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And So It Began
Three years ago tonight we were all watching a new world unfold.
Many of us did not know how bad it would be, how close to utter collapse we would come, or three years later how little would have actually changed (besides the unemployment rate being 40% higher)
What has changed is the confidence and trust we have in the Government, Politicians, and the United States as a whole.
In a piece the Frank Rich wrote for NY Magazine for 9/11 he speculated that 9/11 may not have been the worst thing that happened to the United States in the last 10 years. That award may go to what happened in the fall of 2008:
In retrospect, the most consequential event of the past ten years may not have been 9/11 or the Iraq War but the looting of the American economy by those in power in Washington and on Wall Street. This was happening in plain sight—or so we can now see from a distance. At the time, we were so caught up in Al Qaeda’s external threat to America that we didn’t pay proper attention to the more prosaic threats within.
Even as the middle class was promised a free ride, those at the top were awarded a free pass—not just with historically low tax rates that compounded America’s rampant economic inequality but with lax supervision of their own fiscal misbehavior.
It is that America—the country where rampaging greed usurped the common good in wartime, the country that crashed just as Bush fled the White House—that we live in today. It has little or no resemblance to the generous and heroic America we glimpsed on 9/11 and the days that followed. Our economy and our politics are broken.
When you watch these videos, remember that this crisis unfolded while Tim Geithner was the head of the FRBNY, and Ben Bernanke was the Federal Reserve Chairman, the former received a promotion, the latter kept his job and “saved the system”. Remember that after getting trillions of dollars in aid the banks paid out record bonuses in 2010. Remember that to date, there has been no “perp walk” for anyone connected to his crisis including any member of the executive team of Lehman Brothers. Finally remember that despite all arguments to the contrary TARP (as was reconstituted in July of 2010 ($475Billion)) still has $237B net outstanding or 40% of total outflows.
When “people” lament the lack of confidence or trust, in the system, one is amused by how short their memories really are. TBTF is the law of the land. As long as every policy decision, is run through the paradigm of “must not have Lehman 2.0”, there will be no confidence. Without failure which is merely accountability there cannot be real success. Subverting the interests of the majority, in order to ensure the survival of not the financial system, but the BANKS that make up the financial system, will end up costing the United States the core of what made her a once great country, in a way no terrorist organization ever could.
From September 14, 2008:
The fall out from September 17, 2008:
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Glass-Steagall needs to come back ... as a Constitutional Amendment so that it will be near-impossible to undo.
Nice write-up Lizzy, and some great comments here. Let's not ever forget what was sacrificed at the alter of greed. Fuck all this fear of collapse. As someone said above, 'something much worse comes instead'.
Gold&silver...check. Guns&ammo...check. CACHED guns&ammo...check. Divorcing the system...ongoing.
Just wonder that what your wrote "something much worse comes instead" will negate all our gold/silver, guns/ammo and a divorce from the system? What is coming down the pike may very well be beyond imagination.
On the contrary, it is possible to imagine. U.S. to gold standard --> China decimated, trade wars, world war. Massively reduced oil imports --> food crisis, millions die, Fascist Statex1000, ZH bloggers, et. al. imprisoned and tortured. I just hope that if this collectivist nightmare kills me, it's on my feet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGmayjYQpB8
Uploaded by RussiaToday on Sep 15, 2011
This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss a tweet describing them as the Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver of the financial war. With that in mind, they look at the modern equivalents to the carpet bombing, Agent Orange and Saigon prostitutes of the Vietnam war and observe that Christine Lagarde has 'loved Arab Spring nations a long time.' In the second half of the show Max talks to Zeus Yiamouyiannis of OfTwoMinds.com about the debt jubilee and Crash JP Morgan, Buy Silver.
Frank Rich? You gotta be kidding.
The longer and harder I look at 2007 thru now the more obvious it becomes that the central bankers have taken over the US and the world. No one has gone to jail which means they have control of the courts, congress and the presidency. If we do not elect someone that will clean up this mess in 2012 we are doomed and I'm afraid if we do elect a Ron Paul type he will be assasinated just as Kennedy was for fucking up thier system.
"If we do not elect someone that will clean up this mess in 2012 we are doomed"
Not to simply disagree with your idea, but, even if, and that's a big 'if', someone were elected who could, or would, clean up the mess then instead of an assassination it would be more akin to co-opting their agenda. Re-read your 2nd sentence. The behemoth called the US government is comprised of too many bureaucratic layers, corrupt courts, corrupt politicians, and banksters for a President to have meaningful affect to stop the descent. In other words a President with the best of intentions and abilities would have ZeroAffect. The cake has been baked. We are past the tipping point. Time and events are moving faster and faster towards the "brick wall".
Prepare for the worst while there is still time to do so. As posted above, it could be a few more weeks or a few more months. At this point I don't know when the singularity will occur. So, be watchful.
It was just a little financial coup:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2o4TC5RoZY&feature=related
The contagion erupted 3 years ago but the underlying infection had its start a decade earlier with this ironic NYT headline
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/23/business/new-financial-era-overview-ac...
Who was POTUS in 1999? Where was Robby Rubin then? Alan Greenspan?
Spot on. My financial advisor thought I was nuts when I moved several hundred thousand into a fixed rate account (3.7 %) in May. Fuck these theives. A bird in hand my friend, a bird in hand. They want you to go for all those birds in the bushes, knowing full well that you won't get any and will lose the one you had. Nothinging changes until the fraud is prosecuted and accountability and the rule of law return. Of course I already had some physical, so most modern financial people think I am nuts anyway.
Haven't agreed much with Rich in the past but this needs to be plastered to the foreheads of those who can make Dick Fuld pay every cent back, strip him of all he has and has hidden. Ditto for Joe Cassano, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Bill Clinton, Bobby Rubin, Hank Paulson, Alan Greenspan, Chris Cox, George Bush, Lord Conrad Black, Lord Blankfein, grahamm, Leach, and Bliley and so many more who remain unnamed, untouched and splashing around still in the lap of luxury instead of being the bitch of some far less guilty who are serving life senteces in Folsom.
Bill Johnson, Jamie Gorelick, Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama, and the rest of the whores at Fannie and Freddie. Their comeuppance is long overdue.
+1000
Interesting. I wasn't watching cnbc right then. I had quit owning stocks after the Nasdaq bubble popped, and was heavily into real estate after that, and I was very busy and very poor that year with the real estate prices dropping dramatically the year before right when I really needed to sell one to stay solvent. Those were such rough times for me. I mostly read novels to try to escape reality right then. I didn't start watching cnbc again until I found Zerohedge. It would have been interesting to watch back then.
I too have recently been watching a little CNBC. The cheerleading is rather macabre. This morning, one of the founders of Home Depot belched out some canned story about regulations. He went on to describe a business venture unable to obtain financing due to excessive regulations. To put a fine (but ridiculous) point on his opinion he quipped that if the banker had lent the money for this wonderful business that he would "land in jail".
What? Even the squawking heads couldn't help but laugh. Girl Scouts selling lemonade are under more scrutiny these days.
dm i sincerely hope you get ahead and win, thanks for sharing.
This is semi fun but out of place because we are not likely to be one day out from the same collapse we saw in 2008 so this is premature to say the least. This is the kind of cheer leading that can lead a guy to go all in on some type of position that will get him in serious trouble. There is still probably a lot of time left in this collapse its not likely to happen in the next few days so this article should absolutely be replayed a day after the collapse. We all know a collapse is coming and major trouble but its not like its going to happen tomorrow. And this type of article at this time I dont think does a service.
Lets just pull back for a second. Its ugly but these guys are masters at buying time and they will buy more time its looking like weeks now.
Trust me Im positioned for tens of thousands to make money when this thing gets ugly but ... dont think its ugly enough right now unless we see something that no one can predict a day ahead of time like:
Isreal attacks Egypt, Iran or Switzerland
Something big goes belly up like gummy bears
A country implodes
Japan moves all of Tokyo out because they are glowing
ummmmm crops fail big time + blah blah
In other words it has to be a bit unaccpected at this point and major and probabbly more then one thing or we are looking at most likley a few to several weeks at the least.
Im already getting ready to get back in to the faster trades to make up for this sideways market which untill we move one way or another is exactly what we are in.
Its sideways until proven different.
Subverting the interests of the majority, in order to ensure the survival of not the financial system, but the BANKS that make up the financial system, will end up costing the United States the core of what made her a once great country, in a way no terrorist organization ever could. - Lizzy
Absomotherfuckin'lutely. The ultimate goal of any terrorist operation is to subvert the rule of law and functioning of the targeted society.
Holding people/institutions accountable for their actions does not cause harm to society nearly as severe as refusing to do so. Our political, financial, military, journalism and legal elites here in the US have built and operated a public and private framework best summed up by Cas Sunstein in a process I have coined judicial exclusion.
Prosecuting government officials risks a “cycle” of criminalizing public service, [Sunstein] argued, and Democrats should avoid replicating retributive efforts like the impeachment of President Clinton — or even the “slight appearance” of it.
http://jonathanturley.org/2008/07/21/obama-adviser-cass-sunstein-rejects...
One cannot rule effectively for long without the rule of law. Absent that all one is left with is the big lie and dissimulation to back it up. The very definition of a hollow, subverted society and its institutions.
Good job Lizzy.
Agreed, the greatest casualty is the loss of confidence in our national institutions. Until these get brought out into the open and the crooks prosecuted, we are spiralling down. This will happen, every day more people recognize that this is not some act of God, but the very predictable results of a culture of immorality and faithlessness, and a criminal elite. It may be they become the necessary scapegoats when more economic pain inspires the citizens to wrath. Now they are mostly in perplexity. And the crooks keep digging, mostly.
Well Liz, I guess the modern banking is similar to love, while both do not have to be a zero sum game, they often turn out to be.
The kicker, while modern banks do believe they have a dominant hand and in the short term it turns out to be so, in the long run cards do change, and TBTF might lead themselves into a corner. And more arrogant TBTF & Co become, the more probable they will eventually find themselves on a recieving end of stick ... 'pawnship', literally.
Zero sum game is so yesterday. With the advent of 1000X leverage, courtesy of the Treaserve's Masters of the Universe, you are into extreme minus territory where many generations out into the future have been stripped of all their production even before they are born.
We never have had a Justice system. What we have had in its place is the Rule of Law, which itself has been buried by lawyers who have been bought by those with all the money they have stolen from the country's treasury and backed up by their accomplices at the FED.
it's when they turn it into a zero sum game that they actually curtail their own profit growth.
Pay now? Or pay later?
The Wall street/DC vote was pay later.
Only problem with paying later - its mostly with blood.
Why do we need the banks & fed to print money? The "free market" economy can do a much better job of it. They produce all our stuff. Why not?
Vote for Ron Paul.
Ahhh..."We" do not.
"THEY" do. Who are "THEY"?
Mostly 90% Jewish Bankers and Financial whizzes who have garnered a virtual monopoly of every single key financial nexus in the universe. One might reasonably begin to conclude that this was done intentionally and with great collusion over the last 30 years.
Rubin, Greenspan, Summers, Bernanke, Geithner, Blankfein, Fuld, Shapiro, Orszag, and on and on and on.
The moneychangers and the goyim, as it has been since the day they killed Christ.
Uhm.. it was another corrupt and bankrupt regime that killed Christ, the Roman Empire.
right, the talmud loving pharisees had nothing to do with it.... /sarc off.
It was the sinful nature of man that killed Christ. It was not some subgroup, nobody has a monopoly on evil, there is plenty to go around. All you have to do is choose. And then stick with the consequences of your choice.
Sometime in the fall of 08, i was determined to get SOMEONE to back up the idea that the AIG counterparty list HAD to be know, i called a person who was supposed to be hands down, the greatest analyst/fund manager always spoke truth to power (is that you TYLER?) Anyhow, when i called, I told him i suspected that money went in the front door of AIG and out the back to pay off counterparties of the LEHMAN DIE bet...he said no way, anyone who did that would go to jail, and there is just no way because that would be a scandal like we have never seen in this country....well, in Feb 2009 the list came out...amazing how people can get desensitized about what is right and wrong...,
again, still NOONE IS IN JAIL for this.
But whistle blowers continue to lose work, get harassed, and worse while the perpetrators of what amounts to something akin to pedophilia get more innocents to molest while collecting fat checks, all backstopped by OUR GOVERNMENT!!! -- And our inability to garner sufficient action from our societies members who have been so brutally traumatized by the actions of these molesters in power, and the members of the legal professions who stand back and support this abomination either implicitly or explicitly for their fat checks and freedom to molest society in their own way.
No wonder things are so darn loopy agrotera. The pedophiles are running school, courts, law, everything and are molesting at will, protected by our own government and the institutions of "civil society". No wonder the only confidence folks have is in the FACT TPTB are out to molest them and their families with ever greater ruthlessness and brutality.
So nice to see you and hear your poetic voice MK!!!
Glad to hear from you lizzy. Couldn't agree more. Sitting here on the Big Island strangely enough the same place I was on that Sept day three years ago wondering why we are spending so much of our grandchildren's money to prop up THEIR system. Glad to see agrotera putting her worthy 2 cents in. I like the female perspective. And I don't care about your breast size.
Thank you brown_hornet! Peace be with you!
with all this euro trash, i forgot that the original issue that created all this is still not finished...
Mortgage default warnings surged in Augusthttp://finance.yahoo.com/news/Mortgage-default-warnings-apf-157937671.ht...
the only thing I take issue with in this article is the following:
"BANKS that make up the financial system, will end up costing the United States the core of what made her a once great country, in a way no terrorist organization ever could."
and here's why i take issue with it:
Definition;
Noun 1. terrorist group - a political movement that uses terror as a weapon to achieve its goals.
Terror: violent or destructive acts (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands <insurrection and revolutionary terror>.-----When you think back to all the threats of mutually assured destruction offered up by Hank Paulson, Tim Giethner, Ben Bernanke and all the banlsters and politicians in the country if we didn't hand the banks a blank check drawn on the peoples account...What you have is a textbook perfect definition of "Terrorist Group".
As is usual in this situation there is a perspective shift that is required in order to understand the situation.
A Terrorist Group is UnLawful.
The actions of the other group are Lawful, because they make the Law.
Therefore the actions of the other group are NOT the actions of a Terrorist Group.
It is past time to realize we are talking to a wall.
Broken record songs about the truth are good even if we sing it to the wall.
Someone told me there is a way that a jury can actually dispute the righteousness of a law, in the end, and if the law is wrong, they can, with this provision, as to let their decision stand on what is right --whatever that provision is, it needs to be pulled out of the mothballs and used to prosecute the whole "oh but it was legal" crowd .
The world economy cannot CONTINUE until there is Lehman 2.0 and all the ripple consequences that entails. Until people start to believe that big-shots will suffer the consequences of their actions, nobody will have ANY trust whatsoever in anything to do with "the system". I know LOTs of people who would have started new businesses in the past 3 years, and exactly ZERO have done so in the USSA. A couple moved to China to see how that works out.
The system MUST collapse before there can be a viable system again. If the system is so interconnected that every bank on earth will vanish, and every corporate executive on earth ends up behind bars for the rest of their lives, well... that's exactly what NEEDs to happen.
And that's the bottom line.
lehman was the terrorist attack (alright, used loosely to cover borderline legality).
the huge, huge difference was that it was a disorderly liquidation. this should never happen but as naomi klein explains in "the shock doctrine" it is the plan to encourage compliance in the frightened masses.
had they wanted to, tptb could have gotten emergency legislation passed to put shadow banking through fdic type orderly reorganizations with customers and counterparties paid and stock and bondholders charged for the expenses of handling the toxic loans. this has been explained at length by many, to my mind as well by john hussman as by any.
good work lizzy!
Funny comment!
Math is correct. EVERY bank on Earth must vanish before trust Should be given again.
As far as your friends going to China to try their luck.
They need to check their math, because from where I sit every bank has not yet vanished, so their actions are interesting.
Looks to me like they know the math, but are still trusting without the preconditions for giving that trust being fulfilled.
I totally agree.
And they totally agree too.
They don't know how badly their experiences will be in China. But they DO know for sure they would be mistreated in the USSA. So "unknown" beat out "known bad" in their cases. In their specific cases, they made this decision because they wanted so badly to move forward on their endeavors.
happy lehman day bitchez!
Thank you Lizzy36!!!
There were moments, for the few months following Sept 2008 (and the resultant ongoing HEIST of the US Treasury) when our country could have been saved, and it all revolved around one crutial thing INTEGRITY, AND OUR COUNTRY'S INTEGRITY IS OUR CURRENCY.
Without retroactive forensic accounting on all the banks that received TARP, without a reconciliaton of all the parties that benefited most from the "decision" to let the Lehman DIE bet go through, and without certain people who insisted on putting our national security at risk for the sake of "saving the country" being tried for their betrayal of all of the US citizens who depended on them as fiduciaries of our security and trust, we will have paid a price in the loss our country's integrity (currency) for generations to come.
Obama was the cleaner in all of this. He followed through by supporting banking regulations that suffocate the small and regional banks, so that they will have to be purchased by the TBTF thus making them more monopolistic and since they are TOOGIGANTICANDSACROSANCT TO EVER NOT RUN ALL POLICY AND POLICYMAKERS.
BTW, i wish, here at ZH, some of you bank experts could do a thought experiment on the idea that we were ACTUALLY told the truth in SEPT 2008 and instead of the three weeks of lobby for TARP, Paulson had asked congress for authority to unwind the bankrupt entities and immediately create a US TREASURY facility to keep all lending going, with the immediate interest rate for all loans to be 1% instead of the banks getting to gamble with a few trillion dollars to "LOOK' like everything is doing well. ANd instead of being told that was socialism, Paulson would have said, although unfortuante, we can work thought the restructuring of all these entities that got toobigandtoocorrupt to stay alive. AMEN
I am truly grateful for your observations. THey are the kind I have "felt" but have not seen enunciated in black and white as you have done. I do hope your words find their way to all the right places. Mahalo!
Mahalo Joy on Maui!
big ups from avenue C right off pch in ventura
Idealism! Got to loooooove it!
This is the normal end-cycle of a fiat CON.
OUR currency?
OUR country?
You need to get yourself some serious Mental floss.
The currency says: "Federal Reserve Note" right on it. What pronoun is associated with that? THEIR currency. Yup!
As far as OUR country <<==>> roflmao!
And as far as Amen. Well a Mr. Amen-Ra was worshipped back in Egyptian times, and its funny because folks praying in Churches around the world don't understand that they are still worhipping Him today with every prayer ending in Amen, just like you ended yours.
Those that are in the land of smoke and mirrors certainly want to "pray" to make everything better.