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And this is just the beginning. Chairman Ben has yet to be fully unleashed.
Courtesy of Sean Malone at Mises Institute
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Dear PM, Sir [?] would you please look at this?
Brasscheck TV [have to google or other] Under supressed technologies, at bottom is [why haven't you heard of this car?] Is this real? I would certainly appreciate your opin, Frank
http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSTRE57T01E20090830?feedTy...
The slimey !@#$$%^%^^&&**@(@(@(@^&&^*(^&^*&% waits til Sat to slip this by. All i can say is i hope the voters who voted for him will vote the slimey @#$%^**y out of office soon.
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cycle=2008&type=I&cid...
Barney's donors from 2007-08
Thanks Anony--i copied the contents of your link here for easy viewing for everyone to see BARNEY FRANK IS A BANK SHILL...check it out, likely you will find this to be true for most elected officials at this point, because it is a machine that has run unchallenged for 95 years...they buy the legeslators so the legeslators will enact policy that works for their criminal schemes so they can claim is is all "legal" when challenged--let's clean out Washington this next election, and replace all the corrupted with new uncorruptable blood....
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cycle=2008&type=I&cid...
First Elected: 1980 Next Election: 2008
REPRESENTATIVE (D - MA)
Barney FrankSelect cycle and data to include:
2010200820062004200220001998Career- Campaign Cmte Only
- Leadership PAC Profile Only
- Campaign Cmte & Leadership PAC Combined
- No Leadership PAC money for selected cycle
Committee Assignments:- Financial Services, Chairman
Cycle Fundraising, 2007 - 2008, Campaign Cmte Raised: $2,202,677 Spent: $2,858,741 Cash on Hand: $173,441 Debts: $0 Last Report: Wednesday, December 31, 2008 Top 5 Contributors, 2007-2008, Campaign Cmte Contributor Total Indivs PACs Brown Brothers Harriman & Co $36,200 $36,200 $0 Bank of America $15,750 $1,750 $14,000 Manulife Financial $15,000 $7,000 $8,000 Royal Bank of Scotland $13,800 $7,800 $6,000 Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu $13,000 $3,000 $10,000 Top 5 Industries, 2007-2008, Campaign Cmte Industry Total Indivs PACs Securities & Investment $228,800 $90,200 $138,600 Real Estate $225,851 $147,650 $78,201 Insurance $202,798 $17,000 $185,798 Lawyers/Law Firms $189,928 $122,409 $67,519 Commercial Banks $121,200 $31,950 $89,250 Total Raised vs. Average Raisedsource: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cycle=2008&type=I&cid...
How does something decrease 196% in value? I thought 100% meant you were wiped out.
You can go under -100% when you use leverage either through borrowing cash or using instruments like futures contracts where margin must be posted. Unfortunately, I know this from experience.
ITS THE ONLY VOICE WE HAVE. WERE OUTLIERS...THE TRUTH IS POWERFUL.
ZERO HEDGE RULES.
BILL MAHER IS A JACKASS, HE THINKS WERE STUPID...BRING IT ON MOFO, EVERYONE KNOWS YOUR BARNY'S BITCH!
Sqworl,
Bless Bill Maher, bless Rachel Maddow, bless them all. Their arrogance and self-righteousness is plain for all to see and will hasten the demise of everything they stand for. All they bring to the discussion of America's future is ridicule of people who disagree with them. They offer no facts in dispute, no case, just ridicule. Everyone can see it for what it is, and it just pisses people off ever so much more. By being so blatant they are doing our work for us. Bless their hearts.
Have you seen the video someone else posted of the cop in Reston threatening to arrest a guy for holding an Obama joker sign at a congressman's town hall political event? It is at the same time infuriating and delightful. Here is a cop threatening to arrest someone for engaging in political speech protected by the first amendment, and it is actually on video! I couldn't ask for more than that to help wake people up. This government can be counted on to act stupidly, and more stupidly as the situation becomes more desperate. God help them if they shut down the Internet.
Okay, it's Saturday night. Everybody go back to drinking and stop all those fantasies about changing the system or taking back your country. Nothing is going to change, the banksters are going to continue to use you for their own gain, the Fed will never be audited, and the only people the SEC is ever going to catch are those $780 cheats.
We're all fat and lazy cowards willing to accept whatever crumbs the PTB throw to us, rather than face the possibility of a little bit of discomfort on the way to freedom.
We get what we deserve. Cheers!
You are a sad little person.
I am Chumbawamba.
Well,duh.
The voting record, those returning their Senators, Reps, local, state, and national thieves to offices term after term, like Kennedy, Specter, Frank, Dodd, etc. ad nauseum
pretty much says it all.
Unfortunately WE get what THEY, those voters deserve.
You are a sad little person.
I am Chumbawamba.
Fox is stupid to do this. Even the left and progressives are beginning to see Obama for the fraud he is. Airing this will only rally what's left of his base to his defense.
Looks like a chart of AIG from two weeks ago.
Wow. -196% That's like an impossible number. Has the dollar turned into a black hole? Swallowing junk from everywhere?
Get a grip.
We are all Americans, first & foremost, as in, We the People.
As Americans we have a right to like gold, just as we have the right to like any other form of currency. It's called FREE CHOICE.
And who has the most GOLD?
Well let's see...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_gold_reserves
Where is China on this list?
Where is Japan on this list?
Keep in mind the Eurozone is a double count.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurozone
Meaning all 16 countries listed that make up the Euro are also posted as reported totals.
Since Zimbabwe keeps coming up here, the question becomes where are they on the gold list?
108 countries listed and I couldn't find them on the list, maybe I missed it.
Remember the IMF can not sell it's gold without US Congressional Approval.
Drunk or sober, We the People, after all is said and done, should be leading by example and deed. Duty, Honor, Country, play by the rules, good sportsmanship, all those things mean something here.
The injustices should be, and will be exposed in time as more people speak truth to power. Past any movie, or fake person/persons, debt can make slaves of those who do fall in that trap. It is also possible to get drunk and start buying your own B.S. to the point you don't even know your talking to yourself.
Past all that, if you want to fight join the Army or better yet if your really good at it get in the ring and make some money while you are young.
My advise would be to get an education. If you can't afford to go to school, go to the library, it's free. Then if you wish to speak truth to power, use your mind and your words.
If you need help and you stand for peace, truth, justice, and the American Way, people will find you, including me.
If you forget which country has been good to you, your family, your grandparents, go to a ball game. Any ball game. High School, college, Pro and stand up when they start to sing the song. Say what you will. This is still the greatest country on earth in my book.
Sounds really simple. As in naive.
There is only a myth of an "america". One you apparently have adopted as your reality.
This country should have been split up, divided, broken apart along the lines of a European Model or African Model a long time ago.
It is impossible to govern one state, one city with any degree of efficiency let alone a zillion square miles, with a diversified people, seeking different ways in which they wish to be governed.
The larger the entity the more chaotic, corrupt, and filthy it is, as it barrels down a one way highway to Armageddon. This country demonstrates the fatal flaw in cloning: one tiny bacteria with one cell gone awry wipes out the entire herd.
A country that seeks to provide 'free' necessities to 500,000,000 is a country headed for decimation.
Those who compare us to Norway, France, Canada, Italy, or other socialist states, haven't a clue what communist style government will do to the producers. Or more likely they do know and don't give a shit as long as it increases their death grip on power.
One does not need an education to realize that the ideal, born in the fetid halls of Academia, is impossible, a violation of nature. There will always be a tension between those who want their needs satisfied without working for them and those who say, "Get your ass to work"! and the battle is being won by those who discovered the power to vote themselves the efforts and achievements of the other.
That tension heretofore about equal is has turned decidedly to the left as more and more on the right decide enough is enough. And in that decision have planted the seeds for an 'america' it would be best to leave.
I think that a decrease from $2.04 to $0.08 is 96%....
"Now try to imagine what your life might be like if every dollar you had bought you 20 times as much stuff... This is the cost of inflation."
...and if that were the case, you'd presumably have 1/20th the dollars, no? Is the Mises Institute hiring sophomores from third-rate colleges to do their economic analysis now? This is seriously lame... quite a surprise to see something of this (low) quality on 0H...
more full for chairman yen ben's fire:
http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/07.09/fedrecord.html
Funny, I always thought we won WWII. Looking at the chart it is not clear. Looking at it again, it becomes clear.
We lost that war........
Man, I am seeing Zero Hedge content every where I go online. Thank you CNBC!
October 09 Crash....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dapTtjsT10s&NR=1
HAHA!
"Oh dear, what perception there."
The fawning expectation over the forthcoming Obama spewage was pathetic. "Ooh, the president is going to speak! Oh dear, I'm all moist!!"
I am Chumbawamba.
Thoughts on Dr. Enzio's track record? Anyone else see a similiar thing unfolding? I believe Robert Prechter sees a similar thing occuring, but his track record is quite inconsistent.
DEBT SLAVES...MUST WATCH THIS VIDEO..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9q1oeMcoL0
Sqworl,
It is difficult but very useful and worthwhile to ride the edge. Change is implemented at the edge.
I wonder if those road signs glow in the dark or are just reflective.
I'm missing my Cheeky!!!!!
I always wonder how careful the americans are about their history (mainly economical) with such detail. From the other side, I see how shitty my country (Brazil) is in this matter. If you ask for 1990 data, pretty sure you'll get nothing.
Rise and Fall. Brings to mind the rise and fall of two steel and concrete towers in Manhattan. Purported to have been brought down by a deep conspiracy of Islamic religious fanatics angry at Satan USA. If Osama Bin Laden were sick to violence because he saw an empty, rapacious, inequitable economic system which chose winners and losers while lying to participants that it was all merit based and Free. Targeting other nations with their eco-political cabal.
If that system did manipulate the psychology of the people, the industrial policy of the nation, the bond/equity/derivative/forex markets of the world; if they lay as predators using inside gaming and automated trading to fleece the innocents of the world; if they coopted the political power to further extort the fat of the land--hoovering them up into their pockets, then they really were what they were perceived to be. Iniquitious, conspiratorial global terrorists without compare.
The twin towers came down very neatly, all that elaborate structure somehow being reduced to simple small almost portable pieces. The winners? Other real estate interests in NY which had the glut overnight transformed into a net scarcity. The military which used specious links to terror to launch wars throughout the middle and far east. The tower owner who needed impossibly expensive asbestos remediation and necessary retrofitting to overcome the extensive design flaws. The owner was handsomely repaid with double insurance payouts. AIG anyone? See the comparison?
Bringing down this tower of Babel which is the Debt peonage, superamplified business cycle, end-of-days rapacious looting has its designated winners too.
In a system where the unit of accounting has no stability, and is used as a tool to distort economic truths as revealed in other markets, in a system where taxpayer liquidity is used to trade against their interests, in a system where their retirements, health, savings, land and structures, livelihoods, and future earnings capacity have been destroyed by pull-forward false demand, this is an EVIL EMPIRE. Where falsehood is established as state policy by balance sheet manoevres, by no-standard accounting standards, by official bureaucratic lie-making, by slippery handed debt and equity manipulation, this is state terrorism against its governed masses.
In the fall of the dollar, in the fall of a false empire, in a fall of any structure of man, the tragedy is made worse by the open corruption and defiant evil of the powerful.
This is the face of the Great Satan. This is the age-old evil which diminishes the happiness and hope for the future. Those who have historically opposed it have been the heroes and patriots. The greatest lie of today is that our institutions founded on virtue and integrity are not the paragons of evildoing and exploitation. The USA, its bankers and politicians, are servants of all the dark arts and its prince reigns through them.
Throw out the money changers and high priests who crucify those who seek to restore the virtuous cycle in trade for their continued gain and position.
Sooner or later, it must crumble down.
And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU...WILL...ATONE!" hehe
What is this chart based on and can anyone actually define purchasing power objectively? I can buy a computer for 1/10 what it was 15 years ago so clearly purchasing power has risen in this instance. The same goes for a lot of technology. Phone rates are way cheaper; Cars have gotten cheaper and toys or just about anything made in Asia. Some things have gotten more expensive: real estate, stocks, gas....
And the comment about FDR's New Deal destroying any hope of prosperity for a decade is highly debatable and it's certainly not clear to anyone how the Great Depression would have unfolded under alternative scenarios. The New Deal laid the groundwork for 3 decades of solid economic performance after the war by giving people the security of social assistance which allowed them to spend and borrow. Everyone seems pretty convinced now that China needs a social safety net in order to get the Chinese consumer to let go of some of their massive savings so clearly the New Deal had a net positive impact.
I'm not trying to defend government largess. Not at all. I think our deficits are a recipe for future disaster however I have a serious problem with knee-jerk dogma which passes for analysis. Additionally, what is this chart based on? We don't know. It's just a chart with some impressive looking numbers.
I'd also like to add that almost 80 years after the the Great Depression, "experts" are still debating the facts of it.
Richard Benson in Inflation and the Ironic Productivity Tax (03.28.07) addresses many of your doubts regarding inflation. Benson shows how “hedonics, and productivity are names and measures for the same fundamental fact,” a fact the government and Fed use to hide the real rate of inflation to rob you of your money. Here’s Benson, edited:
Man is such a lucky creature because machines do all of our work. Our economy and prosperity stand on the shoulders of the geniuses who invented the wheel, lever and plow, and the creative thinkers who dreamed up mathematics, the internal combustion engine, silicone chip and the internet. These innovations have led to wondrous and unforeseen leaps forward for mankind. Human ingenuity, mixed with a desire to do better and produce more with less, has relentlessly driven productivity forward.
There was a time when I actually looked forward to the government’s reports on productivity because it made me feel that I could share in the collective genius, good luck, and hard work of my fellow man. Then I woke up and realized that those very reports were being used to rob me! Here’s how I came to that conclusion.
The other day while at the gas pump, I was thinking about productivity, creativity and technological advances. When I realized how much it would cost me to fill up my Sport Ute – an amount that would have fed a family of four for a month when I was a kid – it dawned on me that the one thing the government never reports on is that the dollar in my pocket will buy me more next year. Indeed, my dollar should buy more because of the relentless increases in productivity, and I should in reality be better off if I saved money, rather than spent it. But, in my lifetime, my world has only known inflation so buying goods today that I will need tomorrow, and stashing them away, has proved to be a better investment than saving cash in the bank.
Even though my wallet was noticeably lighter after paying the bill to fill up my car, I proceeded to go to the supermarket. Regardless of all the gains in productivity, everything on the supermarket shelves – and I mean everything – was more expensive than the last time I shopped. A nagging thought kept bothering me:
“If mankind’s machines produce more with less labor each year, why shouldn’t the dollar I make this year buy more next year?” Shouldn’t this increase in productivity flow through to the wage earner and saver?
This brings me to a serious examination of inflation. Because I’m a trained economist, I know that inflation is the Government’s and Federal Reserve’s way of taxing financial assets like cash… [W]ith inflation, the government has basically stolen/taxed my share of productivity away. Stunning and painful thought!
…I have been writing for years about how the government has been using “hedonic” price adjustments to hold down reported inflation and one way inflation measures are modified over time is in the way in which goods from the present are compared with goods from the past. Let’s use the purchase of your computer as an example:
The concept behind a hedonic adjustment is that because your computer is twice as fast and stores twice as much data for the same price, the price you paid is cut in half. The actual price you paid for the computer is not cut in half, but the price as reported in the price indexes is!
Well surprise, surprise! Most of what passes for hedonic adjustments in the price indexes is simply another way of reporting the improvements in technology. Another name for this is, of course, “productivity”. Technological advances, hedonics, and productivity are all names and measures for the same fundamental fact: technological advance allows for the increase in productivity that is translated into the hedonic adjustments.
Something didn’t feel right. I got up and examined the shrinking dollar in my wallet and I felt like I was robbed! First, by the Federal Reserve Bank because they have keep inflation moving ahead so I never receive the benefit of productivity, and then by the slick Bureau of Labor Statistics, (“BLS”) that actually made the Price Index pay for productivity by subtracting it from the CPI and reporting it as a smaller number than it really is! (It’s ironic that the best and brightest at the BLS are employed to figure out how to use fancy statistics to rob their grandparents of their social security increases.)
If our government was fair and money and credit growth were restrained, I estimate the dollar could purchase about two percent more each year, and we would be living in a saver’s paradise. Taking productivity out of the Price Index means that when the CPI shows three percent, in reality it’s more like five percent. Our government gains by doing this because as the world’s largest borrower, they benefit from increases in productivity. On the other hand, savers and those on fixed income really get ripped off. In a $14 trillion economy, the two percent productivity rip-off is likely to amount to a cool $280 billion, and the total inflation tax on five percent is over a half trillion dollars. That is enough tax revenue to pay for a not so little war! …
http://www.sfgroup.org/Invlation%20and%20the%20IronicProductivity%20Tax....
*Blind Applause*
So if inflation is a tax, and the Federal Reserve for all intents and purposes is designed to control inflation, that would amount to taxation without representation. Interesting.
Yes! And "taxation without representation," said James Otis in The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, 1764, "is tyranny." And, said George Santayana, "There is no tyranny so hateful as a vulgar and anonymous tyranny. It is all permeating, all-thwarting; it blasts every budding novelty and sprig of genius with its omnipresence and fierce stupidity."
The Fed must be slain! before it becomes our eternal lord and master...
In this nation, the very few highly innovative, uberproductive few furnish the many with a cornocopaiea of abundance. Whatever innate facility has been triggered in them, they think more of nature's bounty and bringing it to mankinds table than any other alternative.
Unfortunately, the power structure is not hosted with the same men. If they can be called men. Those that seek to rule, seek to establish the law and commandment of society, generally have a much separate purpose. They wish to impose their will upon others. They wish to consume without producing. They wish to subvert the honest labours of their fellows, and divert the excess of goods and services to themselves. In real terms and by money proxy.
This group has waxed into its height of power and dominion. While they seek the fruits of productive labour for the pleasure and felicities of life, their output is strictly deleterous.
It leads to greater impoverishment, increased despair; it delivers a decidedly contrary fruit. It falsely incents, it captivates hope, it subordinates creation to greed. This malignancy of spirit asks tribute of treasure and heart which can never quench the empty soul.
It is living beyond present means, it is betting upon the come of tomorrow, it is overweening pride where none is due.
It produces sorrow, meagerness, tumult, corruption, war, and disintegration of all that is sought for.
It is ultimate duplicity. Seeking superabundance from paucity, extraction without any addition.
Blackness and the face of untimely death.
remember that zero-hedge motto?
"on a long enough timescale..."
u should stick this chart right next to your zero hedge logo
hey look. our favorite deflation expert, mish shedlockski is on max keiser. on a side note, it is funny that keiser had all of the deleterious remarks concerning that windbag, alex jones, removed. ha ha ha
JPM and GS own the government these days, and tell the regulators what they can regulate....ya know, the small stuff that the "little people" and the peasants could possibly turn profits on....gotta catch any "cheating" among them......
Speaking of ownership:
Survival Of The BiggestOn account of Fed sponsorship, Banks 'Too Big to Fail' Have Grown Even Bigger.
When the credit crisis struck last year, federal regulators pumped tens of billions of dollars into the nation's leading financial institutions because the banks were so big that officials feared their failure would ruin the entire financial system.
Today, the biggest of those banks are even bigger.
________________________________________________________________________
PERCENTAGE GROWTH OF COMBINED ASSETS from 2007 to March 2009
Wells Fargo +43% After acquiring Wachovia
J.P. Morgan Chase +51% After acquiring Bear Stearns and Washington Mututal
Bank of America +138% After acquiring Countrywide and Merrill Lynch
________________________________________________________________________
J.P. Morgan Chase, an amalgam of some of Wall Street's most storied institutions, now holds more than $1 of every $10 on deposit in this country. So does Bank of America, scarred by its acquisition of Merrill Lynch and partly government-owned as a result of the crisis, as does Wells Fargo, the biggest West Coast bank. Those three banks, plus government-rescued and -owned Citigroup, now issue one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards, federal data show...Fresh data from the FDIC show that big banks have the ability to borrow more cheaply than their peers because creditors assume these large companies are not at risk of failing. That imbalance could eventually squeeze out smaller competitors. Already, consumers are seeing fewer choices and higher prices for financial services, some senior government officials warn.
Officials waived long-standing regulations to make the deals work. J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo were each allowed to hold more than 10 percent of the nation's deposits despite a rule barring such a practice. In several metropolitan regions, these banks were permitted to take market share beyond what the Department of Justice's antitrust guidelines typically allow, Federal Reserve documents show.
"There's been a significant consolidation among the big banks, and it's kind of hollowing out the banking system," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com. "You'll be left with very large institutions and small ones that fill in the cracks. But it'll be difficult for the mid-tier institutions to thrive."
"The oligopoly has tightened," he added.
Last October, when the Fed was arranging the merger between Wells Fargo and Wachovia, it identified six other metropolitan regions in which the combined company would either exceed the Justice Department's antitrust guidelines or hold more than a third of an area's deposits. But the central bank thought local competition in each of those places was sufficient to allow the merger to go through, documents show.
Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, said those comments reveal the government's preferential treatment of big banks. He doubted whether the Fed would approve the merger of community banks if the combined company ended up controlling more a third of the market.
"To favor one class of financial institutions over another class skews the market. You don't have a free market; you have a government-favored market," he said. "We will never have free markets again if you have the government picking winners and losers."
The dollar is an orphaned child who is now being molested by his uncle Ben.
I think you have to compare the dollar against gold, since that is precisely how the government itself used to define the value of the dollar and gold has been a currency far longer than the U.S. dollar has anyway. Here's a good explanation of what has happened since 1900:
http://www.powerwealth.com/?p=9
http://stg.powerwealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/dollardevaluation1...
US Dollar has been giving bullish signals for several months now.
More here:
http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/market-outlook