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Big Banks Take Huge Stakes In Aluminum, Petroleum and Other Physical Markets ... Then Manipulate Their Prices
Top economists, financial experts and bankers say that the big banks are too large … and their very size is threatening the economy. They say we need to break up the big banks to stabilize the economy. They say that too much interconnectedness leads to financial instability.
But - as shown below - the big banks are getting bigger and bigger ... and getting into ever more interconnected markets.
Indeed, big banks aren't even really acting like banks anymore. Big banks do very little traditional banking, since most of their business is from financial speculation. For example, we noted in 2010 that less than 10% of Bank of America’s assets come from traditional banking deposits.
The big banks are manipulating every market. They're also taking over important aspects of the physical economy, including uranium mining, petroleum products, aluminum, ownership and operation of airports, toll roads, ports, and electricity.
And they are using these physical assets to massively manipulate commodities prices … scalping consumers of many billions of dollars each year. More from Matt Taibbi, FDL and Elizabeth Warren.
A 2-year bipartisan probe by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has shined a light on this problem, culminating in a new 400-page report.
Senator Levin - the Chair of Subcommittee - summarizes the findings from the investigation:
“Wall Street’s massive involvement in physical commodities puts our economy, our manufacturers and the integrity of our markets at risk,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the subcommittee’s chairman. “It’s time to restore the separation between banking and commerce and to prevent Wall Street from using nonpublic information to profit at the expense of industry and consumers.”
“Banks have been involved in the trade and ownership of physical commodities for a number of years, but have recently increased their participation in new ways,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “This subcommittee’s hearing is an opportunity to examine that involvement, determine whether it gives rise to excessive risk, and identify potential causes for concern that warrant further oversight by Congress and financial regulators.”
One focus for the subcommittee is the management of Detroit-area metal warehouses run by Metro Trade Services International, the largest U.S. warehouse company certified to store aluminum warranted by the London Metal Exchange for use in settling trades. Since Goldman bought Metro in 2010, Metro warehouses have accumulated up to 85 percent of the U.S. LME aluminum storage market.
Since Goldman took over the warehouses, the wait to withdraw LME-warranted metal has increased from about 40 days to more than 600 days, reducing aluminum availability and tripling the regional premium for storage and delivery costs.
The investigation revealed a number of previously unknown details about these deals: that Goldman’s warehouse company paid metal owners to engage in “merry-go-round” deals that shuttled metal from building to building without actually shipping aluminum out of Metro’s system; that the deals were approved by Metro’s board, which consisted entirely of Goldman employees; and that a Metro executive raised concerns internally about the appropriateness of such “queue management.”
Goldman didn’t just store aluminum; it was involved in massive trades of aluminum at the same time its warehouse operations were affecting aluminum availability, storage costs, and prices. After Goldman bought Metro, it accumulated massive aluminum holdings of its own, and in 2012, added about 300,000 metric tons of its own aluminum to the exit queue at its warehouses.
The Subcommittee investigation also examined other instances of Wall Street bank involvement with physical commodities. The Subcommittee report details how JPMorgan amassed physical commodity holdings equal to nearly 12 percent of its Tier 1 capital, while telling regulators its holdings were far smaller; and that at one point it owned an amount equal to more than half the aluminum used in North America in a year. The report also discloses that, until recently, Morgan Stanley controlled 55 million barrels of oil storage capacity, 100 oil tankers, and 6,000 miles of pipeline, while also working to build its own compressed natural gas facility and supply major airlines with jet fuel.
Details are also provided about Goldman’s ownership of a uranium trading company and two open pit coal mines in Colombia. When one of the mines was shut down last year due to labor unrest, Goldman’s Colombian subsidiary requested military and police assistance to end a human blockade — before paying the miners with $10,000 checks to end the protest.
***
The findings and recommendations from the bipartisan report are as follows:
Findings of Fact
(1) Engaging in Risky Activities. Since 2008, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley have engaged in many billions of dollars of risky physical commodity activities, owning or controlling, not only vast inventories of physical commodities like crude oil, jet fuel, heating oil, natural gas, copper, aluminum, and uranium, but also related businesses, including power plants, coal mines, natural gas facilities, and oil and gas pipelines.
(2) Mixing Banking and Commerce. From 2008 to 2014, Goldman, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley engaged in physical commodity activities that mixed banking and commerce, benefiting from lower borrowing costs and lower capital to debt ratios compared to nonbank companies.
(3) Affecting Prices. At times, some of the financial holding companies used or contemplated using physical commodity activities, such as electricity bidding strategies, merry-go-round trades, or a proposed exchange traded fund backed by physical copper, that had the effect or potential effect of manipulating or influencing commodity prices.
(4) Gaining Trading Advantages. Exercising control over vast physical commodity activities gave Goldman, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley access to commercially valuable, non-public information that could have provided advantages in their trading activities.
(5) Incurring New Bank Risks. Due to their physical commodity activities, Goldman, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley incurred multiple risks normally absent from banking, including operational, environmental, and catastrophic event risks, made worse by the transitory nature of their investments.
(6) Incurring New Systemic Risks. Due to their physical commodity activities, Goldman, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley incurred increased financial, operational, and catastrophic event risks, faced accusations of unfair trading advantages, conflicts of interest, and market manipulation, and intensified problems with being too big to manage or regulate, introducing new systemic risks into the U.S. financial system.
(7) Using Ineffective Size Limits. Prudential safeguards limiting the size of physical commodity activities are riddled with exclusions and applied in an uncoordinated, incoherent, and ineffective fashion, allowing JPMorgan, for example, to hold physical commodities with a market value of $17.4 billion – nearly 12% of its Tier 1 capital – while at the same time calculating the market value of its physical commodity holdings for purposes of complying with the Federal Reserve limit at just $6.6 billion.
(8) Lacking Key Information. Federal regulators and the public currently lack key information about financial holding companies’ physical commodities activities to form an accurate understanding of the nature and extent of those activities and to protect the markets.
Of course, the Federal Reserve - instead of regulating the banks, encouraged them to buy all of these physical assets. As Reuters notes:
[The Senate report] also points the finger at the Federal Reserve, saying the central bank has taken insufficient steps to address the risks taken by financial holding companies gathering physical commodities. The Fed in some cases was unaware of the growing risk, the report said.
Pam Martens points out:
Adding to the hubris of the situation, the Wall Street banks’ own regulator, the Federal Reserve, gave its blessing to this unprecedented and dangerous encroachment by banking interests into industrial commodity ownership and has effectively looked the other way as the banks moved into industrial commerce activities like owning pipelines and power plants.
***
One would think that the mega banks’ regulator, the Federal Reserve, would be the first line of defense against this type of dangerous sprawl by banks. According to the Levin Subcommittee report, the Federal Reserve was actually the facilitator of the sprawl by the banks. The report notes:
“Without the complementary orders and letters issued by the Federal Reserve, many of those physical commodity activities would not otherwise have been permissible ‘financial’ activities under federal banking law. By issuing those complementary orders, the Federal Reserve directly facilitated the expansion of financial holding companies into new physical commodity activities.”
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Please also exterminate the Clintons. As an example for the like minded scum.
But GW, this is not news, just usual Bankster shennanigans.
Thanks, however, for the tip.
Same names I see ... Goldman, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley
Whats the betting the next fix is the same? 100%.
"Bankster ______ do u have anything to say before we drop the hatch?"
"I was doing God's work! If there were no Banksters, you guys would be free to roam around and do all kinds of stuff freely."
"Thank you."
"UUrrrrKK!"
George is spot on, so much for "transparency" all of these crooks should be thrown in jail. To say the market is rigged is an understatement. After over 30 years of trading commodities I will flat out state without any reservations that lies and manipulation run rampant. If you think anyone is looking out for the small independent trader you are wrong.
An unholy alliance of the Federal Reserve, the government, and the too big to fail has left the rest of us in a precarious position. For the big boys, its insider information and computer trading, this includes computing patterns that exploit where stops are placed, this improves their ability to wash the weak out of their positions. The bottom-line is that the higher the market goes the more vulnerable it becomes to a major collapse and sudden downward move. More on this subject in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2013/07/markets-more-lies-and-munipulation.html
Carl Rove would not have been able to spring the new 21st. Century global Empire of corporate monopoly fascist (merger of corporate monopoly with government) without de-regulation.
Carl Rove Quote: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."[
Washington promised us that if we did not like de-regulation we can always switch back to the Free Enterprise System of capitalism that was free from corporate monopoly. Global Empire was not mentioned at the time. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Please note that Sen. Levin, who complains that banks profit fron non public information, himself has an exemption from insider trading rules that Congress has created for itself. How can anyone take ANYTHING this Kleptocrat has to say at face value?
Enron wouldn't be BK if the investors had stayed put because their profits exceeded their fraud. Ken Lay et al needed to go to prison for sure but the shareholders were stampeeded into selling....outfits like Goldman picked up these profitable units which they continue to earn money with.
Alibaba Massive Fraud
Unrelated, but I believe highly important none the less. We have some smart people on ZH and curious if anyone else has heard or read about this. I am hoping someone that has the time and resources can look in to this and do some homework.
I was listening to The John Batchelor Show one night about a week or so again. He is on the radio and can be found online. Incredibly well versed on many international topics and world history. I highly recommend you tune in to him when you have a chance.
In any event, he had three guests (from China) on and the discussion was surrounding a massive fraud at Alibaba. The story goes something like this. Alibaba is a marketplace and they collect a fee on each purchase from merchandisers that operate via their website. Alibaba understands net profits and margins are of little concern to Wall Street, but growth in revenues and now we are talking. Many multiples for "growth" in a global economy that is barely creeping along. So, Alibaba hires a network of thousands to simply buy and return products all day. If Alibaba held inventory this fraud would be somewhat more difficult to pull off, but with thousands of businesses connected to Alibaba it is very easy to hide the costs of labor and returns in underlying (most likely very closely held) companies. Afterall, billions of $'s in stock price appreciation will pay a lot of people to sit on a computer all day and buy and return stuff on their website.
This is massive securities fraud and according to the guests, the scheme is "well known" in China. Besides the financial statement fraud, one would have to wonder what type of due diligence was done by the investment bankers that brought Alibaba to market?
I don't know about you, but I think this could be a watershed Enron-like, Madoff-like story.
Thats one of my EoTW tells. When they start sending out empty boxes the end will be very near. Missing lug nuts on new cars stuff like that.
This is what got bailed out.
And "people can stop driving" too. We have public transportation in the USA and it is the best in he world (see "uber" et al.)
I agree that Alibabba is the biggest fraud in history and I do expect it to go zero just like GTAT did.
I wonder if they even have any of the comodities in question at all. Could they just rehypothocate other peoples stuff mutiple times? Using the real perchases and some accounting magic. Why not its not like you could call a cop?
Like Chinese copper and stuff? Its all accounting magic anyway? Could they offer to sell stuff they dont have then buy it from themselves at they price they would like. All well front running both the real seller and buyer of the phisical things?
"Adding to the hubris of the situation, the Wall Street banks’ own regulator, the Federal Reserve, gave its blessing to this unprecedented and dangerous encroachment by banking interests into industrial commodity ownership and has effectively looked the other way as the banks moved into industrial commerce activities like owning pipelines and power plants."
***
"One would think that the mega banks’ regulator, the Federal Reserve, would be the first line of defense against this type of dangerous sprawl by banks. According to the Levin Subcommittee report, the Federal Reserve was actually the facilitator of the sprawl by the banks."
Article 1, Section 8, Constitution For The United States:
The Congress shall have Power To... regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States,... coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures... provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;...
Subcommittees are a total SHAM. Congress is no longer of the PEOPLE. Congress could end this bullshit looting in an INSTANT, if it WANTED to.
Without a free market, there are no human rights. Whenever a man is forced to trade his time and work on a market which is rigged against him, he is not free. International banking has as its basic goal the destruction of all free markets and their replacement with rigged markets, rigged by the owners of the international bank.
A good start would be for any contract thru CME should have to be guaranteed. In whatever the item is. How can the $us. be forced to be accepted when the contracts are for Gold or Silver?
Whomever gave the CME this right, allows the manipulation. My thoughts are again the Fed. A Private Bankers Dream.
Thank you George. Commodity traders in ZH shouting hoarse to fighters on this escalating control of physicals. You bring further credibility to the fact not conjectures.
Also controls exercise thru cronies of parliculary EM resource rich countries that you can see and touch. (the comparatively better countries are Australia and Canada).
Useless analysts are still spining on free markets determining daily prices and worse all these one way causation of prices determined by real economy demand/supply.
Watch the unintended consequence of the leakage into a growing underground economy for commodity phsicals. Analogous to the flight of preys from traps.
I quit reading after reference to the fraud fauxcohantas......
Fauxcohantas for fucks sake??????
There is only one bank in the US.
One note = One bank.
Besides, it is irrelevant what they do with their money; the problem is what they do with other people's money.
This bank run will be epic.
There is only one big bank in the world. Vitali Glattfelder and Battiston identified the monster in 2011. It is so big it owns and controls 80% of the wealth in the western world. That is what needs to be broken up and unless the right to create money is taken from it there is no chance of beating it.
BTW, in case you didn't know, Taibbi is a 911 truth denier, and Warren is a warmonger who supports every war that comes along. Just sayin'. :)
Hey, George, have you seen this?
http://rt.com/business/209023-metals-price-fixing-lawsuit/
It seems to me that the "money" made out of nothing to speculate with totals to at least 100 times BIGGER than the total physical market. Since the political economy has become based on enforced frauds, that have grown at an exponential rate, it is no longer possible to perceive any relatively rational or sane perspective upon the magnitude of the basic problem, that the established systems are based on ENFORCED FRAUDS.
Globalized electronic frauds, backed by the threat of the force of atomic bombs, have resulted in generating numbers of notational "money" that no longer have any more relationship to the real world than weapons of mass destruction do, in the sense that those weapons could kill everyone a thousand times, while after being killed once, it would not matter. That expresses the magnitude of the overall social insanity of the force that backs up the corresponding financial frauds.
The biggest banks are the result of applying the methods of organized crime to control civilization, whose degrees of success have been amplified to astronomical sizes, whereby the "money" made out of nothing to speculate with is now orders of magnitude GREATER than the entire physical market, and all the flesh and blood people. Since flesh and blood people still use the same "money" to pay for their food and fuel, they still think that "money" means something old-fashioned, & within their little lives that is so, for them ...
However, what has actually happened is that the euphemistically referred to "legal fictions," i.e., corporations such as the biggest banks, and their buddies that have grown up around them, based on ENFORCING FRAUDS, which have become amplified by atomic and electronic capacities, have enabled the established systems of legalized lies backed by legalized violence to become orders of magnitude GREATER than everything actually existing in the physical markets, including all the flesh and blood people living through those physical markets.
Basically, the ability of weapons of mass destruction to kill 100 planet Earths has enabled the financial frauds to operate a virtual world, whereby it is as if there were 100 Planet Earths. The runaway situations of exponential growth of enforced frauds, powered up with electronics and atomic energy, have enabled the social pyramid systems based on backing up lies with violence to grow their enforced frauds to become orders of magnitude GREATER than all the flesh and blood people, and everything they do in the physical markets.
While this article above by George Washington was interesting enough, in its own frame of reference, as usually the case, it grossly underestimates and understates the magnitude of the problems presented by private banks getting bigger and BIGGER, because it is almost incomprehensible how BIG is BIGGER, when the basis for their "BIGNESS" was based on enforced frauds, which have become driven by electronics and atomic power, etc., to become almost inconceivably BIG ... It is only through abstract intellectual mathematics that one can try to understand that the total of all the "money" made out of nothing to speculate with is now measured in $quadrillions, while the total physical market is less than $100 trillion.
It that context, it is a typical kind of gross understatement that "big banks aren't even really acting like banks anymore." Similarly, any indications regarding what would be possible ways to resolve those kinds of problems continue to be gross underestimates of the MAGNITUDE OF THOSE PROBLEMS, which I may summarize as a situation where there is electronic monkey money, backed by apes with atomic bombs.
Of course, there is NO DOUBT that Big Banks Take Huge Stakes in Physical Markets and Then Manipulate Their Prices! However, in my opinion, nobody is able to fully comprehend that situation, because it has become way too inconceivably crazy and corrupt. The vast majority of people do not understand, because they have been conditioned to not want to understand, that their "money" is created out of nothing as debts, and can disappear back to nothing when those debts disappear. Everyone is forced to operate through that public "money" supply, whose basis is enforced frauds, whose successes require that the vast majority of people not understand that monetary system, because they feel like they do not want to understand.
Despite that those little people, within their little lives, are still using that "money" to buy food and fuel, and otherwise operate through the physical markets, those people, and those physical markets, have become relatively trivial factors inside of the systems of enforced frauds, which have created a sort of virtual world, where the same "money" that flows through those little people, and their little lives, through the physical markets, has become but a tiny fraction of ENFORCED FRAUDS' BIGNESS!
The vast majority of people want to continue to rely upon their common sense, which has become quite disconnected from the reality of things like electronics and atomic energy. The astonishing progress in mathematical physics, like quantum mechanics and the special theory of relativity, etc., have enabled the social pyramid systems based on backing up lies with violence, through increasingly sophisticated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, to develop to the point where those ENFORCED FRAUDS ARE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE BIGGER THAN THE PHYSICAL MARKETS, AND THE FLESH AND BLOOD PEOPLE THAT LIVE THEIR LITTLE LIVES INSIDE OF CORPORATIONS WHICH ARE "LEGAL FICTIONS," LIVING IN A FICTIONAL WORLD, WHICH IS LIKE A VIRTUAL REALITY ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE BIGGER THAN THE PHYSICAL REALITY.
In that context, the problem is not merely that the big banks are "too big." Combined they are enforced frauds which are so BIG that almost nobody understand them anymore, including even the people who are operating within those big banks (more and more with the assistance of artificially intelligent computerized systems, that are no longer fully understood by the people using those tools.)
The basic problem is that the political economy developed on the basis of enforced frauds, which had a long history, whereby the historical processes were amplified to become extremely BIG by electronics and atomic power, while almost nobody originally understood, nor wanted to understand, how those systems of lies backed by violence were really working in the first place. Of course, anyone that wants to can discover the history of how the international banks became the biggest gangsters, the banksters, that applied the methods of organized crime to the political processes. For instance, the historian Carroll Quigley wrote:
The powers of financial capitalism
had another far-reaching goal,
nothing less than to create a
world system of financial
control in private hands
able to dominate the
political system of
each country and
the economy of
the world as
a whole ...
However, that history is more like ancient archeology now, because the successful creation of those ENFORCED FRAUDS, which have become electronics backed by atomic energy, has driven the BIG BANKS to become inconceivably BIG expressions of runaway crazy corruption, to the point where the little lives of flesh and blood people, inside the physical markets are relatively trivial factors, within the virtual reality using "money" made out of nothing to speculate with, since that virtual reality now exceeds the physical reality of physical markets by orders of magnitude, similar to the degree to which electronics and atomic energy exceeds the common sense of the vast majority of people.
Of course, all the little people were forced, for generation after generation, to adapt to live inside of a political economy based on the frauds of privately controlled banks being able to create the public "money" supply out of nothing as debts. Most of those little people still think in the same little ways. Since they did not want to understand that money was measurement backed by murder, they did not want to understand even more so when that became electronic money, backed by atomic bombs.
Human beings are currently stranded within the almost inconceivable contradictions of having electronic monkey money, backed by apes with atomic bombs. There is barely any comprehension of that. Instead, the best one sees in the public spaces are statements such as in the article above, which grossly understates the SIZE of those problems, and so, then grossly underestimates what could be solutions to those problems. People who have adapted to living inside of social systems based on enforced frauds have simultaneously developed attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance, related to the deeply paradoxical nature of the social successes that were based upon those triumphantly enforced frauds. Those attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance applied all across the board, from the resulting social polarization, to the destruction of the natural world, to accumulate consequences that have gone beyond ordinary human comprehension.
BANKSTERS HAVE BUILT SYSTEMS OF ENFORCED FRAUDS WHICH HAVE BECOME SO BIG THAT NOBODY, INCLUDING THEM, CAN COMPREHEND THAT ANYMORE. Their debt slavery systems have generated numbers which have become debt insanities ... while those threaten to provoke death insanities, because money was always measurement backed by murder, BUT THAT BECAME BIGGER AND BIGGER, as that was amplified by technologies which were trillions of times more capable and powerful, to create a situation where the total of the "money" made of out nothing to speculate with is at least 100 times BIGGER than the physical market that it was supposed to operate within ...
The big banks are the expression of runaway CRIMINAL INSANITIES, due to social pyramid systems based on backing up lies with violence becoming enforced frauds amplified by atomic energy and electronics. However, by and large, almost nobody understands that, nor even wants to try to understand that ... Therefore, it is mostly pointless and quixotic for me to attempt it, yet nevertheless, I endeavour to ...
A common example of a legal fiction is a corporation, which is regarded in many jurisdictions as a "person" who has many of the same legal rights and responsibilities as a natural person.
Legal fictions are mostly encountered under common law systems.
The term "legal fiction" is not usually used in a pejorative way, and has been likened to scaffolding around a building under construction.[2]
All I can do is look at one piece at a time.
This legal fiction of TBTF Corporations clearly discharges it's debt after 2008 Financial Crash. Clearly they were Bankrupt, they cause many other corporations to go bankrupt, and they cost many on Main Street to lose their life savings which had been invested in a House. There were many other assets and wealth lost due to the Banks Gaming the system.
So they play a game. Call themselves "Persons", but don't take responsibility, Liability... and then have the Gall to make themselves out to be something untouchable like Royals, or those doing God's Work as TBTF.
What a Meme. Mission Essential Banks, TBTF, Persons with Rights, but above the normal small business or the common man.... Literally adding a "Sixth Estate"
the clergy, the nobility, and commoners, Free Press, Corporations, TBTF Banks
What are the "Estates" in the USA?
- Federal .gov, President, Congress
- Lobbyist, Lawyers, PACs, 501(c)s, Global Elite
- TBTF Big Banks, Federal Reserve, Shadow Banking
- MIC, Intelligence, Communications, Computers, Security, Spying, Contractors, Manufacturers, Private Armies
- MSM, Corporate or Privately controlled by agreement with Government
- Transnational Conglomerates, Big Oil, Mining & Engineering, Big Ag & Big Chemical, Big Pharma, etc.
Dios Mio, lo ciento mucho, pero me gusta. I don't know how to fully react in wiriting to such a piece of eloquence. Il est c'est magnifique.
Wow that was a mouthful!
Good job!
"The big banks are the expression of runaway CRIMINAL INSANITIES, due to social pyramid systems..."
Actually, they're based on a Step Pyamid Model of Authority or Monarch Reign Pyamid Model of Authority. The EXACT same Debt Bondage & Enslavement System used throughout history.
The Approach my change but the raping, murdeing & Pillageing of the innocent at the hands of an Elite few continues.
Just ask the Egyptians.
I agree, Chupacapbra, that Neolithic Civilizations' Step Pyramid Model of Authority go back thousands of years. Metaphorically, it DOES go back to Babylon! But nevertheless, my main point is that the development of science and technologies which ARE trillions of times more powerful has driven those social pyramid systems based on backing up lies with violence to become CRIMINALLY INSANE!
If there was nothing more than swords and spears, or even gunpowder, then we could still be fighting in ways that could end up with some relative winners. However, after the development of weapons of mass destruction, everyone would be losing, even those who appear to be winning in the short-term. Meanwhile, the deeper, perpetual problem is the established monetary system is relentlessly driving debt slavery to become debt insanities! The ruling classes are more and more recklessly risking wars going out of control, because they want to completely consolidate their financial frauds, as a globalized system with no exceptions anywhere!
Personally, I indulge in the perception that the apparent Step Pyramids are ACTUALLY toroidal vortices. I promote the irrational hope that IF more people would perceive that, then we could perhaps connect the top and bottom of the social pyramids better. For those who like to similarly indulge in optimism regarding the importance of perceiving toroidal vortices, I recommend this well-made, entertaining video overview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEV5AFFcZ-s
Thrive
http://thrivemovement.com/
Was going to write some ideas today about establishing new communities.
But came at it backwards from an idea of leveraging the Youth in USA in a way similar to Germany (3 Track Education System in which students choose early).
IF we cut the Education System from K-12 to K-10 that would force young men and women to plan their lives near the age of 13 years old. They would decide:
- End Learning to enter low skilled Labor Force
- Plan for Vocational to Tech School
- Plan for Study for Entrance to College & University Programs
This forces the boys who are passionate, learn quickly, have lot so competitive energy, who are not yet at physical peak or mental peak to "Engage" the world, perhaps consider starting a business for the first time or Dedicate themselves to "study like a man". Part of this is about sex and how a man sees himself and what kind of woman would date, fool around with, or marry a boy with no career.
- One Result would be Empty High Schools.
- Empty schools make great places for community forums
- This can lead to a Renaissance in my imagination
- We need Local Level Philosophy Established in each state, even if they are just free, open, forums in empty churches or buildings and... even if they focus on politics or religion instead of science or philosophy
"Teeth's Law of Youth, Manhood, Independence", treat young men like they have a choice and must choose early in life what they will do and what they will be. This is an alternative to the feeling that... from 6 years of age till 18 years of age you are locked into a "Broken" school system that does not prepare you for the business world, for College or for a career.
- Leverage your young, Strong, Competitive, imaginative, and you have a force multiplier in the US Economy.
- Spread the Word that our country is dying without adequate Logic, Philosophy, History, Science, Engineering
Today there is two much binary thought. Cognitive Errors that reinforce the paradigms of only two choices or solutions: the left or the right, conservative or progressive, Liberal or Traditional, Black or White, Right or Wrong.
- Today we solve problems with false dichotomies of only two solutions or two steady states.
- Cognitive Distortions, Cognitive Errors, Bias Thinking, must be taught early and taught in the context of debates, judgements, analysis, community issues, news reporting, and professional surveys and analysis
- The US Idiocracy is now upon us
- How will we avoid War?
- How will we stop the Fraud, Waste & Abuse of Federal tax Dollars for Corporate Welfare, Corporate Subsidies, and Wall Street Banker Monopolies?
Forums, Debates, Community Town-halls, Establishing COOP Businesses, Establishing community Groups or Towns that share the same Political Thought, Communal Type Living, ... These will be places for Young Men to catch the ideas of Economics, Budgets, Accounting, Auditing, Cost of Living, Monopolies, Bank Charters for Creating Fiat out of Thin Air, and Fixed US Markets.
"Black versus White."
We are biased in this way...and the media is the "blow horn."
Being smart or "cognitively aware" is one thing...but have faith and being "spiritual" is far more important to a society and "social cohesion."
Jesus answered all these questions two thousand years ago. We don't need "pyramids" least of all on our money. We need food, clothing and shelter. Everything else is speculation and attempts to "corner" the market.
God bless you RM.
I only scanned George's article, understanding quickly what I read. But I read every word of your ealier long post, and was somehow strangely comforted by it. Even though the news is awful, some how getting a better grip on it made me feel a little better.
Best wishes to soul mates here.
Thanks, Plato's Law!
Judge the Leaders by whether they teach or not.
Good ones teach what is happening, then they get gotten to at some point, corrupted by the Elites & Organized Crime.
Barney Franks seemed to lay out processes and put out information. I don't take cable or satellite TV, so I'm not the guy to ask.
Dennis Kucinich
Barney Franks
Ron Paul
Alan Grayson
Carl Levin
Who were the Teachers?
Rad as usual I enjoyed another of your posts ! Kudos
Many of the readers of this should file multi-billion $$$ RICO and other lawsuits in the courts on Monday against these banks and entities.
Won't go anywhere, but would be interesting to watch their responses while we utilize their own laws of plunder against them.
If enough of us do this, the system would grind to a halt.
An American, not US subject.
http://rt.com/business/209023-metals-price-fixing-lawsuit/
Need a Coalition of Tea Party PAC, NRA, NRA-ILA
What are gun rights for if not for Revolution and Leveraging the Guillotines?
But need to consider more PAC or 501(C)s to set a real coalition.
Hey Chris, great idea, wouldya lend me the bucks my lwyers gonna request to get the ball rollin?
BTW, sorry for lack of paragraph spacing in the post. I posted using iPhone, and it's nigh impossible to format.
The question is not just if they are but to exactly what extent? Control + print is tough to compete with.
Where is Adolf when you need the banks sorted out... Dump the debt based ar$£ paper & roll out some labour based cedit for infrastructure projects that cant be gambled away by the Zionist casino gang
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnu5uW9No8g A lesson in history
+ 1000 I'm not going to say anything you beat me to it ...Thanks
How much more blatent does it have to get?
I expect banks to start funding mercenaries, oh wait, CS (Credit Suisse) is already been there and done that.
We need to bring back the guillotine!
The guillotine was used for political ends.
When fiat systems end there is no one to blame that the money was too hard to get. A better and probably harder money system will be demanded when this one fails. It won't be called 'freegold' but it will look a lot like.
The banks have the same motives as virtually any other trading company. The real problem here is the implied guarantee that they will be bailed out by the taxpayer for reckless behavior that would put their non-bank competitors at risk of bankruptcy.
Big Banks...Manipulate Prices....
Yes. Of course.
Next moronic article , please.
The strange thing is that these authors keep bemoaning these facts of life instead of giving good advise on how to profit off blatant manipulation.What´s the use of repeating the self-evident? Have we all turned into wild-eyed economic cum religious preachers? Repent! Repent!
That........and the fact they are considered Too Big To Prosecute certainly helps with the rape and pillage.
Don't you really mean that the "FED" supports the banks will upon us to do whatever they want to pillage us.
Case in Point, it is the FED who gave Goldman "Bank Status" under the "Bailout Fraud to Save the Economy".
Just another tool for Goldman to have more financial support to suck more out of their prey, whoever it is.
As the economy goes deeper into higher inflation, experts say one protection would be to own commodities that are in constant use. So, the banks already are there: First, printing the money to drive up inflation and bubbles; second, to dominate ownership of the commodities; third, to own and operate the regulatory system: and, forth, to enrich its partner in crime, the government.
One definition of hyperinflation is that private money is wiped out and government money is enriched.
So, along comes tough, outspoken Carl Levin with his remedy. But what he’s really saying is, “Oh, darn, look what we did.”
And there the matter ends.