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Guest Post: The U.S. Is A Kleptocracy, Too
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
The U.S. Is A Kleptocracy, Too
If we dare look at the plain facts of the matter, we have to conclude the U.S. is a kleptocracy not unlike Greece, only on a larger and slightly more sophisticated scale.
Yesterday, I noted that Greece Is a Kleptocracy; the U.S. is a kleptocracy, too. Before you object with a florid speech about the Bill of Rights and free enterprise, please consider the following evidence that the U.S. is now a kleptocracy worthy of comparison to Greece:
1. Neither party has any interest in limiting the banking/financial cartel. The original Glass-Steagal bill partitioning investment banking from commercial banking was a few pages long, and it was passed in a few days. Our present political oligrachy spends months passing thousands of pages of complex legislation that accomplishes essentially nothing.
As Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig recently noted (in a rare admission by an insider--I wonder how long it will be before he "resigns to pursue other opportunities," i.e. is muzzled):
The problem with SIFIs ("systemically important financial institutions," a.k.a. too big to fail banks) is they are fundamentally inconsistent with capitalism. They are inherently destabilizing to global markets and detrimental to world growth. So long as the concept of a SIFI exists, and there are institutions so powerful and considered so important that they require special support and different rules, the future of capitalism is at risk and our market economy is in peril.
Do you really think Dodd-Frank and all the other "fooled by complexity" legislation has accomplished anything? Hoenig cuts that fantasy off at the knees:
As late as 1980, the U.S. banking industry was relatively unconcentrated, with 14,000 commercial banks and the assets of the five largest amounting to 29 percent of total banking organization assets and 14 percent of GDP.
Today, we have a far more concentrated and less competitive banking system. There are fewer banks operating across the country, and the five largest institutions control more than half of the industry’s assets, which is equal to almost 60 percent of GDP. The largest 20 institutions control 80 percent of the industry’s assets, which amounts to about 86 percent of GDP.
In other words, nothing has really changed from 2008 except the domination of the political process and economy by the financial cartel has been masked by a welter of purposefully obfuscating legislation. This is of course the exact same trick Wall Street used to cloak the risk of the mortgage-backed derivatives it sold as "low risk" AAA rated securities: by design, the instruments were so complex that only the originators understood how they worked.
That is the current legislative process in a nutshell. Much of the 60,000 pages of tax code are arcane because they describe loopholes and exclusions written specifically to exempt a single corporation or cartel from Federal taxes.
The U.S. is truly a kleptocracy because its political leadership actually has no interest in limiting the banking/financial cartel. When questioned why their "reforms" are so toothless, legislators wring their hands and bleat, "Honest, I wanted to limit the banks but they're too powerful." Spoken like a true kleptocrat.
2. Our stock markets are dominated by insiders. It is estimated that some 70% of all shares traded are exchanged in private "dark pools" operated by the TBTF banks and Wall Street, and the majority of the remaining 30% of publicly traded shares are traded by high-frequency trading machines that hold the shares for a few seconds, or however long is needed to skim the advantages offered by proximity to the exchange and speed.
If that's your idea of an "open market," then you're the ideal citizen for a kleptocracy.
3. The rule of law in the U.S. has been divided into two branches: one in name only for the financial Elites and corporate cartels, and one for the rest of us mere citizens. Between corporate toadies on the Supreme Court who have granted corporations rights to spend unlimited money lobbying and buying legislators as a form of "free speech"--ahem, how can something that costs billions of dollars be "free"?--and vast regulatory brueacracies that saw nothing wrong with MERS and the complete corruption of land and mortgage transfer rules, the U.S. legal system is now a perfection of kleptocracy.
As economist Hernando de Soto observed in The Destruction of Economic Facts, the ForeclosureGate mortgage mess is not just a series of petty paperwork mistakes--it is the destruction of the entire system of trustworthy transfer of property rights for non-Elites:
Knowing who owned and owed, and fixing that information in public records, made it possible for investors to infer value, take risks, and track results. The final product was a revolutionary form of knowledge: "economic facts."
Over the past 20 years, Americans and Europeans have quietly gone about destroying these facts. The very systems that could have provided markets and governments with the means to understand the global financial crisis—and to prevent another one—are being eroded. Governments have allowed shadow markets to develop and reach a size beyond comprehension. Mortgages have been granted and recorded with such inattention that homeowners and banks often don't know and can't prove who owns their homes. In a few short decades the West undercut 150 years of legal reforms that made the global economy possible.
The results are hardly surprising. In the U.S., trust has broken down between banks and subprime mortgage holders; between foreclosing agents and courts; between banks and their investors—even between banks and other banks.
Frequent contributor Harun I. summarized the reality of this political and financial coup by kleptocrats:
As described by Georgetown University bankruptcy expert Adam Levitin, in testimony to subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, "If mortgages were not properly transferred in the securitization process, then mortgage-backed securities would in fact not be backed by any mortgages whatsoever, [and] could cloud title to nearly every property in the United States." It would also raise the question of the legality of the resulting millions of foreclosures on American homeowners, since the banks cannot prove "ownership" of the foreclosed property.
The statement above gets to the elemental issue that apparently is lost on many otherwise intelligent people. This is not about frivolous claims based on technicalities. This is about securities fraud (theft) on a ludicrously massive scale. These so-called securities were sold to governments, pension funds and other financial institutions globally. Trillions were made by banks selling what is becoming clearly understood to be worthless pieces of paper and when the jig was up, which ultimately led to the destruction of economies globally, they made ordinary citizens the losers by sliding their worthless pieces of paper to the balance sheet of taxpayers worldwide.
And while some are quibbling over whether someone should get a free house, those who have perpetrated the greatest swindle in the history of mankind are about to get away with it, because they are "systemically important", code for TBTF (too big to fail).
You think money laundering and tax evasion is a specialty only of Caribbean island "banking centers"? Think again; we have corporate oversight equivalent to that of Somalia. U.S.A. a haven for corporate money laundering: A little house of secrets on the Great Plains:
Among the firm's offerings is a variety of shell known as a "shelf" company, which comes with years of regulatory filings behind it, lending a greater feeling of solidity.
"A corporation is a legal person created by state statute that can be used as a fall guy, a servant, a good friend or a decoy," the company's website boasts. "A person you control... yet cannot be held accountable for its actions. Imagine the possibilities!"
"In the U.S., (business incorporation) is completely unregulated," says Jason Sharman, a professor at Griffith University in Nathan, Australia, who is preparing a study for the World Bank on corporate formation worldwide. "Somalia has slightly higher standards than Wyoming and Nevada."
The U.S. was declared "non-compliant" in four out of 40 categories monitored by the Financial Action Task Force, an international group fighting money laundering and terrorism finance, in a 2006 evaluation report, its most recent. Two of those ratings relate to scant information collected on the owners of corporations. The task force named Wyoming, Nevada and Delaware as secrecy havens. Only three states - Alaska, Arizona and Montana - require regular disclosure of corporate shareholders in some form.
4. Just as in Greece, taxes are optional for the nation's financial Elites. In Greece, you don't mention your swimming pool to avoid the "swimming pool tax." Here in the U.S., that sort of tax avoidance is against the law (smirk). Here, you hire a Panzer division of sharp tax attorneys and escape taxation legally (well, mostly legally--whatever it takes to win).
If you are unfortunate enough to be a successful small entrepreneur who nets $100,000 a year, you pay 15.3% self-employment and 25% Federal tax on the bulk of your income, a combined rate of 40.3%, and a combined rate of 43.3% on all income above $82,400.
Those who net millions pay less than half that amount, somewhere between 17% for the top 1/10th of 1% and 21% for the top 1%: Citizens for Tax Justice, which looks at all taxes paid including federal, state and local taxes, said that in 2010 the top 1 percent of earners will pay 21.5 percent of taxes.
Note that the 21.5% paid by the top 1% includes all state and local taxes. Here in California, the small businessperson earning $100,000 pays between 5% and 9% state tax, so their combined state and Federal tax burden on their highest earnings is a whopping 50%. Then there are property taxes and the 9.5% sales tax, and endless junk fees skimmed from small business. Add all that together and the total taxes paid rises to the 60% level, or roughly triple what the top 1% pay.
(Bitter note from a tax donkey: To all those tax-and-spenders who whine that California has "low taxes," please pay my "low" property tax bill, will you? It's "only" $11,000 a year.)
Super Rich See Federal Taxes Drop Dramatically:
The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.
Eric Schoenberg says to sign him up for paying higher taxes. Schoenberg, who inherited money and has a healthy portfolio from his days as an investment banker, has joined a group of other wealthy Americans called United for a Fair Economy. Their goal: Raise taxes on rich people like themselves.
Schoenberg, who now teaches a business class at Columbia University, said his income is usually "north of half a million a year." But 2009 was a bad year for investments, so his income dropped to a little over $200,000. His federal income tax bill was a little more than $2,000.
"I simply point out to people, 'Do you think this is reasonable, that somebody in my circumstances should only be paying 1 percent of their income in tax?'" Schoenberg said.
Do you really think you don't live in a kleptocracy? Why? Because the truth hurts?
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PigMen scored huge by faking the bears out 3 times near the 200-day.
There will be booze and hookers aplenty out at The Hamptons this weekend.
Just look at how the shorts were totally massacred on consumer stocks like DECK, HANS, LULU, CMG, etc.
Now the PigMen are probably going to take profits and rotate into oils and materials like X, FCX, HAL, etc.
Rich get richer.
Poor average Joe gets the shaft again.
You'll always just be a pathetic Pigman wanna-be buttboy groupie....never a Pigman.
Pretending that average joe matters is unbecoming.
Fools and their money are soon parted. Average joe gets exactly what he deserves. Lots of tranquilizers, internet porn, and Dancing with the Stars.
I would respect average joe more when he proves worthy of respect.
Obamao now calls tax increases " tackling spending in the tax code"
What was his last one " cuts in revenue decreases?"
You know advocates of shrinking the government are winning when socialists are afraid to ask for " tax" increases.
No, no no... it's never tax "increases" silly... it's called "investing in our future".
Learn the new socialists dictionary.
+++ Hernando De Soto
Thank you Tyler for providing this "essay" from Charles Hugh Smith. I am trying to be polite in an attempt to control my seething anger. I am furious. I am angry at the damn crooks that have taken over a country that I love. I am angry at my impotence in being unable to do anything about it. I am angry at our President for mouthing total bullshit this morning instead of trying to figure out a solution to our debt problems. I am angry at all of our politicians for being "bought" by those that require their votes. I am angry that my children will live in semi-poverty all of their lives because we have too many leaches sucking the lifeblood out of our country. I am angry that I had to pay $12 for a pound of coffee. I am angry that it wasn't a full pound.
Having moral guidlines instilled within me, I cannot solve any of these problems by shooting someone.
The alternative is shooting myself.
Have a nice day.
Good post, though shooting yourself it's not solution at all.
The only solution I found not to be angry, at least to rising
costs, is the find the way to make MO money. I know sometimes you
think it's impossible, but it is possible, if you work hard on
it (I mean not physically hard). Maybe stop listen those clowns
and learn how to trade? How protect your trades. Ask them
if they know, what: Buy Covered Stock means.. Good luck.
This comment is junk...suggesting people give up and commit fraud instead of giving up and turning to violence is ridiculous.
Moronic teen. F* U* What the f*ck do you mean by "commit fraud" - dumbass?
I had to laugh out loud at that. That is funny.
You couldn't write intelligently in the first place and now you resort to vulgarity when someone questions you on it. Seriously, WTF is wrong with you? That entire comment of yours was fragmented gibberish. The poster you're responding to expresses a heartfelt frustration with the way this country operates against honest people and all you can manage is "give up, answer is not#( don't shoot trade learn from clowns." Are you one of those clowns out there doing God's work defrauding retirees with made up numbers and pushy sales tactics?
aim at your left toe...the one that says no to your righteous instincts. I know you will miss but you will feel all the better for having tried.
The alternative doesnt necessarily require shooting anyone, but it requires organization and work. Freedom has never been free. The price has gone up recently.
You can make a difference for your family and community. Get with likeminded people and organize.
" I am angry that my children will live in semi-poverty all of their lives"
Semi? Those are the lucky ones.
You have moral guidelines and the ability to rationalize your anger. You have the ability come here and say something about it. Congrats.
There are lots of desensitized, angry people these days that lack these skills. It is those people who WILL shoot someone at some point. Too often they shoot the wrong people though.
Keep your kids and family safe. That is your mission.
Jealousy is so unbecomming Tyler. Caviar anyone?
I think the true issue is indeed tax fairness.
One of the tyler's might be jealous at getting his hand slapped reaching in the cookie jar when he sees people sometimes taking the whole jar without consequences.
Addressing Tax parity before eliminating govt corruption is wasted breath. It doesn't matter if one is rich or poor; who wants to pay taxes so B of A can get a permanent floater from the Bernanke for the first of many settlements north of 8.5b. Hey , how about Cristie Mack getting 220 Million from the Bernanke to invest in student loans which probably nets her 10 Million or more given the no-tax rule and no-laws applies to those with net worth greater than 50M+/-20M system we are under right now.
Until a single tier "rule of law" is enforced, there really is nothing else to talk about. Period.
"Kleptocracy Uber Alles!"
... paraphrasing an old saying.
Seems I've read this before, this is not a new topic. Its as if The Constitution was housed in WTC7. And tell me again why all the Banksterz were uptown that day? All except Cantor-Fitz but they weren't yet primary dealers. Have you read about Lehman's grand renovations within WTC7? They removed whole floors to make 3 separate 2-story high trading floors. FEMA front-running by a day, those insiders....
We're living in a kleptocracy... which most Tea Party types would fully endorese... but nevertheless, we're supposed to believe that the evil mean super rich are actually lying away at night because they just can't figure out who to write the check to, so they need taxes to figure it out... Does this make sense to anyone else?
Oh help. Help me. I stole all this money. I want to give to the Governemnt. Honestly. <sniff> If only there was a governement program to help me. <sob> I could do so much good. All I need is your vote. <sob,sob> And some more zirp...
The banker-politico hegemony has declared all out war on the rest of us. Look at Syntagma Square. Coming soon to a capital city near you as the sheeple realize just how thoroughly they've been fleeced by their lords and masters.
Gimme a break. Nobody can fleece the sheeple the way the sheeple do.
Sad but true. The wizard of oz effect. I believe this is actually to "our" benefit, as it keeps the ball up in the air while those so inclined position themselves appropriately for the future. A blessing and a curse really. I try to explain the issues to those I care about but most just glaze over and eventually switch the subject to facebook or dancing with the stars, etc. Ignorance is bliss for some I guess. I can't help but be jealous on the more stressful days.
Could ZH perhaps institute a "junk allowance"? Even better, display double entry junk dealt/received counts for each persona? At least then we'd know who is playing game theoretic tit-for-tat and broad spectrum dominance with the junk buttons.
Don't worry about the junk. Everybody's got junk - usually between their legs. Whoever's been on the junk tear is like the little-retarded-kid at the adult party... ignore them and they'll go away. Junk is Bullshit anyway. You could write a Nobel Economics Prize Winning Treatise on Fraud as a Business Model in the US and somebody would Junk you for it.
This week is proof that when shorting you must take your bacon early.
Dip buying on oversold conditions is must easier than trying to short stocks and battling against all the squeezes perpetrated by the PigMen and operators.
If you are a bear, you can actually make more money buying the dips at the 50-day or 200-day and hold for the inevitable rally rather than get shanked on shorts like the poor schlubs that got taken out back and shot shorting SBUX, LULU, FOSL, etc.
I'd say there is probably an exception with gold stocks, those can be consistently shorted for major coin any time there is a credit event or if the stock market gets into trouble.
Wow, a RobotTrader or Robot Troll? $VXN down 9% today, AAPL flat, I've shorted QQQ at 56.38. Talk with you in a couple of days.
Yea, I'm short the Brent/WTI spread from 22. He's right though, I should have let it go a couple days go. But I'll let it ride back up to 18 before I start to cut it loose. I'm looking for it to head on down to about 9 before a real reversal.
Covering half @ 56.05 ... bird in hand and all that jive.
Retired the other half at end of aftermarket, a wash. Didn't expect today's dip, paid $4.95 to go out flat. Certainly more enticing than possibly waking tomorrow with position underwater due to a gap up opening.
With irredeemable money at the foundation of our system what else could we expect to get out of this deal? Our leaders got unlimited war, a rigged casino for a market place to make them rich, and a blank check to bail out connected friends. We get a police state (Patriot Act), inflation, high unemployment, lower wages and rising crime. A heads I win tails you lose money system. It was designed perfectly and is working exactly the way it's supposed to. Why would our leaders want to change this arrangement? It's transferring the wealth of the nation to the 1% without having to use violence or direct means of confiscation. A kinder gentler Kleptocracy...But when they get it all they'll go back to cutting people's heads off, crusifiction, and full blown torture like the old days. So enjoy it while it lasts. These are the good times.
No, U.S. is a simple idiocracy.
MS and RKH have cleared the 21-day EMA, bears need to knock these back ASAP, otherwise its going to be a long hot summer for the gloomer crowd who were hoping for a credit event driven selloff.
The stated purpose of this government from the beginning (USA) was to protect the propertied, with the faculties (privilege) of gaining more from those who hold no or little property. The average person who owns property can be assailed at any time by the propertied (through their franchise government) to take those who have little, to give to those who have more. It is as simple as raising a fee or duty (tax), or where hundreds of more powerful entities can attach to a property by a perceived offense or the inability to pay, etc (no matter what effect the powerful have invoked by almost bankrupting society). Average people do not hold property allodially (without fee or duty), as a king did in the past - that is because the power and type of ownership that average people have in essence means they own nothing under the correct circumstances, the concept of the kings property has passed to the moneyed elite.
There is more attrition of ownership of property systemically (note the recent foreclosure debacle) than any other method, that is because it is a monopoly of the rich and enfranchised
The current government will never get it right, that is because it has never been a government of the people from the beginning, no matter what we were taught in school. They are there to serve a moneyed elite, and it is their business to protect this elite from the "leveling impulses" as the so called father of the Constitution said, Madison in the 10th Federalist Paper.
A complete and obvious kleptocracy is what it ALWAYS reverts to sooner or later as those with little property who think they are privileged become the duped fat around the midsection of the moneyed elite. This goes for the the erosion of the bill of rights and rise of the security state, just another symptom of a paranoid elite worried about losing power.
Junk away
+++
Is this thread attracting flies...?
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner put forward a mind bending justification for increasing taxes on small business before the House Small Business Committee on June 22, 2011:
Tax small business to avoid reducing the overall size of governmenthttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4bYNkXu5qs&feature=player_embedded
I live in California and pay these taxes, unfortunately.
My representatives don't represent me. They steal from me and the people that vote for them steal from me. High taxes, no representation, horrible business environment. Our only hope is California's default. Default is the only guardrail left. Default is the only way to control these idiots. The sooner we fly off the financial cliff the better.
the U.S. is a kleptocracy, too
no shit charles, now why do you think that is?
While you all were feeling superior to the "knuckle dragging inferiors" and arguing about the same old BS your government was at work.
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/169017-senate-defeats-amend...
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/58002.html
Dick Durbin on the Ed Show, "The Banks own Washington"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOJk11TrwDw&feature=related
Doc. Tyler, we need Thumbs UP and Thumbs down, otherwise
pretty much 99% of the posts are flagged as junk.
Thank you.
Watch the video 'THIS IS A HEIST OF AMERICA !!!'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj3wdaCL3R0
This is a kleptocratic nightmare! Welcome to tyranny!
!!! (to aid dramatic effect)
We let 60% of all jobs revolve around residential/commercial construction, now 60% of all GDP controlled by 4-5 banks, yet the other blew up. Force them to take the losses, demand they expose the bad loans, cut their heads off and break them up. Merge with strong regionals.
In light of the mortgage putback situation, and recent legislation laying out how the fed can unwind systemically important institutions, I have my fingers crossed that day is coming. I know this is the epitome of naivete, but, I am a dreamer at heart.
Why are you morons complaining about junks on ZH?
Do you go to the beach and bitch about the sand? STFU.
Can it rat.
gee, what ever would we do without you around to set us all straight?
Yeah, the very fountain of wisdom...
That's how you make money on Forex:
Run those fat bastards to the finish line, that's all it takes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtH0lVRAwlc
:))))) *LOL*
Another angle:
The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, in his 12-volume magnum opus A Study of History (1961), theorized that all civilizations pass through several distinct stages: genesis, growth, time of troubles, universal state, and disintegration.
Toynbee argues that the breakdown of civilizations is not caused by loss of control over the environment, over the human environment, or attacks from outside. Rather, ironically, societies that develop great expertise in problem solving become incapable of solving new problems by overdeveloping their structures for solving old ones.
The fixation on the old methods of the "Creative Minority" leads it to eventually cease to be creative and degenerates into merely a "Dominant minority" (that forces the majority to obey without meriting obedience), failing to recognize new ways of thinking. He argues that creative minorities deteriorate due to a worship of their "former self," by which they become prideful, and fail to adequately address the next challenge they face.
He argues that the ultimate sign a civilization has broken down is when the dominant minority forms a "Universal State," which stifles political creativity. He states:
“ First the Dominant Minority attempts to hold by force - against all right and reason - a position of inherited privilege which it has ceased to merit; and then the Proletariat repays injustice with resentment, fear with hate, and violence with violence when it executes its acts of secession. Yet the whole movement ends in positive acts of creation - and this on the part of all the actors in the tragedy of disintegration. The Dominant Minority creates a universal state, the Internal Proletariat a universal church, and the External Proletariat a bevy of barbarian war-bands. ”He argues that, as civilizations decay, they form an "Internal Proletariat" and an "External Proletariat." The Internal proletariat is held in subjugation by the dominant minority inside the civilization, and grows bitter; the external proletariat exists outside the civilization in poverty and chaos, and grows envious.
He argues that in this environment, people resort to archaism (idealization of the past), futurism (idealization of the future), detachment (removal of oneself from the realities of a decaying world), and transcendence(meeting the challenges of the decaying civilization with new insight, as a Prophet). He argues that those who Transcend during a period of social decay give birth to a new Church with new and stronger spiritual insights, around which a subsequent civilization may begin to form after the old has died.
Toynbee's use of the word 'church' refers to the collective spiritual bond of a common worship, or the same unity found in some kind of social order.
WTC7 becomes more intriguing each passing day, as does the prosecution of whatever Enron did.
Charles Hugh Smith ignores that fact that dividends, nominally taxed at 15%, have already been taxed at whatever the corporate rate was. His lumping this into his "rich peoples tax rates" is as disingenous as Warren Buffet claiming that he pays at a lower tax rate than his secretary. The truth is that these dividends have already been taxed once, and by ignoring the prior tax makes him vulnerable to the charge of being a socialist tax and spend statist.
He's a fuckball, like Leo, like Phoenix, they all have Adsense accounts that pileup pennies 24/7 for their wife's Lexis's gas expense. ASOL.
Stupid article. It isn't who to tax more, it is government spend less.
For Keynesian economics to work it REQUIRED government to tax more and SAVE during the good times. NOT spend in the bad times, run up debt and then tax more to keep the economy from growing paying off the debt.
And with Executive order #13575, the army corp buying farm land, the recent creation of a hugely expandable bureaucracy thru the Food Safety and Modernization Act, Obamacare, and more, The government is guaranteed to continue to expand more and more. Stop government gone wild.
C.H. Smith is right.
The problem most people refuse to face is that it is PAST TIME to expect any of the country's manifest problems to be solved by the current system.
Rather, THE PROBLEM IS THE SYSTEM.
This cannot be settled at the ballot box - it can only be settled in the streets, by heavily armed contending parties.
And in this fight, it is TPTB that are out-armed and outnumbered. Any attempt by TPTB to use what remains of the police or the Army will literally find "a rifle behind every blade of grass".
I would predict would have no more success - in fact LESS - in attempting to "pacify" the USA than they did in Iraq or Afghanistan. This will become increasingly more likely as the "Security Forces" come to realize that the Elites wish only for enough time to be bought so that they can flee on a one-way trip to their new luxury estates in a non-extradition-treaty country.
Forutnately for us, though, many of this guilty Elite will choose to flee to that certain Middle East country to which they have the "right of return"...
What, are you too pussy to admit you're an anti-semite and type it out? Please elaborate on your hate of Jews. It helps the search term analytics decide exactly what the nature of Zero Hedge is all about.
Please also feel free to continue to pontificate about the state of the world, "Laughing Swordfish" -- Nazi sympathisers have *boatloads* of credibility outside wingnutville. I'm sure your petty little bigoted posts will truly rock the evil bankster controlled superstructure to its core. Really. Keep spending your time wisely. Me? I'm going for beer. Cheers, asshole.
Oops.
Stupid is, as stupid does.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DmmtT3AeBE&feature=related
Turns out, plenty of the TPTB share those feelings. Just like plenty of the Knesset habour rather fascist and racist views on 'the goys', and are on record showing it.
Hmm... I'd go away now, before I shred you into little pieces.
Oh. A tough guy! Shred what? It is you that has to explain your completely foolish faux-reasoning of equating an attack on an anti-semitic comment into some comment on one faction in the Israeli government, which wasn't even the topic of the exchange. Have something you need to get off your chest, little one?
I really thought our country's pristine system of property ownership conveyance would be the saving grace and return to righteousness for our country--but so far, even the mortgagegate is getting shoved under a rug with settlements, but no justice, and all the while, Bank of America's hedge funds are busy ensuring America's demise by financing the purchase of tax notes with zero percent loans from the Fed cartel ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/18/the-new-tax-man-big-banks_n_766169.html )
...Long time passing; Where have all the decent public servants gone; long time ago; where have all the decent public servants gone-- bought by the federal reserve cartel everyone...Oh when will they ever learn.