The Housing Bubble

Realtors are liars.

South Africa buries ‘greatest son’ Mandela

(No reports of any graveside selfies)

By Ed Cropley

South Africa
Sun Dec 15, 2013 7:06am EST

(Reuters) - South Africa buried Nelson Mandela on Sunday, closing one chapter in its tortured history and opening another in which the multi-racial democracy he founded will have to discover if it can thrive without its central pillar.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/15/us-mandela-death-idUSBRE9B417U20131215 - -

Obamacare exchange ‘mistakenly debting bank accounts’

ELISA HAHN
KING 5 News
December 15, 2013

For the second week in a row, the Washington Healthplanfinder website is down, and it’s causing problems for people who are dealing with billing issues. Some of them say the website is mistakenly debiting their accounts.

Shannon Bruner of Indianola logged on to her checking account Monday morning, and found she was almost 800 dollars in the negative.

“The first thing I thought was, ‘I got screwed,’” she said.

Full article here

This article was posted: Sunday, December 15, 2013 at 3:20 am

Anyone here ever notice how many people - as in thousands of them - quit their good-paying jobs a few years back so as to get immediately rich by becoming realtors?

Yes? You do remember?

Now, how many of you remember the thousands of people a few years back that quit their good-paying jobs so as to become bankers? You don’t remember that, do you? Well, that’s because it did not happen.

The REAL MONEY is to be made in the long-term commitment of a mortgage obligation, not in the one-time fee of making the sale. But the stupid folks who quit their good-paying jobs some years back so as to hustle up sales as realtors - as tools of the banks - did not know that then. But, now they do.

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): Bigger and More Dangerous Than ObamaCare (Video)

Written by William F. Jasper
Saturday, 14 December 2013 14:45

We all remember Representative Nancy Pelosi’s infamous statement that we have to pass the ObamaCare legislation so that we can find out what’s in it. That was in 2010 and Mrs. Pelosi was then speaker of the House of Representatives.

Well, Congress followed her advice and passed ObamaCare, formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Three years later, in October of 2013, tens of millions of Americans began finding out what was really in the bill, as they began receiving health insurance cancellations and/or massive premium hikes. They also began to learn that under ObamaCare the IRS has been given new powers to go after them, their businesses, and their bank accounts. And that is only the beginning. As with all legislation, the devil is in the details, and lots of devils keep popping out of the constantly evolving details, as dozens of federal agencies continue churning out thousands of pages of regulations to implement the misbegotten, misnamed Affordable Care Act.

There are many important lessons from ObamaCare that we should apply to another huge project that could have a similarly devastating impact on our nation. In November 2009, President Obama announced his intention to have the United States participate in a so-called trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I say so-called trade agreement because 80 percent of the proposed agreement deals with a great many issues besides trade.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, as it is called, is an all-out assault on our national sovereignty. It would unconstitutionally transfer legislative powers from the U.S. Congress, our state legislatures, and our city and county governments to multi-national corporations and unaccountable international bureaucrats at the World Trade Organization, or WTO. Incredibly, it also would transfer judicial powers from our federal and state courts — which are bad enough — to globalist TPP judges at regional tribunals and the WTO. It would also confer huge advantages on foreign businesses and large multinationals, while at the same time putting companies that operate here in America — especially small and medium-sized enterprises — at a competitive disadvantage. American businesses would remain shackled by the regulations of EPA, FDA, OSHA, etc. while their foreign competitors could operate here unimpeded by those same strictures.

Like the infamous NAFTA trade agreement passed in the ’90s, the TPP would usher in another wave of outsourcing, as the remaining manufacturing and technology bases would be given incentives to move to Pacific Rim countries, resulting in millions more American job losses.

With TPP negotiations on track to be completed by the end of 2013, President Obama will likely ask Congress to approve this trade agreement in early 2014. Contact your senators and representative and urge them to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and see the many additional articles listed below the video that we’ve published detailing the dangers of the TPP.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/item/17175-trans-pacific-partnership-tpp-bigger-and-more-dangerous-than-obamacare - -

mortgage salesmen are liars

Here is proof that there is a God, and here is proof that this God looks out for bankers and this is probably so because bankers are doing God’s work:

If you are a lender and you discover that the collateral that backs some rather stupid loans you made has fallen in value then you just might end up taking a hit on your balance sheet. Taking a hit on one’s balance sheet just might possibly result in some red ink and if you, the lender, are stuck with a boss who has a limited sense of humor then you just might find yourself out of your cushy job and (gasp) you may have to go out in this rather cruel world and get an honest-to-god real job. Oh, the horror!

But if the collateral that backs the rather stupid loans you made happen to be real estate then you have no worries because somehow, somebody, somewhere in this Great Land of ours has determined it to be in the National Interest that real estate prices should forever remain elevated. And this forever elevating of real estate prices will forever elevate the values of the stupid mortgages that you stupidly written a few years back when the entire country went crazy, when the entire country went stupid.

And thus, because you are a banker, you are saved. And thus, because you are a banker, there is Redemption. And thus, there is a God.

Kind of interesting…They specifically use the word “Bubble”…

http://cl.exct.net/?ju=fe591c727c62057a7410&ls=fe1b1d777d6c017e741275&m=fefc1172766306&l=fed1157376640678&s=fe35157277640d7d711074&jb=ffcf14&t=

FHA LOWERS PHOENIX LOAN LIMITS

(PNI) Prospecive buyers in metro Phoenix counting on Federal Housing Administration-backed mortgages soon either will have to come up with a bigger down payment or buy a less expensive property. The limit on FHA loans in the Valley is dropping by more than $120,000 to $217,000.

Buried on page D10 of the Az Republic today, most important story of the year.

2banana’s definition:

A conservative is more than happy to live under the laws they want for everyone else.

A liberal/progressive expects to be exempted from the laws they want for everyone else. A liberal/progressive expects to be exempted from the taxes they want for everyone else. Those laws and taxes are for the little people.

I see “obama people” except they don’t know they are “obama people”

——————–

In NYC, thousands of Obama voting, upper class professionals complain about losing their insurance
wordpress | December 15, 2013

The New York Times is reporting this news about five years too late, but I guess that’s better than never. Obamacare is forcing thousands of Obama voting, well educated, upper class, professionals from New York City to lose their insurance.

Even before Obamacare was passed, its critics were saying this would happen. It’s a shame that the New York Times waited until after the 2012 election to report information that Obamacare critics knew five years ago.

These people are intelligent, well educated professionals. How could they not see that these cancellations were coming? How could so many people who are this smart, simultaneously be so dumb that these cancellations are coming as a surprise?

The New York Times reports:

Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.

“I couldn’t sleep because of it,” said Barbara Meinwald, a solo practitioner lawyer in Manhattan.

Ms. Meinwald, 61, has been paying $10,000 a year for her insurance through the New York City Bar. A broker told her that a new temporary plan with fewer doctors would cost $5,000 more, after factoring in the cost of her medications.

It is not lost on many of the professionals that they are exactly the sort of people — liberal, concerned with social justice — who supported the Obama health plan in the first place. Ms. Meinwald, the lawyer, said she was a lifelong Democrat who still supported better health care for all, but had she known what was in store for her, she would have voted for Mitt Romney.

“We are the Obama people,” said Camille Sweeney, a New York writer and member of the Authors Guild. Her insurance is being canceled, and she is dismayed that neither her pediatrician nor her general practitioner appears to be on the exchange plans. What to do has become a hot topic on Facebook and at dinner parties frequented by her fellow writers and artists.

“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”

Is a STEM degree really worth getting?

Governments Admit They Carry Out False Flag Terror
by Washingtons Blog - December 9th, 2013, 1:30am

Tweet This Email This Post Print This Post Governments from around the world admit they carry out false flag terror:

•A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that – under orders from the chief of the Gestapo – he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland. Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson
•Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in writing that the Soviet Union’s Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila in 1939, and declared that the fire originated from Finland as a basis launching the Winter War four days later
•Israel admits that an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this)
•The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister
•The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security” (and see this)(Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred). And watch this BBC special
•As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960′s, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.
•2 years before, American Senator George Smathers had suggested that the U.S. make “a false attack made on Guantanamo Bay which would give us the excuse of actually fomenting a fight which would then give us the excuse to go in and [overthrow Castro]“.
•And Official State Department documents show that – only nine months before the Joint Chiefs of Staff plan was proposed – the head of the Joint Chiefs and other high-level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. The 3 plans were not carried out, but they were all discussed as serious proposals
•The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and asked him “to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the investigating officer into the murder incident”, thus framing the ANC for the bombing
•An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author)
•Senior Russian Senior military and intelligence officers admit that the KGB blew up Russian apartment buildings and falsely blamed it on Chechens, in order to justify an invasion of Chechnya (and see this report and this discussion)
•According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization.
•The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings
•As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the “war on terror”.
•Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that the FBI was actually told to blame the Anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda by White House officials (remember what the anthrax letters looked like). Government officials also confirm that the white House tried to link the anthrax to Iraq as a justification for regime change in that country
•Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’ identities and to question the validity of communications.”
•United Press International reported in June 2005:

U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.

•Undercover Israeli soldiers admitted in 2005 to throwing stones at other Israeli soldiers so they could blame it on Palestinians, as an excuse to crack down on peaceful protests by the Palestinians
•Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers (and see this)
•At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament saw plain clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence
•A Colombian army colonel has admitted that his unit murdered 57 civilians, then dressed them in uniforms and claimed they were rebels killed in combat
•U.S. soldiers have admitted that if they kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then “drop” automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they were militants
•The highly-respected writer for the Telegraph Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that the head of Saudi intelligence – Prince Bandar – admitted last the Saudi government controls “Chechen” terrorists
So Common … There’s a Name for It
This tactic is so common that it was given a name for hundreds of years ago.

“False flag terrorism” is defined as a government attacking its own people, then blaming others in order to justify going to war against the people it blames. Or as Wikipedia defines it:

False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one’s own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and have been used in peace-time; for example, during Italy’s strategy of tension.

The term comes from the old days of wooden ships, when one ship would hang the flag of its enemy before attacking another ship in its own navy. Because the enemy’s flag, instead of the flag of the real country of the attacking ship, was hung, it was called a “false flag” attack.

Indeed, this concept is so well-accepted that rules of engagement for naval, air and land warfare all prohibit false flag attacks.

Leaders Throughout History Have Acknowledged False Flags
Leaders throughout history have acknowledged the danger of false flags:

“This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.”
- Plato

“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
- U.S. President James Madison

“A history of false flag attacks used to manipulate the minds of the people! “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death”.
- Adolph Hitler

“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
- Hermann Goering, Nazi leader.

“The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened”.
- Josef Stalin

People Are Waking Up to False Flags
People are slowly waking up to this whole con job by governments who want to justify war.

More people are talking about the phrase “false flag” than ever before.

Category: Think Tank, War/Defense

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/12/governments-admit-they-carry-out-false-flag-terror/ - 78k -

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/science/the-montreal-protocol-a-little-treaty-that-could.html

I guess economic “Trickle-down” fails in any language. You’re seeing more and more people talking all around the world about “Supply-Side’s” now-proven failures.

Lapid: I’m no socialist, but trickle-down has failed

“Trickle-down failed in the US, it failed in Britain, and it failed in Israel. When the money reaches the top it stays at the top.”

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000900926

Minister of Finance Yair Lapid in a speech to the Israel Securities Authority:
“I am no socialist,” declared Lapid. “Far from it, but the time has come to admit that trickle-down economics, Reganomics of the 1980s, which asserted that the rich should be allowed to make unlimited profits and all the tax breaks possible, and the money would trickle down to the poor, simply does not work. It failed in the US, it failed in Britain, and it failed in Israel. When the money reaches the top it stays at the top.

“Money should not be at the top. We should invest the money in the middle class. From there, it will flow down; from there it will flow up. We need the middle class to earn more money,…

….The rich grew richer, the poor grew poorer, and people who are now in their 30s are the first generation of Israelis who live less well than their parents. Not only that, they also live at their parents’ expense, and are still stuck living at home. This has to change.

Speaking of false information NASA seems to be promulgating more and more of it. While satellite data is more accurate than ground data to determine global temperatures, NASA uses ground base. Several times when data filed to establish a milestone NASA would relook at the data and discover that a milestone would be reached. But this always involved a small change like .01F. However, in the last few months the data between the satellites and the ground based data has increasingly diverged. For the month of November, NASA is reporting the temperature close to .4 F warming than the UAH data set. It may be that the third world sh*t holes are providing bad data to get more aid or NASA may be involved by it needs to be investigated. The manipulation of unemployment data was bad enough but science should be above this type of manipulation.

If you look at Greece and apply Rio’s theories they should be doing quite well due to their “progressive” tax structure:

http://www.worldwide-tax.com/greece/greece_tax.asp

2016 Looks Disturbingly Good For the Corporate State

Sheldon Richman | December 15, 2013

If you share my belief that the major obstacle to the free society is the national-security/corporate state, 2016 is shaping up to be a year of apprehension. The Wall Streeters, who are among the biggest advocates of partnership between big government and big business, are looking forward to a presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie, a contest the bankers can’t lose.

They have already discounted any populist rhetoric Clinton may need to fight off a primary challenge from, say, Sen. Elizabeth Warren. As “one well-placed Democrat” told Politico, “Wall Street folks are so happy about [having Clinton run] that they won’t care what she says.”

Clinton recently spoke to a gathering in New York organized by Goldman Sachs, the giant, influential (and bailed-out) investment bank, a gathering that Politico says was attended by “a few hundred major investors.”

Ordinarily these masters of the universe might have groaned at the idea of a politician taking the microphone. In the contentious years since the crash of 2008, they’ve grown wearily accustomed to being called names — labeled “fat cats” by President Obama and worse by those on the left — and gotten used to being largely shunned by Tea Party Republicans for their association with the Washington establishment. And of course there are all those infuriating new rules and regulations, culminating this week with the imposition of the so-called Volcker Rule to make risky trades by big banks illegal.
“But,” Politico continues, “Clinton offered a message that the collected plutocrats found reassuring, according to accounts offered by several attendees, declaring that the banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish.”

Striking a soothing note on the global financial crisis, she told the audience, in effect: We all got into this mess together, and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it. What the bankers heard her to say was just what they would hope for from a prospective presidential candidate: Beating up the finance industry isn’t going to improve the economy — it needs to stop. And indeed Goldman’s Tim O’Neill, who heads the bank’s asset management business, introduced Clinton by saying how courageous she was for speaking at the bank. (Brave, perhaps, but also well-compensated: Clinton’s minimum fee for paid remarks is $200,000).

She got one thing right:

The politicians and big bankers “all got into this mess together.” The financial and housing collapse of 2008 was the fruit of that malign partnership of big government and big business. (See my article “Wall Street Couldn’t Have Done It Alone.”) But the big banks are doing fine now, thank you, and there’s no reason to think that too-big-to-fail is over. It’s regular people who are still hurting.

So the bankers liked what they heard. Politico reports:

“It was like, ‘Here’s someone who doesn’t want to vilify us but wants to get business back in the game,’” said an attendee. “Like, maybe here’s someone who can lead us out of the wilderness.”
Back in the game? That’s a good one!

In Clinton, then, we have a friend of the bankers and a friend of the military-industrial complex, since as secretary of state she was an advocate of a muscular foreign policy, including intervention in Libya. (When she was in the Senate she voted to give George W. Bush a blank check to invade Iraq, and when she was first lady, she pushed Bill Clinton to drop bombs on the Balkans).

“And if the banking class is delighted with Clinton lately,” Politico notes, “the feeling appears mutual.”

Wall Street’s first choice on the GOP side is apparently Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey. He had his own meeting with the big-money crowd in July 2011. Politico calls him “the candidate with the best chances at winning the support of bankers in the next presidential election.”

At that 2011 meeting: “Henry Kissinger [!], the former secretary of state, stood and pleaded with the governor to enter the presidential race for the good of his country. Christie would, of course, resist their pleas, becoming perhaps even more alluring to those on Wall Street as a prospect for 2016.”

“I like him. I do. I think he’s authentic, and I think he is a good manager and a good leader,” Goldman’s Lloyd Blankfein said of Christie at a recent Wall Street industry event, where he also praised Hillary Clinton.

So there you have it. The titans of Wall Street have a shot at a can’t-lose 2016 election.

Who’s surprised? The corporate state’s roots go quite deep, having had a couple of hundred years to spread. It’s easy to discount its pervasiveness because of the chronic public feuding between business, particularly big banks, and some politicians, but don’t be fooled by this. The feud is more superficial than it appears. Roderick Long explains:

Those who see government power and corporate power as being in conflict, and those who seem them as being in cahoots, each have a point. The alliance between government and the corporate elite is like the partnership between church and state in the Middle Ages: each one wants to be the dominant partner, so there’s naturally some pushing and shoving from time to time; but on the other hand the two parties have a common interest in holding down the rest of us, and so the conflict rarely goes too far. The main difference between “left-wing” and “right-wing” versions of statism, as I see it, is that the former generally seek to shift the balance a bit farther in favour of the state (i.e., toward state-socialism) while the latter generally seek to shift the balance a bit farther in favour of corporatism and plutocracy. (In the U.S., the reigning versions of liberalism and conservatism are arguably both more corporatist than state-socialist; but the liberals are still a few notches farther toward state-socialism than the conservatives are.)
This disagreement is useful in discouraging spectators from discovering the radical alternative to statism, the free market. Those with an aversion to state socialism will be drawn to the plutocrats, thinking they represent the free-market choice — hence the free-market rhetoric from people who want no part of the free market. Meanwhile, those with an aversion to corporate abuse will find the “statocrats” (Long’s term) appealing, believing they represent the only alternative to plutocracy. You know who wins — and who loses.

‘Google confirmed on Friday that it had completed the acquisition of Boston Dynamics, an engineering company that has designed mobile research robots for the Pentagon. The company, based in Waltham, Mass., has gained an international reputation for machines that walk with an uncanny sense of balance and even — cheetahlike — run faster than the fastest humans.’

‘It is the eighth robotics company that Google has acquired in the last half-year.’

‘Under a $10.8 million contract, Boston Dynamics is currently supplying Darpa with a set of humanoid robots named Atlas to participate in the Darpa Robotics Challenge, a two-year contest with a $2 million prize. The contest’s goal is creating a class of robots that can operate in natural disasters and catastrophes like the nuclear power plant meltdown in Fukushima, Japan.’

“Competitions like the Darpa Robotics Challenge stretch participants to try to solve problems that matter and we hope to learn from the teams’ insights around disaster relief,” Mr. Rubin said in a statement released by Google.’

Oh yeah, DARPA is concerned with natural disasters. And Googles spying is just for advertising.

Drones….Robots…Satellites….Camera’s…Info Technology….Welcome to;

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0064177%2F&ei=B-atUoLkLJDyoASt-oDIDg&usg=AFQjCNGebhSNeaHcQvDtA2DKHYWORYynIg&sig2=fuRuWWBHdYOaQmcSigw3yw&bvm=bv.57967247,d.cGU

Now this is “rich”, and shows what perverse results arise from following Trickle-down/Reaganomics (Funneling all our wealth to the rich) for over 3 decades. Here we have Mitt Romney’s old company Bain and Company fretting on how there is “too much money” in the world and how the very few who have too much money can get around this “problem”. The report came out about a week after the 2012 election. Can you imagine if it would have come out a month earlier? The title: “A world awash in money”. But where is all this money that the world is “awash” in? In the average American’s pocket’s as we were promised if we cut the rich’s taxes and deregulated as per supply-side economics? I think not. We are still waiting for the Trickle-down.

It also talks a lot about the endless bubbles that arise from this “too much money” in the hands of the very few.

A world awash in money
November 14, 2012 Bain and Company report

http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/a-world-awash-in-money.aspx

Introduction: The world of capital turned upside down

Global capital markets have been in a state of turmoil since the financial collapse in late 2008. Ongoing intervention by fiscal policy makers and central banks to stimulate growth since then has heavily impacted equity and bond markets and depressed benchmark interest rates in many markets to historic lows. The turbulence has left senior corporate executives, institutional investors and financial intermediaries looking to allocate capital in a quandary: After the crisis has passed, will familiar capital market conditions once again reassert themselves? Or will markets settle into a new pattern that will require major shifts in investor behavior?

….What does a world that is structurally awash in capital look like—and what will it mean for businesses and investors? The most immediate effect has been to paralyze, confuse and distort investment decisions. Large financial flows are creating dangerous pockets of excess capital in some places, while simultaneously cutting off access in other places where risk premiums are prohibitively high.

….Prepare for bubble risks. Capital superabundance will increase the frequency, intensity, size and longevity of asset bubbles. The propensity for bubbles to form will be magnified as yield-hungry investors race to pour capital into assets that show the potential to generate superior returns. Because the global financial system has grown so large relative to the underlying economy, asset values can quickly reach unsustainable levels and remain inflated for months or years, tempting businesses to commit resources in pursuit of unachievable returns.

Hey Lola The LIEberal…… How many frequent liar miles have you accumulated?

Nazi Counterfeiters and the Fed

Economic law applies regardless of political circumstances

Tim Kelly
Infowars.com
December 15, 2013

What is the fundamental difference between the SS pumping “liquidity” into the British economy via black markets in the 1940′s and the Federal Reserve pumping “liquidity” into the US economy today?
During the Second Word War, Germany devised a secret plan to undermine the British economy by flooding the country with counterfeit Bank of England notes.

Codenamed Operation Bernhard, in recognition of its mastermind, SS Major Bernhard Krüger, the plan involved a team of 142 counterfeiters, drawn primarily from the inmate populations at Sachsenhausan and Auschwitz concentration camps. Beginning in 1942, the dragooned engravers and artists worked feverishly, forging huge quantities of £5, £10, £20, and £50 notes. By the time of Germany’s surrender in May of 1945, the operation had produced 8,965,080 banknotes worth a total value of £134,610,810, an amount exceeding all the reserves in the Bank of England’s vaults.

The original plan called for the dropping of the forged notes from aircraft flying over Great Britain in the expectation that they would be picked up and eagerly circulated but that part of the scheme was never put into effect. By 1943, the Luftwaffe lacked the capacity to deliver the “economic weapon” in sufficient quantities and the operation was taken over by SS foreign intelligence agents who laundered the counterfeit currency, using it to finance their own espionage activities and pay for strategic imports.

Although Operation Bernhard failed to meet its primary objective (the collapse of the British wartime economy), it was successful in flooding the European black markets with counterfeit pounds, thus undermining confidence in Britain’s currency abroad, and causing its value to plummet.

The Nazi plot may have been the most ambitious counterfeiting racket in history but it pales in comparison to the recent exploits of the world’s central banks, especially those of the Federal Reserve.

The Fed is currently creating, ex nihlio, more than a trillion dollars a year and using the funny money to buy U.S. government debt and mortgage-backed securities and then taking them out of circulation. These purchases have propped up the bond market and kept banks solvent. But they have also caused the Fed’s balance sheet to quadruple, growing from just under $1 trillion in 2008 to nearly $4 trillion today.

And there appears to be no end in sight to the reckless money creation. Janet Yellen, a “monetary policy dove” by all accounts, is about to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the next head of the Federal Reserve. Were Messrs. Bernanke and Greenspan “monetary policy hawks?”

Now if a Nazi plot to flood Great Britain with counterfeit currency was a considered a serious threat to that nation’s economy, what are we to make of our own central bank’s policies? What is the fundamental difference between the SS pumping “liquidity” into the British economy via black markets in the 1940′s and the Federal Reserve pumping “liquidity” into the US economy today?

The answer, of course, is there really is no difference. Economic law applies regardless of political circumstances. If you print money faster than the rate of production, you will have more money chasing fewer goods and sooner or later you will have price inflation. It really is just that simple.

An important distinction, however, between the Nazi counterfeiting scheme and the Fed’s current monetary policy is that the US dollar is still the dominant international reserve currency. This “exorbitant privilege” enables US monetary authorities to engage in periodic devaluations without being immediately confronted with a balance of payments crisis or domestic price inflation.

Right now the Fed’s inflationary policies have yet to show up in the Consumer Price Index though there are those who claim the rate of price inflation has been purposely understated by the US government. And indeed consumer prices have gone up in the last five years.

It should also be taken into consideration that the consequences of currency devaluation can manifest themselves in ways other than overt sticker shock. For instance, producers anticipating consumer resistance to price inflation can reduce the quality or quantity of their goods rather than raise prices. This is happening today as many products are now being packaged in smaller amounts yet are being sold at the same price.

Moreover, when you’re measuring price inflation, your baseline is crucial to your analysis. Absent intervention by the US government and the Fed, the Crash of 2008 would have precipitated widespread deflation. This did not happen as the US Treasury and central bank pumped in trillions of new dollars to arrest the panic. The new money has created relative “price stability” in the past few years but this itself is evidence of inflation because otherwise prices would have fallen.

And we can look at bond prices as evidence of inflation. The bond market is an enormous bubble that has been intentionally created by the Fed in order to forestall the inevitable reckoning for decades of overspending by the Congress.

That said, the dreaded hyperinflation that many predicted would happen has yet to occur. Why?

It appears the inflationary deluge is being held back by the Fed’s policy of paying banks not to lend money. Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff elaborated on this very point in Forbes last September. He wrote:

But why haven’t prices started rising already if there is so much money floating around? This year’s inflation rate is running at just 1.5 percent. There are three answers.

First, three quarters of the newly created money hasn’t made its way into the blood stream of the economy – into M1 – the money supply held by the public. Instead, the Fed is paying the banks interest not to lend out the money, but to hold it within the Fed in what are called excess reserves.

Since 2007, the Monetary Base – the amount of money the Fed’s printed – has risen by $2.7 trillion and excess reserves have risen by $2.1 trillion. Normally excess reserves would be close to zero. Hence, the banks are sitting on $2.1 trillion they can lend to the private sector at a moment’s notice. i.e., we’re looking at an gi-normous reservoir filling up with trillions of dollars whose dam can break at any time. Once interest rates rise, these excess reserves will be lent out.

But, and this is point two, other things aren’t equal. As interest rates and prices take off, money will become a hot potato. i.e., its velocity will rise. Having money move more rapidly through the economy – having faster money – is like having more money. Today, money has the slows; its velocity – the ratio GDP to M1 — is 6.6. Everybody’s happy to hold it because they aren’t losing much or any interest. But back in 2007, M1 was a warm potato with a velocity of 10.4.

If banks fully lend out their reserves and the velocity of money returns to 10.4, we’ll have enough M1, measured in effective units (adjusted for speed of circulation), to support a nominal GDP that’s 3.5 times larger than is now the case. I.e., we’ll have the wherewithal for almost a quadrupling of prices. But were prices to start moving rapidly higher, M1 would switch from being a warm to a hot potato. i.e., velocity would rise above 10.4, leading to yet faster money and higher inflation.

So, if commercial banks began lending at a rate resembling the historical norm, we would soon be experiencing hyperinflation. That is hardly a comforting thought. I suppose the only saving grace at that point would be in an economy already laden with massive debt, there might be very little demand for more credit and thus the money multiplier effect may not kick-in, at least not with the vengeance foreseen by Mr. Kotlikoff.

The Fed’s massive intervention into the market has been defended by the usual Keynesian suspects as a necessary measure to spur economic recovery. And yes, the Fed’s overheated printing presses have fueled a stock market boom. Unfortunately, this latest bubble has not lifted the real economy which remains in the doldrums. Private sector investment remains low and unemployment high.

The problem with this situation is the moment the Fed takes away the easy money, the market will collapse. Indeed, we have reached a point where just the suggestion of the Fed “tapering off” sends financial markets into a panic.

So the Fed has painted itself, and the entire U.S economy, into a corner. There is no way the Fed can stop creating money and liquidate its bloated balance sheet without reaping a deflationary whirlwind. And with an economy addicted to perennial trillion-dollar budget deficits and consumer debt, the political will to stomach such a painful yet necessary correction is not likely to be manifested anytime soon.

Vladimir Lenin is reported to have said, “the best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.” He was right. So why is the Fed following the advice of a deceased communist revolutionary?

No, I don’t think it is because the Federal Reserve Board has been infiltrated by communist moles, or Nazi agents for that matter. Although it is difficult to imagine commie saboteurs doing more damage to the U.S. economy than the monetary commissars now in charge at the Eccles building.

Perhaps the famed economist and alleged Fabian socialist John Maynard Keynes provided the answer when he wrote:

By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

That ratio has probably improved somewhat lately. A greater portion of the public appears to be catching on to the Fed’s monetary sleights of hand. The increasing demand for physical gold and silver as well as the various state initiatives to re-monetize those precious metals are auspicious signs of such an awakening.

The war on terror is not a war against radical Muslims who blow themselves and innocent people up.

The war on terror is a war against that terrifying idea of traditional American freedoms. Conservatives have taken the bait for wanting security in exchange for their freedoms and the freedoms of their neighbors.

The same thing is said for the war on drugs.

Manufacturing threats is a win-win for statists.

Lucy, you got some `splainin` to do!