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"The Illuminati Were Amateurs" - Matt Taibbi Explains How "Everything Is Rigged"
From Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, back to his best, most floral of writing styles:
Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever
The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There's no price the big banks can't fix
Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.
You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets."
That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.
Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.
It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks – including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland – that serve on the Libor panel that sets global interest rates. In fact, in recent years many of these banks have already paid multimillion-dollar settlements for anti-competitive manipulation of one form or another (in addition to Libor, some were caught up in an anti-competitive scheme, detailed in Rolling Stone last year, to rig municipal-debt service auctions). Though the jumble of financial acronyms sounds like gibberish to the layperson, the fact that there may now be price-fixing scandals involving both Libor and ISDAfix suggests a single, giant mushrooming conspiracy of collusion and price-fixing hovering under the ostensibly competitive veneer of Wall Street culture.
Why? Because Libor already affects the prices of interest-rate swaps, making this a manipulation-on-manipulation situation. If the allegations prove to be right, that will mean that swap customers have been paying for two different layers of price-fixing corruption. If you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks.
"It's a double conspiracy," says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. "It's the height of criminality."
The bad news didn't stop with swaps and interest rates. In March, it also came out that two regulators – the CFTC here in the U.S. and the Madrid-based International Organization of Securities Commissions – were spurred by the Libor revelations to investigate the possibility of collusive manipulation of gold and silver prices. "Given the clubby manipulation efforts we saw in Libor benchmarks, I assume other benchmarks – many other benchmarks – are legit areas of inquiry," CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said.
But the biggest shock came out of a federal courtroom at the end of March – though if you follow these matters closely, it may not have been so shocking at all – when a landmark class-action civil lawsuit against the banks for Libor-related offenses was dismissed. In that case, a federal judge accepted the banker-defendants' incredible argument: If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place.
"A farce," was one antitrust lawyer's response to the eyebrow-raising dismissal.
"Incredible," says Sylvia Sokol, an attorney for Constantine Cannon, a firm that specializes in antitrust cases.
All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.
If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati – this is the real thing, and it's no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want.
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Ahem, he's REPORTING (to people that might not have a clue). And note that under such conditions he has to watch what he says such that he doesn't get drug through the courts (reporting that he "knows" means that he would be challenged to PROVE it, and as we're seeing, as he is clearly pointing out, well... yeah good luck!).
Time is getting closer that the people will start taking matters into their own hands. I have to wonder whether all these liars comprehend the notion that creating a lawless environment means that ultimately there will be NO law to protect them.
sure, he came up with "vampire" after the first time he voted for the dynamic duo crime fighters O-man and Dickholder and "squid" after the second time he voted for them. Blah blah blah, misdirection blah blah, look over here, blah. Yea Matt, a snake will bite you, we know they are thieves but if the full and force of the feds was directed at a 6 month old baby boy he would have done hard time for stealing milk. He knows where the rot started on this fish he just won't look.
"The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates." - Matt Taibbi
for refreshment --> The Great American Bubble Machine
people you wouldn't believe are waking up...me and some coworker sheeps had a convo about this crap last week and many shared the views we share here. it was kinda awesome yet scary.
I remember back 10 years, it was so so so few people who 'got it'. Now, its literally 10 times as many people who are critical and aware.
Unfortunately, nobody in the Propaganda Ministry, and I include Taibbi, has clued the Sheeple in on the fact that the banksters compromised the Justice Department years ago. Everybody in that comment thread is going "Yea Team!" Obama will save the day!
Suckers. They don't know that the same people who put Obama in power put Bushtard in power.
But is that really his job? He can no sooner cure stupid than any of us can.
Willful ignorance cannot be cured by anyone other than yourself.
Matt has put a lot of information out there for anyone with curiosity to pick up and run with.
I say kudos.
pods
Not a lot of guys could turn a Rolling Stone gig into being one of the most widely read critics of the banking system.
I remeber this one almost verbatim from 2009:
"The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
He is good. VERY good. (no I am not him or his gay lover; not that there's anything wrong with it)
pods
Yes, you are.
He's a massive liberal douche, who only hates banks because he hates corporations, despises the free market, and loves big government.
He's not doing it out of a love for liberty.
suck from the nutsack of an oligarch much? sounds like you've found your bliss
yup definitely deep in nutsack sucking.........probably has an oligarch humping him while he keystroked....
There is always somebody who loves their elite rulers and believes those oligarchs and corporations are agents of freedom and liberation. They manipulate the markets for our own good. What would Ayn Rand do?
There you had a Randian take of theft and corruption, as long as it is in private hands it is good. Not that the oligarchs haven't captured government or anything!
Where does the author indicate that banking should be run by government?
I am not being sarcastic, I'm genuinely curious.
Well that's the thing, Taibbi never advocates anything in his reports. He simply analyzes crime scenes and he does a good job.
If you love corporations, then you don't love the free market. The two are incompatible, as corporations are not only creations of the state, they get special priviledges that could never arise through free interaction, ie you could never shield the owner's assets from seizure in the even of a lawsuit over the activities of their company. Nevermind all this business about shell companies and subsidiaries.
Thank you for the anti-Rand rant. Well said.
lol, Rand never addressed such issues, to my knowledge, at least not in her seminal books.
Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. I'd be happy to accept the existance of corporations, just as I would be happy to accept minarchism, or even just the big government of 25 years ago, if the government had a much smaller role in the economy, despite the fact that I am an anarcho capitalist.
All of the protaganists in Atlas Shrugged, Inc., worked for large corporations and met in boardrooms. Did you not read that part?
the only scene i remember was the "sex on the railroad tracks." that clearly had "corporatism" written all over it. The Fountainhead was a great book though...egotistical architects and maniacal CEO's "all in one place." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead And "We the Living" was a great book too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_the_Living. "thoughts on the Soviet." i'm not a big fan of mega banks as they are inherently undemocratic...and indeed one need only look at the POLITICAL response to 2008 to see just how "disaffected" our leaders have become from "We the People." i find myself forced to respect them however...whatever "emotionalism" i might feel. they've gone from what i thought was a knockout blow to "ruling the world" in the span of 4 short years. to call that a "headscratcher" is an understatement. when you own the media though, indeed "anything is possible." obviously there is no better way to keep what you're doing secret then to have as your sidekick someone who blasts gibberish at the rank and file 24/7-365. the only standing orders i'm aware of is "make sure they have lots of free time on their hands. we might need to borrow them to do whatever with." it's effectiveness is only matched by its simplicity. i still think the game changer for our Age is when the Internet got turned on though. http://www.cs.duke.edu/courses/cps049s/spring01/class/html/iehistory.htm 1995...bought my first Dell Computer then. who could have known. now this thing is overthrowing Governments, starting revolutions, watching and solving crimes in real time, getting people to reveal themselves...voluntarily!...allowing us all to be downloaded, stored, sent and retrieved. with the advent of the i-phone and Uncle Samsung this is now done on EVERYONE. we're tracked, traced..."spying on ourselves"...this is no mere corporate thing. this thing has changed the way we all work...and hopefully collaborate. we're all part of The Network now...the only difference being "what platform do we use"...to the extent We the People even know what a platform is (the totality of the human race simply has no clue.) is it safe for us to even walk out our door? quite honestly i wonder that now. amazingly "you can't turn it off" and "it was built to keep working AFTER a nuclear exchange." YIKES. human curiosity...there really is no more powerful force ever invented. and re-invented. and refined. and tweeked. and "made workable." the list just goes on and on "with seemingly no end to the innovation trail." amazingly "this is what we want." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntm1YfehK7U
Here's some info none of you need to know; when i was 18 i gave the girl i was in love with a copy of "we the living" with a silver dime folded into a bookmark on a chapter i thought was relevant.. I wonder if she remembers that.. Quite a while ago now, loved that book. Was a different person then, i wouldn't even bother with such gestures today, irrelevant in how things seem to work now.
I guess YOU missed the part where the protagonists were awash in a sea of evil, incompetent people in those corporations and board rooms, and abandoned them to their fates to go create their own society, a society that very nearly fits the exact definition of anarcho-capitalism.
Did you never get to the end of the book? Understandable, as it is pretty long.
Rand's fatal flaw is the same as Mises': they both believed that the state is necessary, whereas Nock, Rothbard, and Hoppe pierced its veil, articulating why even miniarchism, however preferable to today's monster states, is impossible. It's the nature of the beast:
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJBTIQbcLeQ
Text: http://mises.org/daily/2874
And for what it's worth, I despise the word anarchy, and its derivatives, as a synonym for a free society. Why?
1) It's got to be the worst marketing one could ever conceive of in that the only thing the general public thinks of when they hear the word is the Superdome after Katrina or some such mayhem, and
2) Virtually every dictionary definition of the word supports this fact.
Yes, I'm for society without government but not for one without law or governance. For while the market can supply them, a free society is impossible without governance under a rule of law limited to the protection of life, liberty, and property.
Call it what you will -- a free society, statelss society, whatever -- libertarianism doesn't just shoot itself in the foot by identifying itself with anarchy; it puts the gun to its head and pulls the trigger.
I'm throwing a flag on this one. What TMosley posted was a very accurate rephrasing of Rand's philosophy, not an "anti-Rand rant."
Don't get me wrong, LTER, I like your stuff, and think you bring some valuable insight to the table- but after that post, I'm forced to believe that you read "The Fountainhead" once, didn't care for it, and decided to go on a crusade against the Russian Radical.
Rand didn't solve all the problems of the world, and in reality, I don't believe I would have liked her as a person. Objectivisim is not my shtick- but that being said, I have had a lifelong hobby of carefully reading and digesting the works of whatever philosophers catch my eye (That's why it's a hobby- I really only read the ones I want to, and I'm good with that.)
So, I'm comfortable that I'm not a rabid Randian- but she was one of the clearest logicians I've ever had the pleasure to read. Truth be told, every book she ever wrote is on the bookshelf in my living room, and I even have a couple of leather-bound editions of her seminal works tucked away here and there. As far as I'm concerned, she's on par with Plato in terms of accuracy and clarity. For a bibliophile, those hateful Russian rants are like fine chocolate- and they're every bit as right and wrong as Plato. Both missed an indefinable something- though Plato came closer to it, IMO.
Rand never claimed that [sic] crony capitalism, aka corporatism, was something to be supported. Hell, she burned serveral hundred pages making that case when she starkly and cartoonishly contrasted Henry Rearden and Jim Taggart in "Atlas Shrugged." She was a staunch supporter of Nietzsche's vision of the superman, describing how sole proprietors routinely built empires for their heirs to later corrupt via the vehicle of corporatism, even though the only actual figure I can find in the whole of human history that kind of, sort of, fits her unrealistic mold is Nicola Tesla.
Like I said, this isn't a personal attack here- you're obviously a bright guy, and I often find myself agreeing with your posts. Rand was naive and childish in many ways, and her works could not form the basis of a functional society in and of themselves. But with that being said, it doesn't add credibility to your comments when you look at something that is clearly and obviously one thing, and declare that it is the polar opposite by fiat.
Human society is the most complex thing we can try to understand, and I don't actually believe that any of us are able to accomplish the task. I'm a voracious reader- more than you would probably even believe, so there's no point to attempting to quantify the claim. I grew up with one foot in abject violence and poverty, and one in the world of landed gentry (I had a kind of unoffical step-dad that mentored me when I was young,) and the only way I could try to figure things out was by reading whatever I could lay hands on. Rand taught me about business and fleshed out the concept that Verne skimmed over with the words "sang froid." Hesse educated me about the human soul, and Camus taught me the meaning of, and reason for, art- and in some very tangible ways, Steinbeck saved my life by edumacating me 'bout how reglur folk talk- 'n also what they are wantin'.
This digression is not for nothing. The point I am making here is that no one has gotten it right yet- they all have a little piece of a huge puzzle that they find, fetishize, and polish as a way to make sense of their own corner of the world. And the sad thing is that most of them are not wrong.
I find myself saying those words more and more as the years drag on. You're not wrong. The trouble with that is that you aren't entirely right, either. I took a lot of logic courses back in my college days, and I can spot a valid syllogism from a hundred paces- but the trouble is that for any legitimate argument I've ever encountered, there has been an equally diverting way to craft an equal and opposing case against it.
What we need, here, if nowhere else, is a comfortable fusion of ideas that leads to a truly creative process. We've already discovered most of the -isms that can be found, and they are obviously not what we need. Don't fall into the trap of condemning Rand- she's the lady you need to get your trains running on schedule. But there are other warnings here as well- if you disregard Hesse, you've ipso facto killed the spirit that men need to arrive ready to assist you in your enterprise every day, if you ignore Steinbeck, you will have no drones to push the buttons and pull the levers, and if you neglect Camus and Kafka, you may as well purchase some body armor to help you get through the day. Each viewpoint is required to craft the whole, and to cast scorn upon one is to kill them all by unbalancing the wheel.
I know I can't change your mind- that's impossible. But you can change your own mind if you care to. Whenever you go crusading, it shuts a door to a whole world. Every world has its good and bad points, but I haven't found one that is entirely useless yet, personally.
There are some things that Rand got right. Same could be said about a lot of people. Greenspan co-wrote with her.
that was your reply to prom's post? srsly? you obviously didn't bother to read1 it and cherrypicked the one sentence that fit your narrow viewpoint.
1read : as in fully digested it, let it sink in, considered the author's viewpoint and where it converged & diverged from your own, read it again and then considered your response in kind.
you incidentally just proved prom's hypothesis: the real issue with human society is not that there are superior & inferior ideologies, but that a critical mass of individuals are so wrapped in defending their own personal ideology (aka private idahos) that they are unwilling to dip even toe out of their comfort zone, even when it's offered to them with an genuine olive branch.
well done.
Excellent comment
Excellent post. Thank you.
That reply was one of the sexiest things I have ever seen on the internet, Prometheus418. It was a pleasure to read and I sincerely thank you.
Best post ever, anywhere.
Sincerely,
Another Bibliophile
Incisive post, much appreciated
So he's a liberal douche. Who gives a shit? If he writes the truth and writes it well, I don't give a fuck if he's neo-royalist with a fetish for llamas.
Room 101, Yes, a very good point. That poster is one of those who puts ideological purity above all else. Either one must ascribe to his prefect conservative model of thought, or one is incapable of any thought worth having.
So what if he is not perfect to the extreme conservative mind of a fringe element. He writes the truth, too bad that makes many in the elites uncomfortable. Why do so many people who cliam to be conservatives worship the crony capitalist model America has become?
I just consulted with the llamas & they told me he was a douche... They weren't sure about his political leanings though... <"writes the truth and writes it well">... Umm... How about conveniently avoiding particular asymmetric 'TRUTHS'?...
~~~
All of this is bullshit... MT gets 'praise' because he deftly avoids the "J" word [even though "J" are knee deep in everything he points fingers at]...
Try using the "J" word, just once, Matt, & you'll quickly be shuffled to the fringe by water totin' sychophants...
Yeah Matt... 'EVERYTHING IS RIGGED'... Especially journalism...
You could learn something from that, Francis. You continue to reflexively ascribe blame to the jews and are routinely shuffled to the fringe by those who read your posts. Which is a shame because you're actually very bright.
To quote the Dude: " God damn you Walter! You fuckin' asshole! Everything's a fuckin' travesty with you, man! And what was all that shit about Vietnam? What the FUCK, has anything got to do with Vietnam? What the fuck are you talking about"
Learn what?... How to be 'LIKED'?... I'm not interested in that... I'm interested in finding out about the TRUTH...
~~~
This thread is full of 'attaboys' for MT, because, supposedly, he is a TRUTH teller... OK ~ So I ask... How can you be considered a TRUTH teller if you so blatantly fail to ask questions <regarding the 'asymmetry' I refer to constantly>, & instead, stay anchored to the part that you know isn't going to get you FIRED by your editors & ganged up on by other journalists who are all toeing the corporate line?
There is only one possible answer to that... & that would be that the TRUTH is that jews have nothing to do with anything... That it's irrelevant to the topic [like the Saudi kid that got hustled away from the Boston Marathon spotlight], or all the holes in the '911 Commission' Report'... All IRRELEVANT because the government, or the media told you so]... Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain...
Maybe francis_sawyer is TOTALLY WRONG here <but that's why I continue to ask the same question>... TO FIND AN ANSWER... I've been here on ZH for 3 years now & have found ZERO in terms of answers [& there are supposed to be a lot of smart, progressive thinkers on this blog]... Instead ~ All I get are junks, 'ant-semite' labels, quips from Sheldon Adelson's pool boy, &, my favorite, YESTERDAY, a:
*SIGH* <from somebody>
I think I'm going to become a defense lawyer... I'll just wait until the prosecution calls its witnesses, & presents it's 10,000 page dossier, & when it's my turn to bat I'll just stroll up to the jury, put a little body english into it... & *SIGH*... I'm sure I'll become the fucking next F Lee Bailey...
Actually ~ there has been one, honest attempt <by MsCreant>, to explain the asymmetry... It came down to ghetto blacks vs. ghetto jews being homeschooled in different ways... [NO ~ I'M SERIOUS ` FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO MISSED IT ~ IT REALLY CAME OUT THIS WAY]... Jews are asymmetrical in banking, MSM, political activism, & jurisprudence because of homeschooling vs. blacks who are homeschooled to worship NBA stars...
That's it people... That's the TRUTH, right there... Matt T probably already knew this, & that's why he didn't think it was pertinent...
Me?... francis_sawyer... I'm thinking James Naismith 'invented' basketball in 1891 using peach baskets... The National Basketball Association came into existence in 1946, & the first BLACK player, Earl Lloyd, came along in 1950 to break the color barrier... Who were all those blacks worshipping in 1890, & 1949, I wonder...
But then again... It doesn't PAY to wonder... It PAYS to kiss jew ass... Which is why I don't get PAID for my views <& frankly, LIKE it that way... Because the moment MONEY, <joobux>, enters the picture, the 'half life' on TRUTH gets reset to 'speed decay'>...
While we're on the subject... Want some more 'TRUTHINESS'?... OK, try this one on for size...
~~~
THE VERY SECOND THAT THE '100TH MONKEY' PHENOMENON IS REACHED, IN TERMS OF COGNIZANT AWARENESS, BY THE MASS POPULATION, IN WESTERN CULTURE, THAT JEWS ACTUALLY DO HAVE THIS ASYMMETRIC FOOTPRINT ON THE POWER NODES OF BANKING, MSM, POLITICAL ACTIVISM, & JURISPRUDENCE... THEN THE GIG IS UP... SOCIETY AS A WHOLE WILL CRUMBLE...
Let that stew for a moment... <it may take time, & actually require periodic revisiting ~ because the 'reverse engineering' of that is why, IMO, there is an unnerving, & ongoing, FULL COURT PRESS in Western culture to stifle any form of jew criticism in any nook or cranny of society>...
~~~
People theorize all the time about the banking system collapsing, yada yada, & how it spells DOOM... Hank Paulson 'Tanks in the Streets' comes to mind... But there's more to it than that... 'SOCIETY' is held together by a very small thread... Consisting of:
- Consentual Control <allowed BY the serfs, who, AMAZINGLY, are easily persuaded to relinquish their everpresent brute & tactical advantage>
- Bread & Circuses <to keep the serfs entertained ~ which somewhat explains the above dynamic>
- Determination, by the overlords, to keep the animals penned in <which, oddly, sometimes only requires putting up some rickety fences, & providing food>
In the present day, those 'rickety fences' are:
- Banking <effort to corral & redirect what would otherwise be a 'free market' dynamic>
- MIC <this is actually half police state, half bread & circuses in the modern day version>
- Laws <& the necessary 'interprative' & 'capricious' enforcement thereof>
- Sports & Media <bread & circuses ~ the 'opiate' of the masses ~ filling in & out in a tag team manner with 'religion'>
~~~
So ~ The day that the '100th Monkey' phenomenon is achieved... & people say 'WTF' ~ My life is getting worse, not better, & then follow the trail to identify THE FARM [& who, asymmetrically, CONTROLS the farm], then there will be a stampede <AWAY from the farm, I'd suppose>...
At this point in the game, you cannot surgically remove jew overlordism in MSM, MIC, or these other things without dismantling them completely, which leads to DARK AGES II...
So the only question that remains is... Are you prepared for DARK AGES II?... Or would you prefer to try your luck with Mad Cow Disease?...
So we now have to have a squeaky clean past and pass a background check in order to speak?
Would you say that Ron Paul is not a lover of liberty?
He worked for the largest empire the world has ever known.
I don't care WHY he does it. And neither should you. Unless of course you support a system of information that is controlled by WHO you are rather than WHAT you say?
pods
He is actually a poor writer. He is just ahead of the curve in identifying the zeitgeist of the new french revolution.
Tiabbi a poor writer? He's carrying on the gonzo tradition started by HST. Of course it's all devolution from Shakespeare and the King james bible, but at least you can understand the Englishe.
If the Babylonian Beast kills a few judges, it is easy to make deadly threats against all the other judges, all the way up to the treasonous US Supreme Court.
They don't seriously still believe in that "Justice for all" drivel do they?
Nothing will really come of any of it.
Let's just say that everything that everyone thinks is being covered up and manipulated is 100% true. You name it, just for the sake of argument, lets just say it is all true (9/11, Obama, the wars, the Fed...etc), all of it.
So what. What the fuck is anyone going to really do about it? Drink beer, complain, watch TV and continue on their 1000 yard dash toward the end of their life.
There are two ways this can all be fixed. The first is the George Orwell version of "fixing you". If you can no longer see a problem, then there is no problem. The second way I will leave as a homework problem.
What can I say? I might have political ambitions.
only honest bankster is a DEAD one...
The banks just copied what Lucky Luciano did 80 years ago. All the "families" banded together to control the rackets. Same thing!
It's All Rigged
Matt Taibbi's latest article in the Rolling Stone once again exemplifies how everything is rigged. Now we've been inundated with the Wall Street talking point, spewed forth from the US Chamber of Commerce, Business Round Table, Financial Services Round Table and their various conduits, and their crooked and corrupt politicians, that it's all about "casino betting" when nothing could be more fictional: it's all rigged, no bets nor risk involved!
(Taibbi's teaser article here)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425?print=true
If you understand credit default swaps and naked swaps, you'll understand how it's rigged.
If you understand futures contracts and forward contracts, you'll understand how it's rigged.
If you understand how hedge funds are structured under the Investment Company Act, you'll understand how it's rigged.
If you understand the Stock Borrow Program of the DTCC and its usage in naked shorting, you'll understand how it's rigged.
If you understand the LIBOR rigging of global bank rates, you'll understand how it's rigged.
And if you understand how they all work in conjunction with each other, and that the banks and oil companies are financially interlocked and owned by the same entities, and in turn own all the financial exchanges and clearinghouses, you'll fully understand that they have their very own ultra-monopoly today!
And once you understand that the largest banks own the largest hedge funds, and that the next group of the largest hedge funds are owned by the descendants of the richest families (Rockefeller family, Morgan family, Harriman family, Mellon family, du Pont family, Guggenheim family, Rothschild family, Koch family, etc.) and realize who the owners of the top banks are, you begin to realize just how incredibly, mind-boggling rigged it really is!
It's all rigged ........
"If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place."
and coming soon....
"If cities and towns and depositors lost money because these banks underlying investments went bankrupt, that was their own fault for thinking the banks were safeguarding their assets in the first place"
Ah, the great prophecy of Animal House. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOXtWxhlsUg
Yup...Now it's up to the real Greeks to DO something about it.
What ever happened to due diligence? Anyone with an internet connection and high school-level reading ability has all the tools they need to figure it out
It's called fraud. There [were once] laws against it.
Still are... they just apply to fewer and fewer people.
Good point. The 99.9% are still subject to those laws. But the .01% have 40% of the assets, so there's that.
Actually, I think that it was once OK to shoot folks that engaged as such...
Back in the day in Montana and you came into town and acted the Fool the next time you left your hovel the no.s 3-7-77 were painted on said Hovel.
You then knew to get out of town or the town would do it for you. To this day those no.s are on the rear quarter panel of the State Police. They are also on the fuelsage of Montana Air National Guard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-7-77
1. 3-7-77 stands for three hours, seven minutes, and seventy-seven seconds, which was how long the outlaw had to get out of town before facing the vengeance of the Vigilantes.
2. 3-7-77 means three feet wide, seven feet long, and seventy-seven inches deep, which was the size of the grave the outlaw would be buried in if he didn't leave quickly.
3. 3-7-77 refers to officers number 3, 7 and 77, who were the ones in the California and Colorado Vigilante organizations who had the authority to order executions and burials. According to this theory, the Montana Vigilantes just borrowed the numbers from the other states, and used them as a warning without really meaning anything.
But now a more plausible story has come to light. The inner circle of vigilantes was composed of Masons, a fraternal organization with an ancient history, and the Masons chose the numbers.
According to John Ellingsen, Curator for Bovey Restorations in Virginia City as well as secretary of the Lodge of Masons there, a man died in Bannack in 1863 and requested a Masonic funeral. Though the Masons in Montana at that time were not authorized to hold meetings, they were allowed to conduct funerals. A few men put out the word and were surprised when 76 Masons showed up at the funeral. This was the first time this group of Masons met together and, counting the man whose funeral it was, there were 77 Masons present.
Surrounded by criminal violence, these men, who trusted each other because of their brotherhood in the Masonic Order, decided to fight back. Though their actions were not formally sanctioned by the Masonic Order, these men organized the Vigilance Committee in Virginia City. They decided that for a meeting to take place, the 3 principal officers and a quorum of at least 7 members would be needed. To these numbers, the vigilantes added the number of members present at their first meeting: 77. They took 3-7-77 as a sign, both for themselves and their opponents.
For well over a century, the vigilante secret was kept by those Masons who knew the real story.
Masons only defend Masons.
Masons swear to kill anyone who betrays the Masons.
In the past many LEO and judges were Masons, complicit in corruption of justice.
Today?
'Everything' includes legal land too.
In fact, that's what they invented legal land for ... 'legalizing' criminal activity.
That's why they use two words that are supposed to mean the same thing: legal & lawful.
Everything is indeed bent. Very, very bent.
the more is see masons, knights templar et al, put up as the secret societies that control things, the more I know that they are indeed not. they are easy targets to mislead away from those who do weild much control.
For me, masons, knights templars and what not was always more an examination (or better imagination) of the "possible" PAST HISTORY of TPTB, and never really about an accurate diagnosis of who runs the world NOW.
But Matt Taibbi has done it again, that's really an incredible article, connecting the dots.
Masons do not have anything to do with Illuminatis.
The Illuminati DID infiltrate the Brotherhood.
One famous example is the Italian P2 Lodge, which was kicked out, many of the conspirators jailed.
Painting the Masons as conspirators is a ruse to deceive people from the real crooks.
Weishaupt and Von Knigge both explicitly wrote about Illuminati infiltration of European secret societies. These papers were seized by the Bavarian authorities and exist online for any who would like to read.
what is the reason of the fucking masonic secrecy then?
The way I understand it, they were originally a medieval brick-layers guild. They used grips & passwords to recognize each other wherever they were working. Ostensibly to protect their lucrative building cartel, as early Masonic rites did not appear to incorporate the Babylonian, Egyptian, and Kabbalistic mythos of later Freemasonry. This early form of Freemasonry is still exhibited in the Craft Degrees. Then they were infiltrated by renegade Templars after the execution and excommunication of the Order by Philip the Fair and Pope Clement in 1312. The additional degrees of the Scottish Rite were thus born, and the familiar Middle Eastern legends and symbolism of Modern Freemasonry was incorporated therein from the early 16th century. Still later, the Continental Freemasonic Lodges were infiltrated by Illuminists and Frankist Jews. Where they proceeded to overthrow the Monarchies of Europe, and start more than a few bloody-ass wars. Some say their global campaign of subjugation and destruction continues today as the New World Order.
I have nothing against the Freemasons personally, and I certainly do not believe that all Freemasons are genocidal maniacs. Though I sincerely wish the Brothers would expel the plotters, usurers, and mass murderers who hide amongst them.
Stone-cutters and Stone-carvers and architects and builders with stone; not clay baked bricks, except perhaps brick-makers and brick-layers in Bible legends of children of Israel in Pharaoh's Egypt, or in Babylon.
"they are easy targets to mislead away from those who do weild much control. "
And what if those that "weild" "much control" are doing so FOR those secret societies? DON'T TURN AROUND!
Lower levels of the Pyramid.
Isn't it the openly stated job of the Fed to manipulate interest rates? So who cares, why is this news?
B-b-but the Fed is, you know, like, Federal. So it's the government, right? And America is like a democracy, so we owe the debt to ourselves.
[ignorance] off
Okay, RS is pretty mainstream.
So, maybe the news is leaking into
the collective consciousness.
A little media,
a little precious metals attention,
a little market crash...
Sometimes, sometimes good folks do get through the lines. Sometimes TPTB can't do anything about it other that to ignore (and KNOW they own the courts).
Publishing revenues have to be pretty hard hit these days. This just might be a case where the need for revenues succumbs to competitive forces rather than propaganda forces.
Don't these bastards realize that Santa is watching??
Who do you think invented Santa?
Lamp post justice is reasonable at this point.
Fuck YOU BERNANK.....Fuck the whole lot of them.
Domestic violence rates would be a lot higher if ZH wasn't here as a pressure valve for the little people to ejaculate their 'fuck ben shalom's over the keyboard.
It serves an important purpose.
You feel better now?
I am not beating my wife because of zerohedge? I never thought of it that way.
What's it like being a dipshit?
Every thread there's a fuck bernanke
It's monotonous, mind numbing and boring
Like 90% of your posts
And technically you just added another.
:)
pods
Doh!!
You're good pods , you're good.
It's D'oh!!
If you're going to steal my catch phrase, at least get it right.
He likes 10% of my posts! (blushing)
If you get to 1%, then you're getting somewhere.
I couldn't edit it to say 95%
Anyway if its that important to ya keep saying u know what
I'm off to crack some twins
Enjoy
(who gets mad at a fuck you bernanke comment by a guy with an avatar punching himself in the face)
And it's Tyler punching himself, no less.
Is it really? Fuck I'm going blind.
Technically it's Jack, but since Jack was Tyler, or was it that Tyler was Jack?
Fuck bernanke.
Just for you.
your rhetoric is a little abrasive, but you do have a point, and there is a lot of groupthink here
You could also say the same thing about TV, professional sports, alcohol, and internet porn.
pods
when the Yankees lose I throw my wife all over the house.
I don't even watch the games anymore because somehow baseball became meaningless. But whenever I see in the paper or somewhere that they lost I use that as my excuse to throw her all over the house. So throwing her all over the house is my release valve.
LOL
I gotta start drinking while on here. :)
pods
Kicking puppies works well too. I highly recommend it.
That is, until it is baby seal clubbing season --- can't beat that!
(Or can you?)
I am ALL for putting Bambi into the freezer.
I'm pretty sure that Jamie or Lloyd posted this.... http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1799/are-manatees-white-meat-or-dark-meat
I like drowning little baby kittens in the basement. Cuts down on the domestic violence. That and posting here on ZH.
Waterboarding kittens is the way to go --- while outright drowning them is great fun, it only last a minute or so.
I can waterboard them over and over, and do it for hours at a time! How can you beat that?
I call them "Not So Felix the Cat".
Did the kitten admit to being Al Qaeda's #2 or #3 operative?
Boston bomber. And he admitted to having firearms in the boat before they slit his throat. Boats, water, boarding.
You are obviously a man who appreciates our classical heritage.
Thank you, August --- I wondered if anyone was going to pick up on that.
That's cruel.
I just toss them out into the middle of a field when there are hawks around. Nature's way.
mmmmm
baby seals...
What would you do-oo-oo ....
that you papa bear?
Nope. I am lead salads raging bile duct.....I would feel better if that bastard got an audit, but we know that will NEVER happen....and oh, fuck you too.
Explain an audit to me mr salad
"Bankers, they're what's for dinner!"
Can't wait til there is an open season on criminal banker types. People will fill their bags with heads of the 1%ers.
HAHAHAHAHA "1%ers" get the fuck out of here hippy, you're poor because you suck not because of a mean "bankster".
When the shit hits the fan the 1% will be long gone while you're defending your single wide from the masses.
-1 for using the word "hippy" in a sentence in a non-ironic way.
I think he meant .00000001%ers.
You don't reach that level of power thru hard work or even by being born into it.
You reach it by being one of those few highest possible sociopathic villains, the likes of which Ian Flemming "warned" us about. lol
Parable of three talents!
when done dining on bankers
one has to floss the fiat
out of their teath..
The only open season will be on us plebes. We don't hunt, we get hunted.
Ewww. Gross. That's the wrong white meat.
Mark Taibbi, we owe you a debt of gratitude. It was Mark who first coined the term "vampire squid" to describe our beloved goldman sacks, loots, rapes, and pillages.
I sure hope that Mat Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, and Jeremy Scahill never fly, or for that matter, congregate together in anything other than the most public of places.
Manipulating interest-rate swaps in a market worth $379 trillion.
Really makes one want to invest long term in a broad portfolio of diversified equities on Wall Street.
*cough*
PONZI!
Late Christendom's power was concentrated with the Vatican Cardinals. Bubble capitalism power is concentrated with the TBTF traders.
The people rose up against Late Christendom, so too will they rise up against bubble capitalism, once the maliciious social contract of: head we wins, tails you lose is told in nursery rhymes.
"f you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks."
What an oaf. Money's been too cheap for 30 years now and this guy thinks we're overpaying. Fucking leftists. Even when they get it, they don't get it.
What do you call it when the bank borrows the money in your savings account at 1/4% and loans it back to you at 29%?
And a few bps of LIBOR-diddling affect that 29% how?
Also, if you're borrowing money at 29%, don't take a name like Diogenes.
Leaving possible profits on the table? Payday loan businesses legally get away with 60% intrest rate around here...
Usuary?
WHEN TYRANNY BECOMES LAW, REBELLION BECOMES DUTY -C.S.A.-
When governments become tyrannical, good people become outlaws. Don't know.
"All governments eventually become tyrannical." —History
"All governments of Men are Evil, because they will hold a gun to your head."
"All Rights derive from the Great Architect of the Universe. They are not Man's to give."
----Founders
I don't know which founder said that second quote, but if true, it must have been one of the many Freemasons, thinking they were creating Freemasonic Utopia, free from the old European royalty, but only to be replaced by the Jewish royalty.
Rolling Stone and Matt Taibbi
Another great article. They have done a great job ever since Matt coined the Vampire Squid. A lot of average people have had their eyes opened by Matt and RR.
Here's the problem with Matt. He never criticizes the Democratic Party as an institution and leads the reader down the path that would lead one to conclude that Obama is a bankster's poodle. He's come close, but basically it's "everybody does it". Any critique of His Oneness is implied, not overt. The man remains a Blue vs. Red guy, for all his good work, which is kind of sad to see.
Amen. The only way out now is a New National Party. I have researched the first national Republican convention, when they sent flyers around to a bunch of state and regional parties. Really beautiful stuff back in the day....
Just imagine what it would take to pull this off nowadays. Actually I have imagined it...well, sort of scoped out a plan...but you know, I'd have to quit my job and hustle and it might take like $150 million to get a national campaign going...once we've siphoned off a bunch of centrist, right and left wing officeholders and insiders, plus military and academic support, on top of literally overwhelming volumes of on the ground grassroots supporters.
'N shit. Anyway if you want to look at how the Republicans started it's kind of cool. Just sort of declare that you're taking the place over, and take the place over.
http://archive.org/details/proceedingsoffir00repu
Political parties literally don't matter while banks and financial institutions have the power of life, death, and money over any kind of government.
The Whigs died because they refused to take a stand over the expansion of slavery in the Territories. The Compromise of 1850 killed them off once and for all (well, it really started with the Mexican War, but let's not go there right now).
New Parties start over God and Man issues such as slavery. A replacement for the GOP won't come about until we are in a revolutionary situation where the existing GOP, which is a bankster's front, has been rebuked utterly by Republicans in the field for coddling the greatest collection of economic war criminals since Hitler commissioned Fritz Todt to rape European Russia. The Dems are no better. In fact, they're the ones doing most of the coddling right now.
If you want to know how far gone the GOP is as a party, all you have to do is listen to the whispering campaign being mounted on Jeb Bush's behalf by his cronies in Texas, Florida and Washington D.C..
I am not entirely ignorant in such matters. Just pointing out how unlikely the last peaceful avenue for change seems to be.
I thought the republican party started from a base core of whigs, ie bankers, and added a veneer of abolitionists almost as an involuntary act, like being infected with bedbugs. Founded on march 20, 1854, the GOP had exactly 7 peaceful years before it helped to start the Nation's bloodiest war.
So what?
But we will need a catchier name. Maybe ... Lesser Evil Party.
Sounds like a winner to me >;)
send an email to beppe grillo at the five star movement in italy. i suspect you have a policy platform that has some action in it, rather than the "negative" action of a protest movement.
the internet is all powerful..it powers and enables the banks too
be great if some internet company (google, linked in?) would enable you to form a network "group" for your party..or twitter?
Give him time. He's only been on this path 3 or 4 years and he has to investigate every step himself. He's almost there now.
Obama the incompetent will fix everything.
FORWARD.
FOR WAR D!
LEAN FORWARD (and suck my dick)!
... its obama's coded message to all of us.
Banker Competition = Out manipulating other Bankster Manipulators.
Here's a novel idea:
Cut all their heads off.
Make them into a stew.
Pour the stew down the caldera of an active volcano.
Rename the volcano Mount Fuck You Global Elite Fascist Bastards.
Wait 100 years, then repeat.
Did I miss anything?
Perfect.
Perhaps their blaoted heads and egos will keep the Yellowstone Caldera from blowing.
+1000 thank u 4 making me blow my mountain dew all over my keyboard & shirt ! Hilarious
you missed the;
urinate on their opened skulls
part but that is sometimes just an oversight which can be caught with the clarity of purpose
First you gotta gouge out their eyeballs and skullfuck them.
THEN urinate.
Order of operations is key here.
pods
correct pods orders of operation make for a more meaningful disembowelment but when do the dogs get set on them?
by this point the dogs will be restless
All you have to do is open their guts and then let in the pack of hungry coyotes, who will gnaw on their entrails while they are still alive.