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Use of National Security Book Cooking Exception Not Looking So Paranoid After All
We are often accused of being paranoid here at Zero Hedge, generally by our many detractors. Occupational hazard, we suppose. So when we pen missives wondering about the use of "National Security" exceptions to SEC disclosure and filing requirements for public companies, we tend to get a lot of smug "you're crazy" correspondence. Then a little time passes, and someone like Reuters writes an article:
U.S. securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve's bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security, according to emails obtained by Reuters.
We are shocked, shocked. Would anyone like to wager on the chance of more documents coming out with a lot more specificity about the import of a National Security interest here? We take no pride in being both paranoid and right here. It is simply the fact that no well-reasoned suspicion seems that outlandish to us anymore when it comes to predicting what crony capitalists might do/have already done.
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It is simply the fact that no well-reasoned suspicion seems that outlandish to us anymore
Amen to that.
Hollywood script writers cannot come up with some of the stuff that we have been seeing the last few years from the US government and our financial sector.
New York Fed spokeswoman Deborah Kilroe said on Friday that the more than 250,000 pages of documents provided by the central bank to Congress "demonstrate that the FBNY's actions assisted AIG in ensuring the accuracy of its disclosures and protected important U.S. taxpayer interests."
Remember, whenever those within government (or within private industry that have been empowered with the constitutional authority to mint money without any law enforcement concerns) feel themselves backed into a corner with nowhere to go, they will resort to throwing out big numbers as a proxy for actually doing the job they know they are supposed to do. What is truly amazing is that anyone involved with government dares to question this which makes the bipartisan efforts of congressmen and committee chairman Towns (A New York Democrat) & ranking member Issa (A southern California republican) all the more amazing. If these efforts prove successful in returning the power to appropriate and tax to the congress from the federal reserve I may just have to change my usual perceptions of New York democrats and the new breed of southern California republicans.
Ultimately, those in government and its public & private institutions have no greater obligation to taxpayers than in preserving, protecting & defending the Constitution of the United States. Seizing the power to appropriate from the congress and then misrepresenting the totality of action fails that standard completely.
Check your six deadhead. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=384CCzUKHtA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRLSOGxKiKg&feature=related
What surprises me is not how outlandish their efforts and deciets are. What does suprise me is Joe Six-Pack has not made more off a ruckus. The theft is pretty much moving into the open and I still see no torches or pitchforks. Sure that Mass. vote was nice but Brown is just another Neocon so ultimatly not a real improvment.
Because complexity is fraud's BFF.
The Sgt Shultz effect: "I see nothing! I know nothing!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ag4nkSh7Q
For those of you who begin to understand that we are living under despotisim, may I sugget you read the excellet article at
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/misesian-vision139.html
to get some good ideas about what can be done about it to undue the problem and get America and the world back on the track to a decent life for the most people.
+1
As the old saying goes, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean someone isn't out to get you."
I worked briefly for one of the 3 letter outfits in DC. Nothing exciting or important.
Their definitions of "National Security" can be a little different than what most of ours might be.
As in "job security of my boss or his boss's boss"??? That would be my guess.
Yes indeed. The phrase; "That is a matter of national security" has lost a good deal of meaning lately. I have found that it is generally used to denote unlawful actions by those in government (or in private institutions that have been empowered by a branch of government too weak to do the job itself) to create profit opportunities for themselves and others at the expense of those they govern or to cover up a preference for antisocial behavior which is what led them to hold these positions in the first place.
It becomes a matter of NatSec if it's going to embarrass a powerful Senator, or the POTUS.
Real matters of NatSec like insane intolerant religious fanatics being routinely pushed through the system at Fort Hood don't make the grade.
(Any kind of religious fanatic, for all you pasty-faced religious Fascists out there waiting to jump onto your self-righteous hobby horse of choice.)
cougar
National Security should not be read literally but as the code word used in 1947 to bring the British security apparatus into the US after WWII. It is Capital taking over the Republic. So, strictly speaking, it is "National Security". Paranoid and right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_of_1947
Lordy, and we thought the Bush cabal was bad. I smell a rat behind the curtain that is above and beyond the administration's control. IMO the Fed is the financial terrorist holding the world hostage.
Timmy did call bullshit on Obamas' latest bank bashing so it's pretty clear who is calling the shots.
Please take a moment to re-read your ZH "Terms of Use" agreement, where it states quite clearly in Section 4 subsection 3.1 that you agree to reference the sitting TresSec as "Tim-may".
Thank you for keeping ZH a better place to blog.
Regards,
cougar
I was a terror since the public school era Bathroom passes, cuttin classes, squeezing asses Smoking blunts was a daily routine Since thirteen, a chubby nigga on the scene I used to have the tre` duce And the deuce deuce in my bubblegoose Now i got a mac in my knapsack Loungin' black, smoking sacks up in acts And sidekicks with my sidekicks rockin fly kicks Honeys want to chat But all we wanna know is "Where the party at?" And can i bring my gat? If not, I hope I don't get shotBut i throw my vest on my chest 'Cause niggaz is a mess It don't take nothin' but frontin' For me to start somethin' Buggin' and barkin' at niggaz like i was duck huntin' Dumbing out, just me and my crew Cause all we wanna do is...
ZH = Terrorists!! ;) ZH = patriots :)
UK raises threat level to "severe"
They are coming for your gold...........er, guns!
"Party and bullshit! and party and bullshit!"...............
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSrPofCwkxw
yeh, its National Security Issue: How to kill ALL your competitors in 3month and make money? Rewind back to 2007... Top FI houses: Leh, Bear, GS, Mer..Top equity houses: GS, Mer, Bear, Leh. After crisis: Top FI houses: GS, GS, GS, Top equity houses: GS, GS, GS.
So the question you should be asking yourself is not, "Am I paranoid?", but "Am I paranoid enough?".
I can answer that.You are NOT paranoid enough.The degree the intel community is mixed up in this disaster is amazing.Think money laundering on a truly EPIC scale concomitant with "fun with ultra black funding".
If that sounds too tinfoil hat all I can say is the truth will out.
Criminals and traitors run the show now.But the wheels are falling off......
I'm shocked that anyone here would be remotely shocked by any of this.
I'm reminded of one of my favorite expressions, "this should surprise no one."
There's nothing paranoid about it. In this day and age to not question anything and everything is just foolishness...shocked indeed, it'll take a lot more than this to shock me...really.
I find myself feeding summaries of ZH articles to my friends, coworkers and my wife. They look at me as if I've sprouted a second noggin (who I like to imagine, is the spitting image of an older Jack Elam). It would appear no machination is off-limits in the 'new normal', but Alas!, I've yet to convince anyone I care about of the downward spiral upon which we find ourselves....
time will tell ;)
And hence why the theft and lies continued undaunted and unabated. As long as TPTB keep the mystery shrouded in complexity, the games will continue. Indeed, the CHECK OIL light is on, but until the crankcase is bone dry and the motor seizes completely, no one will notice.
That's why it's called an "idiot light". The requirement to participate is that as an American must be able to operate at the level of idiot, or better.
I'm not sure where that puts most of the voters. What is below idiot? Cretin? Moron? Vegetable? Someone help me out here.
cougar
Many years ago, a friend at the time destroyed the slant six in her car. She saw the oil light come on, then proceeded to drive 60 or so miles until the engine seized. Afterwards, she said, "Now I know. If the oil light comes on, I can drive it for 60 more miles."
As Scott Adams said:
"If you try to build something idiot-proof, they'll just build a better idiot."
National security is a blanket term these days to justify covert operations. The less said the better so as to conveniently avoid implication in what is and is not going on and the legalities of those operations. The operations are conducted so they can be plausibly denied. Whether the actions are for any purpose is unclear, the generic purpose of national security is the blanket term cast over anything they wish to do. And, because national security is involved any actions are ok to take. National security is being used as a vague circular road block. What are you doing? WE believe helping national security. Why are you justified in doing it? National security justifies it.
Read the excerpts below from the essay "The Hope of Confronting the Unspeakable" and it is easy to substitute Fed & Banks for the CIA as the alien force covertly operating... (I include this just to see the borrowed logic and parallels behind "agency" operations...in fact I'd love to uncover the relationship between the CIA dealings and the Fed)
The doctrine of “plausible deniability” in an old government document provides us with a source of the assassination of President Kennedy. The document was issued in 1948, one year after the CIA was established, 15 years before JFK’s murder. That document, National Security Council directive 10/2, on June 18, 1948, “gave the highest sanction of the [U.S.] government to a broad range of covert operations” – propaganda, sabotage, economic warfare, subversion of all kinds – that were seen as necessary to “win” the Cold War against the Communists. The government’s condition for those covert activities by U.S. agencies, coordinated by the CIA, was that they be “so planned and executed that…if uncovered the US government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.”
The man who proposed this secret, subversive process in 1948, diplomat George Kennan, said later, in light of its consequences, that it was “the greatest mistake I ever made.” President Harry Truman, under whom the CIA was created, and during whose presidency the plausible deniability doctrine was authorized, had deep regrets. He said in a statement on December 22, 1963: “For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.
“We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.”
What George Kennan and Harry Truman realized much too late was that, in the name of national security, they had unwittingly allowed an alien force to invade a democracy. As a result, we now had to deal with a government agency authorized to carry out a broad range of criminal activities on an international scale, theoretically accountable to the president but with no genuine accountability to anyone. Plausible deniability became a rationale for the CIA’s interpretation of what the executive branch’s wishes might be. But for the Agency’s crimes to remain plausibly deniable, the less said the better – to the point where CIA leaders’ creative imaginations simply took over. It was all for the sake of “winning” the Cold War by any means necessary and without implicating the more visible heads of the government.
It has never been more obvious then now that national security is a tool used by a few to abuse so many.
Yes.They have been unaccountable for so long that they are now totally out of control.
And there is no mechanism I am aware of to reign them in.Plans for gov. continuity and other areas of deep blackness authorize powers and actions completely at odds with any reasonable interpretation of the constitution.A very sad state of affairs.
This problem will have to be dealt with.Before it is too late.
Au contraire. You can rest assured the problem will not be dealt with until too late. By design.
And then what was just a problem, can become the norm.
That's how it happens, folks.
cougar
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you, your guns, your gold or other wealth, and your freedom.
You're just jealous because the voices are talking to me...
Let's see, approximately 9000 Americans killed by Al-Qaeda, and approximately 9,000,000 Americans in (state & federal) prisions. Gee, I wonder who should cause me more "terror"?
you're crazy.
At the time it was a Global Whopper of a Security issue.. because there wasn't anyone prepared to pay to clean the mess up... in fact, there appears to be a continued absence of real care in the 'jumping in to help Gramps'. Why is that?
No, honestly, why does the rest of the world, stand around and do the least possible in order to stave off the imminent write-down of significant balance sheet...my guess, is that it's because everyone feels that the Bankers have been 'in control' of policy and 'absolute crap' at it for about twenty years too long (I make these numbers up, but otherwise I'm a chartist, without a chart.. a teen, without a mission...Karma, karma, karma, Chameleon, ..tra la la ).
Faced with crippling economic fallout on yet a chance to be free from under the grip of a bad governor...
Crumbs, if this was a proper War it couldn't be more human
The rest of the world is focused on fires in their own back yard - either stoking them, or putting them out.
This is what you get when you have a global trading system based on fiat currencies and corrupted governments.
My real concern is what happens if SDRs ever become the "real" global currency - then what?
Let's say anyone here gets audited by the IRS... if you believe you are innocent, would you like the whole thing, and any unrelated files on your PC, and every transaction you have ever made with your credit card, to be out in the public domain until such time as you are found innocent or guilty of tax fraud? I expect you'd rather have everything kept under wraps until they find you innocent of having tried to cheat the national polity.
Why this is being viewed as a covert bailout of the 16 banks and not as a covert bailout of the umpteen million policyholders of AIG is beyond me... All those 16 did was get the money they were entitled to as secured creditors. Millions of American policyholders (corporate, individual, etc) who had paid premia for years, and had their life savings in the insurer's whole life products, were unsecured creditors. There was no chance that any of the banks would have given up a cent of what they were owed until the unsecured creditors (mom & pop and tiny tim) got taken out. Why is this so difficult?
The scandal out of all this is not that this or that institution got "bailed out." The scandal is that otherwise intelligent people don't understand that the biggest beneficiary of the AIG bailout, and the GSE bailout, was the many tens of millions of Americans who have houses, have savings-style insurance, etc, and did not see their assets taken away from them.
Now that's one way of looking at it. I think most people have trouble with the idea that bank loses were due to their criminal financial instruments exploding. It was never intended to bail out depositors and mortgage holders.
It is difficult for most people to fathom what would have happened to American savers, policyholders, mortgage holders, etc if instead of providing liquidity in repo markets the government had simply decided to allow a run on every major and minor financial institution in the country. When the FDIC and state insurance guarantee funds were running on fumes, and then everything goes under simultaneously, just to provide the in-place guarantees would have cost far more, and would have been rife with fraud (ask Feinberg about the fraud on the 9/11 payouts, then multiply that by 10,000 (4,000 families affected by 4,000 deaths vs call it 40,000,000 policyholders, bank account holders, etc)).
I agree that it was "criminally stupid" for banks to write option ARM liar loan mortgages so that a SEP pool-installer in Las Vegas could buy his own little 5k sqft, 5 bedroom-with-home-theater-slice-of-heaven with no money down and implied below-market rent until his optionARM blows up. It was even more "criminally stupid" to stay long the senior portion of those loans. However, it is tough to say that the Americans who were long the bonds of those banks through their banks, their pension funds, their insurers, etc, and long insurance policies of insurers who bought that stuff did not benefit from not being forced to join the creditors' queue in liquidation if it had all gone at once.
The Fed provided liquidity that kept the banks alive, and in some cases gave some "gifts" (like the Bear Stearns non-recourse funding provided to JPM), but overall, the Fed stepped in to provide the liquidity against asset funding which had simply disappeared from the market. Without that liquidity, a case could have been made that wholesale bankruptcy proceedings would have been necessary against a stupid number of corporate institutions which relied on CP funding to some portion of their liabilities. If they had not been able to roll, then a significant chunk of the equity of the United States would have been handed to the creditors, who were not in the mood to own it, and the equity of the United States would have been wiped out, for the sake of making sure that everyone who was liable to obey mark-to-market rules did so when the market disappeared and we all had to mark AAA-rated paper on cash-rich companies at LIBOR+four-digit-bp spreads.
bingocat, thanks. I generally agree and it's good that people who can do the "what if" are posting, even (and especially) if it is counter to prevailing sentiment.
I'd add that from what I've gathered since the crisis, the AIG bailout was undertaken on the basis of the threat to the soveriegn credibility of the US in Asia - if we'd let it go the way of Lehman, the next step would have been a general run on US debt by Asians rudely disabused of the notion that our nation was creditworthy. AIG was - rightly or wrongly - seen as a kind of GSE.
I'm not sure what is scarier, the idea that National Security is being invoked improperly... or properly...
...but all that said: the fact that the implicit guarantee of the financial markets by institutions of the USG has been gamed by looters is widely appreciated, even by those (like myself) who saw the government actions of Sep 08 as necessary and correct. And I stand by the "gamed by looters" wording without apology.
I'm terrified by the idea that massive contingent liabilities might necessarily be born by the government, but if they are necessary (and I suspect they are - I don't see SocGen/DB/HSBC/RBS/CS/UBS/et al being dismembered any time soon) then the question becomes how to extract suitable premia from the financial entities that require it.
Premia which have hereforto been gratis.
Nicely stated, bingocat, but I couldn't disagree more. Your tale -- that there are no assets beyond those held by the large money center banks -- is the great scare that fuels all of this. The market will clean this up if you'll just let it.
You fear a que of people trying to get their assets back thru bankruptcy. So instead, we've turned the que around and paid the guys at the end of the line (the bankers), the ones who instead should have been paying out. Hey, the system might just work if you pay the people in line like you're supposed to -- it won't work if you pay the people at the wrong end of the line. You'll see.
Default is the other big scare you toss out. Hey, threaten our biggest creditors with default, and see how quickly they take 60 cents on the dollar. The outcome -- less debt accrued by the US treasury because our largest trading partners won't extend more? -- seems to be the cure to our current problems. Anyway, after we default we just prosecute the previous absconders, and present them to the world -- "See, we cleaned up our act."
(Check out Iceland. The gov't wanted to give $5 bill to UK and friends, but the people say no. Folks who thought they were getting extra payouts for free on Icelandic CDs -- no added risk -- were wrong, so they should eat the loss, same as Madoff customers.)
Finally, everyone wonders why the populace hasn't picked up pitchforks. Answer: Not enough pain yet. If we had let the pain come, you better believe the politicians would be singing a different tune now. The old white guys who got us into this would be gone, no hope for them, and a new breed that appeals to the populist anger would be allowed to rise.
Like the forest, we need a massive burn to eliminate the deadwood, the fallen debris of 20 years, and the over-population of rodents, ticks and snakes that have accumulated. Burn it to the ground, fast and quick, and let the new growth see the light of day.
"Your tale -- that there are no assets beyond those held by the large money center banks -- is the great scare that fuels all of this."
I hadn't meant to put it that way. They are important because they are the conduits to get global credit provision to Main Street, but there are other assetholders. Lots of credit asset owners are not money-center banks. They are pension funds, insurance companies, grandparents' retirement accounts at Schwab, etc. The vast majority of them are not endowed with a) boatloads of cash, or b) the ability to raise boatloads of cash when credit tightens significantly. And, perhaps unfortunately, many of them have liabilities which they believe are not mark-to-market but which may be. They have income which services opeational cost which could disappear (they may have real estate rental assets which become empty or earn less. And even if there is no mortgage, the insurance company still has a liability profile to pay, and grandma still has to pay property tax, and eat, and the rest. And so they say "oh, real estate prices are down too much, so I won't sell that, but instead I'll sell that MyCityPower & Light bond I bought several years ago. Oops, that's only worth 70cts on the dollar too... oh no... what I am going to do....?" No debt against the credit or real estate asset but real-time liabilities which have to be paid. Grandma does NOT escape the great mark-to-market blowout unless she is seriously wealthy.
When you shock an economy through sudden sharp withdrawal of liquidity and the associated sharp falls in financial asset prices, you have to be prepared for ALL of the consequences. There is, nor was, no way to avoid an unpleasant outcome for the whole economy when you are trying to reduce gross private sector debt to GDP and reduce leverage ratios for debt providers at the same time. The 'equity return' of Americans' divine mandate to be American and be materially wealthy because of it is going to take a hit. Credit growth will fall, not because there is no supply of credit but because there will be little demand. The PIMCO guys are right. This event has a very long tail. It is not so much an event as a trend. Impossible to deny, but impossible to prove without the benefit of hindsight.
"Threaten our biggest creditors with default and see how quickly they take 60 cents on the dollar."
While I appreciate the sentiment, sovereign default because the politicians don't want to incur too much debt for the next generation of Americans after not having imposed a period of austerity on the people is a recipe for not getting credit again. Ever.
"Like the forest, we need a massive burn to eliminate the deadwood, the fallen debris of 20 years, and the over-population of rodents, ticks and snakes that have accumulated. Burn it to the ground, fast and quick, and let the new growth see the light of day."
Good forest management sometimes includes a managed burn. The key here is "managed burn." It includes substantial preparation, waiting for the right weather, substantial numbers of people standing by just in case. It is very specifically NOT done at time when gale force winds are blowing across vast swaths of the country after a long drought. Anyone who thinks it would have been a good idea to "just let it burn to the ground" is deluding themselves. The results of a managed burn are far more desirable than picking up after an uncontrollable burn which lays waste to far more than one had initially hoped for.
In the specific case of AIG, it was the holding company that was bailed out (sorry, made into a Western Union to funnel monies to entities we don't want the sheeple to know (foreign banks?)). A "bankruptcy" of the holding company would have a minimal impact on the policyholders of an insurance company.
Why this is being viewed as a covert bailout of the 16 banks and not as a covert bailout of the umpteen million policyholders of AIG is beyond me
Many of those policyholders were not at risk as the subsidiaries had firewalls...example, the AIG subs in NY were in great shape and shielded from the mother company. In fact, the Feds went to NY Gov Patterson and the NY Ins Commish to ask them to allow the insurance subs to release some capital to the mother company.
I cannot speak for all AIG subs but many of them were properly reserved and not at risk.
TO:DEADHEAD
Bingo!
This why the AIG contracts with GS were fraud ab initio...
they were sham transactions with an entity lacking adequate financial substance: from the beginning the plan was to dump GS losses onto the government,
these contracts can be voided under the accepted law of fraudulent conveyance, placed in a constructive trust, and returned to GS-Paulson Geithner, Bernanke and Obama will fight this to the end, and AIG's staff, including Cassano who set them up and Liddy who came in to cover them up, will never be examined.
When senior secured creditors of a parent holding company have to seize the assets of the holding company, they also get to renege on the senior unsecured and junior liabilities (the bonds, MTNs, etc) issued by the parent company - in this case on the order of $50bn. They also would have seized all the subs. And in the process of trying to sell them, they would have had to "mark them to market", and anything which looked ugly - like perhaps the fact that an insurer marking himself to insurance accounting looks fine until you mark him to market and all his AAA-rated assets (earning income against his liabilities) are now trading at 60 cents on the dollar - will invite all kinds of "shoot first analyze later" hand-wringing of the "financial press" who suddenly would have come out with headlines like "AIG Creditor Group Not Able to Find Insurance Unit Buyers Because All Insolvent on Mark-to-Market Basis", and then the govt steps in and says the banks which own AIG don't have to mark those assets to market because they don't have to consolidate them. But, the reason why the govt would not have bailed out the banks in that case and told them to unwind AIG was because they wanted to enforce market discipline on everyone.
Once again... I believe Hank Paulson was right when he retorted in spring 2009 to a journalist that he hadn't been forthright with details because "you can't handle the truth!" (if, indeed, he did sat that). One cannot simply decide to re-allocate vast quantities of capital structure ownership based on "market moves" when the market is not set up to do that. If you choose to not give TARP money to financial institutions, then you are setting them up to go under. Shareholders lose everything. Unsecured bondholders lose everything, and senior creditors get most of what they had. What most people do not understand is that most credit assets owned by pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, etc (i.e. the financial wealth of the vast majority of Americans) do not have the same level of seniority as the derivatives counterparts. The senior secured derivs counterparts get the lion's share when markets tank because they get to liquidate/claim (i.e overcollateralize themselves on a long-term moving average basis) as the market is tanking. When they unwind, everything hits the fan at once (though I thought Lehman's OTC unwinds were relatively orderly in process even though there were some ugly market moves) and suddenly what is now due to waterfall down to the senior unsecured as of the day before is a fraction of what it was just days before, simply because of the process of unwinding senior secured.
The same thing will happen if it gets into Americans' heads that they should default en masse because Tishman Speyer and Morgan Stanley do and therefore it's only fair. Sure it's within homeowners' rights to do that. It is also within the rights of capital owners to not lend money. Such a movement would have catastrophic consequences on banks, and on RMBS owners, and on the GSEs, and on the US government (and therefore it would be the same as current homeowners taking a current mark-to-market benefit to permanently change the indebtedness of their progeny, not unlike what the government is doing now, on a smaller scale).
Bingocat:
Great hypothesis in your post, but your conclusion is not immediately obvious.
AIG Financial Products' creditors may very well have been treated differently in a bankruptcy from AIG Life or P&C Insurance creditors, etc. had the Holding Company declared bankruptcy.
We will never know now. Would the lawyers among us care to shed more light on this interesting topic?
Cheers, Spanishmoon
If you're the Fed, it *is* "national security". The Fed is slowly become the Ministry of Truth.
I hate that we are right. I beg people to show me I am wrong. They can't. I keep being right, time passes, they admit I called it correctly, but THIS TIME, I am wrong. It won't be THAT BAD. I feel a mixture of frustration, pity, anger, sorrow, and resignation. I have in the past attributed it to being a woman (in my family, I may have a good job and an advanced degree, but I am still a "girl," never mind I told them to move a key investment and $93,000 was lost because they did not take my word for it, but instead, the broker's), but that is not the reason. In their universe it is just too far fetched to believe that things won't "come back." It is too paranoid to really believe that the folks running things are all that dishonest.
I'm sorry we are right. No matter. Keep telling the truth as you see it ZH. You will call some of them wrong. That is called being human. We know you've "got this" at the marco level.
DO NOT LET UP. DO NOT BE DETERED. GIVE THEM HELL. MAKE THEM WORRY. They should be very worried. It is the least they deserve for what they have done.
MsCreant, frigging amazing! By the time the dot com bust came around I had been at this for more than a decade. So, when I voiced grave concerns to family members I was written off as a malcontent, until a dear friend lost more than a mil on Enron and several lost big on their portfolios of equities. Still, there were difficulties until Iraqi Freedom rolled around and I was again vindicated with the realization that the National Guard had to fill a major overseas combat arms role after being laughed at for years over the preposterous notion that the Guard could be ordered to active duty and federalized for overseas direct combat operations. Now whenever I preface my observations with key language those close to me listen. This time many of those I know were able to move their investments shortly after the meltdown in credit markets in 2007. My warning went out in May and in August I advised to pull the trigger saving big time. The events of that year and since have found many within my circle to observe that they have joined the ranks of " Miles's malcontents".
Keep at it! After all, what we do care most about is not making antisocial kleptocrats worried, but in remaining true to our values and carrying those values forward. In this it is my aim to assist with redefining what being a "values voter" is all about.
Peace my dear fellow citizen.
It is too paranoid to really believe that the folks running things are all that dishonest.
They would rather believe that, instead of dishonesty, gross incompetence is the key here. Of course, when I point out that, if gross incompetence is the key, they we as a society/country meet Einstein's definition of insanity, they usually fall silent or engage in an ad hominem attack.
With you on this MC. I frequently talk with folks that, while they acknowledge this incident or that incident as a travesty of actual justice, actually believe that the 1000 coincidences somewhat neatly stacking up at this point are "isolated incidents" with nothing connecting them. Furthermore, for these folks, these "isolated incidents" hold no predictive value whatsoever. I just had a conversation like this on Friday night which ended in ad hominem attacks by my fellow conversant.
Thank God the SEC is here to protect the insiders from us in the name of national security. Keep up the great work ZH.
Difficult to see the truth in a house of mirrors. Everything is finally tuned as a media presentation meant to engender a certain response in the viewers. It never has anything to do with the specifics of the content of the presentation. Therefore the "effect" of the presentation is the "truth" of the presentation. I believe its called "real-politics".
Still, when a wise teacher points to the moon an able student can see the moon - while the fool sees only the finger.
Marla, I thank you for your continued pointing to the moon.
Hey.... nice ring Marla!
as I wrote earlier...ZH is the ultimate modern resistance movement...Keep up the good work! Houdt Moed!
"Karl Rove did not merely recognize that the truth can be manipulated, he promoted the manipulation of truth as a superior approach."
"Rove’s approach led to the restriction of liberties by using the manipulation of public opinion to enhance the powers and prerogatives of the president."
G. Soros
Replace "Rove" with Obama, Plouffe and Axelrod
Those black helicopters are real.
will the internet break down the old power structures in the way that the printing press destroyed the monopoly of the Catholic Church?
Is that the same George Soros who made $5 billion, following John Paulson's lead and betting against the CDOs Paulson directed Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank's Greg Lippmann to create from the worst of the worst mortgages (see Greg Zuckerman's The Greatest Trade Ever) ?
And, is this the same George Soros who declared "I'm having a very good crisis" while the American public lost $11 Trillion in net worth ?
If so, I'd suggest you find another "hero of truth".
1) Provide an example of an AD HOMINEM argument.
PASS
2) Indicate whether you see THE MOON or MARLA'S FINGER when reading 'pros' post.
FAIL
National security? More like national insecurity. If we are going to depend on the CIA, FBI, NSA, Treasury and FRB to defend our national security we are screwed.
COVERUP OF A MASSIVE FRAUD IS DIFFICULT---
Paulson/Bernanke/Geithner/Obama are bankrupting the U.S. to cover gambling losses of the elite...
What is a derivatives contract?
A form of gambling?
The US Supreme Court's View-
Irwin v. Williar, 110 U.S. 499 (1884)"If, under guise of a contract to deliver goods at a future day, the real intent be to speculate in the rise or fall of prices, and the goods are not to be delivered, but one party is to pay to the other the difference between the contract price and the market price of the goods at the date fixed for executing the contract, the whole transaction is nothing more than a wager, and is null and void.
When a broker is privy to such a wagering contract, and brings the parties together for the very purpose of entering into the illegal agreement, he is particeps criminis, and cannot recover for services rendered or losses incurred by himself in forwarding the transaction.
Generally, in this country, wagering contracts are held to be illegal and void as against public policy."
Gramm-Leach-Billey saved the banksters from being criminals by making it good citizenship to bet the bank on derivatives. Bernanke saved the banksters from being bankrupts by making it the taxpayers' loss when the bad bets came due.
Wagering contracts should be illegal and void as against public policy, but instead wagering contracts are now mandatory as public policy - at least as long as profits are privatised and losses are socialised.
Pretty much sums up the silver COMEX market where 620 Million ounces of silver (nearly an entire year's production for the whole world) is backed by 47 Million physical ounces. Considerig world consumption at 820 Million ounces, a silver futures contract should be null and void.
Props to Marla.
Just wondering where else were the books cooked?
You can bet your ass that this crisis is utterly plagued with such "correspondence" and priority classification. I can't wait for a little color meter to tell me the sanctity of the US financial system.
Here is something else you can bet your ass too, that anyone that bitches about bullshit monetary policy is an enemy combatant and thus subject to all manners of seizure, starting with your freedom of speech.
The US leadership is so incompetent and self-preserved that they will stop at nothing to kick the can and steal everything the middle class owns. Case and point is Ben Bernanke. Lies, cheating and stealing. Welcome to Congress, now pay up Main Street!
You can be sure, anytime those in power put up walls to investigation(s), or use/mis-use "National Security", it is to keep the public from the truth.
The most powerful tool you have to combat this is your vote. Vote out all incumbents in upcoming elections, and keep voting them out until they get the message. N.Y., N.J., M.A. should just be the tip of the iceberg.
Beyond the edge, ahead of the curve, recognize the micro-patterns.
Another astute presentation from our wonderful Marla Singer.
Two adages apply:
When the government calls you crazy you're generally spot on with the truth.
When the whole world is calling you an asshole, the problem is very likely not with the world.