five years ago,” says the Senator, “and they have continued to engage in dangerous, high-risk practices that could once again put our economy at risk. The 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act will reestablish a wall between commercial and investment banking, make our financial system more stable and secure, and protect American families.”
JIM TRAFICANT ON THE RECORD WITH GRETA -SPEAKS ABOUT AID TO ISRAEL AND RELEASING NON VIOLENT OFFENDERS (VIDEO)
Really Interesting Stuff!!!
http://12160.info/profiles/blogs/jim-traficant-on-the-record
Shermann
Lifting the Veil – Barack Obama and the Failure of Capitalist Democracy (DOCUMENTARY)
http://undergrounddocumentaries.com/lifting-the-veil-barack-obama-and-the-failure-of-capitalist-democracy/
Shermann
Ray McGovern on Bradley Manning Panel
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/post_new.aspx?board_id=15370s
Shermann
Prepper Recon & SGT Report: How Much More TYRANNY Will Americans Take? (VIDEO)
http://investmentwatchblog.com/prepper-recon-sgt-report-how-much-more-tyranny-will-americans-take/
Shermann
This Thorium Reactor Has the Power of a Norse God
http://gizmodo.com/this-thorium-reactor-has-the-power-of-a-norse-god-649185119
The Uranium-235 and -238 we use in modern nuclear fission reactors are humanity's single most energy-dense fuel source (1,546,000,000 MJ/L), but that potent power potential comes at a steep price—and not just during natural disasters. Its radioactive plutonium byproducts remain lethally irradiated for millennia. That's why one pioneering Nordic company is developing an alternative fuel that doesn't produce it.
When uranium is used in a conventional Light Water Reactor, it's converted into plutonium (and if the U238 isotope is used, the result can be fissable Pu239). Even without the danger of weapons-grade plutonium proliferating from a country's stores of radioactive waste, there's not really an easy way to dispose of the byproduct. Our best answer so far has been burying it and hoping for the best. Instead, Thor Energy—a subsidiary of the Oslo-based Scatec group—wants to burn up that store of plutonium to power the very reactors that created it. All its system needs is the addition of thorium. A lot of it.
Luckily, thorium (Th232) is an abundant—albeit slightly radioactive—element. It's estimated to be four times as common as uranium and 500 times as much as U238. It's so common that it's currently treated like a byproduct in the rare-earth mining industry. Problem is, naturally occurring thorium doesn't contain enough of its fissable isotope (Th231) to maintain criticality. But that's where the plutonium comes in. What Thor energy did was mix ceramic thorium oxide (ThO2) with plutonium oxide (nuclear waste) in a 90:10 ratio to create thorium-MOX (mixed-oxide). The thorium oxide acts as a matrix that holds the plutonium in place as its used up.
This stuff could very well revolutionize nuclear power. Thorium-MOX can be formed into rods and used in current generation (Gen II) nuclear reactor with minimal retrofitting. Ceramic thorium has a higher thermal conductivity and melting point than uranium, meaning it can operate at a lower (and safer) internal pellet temperature with less chance of a meltdown, fewer fission gas emissions, and extended fuel cycles.
Most importantly, thorium doesn't convert into plutonium—precisely the opposite, in fact. That is, the process consumes plutonium. We could be looking at a means of not only halting the growth American nuclear waste sites but actually reducing our stores of plutonium while simultaneously reducing the danger of nuclear proliferation. Sure, the thorium system does create waste of i's own, but irradiated thorium doesn't oxidize and remains more stable as it decays. What more could you want?
Thor Energy is currently testing the new technology on the small scale. A prototype reactor will power a paper mill in the town of Halden, Norway for the next five years. If the fuel proves to be commercially viable during that test, we could see a sea change in nuclear power by the end of the decade.
EPIC VIDEO Gerald Celente Calls for 2nd American Revolution (VIDEO)
A Must Listen!!!
http://investmentwatchblog.com/epic-video-gerald-celente-calls-for-2nd-american-revolution/
Shermann
Lindsey Williams – Time Out – Kevin Gallagher – June 2013 (VIDEO)
http://www.lindseywilliams.net/lindsey-williams-time-out-kevin-gallagher-june-2013/
Shermann
Has Washington’s Arrogance Undone Its Empire? — Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/07/01/has-washingtons-arrogance-undone-its-empire-paul-craig-roberts/
No one likes a bully, and Washington’s NATO puppets have been bullied for six decades. British prime ministers, German chancellors, and French presidents have to salute and say “yes sir.”
They all hate it, but they love Washington’s money; so they prostitute themselves and their countries for Washington’s money. Even a person of Winston Churchill’s stature had to suck up to Washington in order to get his bills and his country’s bills paid.
But what the bought European leaders are finding is that Washington doesn’t pay enough for the prostitution required. One year out of office Tony Blair was worth $35 million dollars. But that’s not enough to get Blair on the waiting list for $50 million 200 foot yachts, to have a chalet in Gstaad, $50 million penthouses in Paris and New York, and a private plane to fly between them, or to wear a $736,000 Franck Muller watch on his wrist, sign his name with a $700,000 Mont Blanc jewel-encrusted pen, and drink $10,000 “martinis on a rock” (gin or vodka poured over a diamond) at New York’s Algonquin Hotel.
In a world in which every member of the Forbes Four Hundred is a billionaire plus or multi-billionaire, $35,000,000 just doesn’t cut it. In 2006 the manager of one hedge fund was paid $1,700,000,000 for one year’s thieving. Another 25 were paid $575,000,000 for their skills in front-running trades. $35 million is probably the annual budget for their household servants.
The British seem content in their role as Washington’s favorite lackey, but France and Germany have not enjoyed that role. France’s last real leader, General DeGaul, would have nothing to do with it and refused to join NATO. Germany, dismembered with East Germany occupied by the Soviets, had no choice. Germans’ gratitude to President Reagan for their unification resulted in re-unified Germany falling under Washington’s hegemony.
However, if news reports from Berlin are true, Germany has had enough. The catalyst was Edward Snowden’s revelations that Washington spies on everyone including its allies, both Germany and the EU in particular. Moreover, Washington uses Britain as the Trojan Horse within the EU as a backup spy in case NSA misses something.
According to news reports, the German, French, and EU governments are upset to find out that their extreme subservience to Washington has not protected them and their citizens from being spied upon. Here they are, fighting Washington’s wars in far distant Afghanistan, the fate of which is completely unrelated to their own, and what does Washington do but embarrass them by spying on the personal lives of their citizens.
Who does the Merkel government represent, Germans are asking, Germans or the NSA? Why does the Merkel government kowtow to Washington? The next question will be: “what does Washington’s spies have on Merkel?”
With the German government put on the spot by Washington’s betrayal, news headlines are: “Germany Ready to Charge UK and US Intelligence Over Bugging Operations.”
Little wonder Washington and its media whores hate Edward Snowden. “A spokesman for the [German] Federal Prosecutor said the office was preparing to bring charges against” the UK and US intelligence services. In light of the Snowden affair, it will be wonderful if Germany issues arrest warrants and Washington and London refuse to extradite its NSA and UK spy operatives who have violated every law and every trust.
The German Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenburger, demanded an “immediate explanation” why Washington was applying to Germany policies “reminiscent of the actions against enemies during the Cold War.”
The president of France has said that France will not again cooperate with Washington on any issue until France receives “full assurances” that Washington will cease spying on France.
The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, and the EU Commissioner for Justice, Viviane Reding, demand Washington’s answer to Snowden’s revelations that Washington has betrayed its own allies.
The question that must be asked is: do any of these protests from politicians who are
almost certain to be on Washington’s payroll mean anything, or are they just make-believe protests to quiet the domestic European populations who have been betrayed by their elected leaders? Why would the French president and the German justice minister think any reassurance from Washington meant anything? When in human memory has Washington told the truth about anything? When has Washington’s reassurance meant anything?
The Tonkin Gulf? Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Iranian nukes? Assad’s sarin gas attack? FBI orchestrated “terror attacks”? It is a proven fact that the US government lies every time it opens its mouth. Compared to Washington, Stalin, Hitler, Tojo, Mao, Castro, Chavez, and Pol Pot were truthful.
Washington’s reply to Europe’s demands for explanation is: “We will discuss these issues bilaterally with EU member states,” but “we are not going to comment publicly on specific alleged intelligence activities.”
You know what that means. Bilateral means that Washington is going to talk with each EU country separately, using the information NSA has obtained to blackmail each complainant into silence. Whereas the EU together could stand up to Washington, separately the countries can be browbeat and offered more money or threats that illicit love affairs will be revealed to shut them up. Washington is betting on its power to intimidate individual countries with the threat of isolation and being cut off from money. If the EU countries agree to the secret bilateral explanations from Washington, the affair will end and the spying on Europe will continue while Washington and the EU politicians deny that the spying continues.
By now the entire world must know that Washington is not merely lawless, but also totally out of control, reveling in arrogance and hubris, driven by desires for hegemony over the entire world. Washington is so paranoid and distrustful that it doesn’t even trust its own citizens or the European puppet governments that it has bought and paid for.
Washington is the only government that has ever used nuclear weapons, and Washington used them against a defeated government that was trying to surrender. Today the craziness in Washington is much worse. Decision-making councils are full of crazed neoconservative war-mongers, such as National Security Advisor Susan Rice, a threat to humanity. Washington think tanks and media are over-represented by neoconservatives such as William Kristol who wants to know “what good are nuclear weapons if you can’t use them?”
The sleazy European politicians and media who took Washington’s money provided for their own economic security, but they betrayed the security of the entire world. By enabling Washington’s hegemony, they unleashed Washington’s arrogance. This arrogance now threatens not merely the independence of every country but life on earth.
Instead of meeting unilaterally alone with Washington, the European countries should
stand together. After all, supposedly there is an EU. If there is an EU, Washington should meet with the EU, not with its constituent parts individually, no one of which can stand up to Washington’s intimidation and bribes.
If thermo-nuclear war is to be avoided and life is to continue on earth, Europe must disband NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in the aftermath of World War II. Its purpose was to prevent the powerful Red Army, which defeated Nazi Germany, from overrunning all of Western Europe.
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, 22 years ago. Yet, NATO still exists. Moreover, against President Reagan’s intentions, NATO has grown. NATO now includes former constituent parts of the Soviet Empire, such as Eastern Europe, and former constituent parts of the Soviet Union itself, such as Georgia, the government of which is bought and paid for by Washington. The NGOs that Washington funds might even deliver Ukraine into Washington’s fold.
Egged on by Washington, Georgia initiated a war with present day Russia, which superior Russian forces quickly ended. In the opinion of many, the Russian government showed far too much tolerance for its defeated enemy, which is being rearmed by Washington and encouraged into new military adventures. Washington is working to make Georgia, located in Asia between the Black and Caspian seas, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO membership would make Georgia a treaty protectorate of Washington and its NATO puppets. Washington thinks that this elevation of Georgia would result in Russia acquiescing to Georgian aggression in order to avoid war with the US and NATO.
China, also, has been amazingly abused by Washington, and instead of replying in kind, has taken it in stride. This magnanimity on the part of the Chinese has been misinterpreted by Washington as fear. The fear that Washington imagines is causing China to quake in its boots has encouraged Washington to surround China with new naval, air, and troop bases. The fact that however numerous are Washington’s bases in the Pacific and South China Sea, Washington itself is an ICBM away has not registered on the ignorant scum that rules Amerika. Overwhelmed by its hubris, Washington threatens all life on earth.
Bush & Cheney Knew About 9/11 Months Before It Happened Says Whistleblower Charged Under Patriot Act (VDEO)
http://xrepublic.tv/node/4142
Shermann
French President Demands Obama STOP Spying On EU Countries Or ALL Agreements Are NULL & VOID! (VIDEO)
http://xrepublic.tv/node/4148
Shermann
Here's what must be done to set the country back on the proper path of liberty:
1. End the Fed.
2. End the Income Tax (instant economic boom)
3. Renounce their debt and declare a restart (jubilee)
4. End the military empire
5. End the alphabet soup agencies
6. Return to constitutional money based on gold and silver
Noam Chomsky (2013) Full Discussion with Jeremy Scahill and Amy Goodman
Great Perspective Here!!!
Jeremy Scahill’s “Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield” (VIDEO)
A View of the U.S. Foreign Policy...
http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/jeremy-scahills-dirty-wars-the-world-is-a-battlefield/48942
Shermann
Krugman Points His Finger at Austerity
http://libertycrier.com/channels/krugman-points-his-finger-at-austerity/?utm_source=The+Liberty+Crier&utm_campaign=b38b68fdbf-The_Liberty_Crier_Daily_News_6_28_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_600843dec4-b38b68fdbf-284729081
In his essay on the revisionism of Harry Elmer Barnes and the Cold War, Murray Rothbard referred to those “intellectuals” who had as their main task, the chore of “spin[ning] the apologia for the new dispensation in return for wealth, power, and prestige at the hands of the State and its allied ‘Establishment.’” These “Establishment hacks” were appropriately titled the “Court Intellectuals.”
Which is of course intended to make it plain that they are paid to inform the public on behalf of the “King” and his agenda.
Reading Krugman over the years always reminds me of the description of the court intellectual. Perhaps it was John Maynard Keynes, the premier economist of the last century, that could be titled the ultimate “Court Economist,” but Krugman has certainly labored hard to follow the Keynesian path to State-approval and official recognition.
In a recent post, Krugman plays his role well. Overplaying the differences between the political parties in Washington, Krugman makes it clear that “the destructive turn toward austerity” has proven to be the chief source of our recent economic woes. This, naturally, is what one would expect him to say. This is his job. No matter the case, Krugman’s goal is to come out on the side that there is never enough spending, and any economic stimulus that makes it through congress is never enough.
This is wise. By immediately making it plain that the stimulus is too small, the path is paved for a larger stimulus in the future after the small stimulus fails. This has been his tactic for over a decade, since back when he called for the housing bubble (which was a great cause of the crash of 2008). So the words in this NYT piece are nothing new in the least.
The problems with Krugman’s piece are many. Firstly, his immediate use of the term austerity is incredibly misleading and misapplied. His definition of austerity is simply slashing government spending in a weak economy. But this is not what austerity means in a political sense. Austerity is a means by which the government accepts rising interest rates, moves to pay back its debts via increased taxation, and shifts its expenditures away from “growth” and toward “debt.” In other words, austerity has little to do with “slashing spending,” and everything to do with actually paying off the “bankers.”
Austerity is the effort the banking lobby promotes if there is a threat of government default. The problem with Krugman’s description of austerity is that he wants to apply it to (fiscal) conservatives. This is a tough issue to address because it calls for questioning the official political spectrum. In short, the so-called conservatives are not so conservative compared to the traditional standard of conservatism. In many ways, the self-described conservatives in the GOP are more liberal than they are conservative. The reason I bring this up is to point out that the true conservative position on this issue is near-impossible to find in Washington today.
The true fiscal “conservative” position on this issue is to simply repudiate the debt –which is to say that the taxpayers ought to just say “no” to the bankers. The conservative position is not to accept “austerity” in order to pay back its debts. Why? Because the conservative believes that the State has no right to draw in the masses to great measures of debt in the first place. Therefore, for Krugman to place blame on the conservatives for their austerity measures is misleading, I think. Although I must admit to apply “conservative” to this view puts far too much hope in the conservative movement, which is largely bankrupt itself. ”Libertarians” must take up this mantle.
Further, the reader must understand that Krugman’s war against the “austerians” (not to be confused with “Austrians”) is misguided simply because we have had no austerity. Krugman must surely prove his case that US government expenditures have been cut in order to call a “turn toward austerity” as destructive. The problem is that he would have an impossible task if he sought to make the case the United State government has actually cut a dime. In fact, Krugman is one to wail about the “dangerous sequester cuts,” which of course, add to Federal expenditures. Krugman is in dangerous territory because the critic can simply point out that spending increases are the recent cause of our economic woes.
The question we should be asking Krugman is: “what austerity?”
But of course Krugman’s main point in this piece is not austerity itself, but rather the assumption that economic stimulus has a political tendency to be cut far too soon. He mentions FDR’s New Deal and Obama’s Recovery Act. Accusing the two Presidents of scaling “back much too soon,” Krugman aims to point out that it was precisely this “scaling back” which caused economic downturn.
Now, the Austrian economist is actually not too much in disagreement here at the surface. But of course, for very different reasons. For the Austrian, it was the stimulus itself which misdirected resources and cause an unsustainable boom which necessarily led to a recession. The stimulus itself was the disease and therefore the Austrian knew that, like a drug-addicted kid who doesn’t get his fix, once the stimulus ended, the pain would begin. Krugman wants to give the kid his fix so that he feels better. The Austrian wants the kid to be healed of his addiction.
Moreover, Krugman is right to say that the stimulus itself was not permanent (in both cases), but this does not mean that spending was cut. In fact, this is the free-market complaint. It is true that the post-stimulus expenditures did not grow at the same rate as they did in the stimulus era, but it is also true that the number of dollars spent was never cut back. This is the ratchet effect which Krugman denies. But in neither stated case did spending actually fall.
The primary issue with Krugman’s analysis is displayed toward the end of his article when his states that “the key measure you want to look at is the ration of debt to GDP, which measures the government’s fiscal position better than a simple dollar number.” This is precisely his problem and precisely my issue with the Keynesian thesis. Their ratio is more important than the numbers themselves. This leads to the effect of forgetting the true debt and spending levels and is the source of the statistician’s refusal to consider looming interest rate hikes, looming tax hikes, and an eventual decision to either repudiate the debt or else call for austerity. By not focusing on actual numbers, Krugman is refusing to realize that the political ramifications of the increased spending are coming around with a vengeance. Austerity could lead to mass riots (like in Europe) and debt repudiation could lead to massive financial crashes.
What will happen when no one wants to lend to the government and the economy fails to produce the revenue levels required to keep the government going?
Krugman does not consider the scenario. Instead he denounces an austerity which does not exist and calls for a U-turn, by which he simply means an increase in spending and stimulus: a new fix for the drug-addict.
Will “tightening our belts” cause more unemployment, more pain? It will certainly deprive the very wealthy of their false prosperity. But after the immediate pain, it will be the much needed trigger to start accumulating real wealth rather than more layers of debt.
I too want a U-turn. Away from debt, central banking, and recession. And toward prosperity and market-based capitalism for a change.
Bank of International Settlements Warning of a Bond Crisis on the Way
Thursday, June 27, 2013 10:24
From 2007 the crises have grown - Central Banks can’t fix it alone!
Whether it is Bill Gross of Pimco, Marc Faber, ourselves or so very many competent analysts in the financial world, to a man, are warning of the destructive power of rising interest rates. Now in addition to all of us, we have the central banker of central bankers, the Bank of International Settlements, giving a serious warning to developed world governments that it is perhaps too late to rely on growth to rescue the global economy from deflation.
To their credit, central banks in the developed world have, in their supportive way, given muted recommendations of a similar nature, that governments and the entire political system should be instituting programs that stimulate economic activity from the ground up. But over the last six years after discussion after discussion, they have failed to give fundamental stimulative support to central banks to get developed world economies going. The democratic process itself, whether in the U.S. or in the Eurozone has conspired through partisan or national agendas to defeat a united move to stimulate growth even without intending to!
Governments have made considerable efforts to reinforce the banking system, on which they depend for the working of the system, but have largely ignored the needs and aspirations of their voting base. We now look at not only ‘hung’ governments, but a disjoint from the people they represent. Consequently, the most pressing problems facing their electorate, the economic ones, have been badly mishandled, neglected or just plain ignored.
After the ‘credit crunch’ of 2007/2008, involving ‘just’ the banking system, which nearly brought it down, U.S. efforts to ‘fix’ the problem simply let it continue with some capital buffers, but the underlying problem has not really been addressed [the levees have been raised but another ‘storm surge’ could still knock them down]. After that we have seen the Sovereign debt crisis of the Eurozone nearly spread a destructive solvency crisis among the weaker members of the E.U. Not only have the problems there not been fixed [yes, the levees have been raised there too], but the structural problems have been starkly highlighted through awful unemployment levels, [56% among the youth 26% overall in the weaker member nations] but not fixed.
Out of these structural problems not only do we find social unrest rising, but the people generally are expressing their disappointment in the democratic system as never before, feeling as they do the victims of government and banking failures.
And now we are warned of a coming storm surge that so many now forecast, that of rising interest rates. Despite the fact, known from the beginning of the ‘credit crunch’, that central banking ‘cures’ are not enough by themselves, the developed world has relied on them to solve the crises. No doubt they will also be the scapegoats when the storm surges overwhelm the levees.
The Bank of International Settlements Warning
The Bank of International Settlements has warned that Banks face another global financial crisis worse than 2007-8 as a $10 trillion central bank bond mountain leaves them perilously exposed to higher interest rates.
The Federal Reserve recently triggered a global tightening of interest rates with hints it may start to wind down its money printing as soon as this September.
Bondholders
The problem is that higher interest rates mean lower bond prices, and the banks are full of this supposedly safe debt. HSBC perhaps the most conservative of the world’s large banks has 42% of its balance sheet in U.S. bonds.
When interest rates go up the banks make losses on their huge bond portfolios as yields rise and prices fall. Global central banks have accumulated $10 trillion in bonds that will also face massive losses. The B.I.S. says, ‘Someone must ultimately hold the interest rate risk. As foreign and domestic banks would be among those experiencing the losses, interest rate increases pose risks to the stability of the financial system if not executed with great care.’
The B.I.S. has issued an urgent appeal for fiscal and monetary prudence well after the horse has bolted. They continue, “Public debt in most advanced economies has reached unprecedented levels in peacetime,’ says the report. ‘Even worse, official debt statistics understate the true scale of fiscal problems. The belief that governments do not face a solvency constraint is a dangerous illusion. Bond investors can and do punish governments hard and fast. Governments must redouble their efforts to ensure that their fiscal trajectories are sustainable. Growth will simply not be high enough on its own. Postponing the pain carries the risk of forcing consolidation under stress which is the current situation in a number of countries in southern Europe.’
The BIS sees the global economy heading for a 1994-style bond market crash.
A ‘credit crunch’ in China?
A recent spike in short-term interest rates well above 30% caught China and the world by surprise. Today the overnight repurchase rate today is 6.5%, which is more than double this year’s average. While the Chinese government has almost total control over its banking system, if the situation is manageable, they will manage it.
But what can the Chinese government really do now, having made its policy errors many years ago?
China, because of Capital Controls is largely immune from any storm surge that may come from outside, as interest rates rise in the U.S., but with its $3.3 trillion in reserves mainly invested in the U.S. dollar and its bonds, the actions they must now be taking could have a severe impact on the US. Treasury markets.
Consequences
The picture being painted since 2007 is one of a steadily decaying monetary system that has been ‘patched up’ as we have moved along. No real reformation needed to halt the decay has taken place. If it had the B.I.S. would not have needed to issue such a warning and a dire one at that. The measures taken over the last six years have averted a collapse of the monetary system but not much more. And now we have one that could see the reinforced levees giving way under the weight of interest rate rises.
The concept that ‘cash is king’ usually took hold ahead of interest rate rises at the end of a boom, but the only ‘boom’ we have had has been cosmetic. Growth remains fragile at the early stage of a recovery even at 2%, in the U.S. and in a recession still in the Eurozone. This means that interest rate rises will undercut any economic recovery and send it into a long deflation, because of the failure of the last six years to resuscitate economies. Confidence will collapse, taking hope away.
But the legacy of the massive increases in money supply over the last few years, combined with a slip into deflation, will, as we have persistently forecast over the last six years, take away the ability of the central bankers to keep the banking system solvent. As prices fall in bank held debt, balance sheet problems of asset values will once again create the crisis the B.I.S. is warning about. But this time higher levees will just not be enough.
The consequences to gold
The gold price has fallen of late, 20+%. Most of this was a well-engineered ‘bear-raid’, but it is still deterring buyers and the price is still slipping. As we saw in 2007/8 the gold price fell similarly among fears of deflation then too. But then came the facet of gold that it has always had. It is both an asset and international cash. And we live in a global world now, where the effect one major economic bloc has on the next is huge. They just can’t ignore one another’s financial plights. It is the global nature of gold’s acceptance that is likely to cause it to be recognized once more as global money facilitating the functioning of the monetary system.
In the past when interest rates rose, gold as an asset did fall, but this time interest rates will not rise because of the growing health of economies, but will undermine economic growth. Will central banks then return once more to QE to bring rates down? Undoubtedly they will, but by this time financial markets will be fully mercurial. Interest rate rises will then not be a confidence builder, as economic recovery proves resilient, but a destructive force on confidence, as economic growth once more sags. At this point the developed world, at least, will have moved into ‘extreme times’, such as leave financial and monetary systems in doubt.
Many analysts look at gold in the context of 1933’s confiscation as solely a function of the internal monetary system. But now such a confiscation could easily happen in the context of the global monetary system, where gold reinforces the international roles of local currencies. Indeed, the reasons behind the 1933 confiscation of gold will not apply in the future, because gold has an entirely different monetary role now. It is its international role in the global economy that becomes pertinent. When global extreme times take hold the number of ounces of gold a nation has to back up its currency on the international scene, will be critical to the level of confidence its national currency inspires.
In a multi-currency monetary system, gold will have a place, one that supports and facilitates it in its present form. Bearing in mind that the interest rate rises will not be restricted to the U.S. but spread far and wide, many economies will slide into recession. “Carry Trade” dollars will be unwound and return home hitting exchange rates the world over and likely undermine growth in countries where the dollars were invested. It is in such extreme times that currencies will need to have confidence in them reinforced. This is where gold comes in.
We believe the B.I.S. warning should also be seen in that global context.
see the link below for the full report...
http://www.kitco.com/ind/AuthenticMoney/2013-06-27-Bank-of-International-Settlements-warning-of-a-Bond-Crisis-on-the-way.html
Lindsey Williams – Radio Preacher Man – Brian Wilson – June 2013 - VIDEO
Always a Must Listen!!!
http://www.lindseywilliams.net/lindsey-williams-radio-preacher-man-brian-wilson-june-2013-post/
Shermann
Jeff Rense & Yoichi Shimatsu - The NSA Surveillance Outrage (VIDEO)
Yoichi is Great!!!
Jeff Rense & Yoichi Shimatsu - The NSA Surveillance Outrage
Shermann
Jeremy Scahill On “Dirty Wars” And U.S. National Security (VIDEO)
A Great Listen!!!
libertycrier.com/government/jeremy-scahill-on-dirty-wars-and-u-s-national-security/?utm_source=The+Liberty+Crier&utm_campaign=9433e62384-The_Liberty_Crier_Daily_News_6_26_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_600843dec4-9433e62384-284729081
Shermann
Sibel Edmonds Blows the Whistle on Government Blackmailing (VIDEO)
A Must Listen Interview!!!
http://xrepublic.tv/node/3990
Shermann
This sums it up nicely..........
Presidential Rule by Deception: Obama, the Master Con-man
By Prof. James Petras
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35413.htm
June 25, 2013 "Information Clearing House - In an electoral system, run by and for a corporate oligarchy, deception and demagoguery are essential elements – entertaining the people while working for the wealthy.
Every US President has engaged, in one fashion or another, in ‘play acting’ to secure popular approval, neutralize hostility and distract voters from the reactionary substance of their foreign and domestic policies.
Every substantive policy is accompanied by a ‘down home’ folksy message to win public approval. This happened with President ‘Jimmy’ Carter’s revival of large-scale proxy wars in Afghanistan in the post-Viet Nam War period; Ronald Reagan’s genocidal wars in Central America, George Bush Sr.’s savaging of Iraq in the First Gulf War; ‘Bill’ Clinton’s decimation of social welfare in the US while bombing civilians in Yugoslavia and deregulating Wall Street; George Bush Jr.’s invasion and partition of Iraq and Afghanistan, the attempted coup in Venezuela and massive tax cuts for the rich; and Barack Obama’s staggering bailout of the biggest Wall Street speculators, unprecedented launching of five consecutive wars, and arrest and deportation of millions of immigrant workers. Each President has elaborated a style in order to ingratiate himself with the public while pursuing his reactionary agenda.
In rhetoric, appearance and in public persona, it is ‘de rigueur’ for US Presidents to present themselves as an ‘everyman’ while committing political actions – including war crimes worthy of prosecution.
Each President, in his ‘play acting’, develops a style suitable to the times. They constantly strive to overcome the public’s suspicion and potential hostility to their overt and covert policies designed to build empire as domestic conditions deteriorate. However, not all play acting is the same: each President’s ‘populist’ style in defense of oligarchic interests has its characteristic nuances.
The Carter Feint: ‘Human Rights’ Wars in the Post-Viet Nam War Era
‘Jimmy’ Carter was elected President at a time of the greatest mass anti-war upheaval in US history. His campaign projected a soft-spoken, conciliatory President from humble roots reaching out to the anti-war electorate and solemnly pledging to uphold human rights against domestic militarists and their overseas despotic allies. To that end, he appointed a liberal human rights advocate Pat Derian to the State Department and a veteran Cold Warrior, Zbigniew (Zbig) Brzezinski, as National Security Advisor and foreign policy strategist.
Duplicity reared its head immediately: Carter openly criticized the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua – while privately telling the dictator to ignore the public criticisms and assuring him of continuing US support.[1] As the Sandinista revolution advanced toward victory, Carter convoked a meeting of Latin American leaders urging them to join in a joint military intervention with the US to ‘save lives’ and to prevent the popular Nicaraguan revolution from taking power and dismantling the dictator’s army. It soon became clear to the leaders of Latin America that Carter’s mission was a thinly- veiled ‘humanitarian’ version of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ and they declined. When Carter realized that, without the fig leaf of Latin American participation, a US-led invasion would arouse universal opposition, he abandoned the project. The political climate would not support a unilateral US invasion so soon after the end of the war in Indochina .
However, Carter soon re-launched the Cold War, reviving military spending and pouring billions of dollars into funding, arming and training tens of thousands of fundamentalist Jihadists from around the world to invade Afghanistan and overthrow its leftist, secular government.
Carter’s policy of re-militarization and launching of large-scale and long-term secret CIA operations in alliance with the most brutal dictators and monarchs of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan was accompanied by sanctimonious speeches about human rights and token appeals to protect ‘civilians’. In this regard, Carter became our founding father of the double discourse: a con man that publically condemned the jailing and torture by Pinochet of political opponents in Chile while orchestrating what would become a decade-long blood bath in Afghanistan with millions of victims.
Reagan: Geniality with Genocide
Up until the ascendancy of Barack Obama, the avuncular President, Ronald Reagan, was acknowledged as the ‘master con-man’, by virtue of his Hollywood acting experience. Reagan was and remained a disciplined and hardened backer of policies designed to concentrate wealth while smashing unions, even as he entertained the flag-waving hard hat construction workers with his jokes about ‘limousine liberals’ and Cadillac welfare queens. The knowing wink and clever two-liners were matched by an adaptation of morality tales from his cowboy films. Reagan, in his role as ‘the righteous sheriff’, backed the mercenary contras as they invaded Nicaragua and destroyed schools and clinics and the genocidal military dictators in El Salvador and Guatemala who murdered hundreds of thousands of Indians and peasants.
Uncle Reagan’s friendly chats would describe how he had stopped the communist ‘outlaws’ (peasants, workers and Indians) of Central America from flooding across the Rio Grande and invading California and Texas. His tales resonated with mass audiences familiar with the racist Hollywood cowboy film version of unshaven Mexican bandits crossing the ‘ US ’ border. The clean-shaven, straight-talking, ‘stand-up for America’ President Ronald Reagan was elected and re-elected by a resounding majority in the midst of CIA-backed mujahedeen victories over the government and secular civil structure of Afghanistan, Pentagon- supported Israeli slaughter of Palestinian refugees in their camps in Lebanon and the mass genocide of scores of thousands of indigenous villagers in Guatemala.
When news reports seeped out about the mass graves of poor villagers in Guatemala , Reagan resorted to colloquial language right out of a Hollywood film to defend General Rios Mont : “He’s getting a bum rap”. In defending the brutal dictator of Guatemala , Reagan replaced Carter’s sanctimonious phrasing in favor of down-to-earth macho talk of a no-nonsense sheriff.
In substance, both Carter and Reagan were rebuilding the US war machine after the debacle of Viet Nam ; they were setting up a global network of client dictators, Muslim fundamentalists and hypocritical Anglo-American humanitarians interventionists.
Bush Senior: Uni-Polarity and the Ticket to Uncontested Imperial Conquests
Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, the US and Western Europe re-conquered, pillaged and neo-colonized Eastern Europe . West Germany annexed East Germany . And a predator-gangster oligarchy in Russia seized over a trillion dollars of public assets, impoverishing millions and laundered the illicit funds via elaborate banking operations on Wall Street and in London and Tel Aviv.
President George Bush Sr. embraced the doctrine of a unipolar world – free from rival super-power constraints and independent Third World resistance. ‘Poppy’ Bush believed the US could impose its will by force anywhere and at any time without fear of retaliation. He believed he was heir to a new imperial order of free markets, free elections and unrestrained plunder. The first war he would launch would be in the Middle East – the invasion, massive bombing and destruction of Iraq . It was followed by an unprecedented expansion of NATO bases in the countries of Eastern Europe . The spread of neo-liberalism led to the naked pillage of public assets throughout Latin American and Eastern Europe . The Empire ruled the Muslim world through an arc of client dictators from Tunisia , Egypt , and Saudi Arabia to Pakistan .
Bush adopted the persona of the ‘happy warrior’ – the invincible American President who had triumphed over the Evil Empire. Meanwhile, the domestic economy deteriorated under the enormous costs of the massive military build-up and gave rise to a crisis that hurt the electorate. Bush’s personal rigidity and lack of theatricality prevented him from playing the con-man – unlike his predecessor, the actor Reagan. Even as he extolled the prowess of the US military, his career as an ‘insider’ corporate operative and CIA director did not provide him with the demagogic skills necessary for a successful re-election.
While Bush celebrated his overseas victories, he failed to attract a popular following: His pinched face and wooden upper-crust smile was no match for ‘Cowboy’ Reagan’s street corner geniality or even ‘Jimmy’ Carter’s pious intonations of human rights and Christian values … Deception and demagoguery are crucial elements in a re-election campaign – and so Bush, Sr. gave way for the next Presidential con-man-in-chief, Bill Clinton.
The Clinton-Con: Black Churches , Welfare Cuts and the Wall Street Warrior
Bill Clinton, like Ronald Reagan, turned out to be a Wall Street populist .With his folksy Arkansas intonations he preached messages of hope in black churches while diligently applying the free-market lessons he had learned from his Wall Street mentors. Tooting the saxophone and oozing compassion, Clinton told the poor that he could ‘feel their pain’, while inflicting misery on single mothers forced to leave their children and take minimum-wage jobs in order to retain any public assistance. He joined hands with labor union bosses at Labor Day festivities, while fast-tracking job-killing free-trade treaties (like NAFTA) that devastated the American working class. Bill Clinton enthusiastically sent bombers over Belgrade and other Yugoslav cities for several weeks, destroying its factories, hospitals, schools, power plants, radio and TV stations and bridges, as well as the Chinese Embassy, in support of the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army and its separatist war against Belgrade . Clinton bombed civilians and their vital infrastructure, a war crime in the name of ‘humanitarian intervention’, to the ecstatic cheers of many Western liberals, progressives, social democrats and not a few Marxists as well as many Jihadists. On the home front, this self-proclaimed ‘people’s candidate’ ripped to shreds all restraints on banking speculation by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, New Deal legislation enacted to protect against massive banking swindles. This opened the floodgates to massive financial manipulation, which destroyed the pensions of many millions of workers.[2]
Clinton’s policies laid the groundwork for the information technology and Stock Market crash of 2000-01. His appointee, Alan Greenspan, created the conditions leading to speculative financial frenzy and subsequent economic crash of 2008. Bill Clinton’s stand-up comic performances in black churches, his back slapping encounters with labor bureaucrats and his embrace of feminists and others just raised the rhetorical bar for future aspiring Wall Street warlords in the White House. It would take eight years and the election of Barack Hussein Obama to finally surpass Bill Clinton as Con-Man-In Chief.
Bush Junior: A Yale Man with a Texas Drawl
President George Bush, Junior’s regime launched two major wars and backed two Israeli assaults on Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza – the world’s largest open-air prison. He virtually eliminated taxes on billionaires while overseeing the geometrical growth of the domestic police state apparatus; and he unleashed the biggest speculative bubble and crash since the Great Depression. He lowered the living standards for all Americans except the top 10% of the population – and despite these disasters and despite his lack-luster performance as a con-man, he was re-elected.
His handlers and backers did their best to market their boy: his Ivy League credentials and New England background was replaced by a transparently phony Texas accent; tinny, whiney sound bites, reminiscent of his father’s, were replaced by a Texas ‘ranchers’ homely drawl. His ‘just-folks’ grammatical mistakes may have been mocked by the liberals but they resonated deeply with fundamentalist Christians – who would never have recognized the Phillips Exeter Academy-Yale Skull and Bones boy in their Commander-in Chief.
President Bush, Jr. was decked out in the uniform of a ‘Top Gun’ fighter pilot to polish his military credentials tarnished by revelations that the millionaire-playboy had gone AWOL during his service in the National Guard. His silly ‘Mission Accomplished’ claim that the Iraq war had been won in the first months after the invasion was rudely corrected by the huge outbreak of Iraqi resistance against the occupier. Bush handed over foreign policymaking, especially pertaining to the Middle East , to a small army of Jewish Zionists, aided and abetted by notorious militarists, like Cheney and Rumsfeld. Most major political events were handled by his Cabinet thugs – Secretary of State Colin Powell shamelessly fabricated the ‘evidence’ of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction in his performance before the United Nations. Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz invented Afghanistan ’s ties to the planners of 9/11.
Cheney and his Zionist troika of Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and ‘Scooter’ Libby trumpeted the ‘global war on terror’ while Michael Chertoff, Michael Mukasey and Stuart Levey conducted a domestic war against the Bill of Rights and US Constitutional freedoms, defending torture, jailing thousands of Muslims, punishing businesses trading with Iran and labeling US opponents of Israel’s war crimes as ‘security threats’. Bush, Jr. just nodded his approval, letting the “big fellas have a piece of the action”. With Junior, there was no peace demagoguery just plain talk to plain folks and- “Let the bombs fall and the Capital flow”. Bush did not have to go preaching to black churches (he had a black Secretary of State and National Security Adviser to do his dirty work without the cant); Bush never claimed that Israel got the ‘bum rap’ when it was charged with genocidal crimes. Under Bush, Jr., war criminals did not have to ‘sugar-coat’ their crimes. While occupying the White House, Bush signed off on the multi-trillion-dollar bailout for Wall Street and then just went off to tend his cows and chop wood at the Texas ranch.
Bush’s ‘style’ was a combination of ‘laid back’ and ‘straight forward’: he simply committed war crimes, protected Wall Street swindles and expanded the police state, without claiming otherwise. As the endless wars dragged on, as the stock market flopped under its own fraud and manipulation and the increasingly repressive legislation provoked debate, Bush just shrugged his shoulders and finished out his term in office without flourish or fanfare: “Y’all can’t win ‘em all. Let the next guy try his hand”.
Barack Obama: The Master of Deceit
From the beginning of his Presidential campaign, Obama demonstrated his proficiency as the master of all cons. He spoke passionately against torture while consulting with the torturers; he condemned Wall Street speculators while appointing key Street operatives as economic advisers. He promised a new deal in the Middle East , especially for Palestinians and then appointed a dual citizen, Israeli-US, Rahm Emmanuel (son of an Israeli Irgun terrorist) to be his most intimate Presidential advisor. Honolulu born and bred, Barack modulated his voice according to the audience, adopting a Baptist minister’s cadence for the black audiences while assuming the professorial tone of an Ivy League lawyer for his Wall Street contributors.
He hob-knobbed with Hollywood celebrities and Silicon billionaires, who bankrolled the fairy tale of his ‘historic breakthrough’ – the First Afro-American President who would speak for all Americans – nay for the entire world! Millions of giddy camp followers, white, black, old and young, the trade unionists and community activists alike were willingly deceived. They had chosen to disregard the fact that Barack Obama’s key advisers were rabid militarists, big bankers, corporate CEO’s, die-hard Zionists and Wall Street manipulators.
Indeed Obama’s supporters were enchanted by the phony rhetoric, the demagogy, the ‘populist style’, and the fake ‘authenticities’. Here was the man who promised to end the wars, close the torture concentration camp in Guantanamo , bring Wall Street to heel, repeal the Patriot Act and restore the Bill of Rights. And he was ‘their guy’ – shooting hoops in an urban playground – something Bush had never done! In truth, Barack Hussein Obama did a lot that Bush never dared to do – he surpassed Bush by far in committing war crimes against humanity – pushing for more military adventures abroad and police state repression at home. He exceeded by far any President in US history in assuming dictatorial police powers, in waging multiple wars while directing the massive transfer of state revenues to Wall Street bankers. President Obama, hands down, will be regarded as the greatest con-man President in American history. The Carters, Reagans and Clintons all pale in comparison: the enormous gap between style and substance, promise and performance, peace and war, capital and labor has never been greater.
It is President Obama’s hollow eloquence that raised the hopes of millions at home and abroad only to condemn them to an inferno of endless wars. It is the perversity of his rhetoric which attracts the Latino vote with promises of immigrant citizenship while his policy has been fill detention centers with hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers and their families. His soaring rhetoric promising justice for Muslims in Cairo was followed by the bloody bombing of Tripoli, the torture and slaughter of the Libyan patriot President Gadhafi; the broken promises to the Palestinians contrasts with the embrace of the bloody Israeli warlords.
Obama far out-paced President Bush’s drone attacks in Pakistan , Yemen and Afghanistan , bombings which targeted farmers, whole families and famished orphans in their schools. Soaring moral and ethical pronouncements accompany Obama’s arming and praising the 40,000 Muslim fundamentalist mercenaries sent to degrade and shatter the secular Syrian state. The pretexts for mass killing fall from his lips like maggots on a rotten corpse: his blatant lies about the use of poison gas in Syria as the government in Damascus confronts a foreign mercenary invasion; the lurid tales of fabricated massacres in Benghazi ( Libya ) and the false claims of stolen elections in Venezuela . Obama’s rhetoric converts executioners into victims and victims into executioners.
President Barack Obama promised a comprehensive health care overhaul for America and then presented the electorate with a confusing series of obligatory payments for plans designed by for-profit private health insurance companies. Obama ‘defended social security’ by raising the age of retirement, ensuring that hundreds of thousands of workers in hazardous occupations would die before ever receiving any benefits after a lifetime of obligatory contributions. Obama solemnly promised to defend Medicare and then proposed to reduce its budget by a trillion dollars over a decade.
Obama claims a presidential prerogative of ‘defending American interests’ by ordering the assassination of whomever his million-member secret police state apparatus designates as a security threat – including American citizens – without trial, without recourse to habeas corpus.
In the White House Rose Garden President Barack Obama strolls arm-in-arm with his wife and children, a family man, true to his promises… While in Aleppo a young teen, a street vendor, is beheaded before his parents and neighbors by fanatical ‘freedom-fighters’ praised and supported by the President. The boy’s alleged crime was blasphemy. The murdered teen has joined the scores of thousands of Syrians killed and the hundreds of thousands who will join them, as Obama has decided to openly arm the mercenaries.
Casual, open collar, President Obama jokes as he walks and talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the sumptuous estate of a California billionaire, offering friendship and peace – shaking hands for the cameras with a scorpion in his palm. The smiling Obama has ceaselessly dispatched his envoys to Asia, Latin America, Oceana and Africa to incite claims and conflicts against Beijing . Obama believes that his own ‘personal magic’ will blind the Chinese to the fact that China is being encircled by US air and maritime bases. He seems to believe that the Chinese will ignore his efforts to forge US-centered trade pacts which specifically exclude China .
The master ‘confidence-man’ sincerely believes in his power to move and mystify the public, pick the pockets of his adversaries and make his victims believe they have been in the presence of a world-class statesman. In fact, Obama has been playing the role of a street hustler living off the earnings and lives of his people while handing them over to his corporate bosses and pimps for Israel .
Obama fills internment camps with hundreds of thousands of Latino immigrant workers while promising a ‘roadmap to citizenship’ to the cheers of Mexican-American Democratic Party vote hustlers!
Obama received 95% of the Afro-American votes, while the income gap between blacks and whites widens and unemployment and poverty figures soar. Obama, the first ‘Afro-American President’, has bombed and intervened in more African countries, backing mercenary armies in Libya and Somalia and establishing more military bases throughout the black continent than the last five ‘white’ Presidents … So much for the self-proclaimed “historic breakthrough of a Black President ending centuries of racism”.
It’s enough for Obama to appoint other black police state thugs and foreign interventionists, like Eric Holder and Susan Rice, to win the cheers of liberals even as their own security files grow in the data warehouses of the world’s biggest spying agencies.
One cynic, commenting on the long-standing love affair between Obama and white liberals, observed that ‘the more he screws them the better they like him … Even as he marches them off to jail, they would take care to note on his behalf, that the barred windows have curtains – something Bush would never have allowed.’
Conclusion
For sheer span of broken promises, of systematic lies in pursuit of wars and financial manipulation in the name of peace and social justice , of consistent and bold aggrandizement of executive power over the life and death of US citizens in the name of security, Obama has set the standard of political deception and demagogy far beyond past and probable future US Presidents.
The political context of his ascent to power and his deep links to the military-financial-Zionist networks insured his success as a premier confidence man.
President George Bush, Jr., the cringing, fading war-monger engaged in prolonged, costly wars and facing the collapse of the entire banking and financial sector, provided Candidate Obama with an easy target. Obama exploited the mass revulsion of the American people, longing for change. His soaring rhetoric and vacuous promise of ‘change’ attracted millions of young activists … The problem is that in their enthusiasm and blind adherence to ‘identity politics’ with its claims that all ‘blacks’ and ‘women’ are oppressed and therefore guaranteed to promote peace and justice — facilitated Obama’s con-game and political hustle.
Obama, once in office, not only deepened and widened the scope of President Bush, Jr’s wars, massive spy apparatus and corporate profiteering; he bamboozled the vast majority of his liberal-labor supporters in the Democratic Party! Barack Obama conned the Democratic Party Congressional liberals and they, in turn, conned their constituents into supporting this fraud.
The costs of President Obama’s two-faced policies are enormous: democracy has given way to a police state openly defended by the President and Congressional leaders; Wall Street’s recovery and corporate profiteering is fast destroying public health and social security. Barack Obama’s multiple endless wars and interventions are destroying vast cities, infrastructure, entire cultures while and killing and impoverishing millions of people from Libya to Palestine , from Syria to Iran . The economic sanctions against Iran , the provocative encirclement and isolation of China , and the campaign to destabilize Venezuela are the centerpieces of Obama’s ‘pivot to empire’. These policies portend even greater world-shattering catastrophes.
Unmasking the con-man is a first step requiring that we expose the tricks of the con-game. The politics of deception and demagogy thrives by directing popular attention to style and rhetoric, not substance. The solemn and pious cant of ‘Jimmy’ Carter distracted from his launch of the rabid Jihadists against the secular administration of Afghanistan . Uncle Ronald Reagan’s geniality and populist TV patter covered-up his blood baths in Central America and mass firing of the unionized air controllers and jailing of union leaders. ‘Bill’ Clinton’s show of empathy for the poor and embrace of ‘feel-good’ politics neutralized opposition as he bombed Yugoslavia into a pre-industrial age while his domestic policies kicked vulnerable single mothers from welfare programs. They all paled before the grand con-master Obama, billed as the ‘first black’ President, a community organizer (who disowned his sponsor into the black communities of Chicago, Rev. Wright, for his anti-war, anti-imperial stand) has capitalized on his racial credentials to garner the vote of guilty-ridden, soft-headed liberals and marginalized blacks in order to serve the interests of Wall Street and Israel.
Disarming these con-men and women requires exposing the nature of their demagogic populist styles and focusing on substantive politics. The decisive criteria need to be class politics that are defined by fundamental class alignments, between capital and labor regarding budgets, income, taxes, social spending, financing and property rights. ‘Shooting hoops’ in ghetto playgrounds is a con-man’s distraction while his budget cuts close hospitals and schools in black and poor neighborhoods.
The extravaganzas, featuring sports and entertainment celebrities to promote imperial wars, are the ‘con’ to undermine international solidarity for war victims and the unemployed. President Obama, the confidence man, is still performing while sowing destruction.
It’s time for the deceived, the disillusioned and the deprived to stand-up and shout! “We are deceived no more. Its time you were put on trial for Crimes against Humanity!”
The Stunning Hypocrisy of the U.S. Government
By WashingtonsBlog
June 23, 2013
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/the-issue-isnt-only-more-spying-or-less-its-also-hypocrisy-versus-honesty.html
Congress has exempted itself from the prohibition against trading on inside information … the law that got Martha Stewart and many other people thrown in jail.
There are many other ways in which the hypocrisy of the politicians in D.C. are hurting our country.
Washington politicians say we have to slash basic services, and yet waste hundreds of billions of dollars on counter-productive boondoggles. If the politicos just stopped throwing money at corporate welfare queens, military and security boondoggles and pork, harmful quantitative easing, unnecessary nuclear subsidies, the failed war on drugs, and other wasted and counter-productive expenses, we wouldn’t need to impose austerity on the people.
The D.C. politicians said that the giant failed banks couldn’t be nationalized, because that would be socialism. Instead of temporarily nationalizing them and then spinning them off to the private sector – or breaking them up – the politicians have bailed them out to the tune of many tens of billions of dollars each year, and created a system where all of the profits are privatized, and all of the losses socialized.
Obama and Congress promised help for struggling homeowners, and passed numerous bills that they claimed would rescue the little guy. But every single one of these bills actually bails out the banks … and doesn’t really help the homeowner.
The Federal Reserve promises to do everything possible to reduce unemployment. But its policies are actually destroying jobs.
Many D.C. politicians pay lip service to helping the little guy … while pushing policies which have driven inequality to levels surpassing slave-owning societies.
The D.C. regulators pretend that they are being tough on the big banks, but are actually doing everything they can to help cover up their sins.
Many have pointed out Obama’s hypocrisy in slamming Bush’s spying programs … and then expanding them (millions more).
And in slamming China’s cyber-warfare … while doing the same thing.
And – while the Obama administration is spying on everyone in the country – it is at the same time the most secretive administration ever (background). That’s despite Obama saying he’s running the most transparent administration ever.
Glenn Greenwald – the Guardian reporter who broke the NSA spying revelations – has documented for many years the hypocritical use of leaks by the government to make itself look good … while throwing the book at anyone who leaks information embarrassing to the government.
Greenwald notes today:
Prior to Barack Obama’s inauguration, there were a grand total of three prosecutions of leakers under the Espionage Act (including the prosecution of Dan Ellsberg by the Nixon DOJ). That’s because the statute is so broad that even the US government has largely refrained from using it. But during the Obama presidency, there are now seven such prosecutions: more than double the number under all prior US presidents combined.
***
Please read this rather good summary in this morning’s New York Times of the worldwide debate Snowden has enabled – how these disclosures have “set off a national debate over the proper limits of government surveillance” and “opened an unprecedented window on the details of surveillance by the NSA, including its compilation of logs of virtually all telephone calls in the United States and its collection of e-mails of foreigners from the major American Internet companies, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and Skype” – and ask yourself: has Snowden actually does anything to bring “injury to the United States”, or has he performed an immense public service?
The irony is obvious: the same people who are building a ubiquitous surveillance system to spy on everyone in the world, including their own citizens, are now accusing the person who exposed it of “espionage”. It seems clear that the people who are actually bringing “injury to the United States” are those who are waging war on basic tenets of transparency and secretly constructing a mass and often illegal and unconstitutional surveillance apparatus aimed at American citizens – and those who are lying to the American people and its Congress about what they’re doing – rather than those who are devoted to informing the American people that this is being done.
The Obama administration leaks classified information continuously. They do it to glorify the President, or manipulate public opinion, or even to help produce a pre-election propaganda film about the Osama bin Laden raid. The Obama administration does not hate unauthorized leaks of classified information. They are more responsible for such leaks than anyone.
What they hate are leaks that embarrass them or expose their wrongdoing. Those are the only kinds of leaks that are prosecuted. It’s a completely one-sided and manipulative abuse of secrecy laws. It’s all designed to ensure that the only information we as citizens can learn is what they want us to learn because it makes them look good. The only leaks they’re interested in severely punishing are those that undermine them politically. The “enemy” they’re seeking to keep ignorant with selective and excessive leak prosecutions are not The Terrorists or The Chinese Communists. It’s the American people.
The Terrorists already knew, and have long known, that the US government is doing everything possible to surveil their telephonic and internet communications. The Chinese have long known, and have repeatedly said, that the US is hacking into both their governmental and civilian systems (just as the Chinese are doing to the US). The Russians have long known that the US and UK try to intercept the conversations of their leaders just as the Russians do to the US and the UK.
They haven’t learned anything from these disclosures that they didn’t already well know. [He's right.] The people who have learned things they didn’t already know are American citizens who have no connection to terrorism or foreign intelligence, as well as hundreds of millions of citizens around the world about whom the same is true. What they have learned is that the vast bulk of this surveillance apparatus is directed not at the Chinese or Russian governments or the Terrorists, but at them.
And that is precisely why the US government is so furious and will bring its full weight to bear against these disclosures. What has been “harmed” is not the national security of the US but the ability of its political leaders to work against their own citizens and citizens around the world in the dark, with zero transparency or real accountability. If anything is a crime, it’s that secret, unaccountable and deceitful behavior: not the shining of light on it.
It has gotten so blatant that even New Yorker comic Andy Borowitz is lampooning the hypocrisy coming out of Washington:
At a press conference to discuss the accusations, an N.S.A. spokesman surprised observers by announcing the spying charges against Mr. Snowden with a totally straight face.
“These charges send a clear message,” the spokesman said. “In the United States, you can’t spy on people.”
***
“The American people have the right to assume that their private documents will remain private and won’t be collected by someone in the government for his own purposes.”
“Only by bringing Mr. Snowden to justice can we safeguard the most precious of American rights: privacy,” added the spokesman, apparently serious.
Similarly, journalists who act as mere stenographers for the government who never criticize in more than a superficial fashion are protected and rewarded … but reporters who actually report on government misdeeds are prosecuted and harassed.
Further, the biggest terrorism fearmongers themselves actually support terrorism. And see this.
In the name of fighting terrorism, the U.S. has been directly supporting Al Qaeda and other terrorists and providing them arms, money and logistical support in Syria, Libya, Mali, Bosnia, Chechnya, Iran, and many other countries … both before and after 9/11. And see this.
The American government has long labeled foreigners as terrorists for doing what America does.
Moreover, government officials may brand Americans as potential terrorists if they peacefully protest, complain about the taste of their water, or do any number of other normal, all-American things.
This is especially hypocritical given that liberals like Noam Chomsky and conservatives like the director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan (Lt. General William Odom) all say that the American government is the world’s largest purveyor of terrorism.
As General Odom noted:
Because the United States itself has a long record of supporting terrorists and using terrorist tactics, the slogans of today’s war on terrorism merely makes the United States look hypocritical to the rest of the world.
These are just a couple of ways in which the D.C. politicians are hypocrites.
This Really is Big Brother: The Leak Nobody's Noticed
By Digby
June 23, 2013
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com.br/2013/06/this-really-is-big-brother-leak-nobodys.html
This McClatchy piece (written by some of the same people who got the Iraq war run-up story so right while everyone else got it wrong) is as chilling to me as anything we've heard over the past few weeks about the NSA spying. In fact, it may be worse:
Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions.
President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments. It emphasizes leaks of classified material, but catchall definitions of “insider threat” give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct.
Government documents reviewed by McClatchy illustrate how some agencies are using that latitude to pursue unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material. They also show how millions of federal employees and contractors must watch for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers and could face penalties, including criminal charges, for failing to report them. Leaks to the media are equated with espionage.
“Hammer this fact home . . . leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States,” says a June 1, 2012, Defense Department strategy for the program that was obtained by McClatchy.
When the free free press, explicitly protected in the bill of rights becomes equivalent to an "enemy of the United States" something very, very bad is happening.
The administration says it's doing this to protect national security and that it is willing to protect those who blow the whistle on waste, fraud and abuse. But that is not how the effect of this sort of program is going to be felt. After all, it's being implemented across the federal government, not just in national security:
The program could make it easier for the government to stifle the flow of unclassified and potentially vital information to the public, while creating toxic work environments poisoned by unfounded suspicions and spurious investigations of loyal Americans, according to these current and former officials and experts. Some non-intelligence agencies already are urging employees to watch their co-workers for “indicators” that include stress, divorce and financial problems.
“It was just a matter of time before the Department of Agriculture or the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) started implementing, ‘Hey, let’s get people to snitch on their friends.’ The only thing they haven’t done here is reward it,” said Kel McClanahan, a Washington lawyer who specializes in national security law. “I’m waiting for the time when you turn in a friend and you get a $50 reward.”
The Defense Department anti-leak strategy obtained by McClatchy spells out a zero-tolerance policy. Security managers, it says, “must” reprimand or revoke the security clearances – a career-killing penalty – of workers who commit a single severe infraction or multiple lesser breaches “as an unavoidable negative personnel action.”
Employees must turn themselves and others in for failing to report breaches. “Penalize clearly identifiable failures to report security infractions and violations, including any lack of self-reporting,” the strategic plan says.
The Obama administration already was pursuing an unprecedented number of leak prosecutions, and some in Congress – long one of the most prolific spillers of secrets – favor tightening restrictions on reporters’ access to federal agencies, making many U.S. officials reluctant to even disclose unclassified matters to the public.
The policy, which partly relies on behavior profiles, also could discourage creative thinking and fuel conformist “group think” of the kind that was blamed for the CIA’s erroneous assessment that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction, a judgment that underpinned the 2003 U.S. invasion.
I don't know about you, but that does not sound like freedom. In fact, it sounds like something else entirely to me.
This government paranoia and informant culture is about as corrosive to the idea of freedom as it gets. The workplace is already rife with petty jealousies, and singular ambition--- it's a human organization after all. Adding in this sort of incentive structure is pretty much setting up a system for intimidation and abuse.
And, as with all informant systems, especially ones that "profile" for certain behaviors deemed to be a threat to the state, only the most conformist will thrive. It's a recipe for disaster if one is looking for any kind of dynamic, creative thinking. Clearly, that is the last these creepy bureaucrats want.
This is the direct result of a culture of secrecy that seems to be pervading the federal government under president Obama. He is not the first president to expand the national security state , nor is he responsible for the bipartisan consensus on national security or the ongoing influence of the Military Industrial Complex.This, however, is different. And he should be individually held to account for this policy.:
Administration officials say the program could help ensure that agencies catch a wide array of threats, especially if employees are properly trained in recognizing behavior that identifies potential security risks.
“If this is done correctly, an organization can get to a person who is having personal issues or problems that if not addressed by a variety of social means may lead that individual to violence, theft or espionage before it even gets to that point,” said a senior Pentagon official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly.
[...]
“If the folks who are watching within an organization for that insider threat – the lawyers, security officials and psychologists – can figure out that an individual is having money problems or decreased work performance and that person may be starting to come into the window of being an insider threat, superiors can then approach them and try to remove that stress before they become a threat to the organization,” the Pentagon official said.
The program, however, gives agencies such wide latitude in crafting their responses to insider threats that someone deemed a risk in one agency could be characterized as harmless in another. Even inside an agency, one manager’s disgruntled employee might become another’s threat to national security.
Obama in November approved “minimum standards” giving departments and agencies considerable leeway in developing their insider threat programs, leading to a potential hodgepodge of interpretations. He instructed them to not only root out leakers but people who might be prone to “violent acts against the government or the nation” and “potential espionage.”
The Pentagon established its own sweeping definition of an insider threat as an employee with a clearance who “wittingly or unwittingly” harms “national security interests” through “unauthorized disclosure, data modification, espionage, terrorism, or kinetic actions resulting in loss or degradation of resources or capabilities.”
“An argument can be made that the rape of military personnel represents an insider threat. Nobody has a model of what this insider threat stuff is supposed to look like,” said the senior Pentagon official, explaining that inside the Defense Department “there are a lot of chiefs with their own agendas but no leadership.”
The Department of Education, meanwhile, informs employees that co-workers going through “certain life experiences . . . might turn a trusted user into an insider threat.” Those experiences, the department says in a computer training manual, include “stress, divorce, financial problems” or “frustrations with co-workers or the organization.”
An online tutorial titled “Treason 101” teaches Department of Agriculture and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees to recognize the psychological profile of spies.
A Defense Security Service online pamphlet lists a wide range of “reportable” suspicious behaviors, including working outside of normal duty hours. While conceding that not every behavior “represents a spy in our midst,” the pamphlet adds that “every situation needs to be examined to determine whether our nation’s secrets are at risk.”
The Defense Department, traditionally a leading source of media leaks, is still setting up its program, but it has taken numerous steps. They include creating a unit that reviews news reports every day for leaks of classified defense information and implementing new training courses to teach employees how to recognize security risks, including “high-risk” and “disruptive” behaviors among co-workers, according to Defense Department documents reviewed by McClatchy.
“It’s about people’s profiles, their approach to work, how they interact with management. Are they cheery? Are they looking at Salon.com or The Onion during their lunch break? This is about ‘The Stepford Wives,’” said a second senior Pentagon official, referring to online publications and a 1975 movie about robotically docile housewives. The official said he wanted to remain anonymous to avoid being punished for criticizing the program.
The emphasis on certain behaviors reminded Greenstein of her employee orientation with the CIA, when she was told to be suspicious of unhappy co-workers.
“If someone was having a bad day, the message was watch out for them,” she said.
Some federal agencies also are using the effort to protect a broader range of information. The Army orders its personnel to report unauthorized disclosures of unclassified information, including details concerning military facilities, activities and personnel.
The Peace Corps, which is in the midst of implementing its program, “takes very seriously the obligation to protect sensitive information,” said an email from a Peace Corps official who insisted on anonymity but gave no reason for doing so.
Granting wide discretion is dangerous, some experts and officials warned, when federal agencies are already prone to overreach in their efforts to control information flow.
The Bush administration allegedly tried to silence two former government climate change experts from speaking publicly on the dangers of global warming. More recently, the FDA justified the monitoring of the personal email of its scientists and doctors as a way to detect leaks of unclassified information.
Trans-Pacific Partnership and Monsanto
Barbara Chicherio
Nation of Change
June 24, 2013
http://portside.org/2013-06-24/trans-pacific-partnership-and-monsanto#sthash.KuzyPfU6.dpuf
Something is looming in the shadows that could help erode our basic rights and contaminate our food. The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has the potential to become the biggest regional Free Trade Agreement in history, both in economic size and the ability to quietly add more countries in addition to those originally included. As of 2011 its 11 countries accounted for 30 percent of the world's agricultural exports. Those countries are the US, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Viet Nam. Recently, Japan has joined the negotiations.
Six hundred US corporate advisors have had input into the TPP. The draft text has not been made available to the public, press or policy makers. The level of secrecy around this agreement is unparalleled. The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark while representatives of US corporations are being consulted and privy to the details.
The chief agricultural negotiator for the US is the former Monsanto lobbyist, Islam Siddique. If ratified the TPP would impose punishing regulations that give multinational corporations unprecedented right to demand taxpayer compensation for policies that corporations deem a barrier to their profits.
Help us speak truth to power. Donate what you can afford to support NationofChange. There appears not to be a specific agricultural chapter in the TPP. Instead, rules affecting food systems and food safety are woven throughout the text. This agreement is attempting to establish corporations' rights to skirt domestic courts and laws and sue governments directly with taxpayers paying compensation and fines directly from the treasury.
Though TPP content remains hidden, here are some things we do know:
Members of Congress are concerned that the TPP would open the door to imports without resolving questions around food safety or environmental impacts on its production.
Procurement rules specifically forbid discrimination based on the quality of production. This means that public programs that favor the use of sustainably produced local foods in school lunch programs could be prohibited.
The labeling of foods containing GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) will not be allowed. Japan currently has labeling laws for GMOs in food. Under the TPP Japan would no longer be able to label GMOs. This situation is the same for New Zealand and Australia. In the US we are just beginning to see some progress towards labeling GMOs. Under the TPP GMO labels for US food would not be allowed.
In April 2013, Peru placed a 10-year moratorium on GMO foods and plants. This prohibits the import, production and use of GMOs in foods and GMO plants and is aimed at safeguarding Peru's agricultural diversity. The hope is to prevent cross-pollination with non-GMO crops and to ban GMO crops like Bt corn. What will become of Peru's moratorium if the TPP is passed?
There is a growing resistance to Monsanto's agricultural plans in Vietnam. Monsanto (the US corporation controlling an estimated 90% of the world seed genetics) has a dark history with Vietnam. Many believe that Monsanto has no right to do business in a country where Monsanto's product Agent Orange is estimated to have killed 400,000 Vietnamese, deformed another 500,000 and stricken another 2 million with various diseases.
Legacies of other trade agreements that serve as a warning about the TPP have a history of displacing small farmers and destroying local food economies. Ten years following the passage of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) 1.5 million Mexican farmers became bankrupt because they could not compete with the highly subsidized US corn entering the Mexican market.
In the same 10 years Mexico went from a country virtually producing all of its own corn to a country that now imports at least half of this food staple. Mexican consumers are now paying higher prices for Monsanto's GMO corn.
With little or no competition for large corporations Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta now control 57 percent of the commercial food market.
While the TPP is in many ways like NAFTA and other existing trade agreements, it appears that the corporations have learned from previous experience. They are carefully crafting the TPP to insure that citizens of the involved countries have no control over food safety, what they will be eating, where it is grown, the conditions under which food is grown and the use of herbicides and pesticides.
If the TPP is adopted the door will be open wider for human rights and environmental abuse. Some of the things we should expect to see include:
more large scale farming and more monocultures; destruction of local economies; no input into how our food is grown or what we will be eating; more deforestation; increased use of herbicides and pesticides; increased patenting of life forms; more GMO plants and foods; and no labeling of GMOs in food.
Together these are a step backwards for human rights and a giant step towards Monsanto's control of our food.
Please pass the word to others about the TPP as most Americans are unaware of this trade agreement or its ominous effects if passed.
Canadians Pay Taxes for Universal Health Care, and Now They're Richer Than Us
Dr. Philip Caper
Bangor Daily News
June 20, 2013
http://portside.org/2013-06-24/canadians-pay-taxes-universal-health-care-and-now-theyre-richer-us
About one third of Americans report that they didn’t go to the doctor when sick, didn’t get recommended care when needed, did not fill a prescription, or skipped doses of medications in the last year because of cost.
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/in-defense-of-canada/
I’ve been watching with some dismay the wrestling match going on between the governor and the Maine Legislature over the opportunity offered by the federal Affordable Care Act to expand our MaineCare program.
Proponents of expansion of MaineCare make their argument on both moral and economic grounds. Such expansion would provide health care coverage for almost 70,000 low-income Mainers who will otherwise receive no assistance from the ACA. More coverage would result in better management of our burgeoning level of chronic illness as our population ages. That will drive down the use of expensive crisis-oriented emergency services as well as the illness-inducing stress produced by out-of-control health care bills in low-income patients already afflicted by poor health.
Since 100 percent of the costs of the proposed expansion would be borne by the federal government for at least the first three years of the program (gradually reduced to 90 percent by 2020), MaineCare expansion under the ACA would also provide significant economic benefits to Maine in the form of federal dollars and the jobs they will create in every county in the state. According to a new study released last week by the Maine Center for Economic Policy and Maine Equal Justice Partners, if MaineCare were expanded under the terms of the ACA it would stimulate more than $350 million in economic activity, lead to the creation of 3,100 new jobs, and result in the generation of up to $18 million in state and local taxes.
Since the Legislature has now refused to override the governor’s veto of the expansion, those federal dollars (including those originating from Maine taxpayers) and their associated benefits will go to other states that accept the deal.
Some opponents of expansion claim that they don’t trust the feds to keep their word (even though it’s now written into law) and that we won’t be able to get rid of the extra costs should they renege on their commitment. Others are simply philosophically opposed to bigger government. It seems as though some are opposing MaineCare expansion simply out of spite.
This fight could be avoided, and is just a symptom of a more fundamental underlying disease — the way we pay for health care in the U.S. Our insurance-based system requires that we slice and dice our population into “risk categories.”
This phenomenon was made worse by PL 90, the “pro-competition” health insurance reform law passed by the Republican legislature in 2011. Now we’re seeing older, rural Mainers pitted against younger, urban ones. This type of discrimination is the very basis of the insurance business.
Many conservatives still characterize Medicaid as “welfare,” and many think of it as such. Presumably other types of health care coverage have been “earned” (think veterans and the military, highly paid executives, union members and congressional staff). We resent our tax dollars going to “freeloaders.” Until the slicing and dicing is ended, the finger pointing, blame shifting and their attendant political wars will continue.
In sharp contrast, our Canadian neighbors feel much differently. Asked if they resent their tax dollars being spent to provide health care to those who can’t afford it on their own, they say they can’t think of a better way to spend them. “Isn’t that what democracy is all about?” I’ve heard Canadian physicians say, “Our universal health care is the highest expression of Canadians caring for each other.”
Here in Maine, the response tends to be much different. Canadians seem to think health care is a human right. We don’t — yet.
If everybody was in the same health care system in the U.S., as is the norm in most wealthy nations, we would be having a much different and more civil conversation than what we are now witnessing in Augusta. No other wealthy country relies on the exorbitantly expensive and divisive practice of insurance underwriting to finance their health care system. They finance their publicly administered systems through broad-based taxes or a simplified system of tax-like, highly regulated premiums. Participation is mandatory and universal.
Taxation gets a bad rap in the U.S. and consequently is politically radioactive. Yet it is the most efficient, most enforceable and fairest way to finance a universal health care system.
In her excellent New Yorker essay called “Tax Time,” Jill LePore points out that taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity and for prosperity. Taxes insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and take some of the edge off of extreme poverty. Taxes protect property and the environment, make business possible and pay for roads, schools, bridges, police, teachers, doctors, nursing homes and medicine.
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.” The wealthy pay more because they have benefited more.
Canada’s tax-financed health care system covers everybody, gets better results, costs about two-thirds of what ours does and is far more popular than ours with both their public and their politicians. There is no opposition to it in the Canadian Parliament.
What’s not to like about that?
Oh yes, and the average Canadian is now wealthier than the average American. Their far more efficient and effective tax-based health care system is part of the reason.
Feinstein....just protecting the "Homeland".
The Good Germans in Government
Posted on Jun 25, 2013
By Robert Scheer
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_good_germans_in_government_20130625/
What a disgrace. The U.S. government, cheered on by much of the media, launches an international manhunt to capture a young American whose crime is that he dared challenge the excess of state power. Read the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and tell me that Edward Snowden is not a hero in the mold of those who founded this republic. Check out the Nuremberg war crime trials and ponder our current contempt for the importance of individual conscience as a civic obligation.
Yes, Snowden has admitted that he violated the terms of his employment at Booz Allen Hamilton, which has the power to grant security clearances as well as profiting mightily from spying on the American taxpayers who pay to be spied on without ever being told that is where their tax dollars are going. Snowden violated the law in the same way that Daniel Ellsberg did when, as a RAND Corporation employee, he leaked the damning Pentagon Papers study of the Vietnam War that the taxpayers had paid for but were not allowed to read.
In both instances, violating a government order was mandated by the principle that the United States trumpeted before the world in the Nuremberg war crime trials of German officers and officials. As Principle IV of what came to be known as the Nuremberg Code states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
That is a heavy obligation, and the question we should be asking is not why do folks like Ellsberg, Snowden and Bradley Manning do the right thing, but rather why aren’t we bringing charges against the many others with access to such damning data of government malfeasance who remain silent?
Is there an international manhunt being organized to bring to justice Dick Cheney, the then-vice president who seized upon the pain and fear of 9/11 to make lying to the public the bedrock of American foreign policy? This traitor to the central integrity of a representative democracy dares condemn Snowden as a “traitor” and suggest that he is a spy for China because he took temporary refuge in Hong Kong.
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The Chinese government, which incidentally does much to finance our massive military budget, was embarrassed by the example of Snowden and was quick to send him on his way. Not so ordinary folk in Hong Kong, who clearly demonstrated their support of the man as an exponent of individual conscience.
So too did Albert Ho, who volunteered his considerable legal skills in support of Snowden, risking the ire of Hong Kong officials. Ho, whom The New York Times describes as “a longtime campaigner for full democracy [in Hong Kong], to the irritation of government leaders of the territory,” is an example of the true democrats around the world who support Snowden, contradicting Cheney’s smear.
But U.S. Democrats have also been quick to join the shoot-the-messenger craze, ignoring the immense significance of Snowden’s revelations. Take Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. Fool me once and shame on her, fool me dozens of times, as Feinstein has, and I feel like a blithering idiot having voted for her. After years of covering up for the intelligence bureaucracy, Feinstein is now chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and clearly for some time has been in a position to know the inconvenient truths that Snowden and others before him have revealed.
Did she know that the NSA had granted Booz Allen Hamilton such extensive access to our telephone and Internet records? Did she grasp that the revolving door between Booz Allen and the NSA meant that this was a double-dealing process involving high officials swapping out between the government and the war profiteers? Did she know that the security system administered by Booz Allen was so lax that young Snowden was given vast access to what she now feels was very sensitive data? Or that private companies like Booz Allen were able to hand out “top security” clearances to their employees, and that there now are 1.4 million Americans with that status?
As with her past cover-ups of government lying going back to the phony weapons of mass destruction claims made to justify the Iraq War, Feinstein, like so many in the government, specializes in plausible deniability. She smugly assumes the stance of the all-knowing expert on claimed intelligence success while pretending to be shocked at the egregious failures. She claims not to have known of the extent of the invasion of our privacy and at the same time says she is assured that the information gained “has disrupted plots, prevented terrorist attacks. ...” If so, why did she not come clean with the American public and say this is what we are doing to you and why?
Instead, Feinstein failed horribly in the central obligation of a public servant to inform the public and now serves as prosecutor, judge and jury in convicting Snowden hours after his name was in the news: “He violated the oath, he violated the law. It’s treason,” she said.
Treason is a word that dictators love to hurl at dissidents, and when both Cheney and Feinstein bring it back into favor, you know that courageous whistle-blowers like Snowden are not the enemy.
A New Fascism on the Rise
By John Pilger, AlterNet
24 June 13
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/18095-a-new-fascism-on-the-rise
The power of truth-tellers like Edward Snowden is that they dispel a whole mythology carefully constructed by the corporate cinema, the corporate academy and the corporate media.
n his book, Propaganda, published in 1928, Edward Bernays wrote: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."
The American nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays invented the term "public relations" as a euphemism for state propaganda. He warned that an enduring threat to the invisible government was the truth-teller and an enlightened public.
In 1971, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg leaked US government files known as The Pentagon Papers, revealing that the invasion of Vietnam was based on systematic lying. Four years later, Frank Church conducted sensational hearings in the US Senate: one of the last flickers of American democracy. These laid bare the full extent of the invisible government: the domestic spying and subversion and warmongering by intelligence and "security" agencies and the backing they received from big business and the media, both conservative and liberal.
Speaking about the National Security Agency (NSA), Senator Church said: "I know that the capacity that there is to make tyranny in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law ... so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."
On 11 June, following the revelations in the Guardian by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg wrote that the US had now "that abyss".
Snowden's revelation that Washington has used Google, Facebook, Apple and other giants of consumer technology to spy on almost everyone, is further evidence of modern form of fascism - that is the "abyss". Having nurtured old-fashioned fascists around the world - from Latin America to Africa and Indonesia - the genie has risen at home. Understanding this is as important as understanding the criminal abuse of technology.
Fred Branfman, who exposed the "secret" destruction of tiny Laos by the US Air Force in the 1960s and 70s, provides an answer to those who still wonder how a liberal African-American president, a professor of constitutional law, can command such lawlessness. "Under Mr. Obama," he wrote for AlterNet, "no president has done more to create the infrastructure for a possible future police state." Why? Because Obama, like George W Bush, understands that his role is not to indulge those who voted for him but to expand "the most powerful institution in the history of the world, one that has killed, wounded or made homeless well over 20 million human beings, mostly civilians, since 1962."
In the new American cyber-power, only the revolving doors have changed. The director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen, was adviser to Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state in the Bush administration who lied that Saddam Hussein could attack the US with nuclear weapons. Cohen and Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt - they met in the ruins of Iraq - have co-authored a book, The New Digital Age, endorsed as visionary by the former CIA director Michael Hayden and the war criminals Henry Kissinger and Tony Blair. The authors make no mention of the Prism spying program, revealed by Edward Snowden, that provides the NSA access to all of us who use Google.
Control and dominance are the two words that make sense of this. These are exercised by political, economic and military designs, of which mass surveillance is an essential part, but also by insinuating propaganda in the public consciousness. This was Edward Bernays's point. His two most successful PR campaigns were convincing Americans they should go to war in 1917 and persuading women to smoke in public; cigarettes were "torches of freedom" that would hasten women's liberation.
It is in popular culture that the fraudulent "ideal" of America as morally superior, a "leader of the free world", has been most effective. Yet, even during Hollywood's most jingoistic periods there were exceptional films, like those of the exile Stanley Kubrick, and adventurous European films would have US distributors. These days, there is no Kubrick, no Strangelove, and the US market is almost closed to foreign films.
When I showed my own film, The War on Democracy, to a major, liberally-minded US distributor, I was handed a laundry list of changes required, to "ensure the movie is acceptable". His memorable sop to me was: "OK, maybe we could drop in Sean Penn as narrator. Would that satisfy you?" Lately, Katherine Bigelow's torture-apologizing Zero Dark Thirtyand Alex Gibney's We Steal Secrets, a cinematic hatchet job on Julian Assange, were made with generous backing by Universal Studios, whose parent company until recently was General Electric. GE manufactures weapons, components for fighter aircraft and advance surveillance technology. The company also has lucrative interests in "liberated" Iraq.
The power of truth-tellers like Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden is that they dispel a whole mythology carefully constructed by the corporate cinema, the corporate academy and the corporate media. WikiLeaks is especially dangerous because it provides truth-tellers with a means to get the truth out. This was achieved by Collateral Damage, the cockpit video of an US Apache helicopter allegedly leaked by Bradley Manning. The impact of this one video marked Manning and Assange for state vengeance. Here were US airmen murdering journalists and maiming children in a Baghdad street, clearly enjoying it, and describing their atrocity as "nice". Yet, in one vital sense, they did not get away with it; we are witnesses now, and the rest is up to us.
The Great Unwind has finally arrived.
(courtesy Bill Holter/Miles Franklin)
50+ years of credit creation and living beyond our means year after year is finally coming to an end. Ben Bernanke spoke last week regarding "tapering" Treasury and MBS purchases some time next year, the market then immediately reacted. Stocks were sold, bonds were sold, commodities were sold and so were Silver and Gold (much more on this shortly). Did the Fed actually do anything? Did they tighten at all? Has their balance sheet shrunk or even stagnated at all? The answer(s) are an emphatic NO!. The bloodbath last week was merely "front running" on the fear that the Fed will back away and stop administering the crack credit doses that the financial community have become accustomed to. Basically free money and $ trillions of it, can you imagine what will happen should the Fed ACTUALLY slow down or stop giving out free cash so that banks can cover up losses?
Last week was only a preview to what is coming. I personally do not believe that any "tapering" will ever come about, last week's financial action only supports my thesis. Last week happened after only the mention of "tapering", do you think the Fed may now know the end result of an ACTUAL exit strategy? One where the markets would have to fend for itself and be self supporting along with the economy? They do know, the Fed knows that it will be forced again and again to not only continue QE but increase it exponentially. There is one minor "problem", the more they monetize, the less "collateral" (there's that word again) there is available to an economy and financial market that... runs on collateral. Can you imagine the immediate bloodbath of panic selling if the Fed not only stopped purchasing bonds but actually tried to sell some to reduce their own balance sheet? The are now purchasing more than half of the Treasury's new issuance, if they turned seller, who is left as the buyer?
What would happen should China's current "cash crunch" cause them to turn seller?
As a result of the mere murmur of slowing QE the most shocking action last week was in the Treasury market. The 10yr ended Friday night at 2.54%, This was a rise of .40 basis points or so and nearly equal to the rise in yield for all of May. May, if you recall was the month where the Fed lost about $115 billion on their bond holdings (certainly far more if they had to mark the non Treasuries to market). The volatility was staggering and without a doubt there are now some dead institutions out there because of how fast and violent the move was. There is $200 trillion outstanding in interest rate derivatives. This past week alone, these contracts on average probably moved more than 5% in value. This would indicate a movement of maybe $10 trillion (with a T) worth of net change from one side to the other in less than 5 days. Do you really believe that this type of "wins and losses" could have occurred without someone, probably "many one's" becoming insolvent? The Fed only purports to have $65 billion of equity capital, between May 1 and now their portfolio has dropped nearly $250 billion. Is this "insolvent"? Yes it is but they have the ability to run the presses so not to worry I guess?
Forget the stock market, the Fed has now lost control of the Treasury market. Interest rates on the 10 year have now gone from just under 1.6% to over 2.5% in a very short period of time. This is now a 60+% rise in rates. Were this truly because the economy was strengthening it would be bad enough but the selling that has come about has nothing to do with the economy.
The selling in reality started as "front running" by those smart enough to leave the party while the music was still playing. Now, it is evolving into one gigantic and global margin call. This will feed on itself, winners will not get paid, sovereigns will lose the ability to "fund" and ultimately the global real economy will suffer from the financial implosion.
Before getting to the Gold and Silver travesties I'd like to mention that market "don't just crash" on their own. If you look back to every crash (with the exception of the metals "forced" crashes) of any asset throughout all of history, they all have one thing in common...debt. TOO MUCH debt to be exact. We have now passed the peak of the "debt bubble", there is no question now. Debt got us into the 2008 calamity and the solution was ...MORE debt. Even though the bubble burst back then they were able to reflate it one last time. "They" being central banks and sovereign treasuries. Now, there is no ability anywhere on the planet to reflate. Why? Because there are no sovereign treasuries healthy enough or big enough to be able to issue enough new debt to reflate one more time. It's over, plain and simple.
Gold. For those of you who can remember years back the "4 pillars" that Jim Sinclair always talked about, this, what is happening now, is exactly what he was talking about. The 4th pillar was the U.S. Treasury market and it has now been "pulled". This was the last horse big enough and strong enough to "pull" (push) the economic cart. The only description of the Treasury market last week was "panic" selling and this coming week should be interesting to see how the margin calls are handled. We got a preview back in 2008 and '09 how firms treated each other which ended with Lehman (and many others) being devoured.
So Gold got hit for another $80 and we are told it has no direction to go but down because interest rates are going up...because the economy is so strong. First off, yes I call bullshit on the strong economy story. Secondly, even if the Fed DID want interest rates to go up (they don't) they would never want rates to move like they just did last week. They know that "fast" is a killer (remember the JPM London whale) and firms cannot "adjust" when market prices (yields) move quickly (think margin calls and delta hedging). Firms blow up when this happens and of course then makes the panic selling that much worse. As an interesting aside, "usually" money flows INTO Treasuries when there is fear but not this time, the "fear" IS the Treasury market!
But something just does not add up here. First, we know that physical demand was huge going into this week and now we hear that physical off take has again increased with this latest price takedown. Secondly, if the COMEX numbers are to be believed, the open interest numbers actually went up Friday a whopping 10,000+ contracts in Gold and in Silver over 2,000 contracts...but how can this be? If everyone was selling to get out then the open interest would have dropped by these amounts or more, they did not which means that more and more "shorts" piled on. Again, if the CME numbers are to be trusted and are correct then we also have a clue as to "who" the shorts are...the specs (hedge funds) and the commercials look now to finally be on the long side after 15 years on the short side.
Here are a couple of speculations on my part. Is this a trap being set for the shorts? A trap for the commercials (banks) to clean out the hedge funds? Follow this through, in the past the CME would raise margins to pressure the prices of Gold and Silver. I believe that 100% of the time after the CME has raised margin rates, Gold and Silver would get hammered, why didn't they get hammered on Friday? If history was any guide at all they should have but they did not, why? Surely there were margin calls issued Thursday night to be met on Friday and a margin hike on top of that. What the heck happened? Why the difference?
...Maybe because the longs are a different group now than in the past? Maybe because in the past the longs were the hedge funds who would receive margin calls and then cut and run, now maybe the longs have deeper pockets?
And speaking of "deeper pockets", the open interest in Silver continues to stay very high...and even after a 50% drop in price. The longs have now effectively PAID for more than half of the Silver if they met each and every margin call and now stand for delivery. Will July be the month that Silver defaults on the COMEX? There are still 50,000 July contracts outstanding with 1st notice day this Friday. This represents 250 million ounces...the dealers only hold about 40 million for delivery.
Who, other than a sovereign government (China?) or a collective of sovereigns could have met the margin calls over the last 6-8 months? Have they allowed the short specs to build up and get bolder in their sales? On the Gold side it is interesting to note that JP Morgan has not reported 1 single ounce of Gold entering their dealer depository so far this year...they have 1 week to go before June deliveries must be made and they have a negative 80,000+ ounce deficit to cover. Where will this Gold come from? Could we be set up for the Chinese to stand for delivery from under stocked vaults...and at the same time sell some of their Treasury holdings?
This upcoming week could be a doozy. So many potential train wrecks from so many different directions to keep your eyes on all of them. Just remember that "credit" is what runs everything and it looks like "credit" is now at the center stage of problems. Should rates continue to rise this week in U.S. Treasuries you should expect to see some very major firms run into trouble.
This time around it will be real as there are no solvent white knights left with the ability to leverage up and save the day.
The U.S. Treasury and Fed are now in the cross-hairs, they need to catch a bid this week or they will be at the center of the biggest one time margin call ever! Regards, Bill H.
http://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/2013/06/comex-dealer-gold-falls-to-all-time-low.html
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