The vampire bat is a horrifying pig-nosed wart of a creature which feasts in a manner that, believe it or not, is a rather familiar scene to those of us who closely study alternative economics. After erratically flittering about in the sinking evening sky, it targets the warmth of a sleeping farm animal and latches onto it with its claws. Carefully, it inserts a fang into a vein dense region of the creature’s body, and laps away at the blood. Normally, the oblivious livestock are completely unaware and helpless to the attack. The tiny parasite does not inflict an immediately mortal blow to its host, but over time, disease and physical debilitation result. The vampire has destroyed the animal, and, pathetically, the animal has no idea.
Just as in nature, the economic world has its own bloodsucking vermin in the form of banking elites which are a wretched drain on the whole of the human race. Without their vicious and predatory presence, I envision a world so rapturously above and beyond what we wallow in today that it is impossible to describe. The disgust many feel when considering the virulent feeding habits of the common mosquito or the slithering leech does nothing to compare to the utter gut churning revulsion I feel when studying the financial habits of banks like the Federal Reserve and the “too big to fails”. They are without a doubt the most malignant form of social cancer imaginable.
And yet, after nearly four years of ongoing fiscal exsanguination, a sizable portion of the American populace is still looking to these pests for economic comfort and reassurance, just like farm animals consistently grazing near the entrance of a vampire bat cave, as if it is a shelter from harm. Worst of all is the willingness by which investors still, to this day, commit their savings and their livelihoods to the stock market meat grinder. Let’s be honest; the typical American daytrading investor is a complete moron. They have absolutely no sense of the fundamentals of our financial structure nor the eccentric rules by which it operates. They only have the faintest inkling of the functions of the highly manipulated stock market. They foolishly believe that what little money they make today riding the wave of an illegitimate liquidity driven rally they will actually get to keep. For them, stock investment is no different from buying a scratch-off lotto ticket at a hillbilly gas station; it is a cheap and tawdry game rife with failure but exciting to play, if only for a fleeting guilt addled thrill.
To be fair, they play because the game is indeed “rewarding”, at least, initially. The first taste is so sweet that it soils the plasma; the very skin of the cellular membrane of the financial mind becomes saturated. It swells within the weakening heart of a culture, and overrides its sense of logic. It makes us do terrible and stupid things, and we clasp our hands together and pray that it will never end. But, of course, an ending is painfully inevitable. The more we indulge, the more it takes down the road to satisfy us. We become an addict nation, riding the chemical wave of a pharmaceutical roller coaster fed by the opiates of fiat and fantasy.
The bottom line; we are being drained of our lifeblood as a country. However, the mainstream media is rife with talk of “recovery”, and one might ask how this could be possible. An overwhelming spectrum of solutions has been presented over the past 3-4 years, and each one has given the stock market a little push towards the green, so what’s the problem?
The problem is, the actions taken by our government and banking elites have built the connecting strands of a spider’s web, instead of a safety net.
Let’s examine some the most common solutions presented to the increasingly desperate American public and why these delusions have lulled us into the role of victim in the most elaborate monster movie of all time…
Centralization As a Solution To…Centralization…?
Europe’s current disintegration is a perfect example of this strange and ultimately destructive policy. The EU as an experiment is an utter disaster. Once the jewel of the open border dynamic and a bastion of the “merits” of globalization, the economic union has been exposed as a kind of waxwork museum; a tourist trap curiosity filled with illusions of life, but rather hollow upon closer inspection.
Half of the countries committed to the EU are burdened with liabilities well beyond the 60% debt to GDP ratio outlined in the ‘Growth and Stability Pact’. Some countries, including Greece, met few if any of the presented criteria for membership and were allowed to join anyway. The only reason the system was able to function at all was due to the imaginary wealth of the toxic derivative framework which now no longer exists.
The problem with globalization is that it requires assimilation; it demands that sovereign nations adopt the fiscal character of their neighbors in order to present the face of a single entity. Of course, when these countries are unable to do this because of their cultural differences, or their incongruent economies, something has to be slapped together instead. Artificially tying together societies by forcing them to financially harmonize is, in my view, a criminal act of collectivism. Now that this crime is being unveiled for all the world to see, though, the corrupt governments and banking puppeteers of Europe have suggested even MORE of the same! That’s right…their solution to the collapse of the EU is a harmonization not just of finance, but of politics and law. A single governing body which would dictate every nuance of the union.
The claim that Europe was not centralized enough, and that this is what caused the breakdown, is absolutely preposterous. Globalization makes a system inflexible and weak. If any portion of that system fails, it sends shockwaves through the rest. This is because centralization removes the protections of independently insulated structures and allows corrupt policy to spread like a plague. As the economic situation grows more dire, the end result will always be a reduction in the common citizen’s standard of living. In harmonization, It is far easier to make everyone equally poor than it is to make them equally rich. With a single, narrow minded leadership, especially one that is completely unaccountable to the people, the EU will become the most fragile makeshift empire in history, and a model for a global government that hopefully will never exist.
Print To Avoid The Pain…
I can’t tell you how truly exhausted I am with the constant rehashing of bailout bills and cheap lending windows as if they have ever or will ever change anything. Let’s make this clear; Keynesian stimulus measures are useless. They will always be useless. Governments do NOT create jobs, they destroy them. Central banks do NOT create wealth, they dilute it. Quantitative easing and zero interest lending does NOT diminish debt, it displaces it; removing it from the shoulders of private corporate banking institutions where it belongs and dumping it in the laps of taxpayers. I’ll say it again; the debts created by major banks have not been paid. They have been handed to you, and your children. Forget the December Santa Rally and the temporary holiday job boost. Nothing has changed since 2008.
The process of transferring private debt into public obligation is a tool of economic vampires. The utility in this is obvious. A program of wealth transference has the ability to prolong full collapse while at the same time giving the impression of stability. The dollar itself characterizes this conflict. The currency has been overprinted since the credit crisis began by some estimates in the ten’s of trillions. Not only has it been devalued to temporarily stave off a purging in the U.S., but now also in Europe. And yet, the dollar index, which supposedly measures the Greenback’s global value, has spiked. We are lulled into a sense of safety by such arbitrary measurements, but our buying power is being subversively annihilated. In less than a year’s time, those who dove into the dollar as a safe haven will discover their bones picked clean by predatory banks and hidden flesh eating inflation. Count on it…
Create A New Currency…
Globalists love currencies, as long as they aren’t tied down by a commodity. For central bankers, each fiat currency is a stepping stone to something more sinister. They are disposable. They are expendable. Like toothbrushes. Yes…even the dollar. And in this rests the key to economic control. A currency is a symbol of trade and labor; if you can create and destroy that symbol at will, then you can dominate trade and labor. Through a mere piece of paper, you manipulate the very breath of social life. No one should be given that kind of power without uncompromising transparency and constant public governance, but the Federal Reserve is free from both.
The suggestion that we can solve our current financial despair with the formation of a whole new currency, or a global currency, is like suggesting to a slave that he would be much more free with a shinier set of chains. Any solution that purports to undo the crisis by doing more of the same was probably devised by an economic vampire.
This includes digital currencies like the failed “Bitcoin”, which swagger about in the classy looking threads of technology and diversity while flashing us impromptu peace signs. Digital currencies are a Star Trek theme park distraction, and just like any paper fiat currency, they make promises they cannot keep. Any trade system that depends upon good faith in ones and zeros traveling across a network of machines that can be hacked or rendered useless by collapse is doomed. We have already tasted the danger of digital through the debauchery of credit cards. Why tempt fate even further?
More Regulation And Control…
Regulation is not the problem in America’s economy; the REGULATORS are the problem with America’s economy. The SEC is given thousands of potential investigations a year to pursue, but rarely do they ever follow through, and when they do, it’s to throw the angry masses a Bernie Madoff or two; an act of insincere appeasement in light of much greater fraud.
Being that true free markets have not existed for at least a century, the insinuation that free markets are the root of the collapse is a bit absurd. The guidelines for government oversight of business in the U.S. already exist; government has just refused to implement them. Adding new restrictions to an already restricted market will change nothing. Therefore, the only solution that makes any sense whatsoever as far as regulation is to wipe the slate clean entirely. Remove the Federal Reserve, replace the SEC, and replace the current establishment leadership.
I have heard it said that the philosophy of our economic system is the problem. This is an ignorant cop-out. The principals of free markets are not the issue; the men who abuse them and diminish them, on the other hand, are. Anyone who suggests that we as a country focus our anger on the idea of the system rather than the men behind the misuse of that system is, without a doubt, an economic vampire.
Lurking in the Shadows...
The question of solutions is difficult, not because there aren’t any, but because those that will actually succeed require pain, sacrifice, and incredible hard work. Most people don’t like to think about that sort of thing. This is why global banks and their proponents have been able to maintain the recovery magic act for the past few years (just barely), and it is why the useless concepts they put forward are still given public consideration. We WANT to be sold on the proposal of an easy way out.
One rule to never forget when considering any solution is to take into account who benefits most from its implementation, and who has to labor for its success. If average people are forced to exert all the effort, and an elite few reap all the substantial benefits, this contradiction outweighs any assertion of practicality. It is not worth our time, nor our energy, to shadowbox reality. Unfortunately, this is all we have been doing as a nation since 2008.
The creeping terror that lay ahead is not the economic collapse, but the men who would use it to their favor. The stakes are high. With the NDAA and similar bills in place, fiscal distress is no longer just a matter of economics, but a matter of personal liberty. Without a doubt, a collapse will be used as a rationalization for totalitarianism. If we do not make the hard decisions now, and take it upon ourselves to construct our own localized economies separate and insulated from the mainstream, we will, indeed, find ourselves one day cowering in the dark of a long drawn night infested with fiends, and desperate enough to actually ask them for help. They will be happy to give it, at a very bloody price…
The blind defense of the vampire squid is what really irks me. The American populace, especially baby boomers and even some in Gen X, have this defiant ignorance about the fact that nothing needs to change, and that those who speak up are troublemakers and misfits looking for a handout.
We really deserve to be raped in the ass as a people. Granted, the occupiers in some retrospect have worn out their welcome at the actual sites......but their message is clear as crystal. When i speak to people at work or see those with an uneducated, biased, and "pot shot" opinion on OWS and other sites, I secretly hope that their 401K is raped one morning when they wake up, finding everything to be gone. God, is that shit going to be fucking hilarious.
In 100 years from now, the "Age of Schaudenfrude" will be alive and well in entertainment circles.
If you're a vampire and you can help it, then you're an unenlightened moron. If you can't help being a vampire, then you're just plain sick. Either way, it sucks to be a vampire.
Blame the Baby-Boomers for all the ongoing disgraces of this country, that's why they are considered America's failed generation. These good-for-nothing invested their deprived intellect in experimenting with all types of drugs and having very promiscuous (and many times deviant/unnatural) sexual lives.
In fact, the following video taken at Woodstock in 1969 clearly depicts what Baby-Boomers were all about:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLDalZ4-53g
Consequently, their offspring are the best evidence that defect genes have been transmitted from one generation to the next; worst of all, the chances that their descendants' DNA carrying a more complex sequence of these defective genes are 100% guarantee -these new generation of Americans can fairly be described as subhumans.
Decentralize - or dissolve - the US - and all the world's problems will be gone with it - the central Dracul.
Perhaps indeed a lot of truth in that ... all major global international criminal schemes tie into the USA and its massive funding of criminal projects, the wars, the terrorism, the financial frauds, the overthrow of governments on every continent ... the USA even close to monopolising the world internet with its two CIA companies Google and Wikipedia ...
When the USA falls and crumbles, it will leave only more local schemes, much more easily managed and avoided
Perhaps indeed, to change the famous ancient Roman saying about Carthage
« America delenda est »
America must be destroyed
If the world is to have a chance.
No democracy or republic ever survived more than 240 years ... and the US did not make it either, ending in fascism as the clock ran out.
By 2020 the US nation will hopefully be in many small pieces, the US regime disappeared and gone in the wind.
Very likely bank guy. It is the same feeling here in India. It is becoming more and more obvious that this was never meant to be a border-bound country. It was just forced together by the brits.
And now, when everything else is feeling shaky, the worst of the schisms come to the fore.
I think balkanization and then re-unification seems to be the mantra. Globally.
Re-divide to re-rule.
ori
/fractal-animal-hypnotic/
India and China....opportunities for mass labor exploitation in the past centuries for European traders.
Today, the exploits are carried out by Indians and Chinese themselves in the name of capitalism for the benefit of the few.
Don't they realize that slavery with Africa was carried out by the same tactic? convince the owners of labor to sell out his own kind for a new shiny thing from Europe/Arabia...
"I have heard it said that the philosophy of our economic system is the problem. This is an ignorant cop-out. The principals of free markets are not the issue; the men who abuse them and diminish them, on the other hand, are. Anyone who suggests that we as a country focus our anger on the idea of the system rather than the men behind the misuse of that system is, without a doubt, an economic vampire. "
This is not a fair statement. I absolutely believe that the philosophy of the Federal Reserve System, which is at the heart of our current economic system, is the problem. Debt based currencies will always lead to unservicable debt levels, which brings huge waves of deflation, and then most likely hyper inflation as central banks and governments try to print their way out of their debt problems, which obviously means deflationary collapse or hyperinflationary collapse. The free market system is fine, I'm a fan, it works. Our currency system however, which is part of the economic system, is fundamentally flawed in its philosophy. INFINITE GROWTH IS IMPOSSIBLE AND ANY SYSTEM THAT RELIES ON PERPETUAL GROWTH WILL EVENTUALLY BREAK DOWN EVERY TIME.
The 5 year plan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFYyLUtIVX8
i am always surprised when i encounter a misanthropy perhaps more malignant than my own, yet here it is on full display. the avatar of the Illuminati Adam Wisehaupt seems particularly appropriate to this kind of hateful venom which is altogether too common these days especially amongst those of us blinded by the hubris of deplorable self conceit. assume your rightful place then beside the eugenicists and genetic engineers whose solution to all the problems inherent in the human condition is the wholesale extermination of all those who bear "defective genes" and unacceptable hereditary dispositions, oh noble Wanker.
People were rioting in Seattle earlier for the OPPORTUNITY to spend $180 on a pair of sneakers.
When I see such utter madness, I wonder if the eugenicists aren't right after all.
It's that what all that WTO hubbub was about?
But sreiously, don't get suckered into the media's edit-vortex...the world is not what you see on TV. Look around.
It seems those people were of one race. Correct me if I am wrong.
In my childhood, sneakers were called "poor person snowshoes".
I wear them for running or sports. I do not consider them "shoes" a person would wear in social occasions or to church, for example.
But what do I know? I have seen coeds wearing $1 flip flops and pajama pants at the airport, topped with a "wife beater" t shirt.
WANKLORD...
Troll. Source of your offspring:
http://budugllydesign.com/archiveow/top100/sounds/nabors.wav
wanklord=jackoff master
Hey wanker, so you mudt be > 70 yrs old, huh. Part of the so-called greatest generation. If so, may I say Bunk! You gave us FDR's destuction of the of the constitutional republic.
Good job - asshole.
You forgot to say 'brutes' this time, pompous nancyboy.
VAMPIRES ARE LAME!
Financial ones, yes? Fictional ones, hell no!
At some point there will be a reckoning...right now TPTB and the current administration are supporting the stats quo, looking the other way from prosecuting crimes of the century. They cover for their bankster friends by saying that no laws were broken. By the time the MSM figures it out and the sheeple awaken, the criminals will be off the hook as the statute of limitations will have expired for the crimes. The banksters will show their thanks by funneling more of their ill gotten wealth at Obummer and friends (or whomever else is in office at the time) and life will go on. It helps to have an uneducated and ignorant public...just ask any politician who lies and gets away with it. When it goes down, I will be ready...I wil llook forward to seeing frontier or vigilante justice brought to the likes of Blankfein, Dimon and so many other cretins who leech off the blood of honest people. There is an old saying..."the truth reveals itself over time"...time will tell, of that I am sure.
reckoning?? people are as dumb as limp dick... even the so called smarties have no fucking clue of the quicksand economics we are in
"when it goes down' wtf?? is it going to be a twitter flash mob?? have you seen the SWAT team cops lately?? The only way to fight the system is to create many smaller local systems and remove as much fodder from the parasites
but that takes work, dedication and commitment to the cause. kinda like a certain group and their whole 'is it kosher?' filtering
"the truth revealed over time....often yes, but the span may be longer that yours....
Also, there's the question of whether the biflation outcome (deflation, or hyperinflation) is the result of the bifurcation of the working class in the US (have & have nots) over the last 30 years.
Either debt will unite us, or it will be the bomb.
It is mostly older folks if you look at the polling numbers. Hell, look at Ron Paul's support among younger people vs. older people. Gingrich basically has almost no support among younger folks and Romney is lukewarm at best.
What history is going to do is look back on the Boomers (left and right) on the whole as the most greedy generation in US history. One that only added additional benefits for themselves (see MMA Act of 2003), refused to paid for what they want (lowered income in 2001 and 2003 taxes), and utterly refuses to seek any sensible compromise. Basically, they are like grasshoppers who ate and ate and ate and now are starting to eat into the seed corn that was built over by previous generations.
The Boomers lead us down this path. They got the free ride and now their children and grandchildren pay for it. And these children are waking up to the scams from the Boomer era. There is nothing left except anger. Our fathers and mothers didn't have the slightest sense of what they were doing. They became part of the machine and they all just went along to get along, paid their taxes, said "yes Sir" when pulled over for speeding... as they set up their own children to be financially raped a few years later.
I have several family members who are Boomers, and they're alright Jack. Nobody goes to see them, they just waste away in their advanced age, sitting on so-called wealth stashed away in banks, stocks, etc... thinking that they are fine and enjoying life amongst their fake Boomer friends.
Bring on the collapse. I can't wait to see them begging at my door for their last few years of survival once they've had all their paper stolen from them in an MFG style robbery. In the meantime I'm trying to figure out how I will put a few 70 year old bankrupt Boomers to work on the farm.
I saw a cartoon on utube from the late 1950's or early 1960's about farmers, unions and government stooges willing to sign up for "ism" tonic to cure their ills, they only had to sign away their children and grandchildren into slavery, they were desperate to sign up.
John Q. Public stepped up, explained what that "ism" shit leads to [government controlled factories, government controlled unions, concentration camps etc], made them all take a taste of the "ism" tonic, they all spit it out and dumped it out on the ground.
Now, 50 years later, they already signed up for "ism", the government is owned by the banksters and giant corporations [the effect is the same] and we have perhaps 5 honest representatives in both houses of Congress. We are doomed.
Wish I had the url. I will try to find it and post. It was in color but poor quality.
Now why is it that people here can see right through the false left-right political stuff but always can fall back on the age old false old vs young argument?
All of us, greatest generation, boomers, genxyz etc are just merely timepoints along the line of fractional reserve banking's lifetime.
To blame one group is utterly fruitless in outcome, but comforting to those while undertaking it.
pods
I think the point was that the boomers embraced the lie as a lifestyle and are still brainwashed by it all
those are the ones that will be jumping out of windows if they ever wake up to reality
I agree that boomers have the most to lose. They are the ones with the most to lose and the shortest time to prepare for the next system.
I have learned in my own life that as soon as I think I know something, information comes to light that shatters my acceptance of fact.
In defense of the boomers et all, information today is far less controlled than before. The advent of the internet and open sourced information gathering (ZH) has allowed us to really see through the fog. Most older generations were raised entirely within a tight sphere of information control. They will be the last to embrace the thought that they are living a lie.
Of course, younger generations now have far more distractions where they may in fact create their own false reality. And with an invented internet personality, they may craft a false world that allows them to live their real life in misery, as long as their false reality is one of pleasure and happiness.
I guess I just can see the majority of people as good, if misguided. For it is a tough thing to accept that your whole life has basically been a lie.
pods
All well and good until the doctor's bill comes due.
As a boomer, and not having any friends, I was more interested in where to get some of them 'fake friends.'
I am a tail end boomer, but I voted Libertarian as often as possible.
The first election I voted in, in Chicago, I voted for any Libertarian running for office.
I voted against any incumbent judge, as they are all corrupt.
I even voted absentee when I left the USA in disgust decades ago, looking for a better place. I kept up my voting pattern.
I voted against every incumbent politician, and against any major party candidate if there was not a Libertarian.
I paid my dues to the LP every year. I followed Harry Browne when my peers were following Che and Fidel.
I spoke out against socialized everything as Ponzi BS whenever anyone would listen.
I doubt very much there will be a social security or Medicare of any real amount when I finally reach the minimum age. However, I knew that for decades and tried to spread the word.
How am I to blame?
I'm not blaming "time points" or the "young vs old". I blame the system you created and saddled me with before I was born. Now I'm stuck with cleaning your old diapers as you continually shit on me!
Left-Right political stuff?!... Only sheeple still believe in "change you can believe in" from one political clone to the next.
"To blame one group is utterly fruitless in outcome, but comforting to those while undertaking it.
What a fucking scholar your are. Probably just another English Major who thinks that because he read "Flying Chaucer" or some other non-coherent 18th century asshole writer he can command an audience of sheep via his green arrows on ZH.
Accept your blame, old man. Take responsibilty for your aged fuck up and how you've left your grandkids... if you have them... if they even know you.
The Federal Reserve is the root of the problem because The Fed makes lots of cheap money available to the financial industry. The financial industry puts that cheap money into risky investments, and makes tons of profit that gets funneled into campaign contributions. Because of these big contributions, politicians are rewarded for making laws that favor the financial industry and for looking the other way when they do things that are illegal or unethical. Politicians are also motivated to bail out the banksters when they do stupid things. By removing this source of cheap money, bankers would not be able to make the ridiculous profits that they make now. It follows from there that politicians would be less dependent on bankers' contributions to get elected, so they would be more responsive to voters instead of to the financial elite.
End the Fed
Ron Paul 2012
Even the simple change that TBTFs would have to vie for capital in the open market again would tip the balance of power.
Cheap money from the Fed is largely a transfer of wealth from Granny's CDs to member banks. The resulting malinvestment fuels job loss and stagnation.
Ron Paul appeals to both the young, who understand they are looking at a lifetime of infuriation if this shift of power is not reversed, and the old who are having their stores of wealth (homes, interest-bearing accounts, careers, pensions, and insurance) drained.
The Fed is not the real problem. Neither is the NWO, CFR, the Muslims or the Jews, the Congress, or even the Keynesian Kenyan. The REAL problem is simply fiat money itself. Without fiat, most of our problems would be non-issues. For example, our military could not be funded at anywhere near currents levels, because there would have been a tax revolt long ago, and/or we could not have exported our inflation to fund our massive deficits. We squandered our gold in paying for the Korean war, the welfare state, then Vietnam. If Nixon had not ended the gold standard, IT ALL WOULD HAVE STOPPED WITH VIETNAM. For another example, everyone talks about how damaging it was to end Glass-Stegal. However, if we still had a gold standard THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO TECH BUBBLE, HOUSING BUBBLE, AND DERIVATIVES CRISIS. Reckless money creation is IMPOSSIBLE for any sustained period if there is a gold standard. So, the question is this: do we want to continue making our own case as to who is the "worst" boogy man, or what social issue is causing our problems, or can we JUST AGREE TO CUT THIS MONSTER OFF AT THE ROOT? If we cut the root, we could eventually get an accurate picture of what additional "regulation" we really need.
Disagree.
The Great Depression was caused by Benjamin Strong (head of NY Fed) printing up loads of money to help out his banker buddy Montagu (head of Bank of England). England had run up ridiculous debts waging WWI (according to one estimate I saw, it put the debt incurred by the war at an equivalent of $70T in 2010 dollars), and she needed major help in inflating the debts away. Enter Strong, who turned on the proverbial printing presses; the resulting cheap money, aside from indeed helping to reduce the NPV of Britain's debts, had obvious forseeable side-effects, like supporting major bubbles in stocks and land speculation - bubbles that were described well in The Great Gatsby - and eventually had to pop, as all bubbles do.
At the time, the US was still on a gold standard, not fiat. Yet the actions of the Fed caused the Depression anyway.
There's a host of problems that exist in a continuum - in an interconnected mobius circle of positive feedback loops. Taken individually, any one of them is damaging enough. Put them all together and you get a recipe for disaster and pain.
1. Fractional-reserve lending (and leverage in general)
2. Fiat money
3. Central banking
4. Completely captured regulatory structure (that disconnects reward from risk)
5. Debt-based money model that requires infinite growth to support/service infinte debt creation
6. Legal tender laws that grant monopoly to governments in the issues of money creation, issuance, and also prevent citizens from transacting private business in any currency apart from the "legal" one.
It's not just ONE thing. Nixon could have just as easily simply re-valued gold against the dollar and kicked the can in that manner. What if Nixon had said, "We're not leaving the gold standard. We're just saying that we'll give you 1/100 oz of gold for each $35 you redeem, instead of 1 oz." Or he could have strong-armed Congress into altering the statutes, allowing the US to lever up whatever remaining gold supply it did have at the time.
It's not just any one thing. It's all of them working together.
I can't disagree.
But first things first: reform campaign finance.
Our democratic government has been subverted utterly by the influence of large, monied interests.
We are powerless to implement any viable solution while monied interests control the outcome of our elections, while they set agendas and write laws.
I can't disagree with you either. Though we might be arguing two sides of the same paradox: do special interests corrupt a money system, or do money systems allow special interests to accrue a corrupting level of influence? Which comes first?
Regardless, when the Supreme Court says that corporations are people, campaign finance reform is basically pointless.
They feed back on each other constructively, very nasty, but money is the root (or, more properly, credit money and fiat).
Muzzling the 6000lb Rottweiler is beyond this SCOTUS though (as long as Anton The Don and Slappy are still on the court anyway).
Disagree. The 1929 depression was caused when the Fed had to contract the fiat supply before the govt had a run on its gold supply. Stock market crash ensued. The brainwashed public did not understand what was happening because naive trust was so high. FDR's literal first act of office was a triple play of bank holiday/gold confiscation/dollar devaluation, so the Fed could start printing again, but keep its gold.
And you are really missing the point - Nixon could have kept the gold standard by devaluing? The whole point of the gold standard is the GUARANTEE of the value. Sort of like saying I can have a yardstick, and chop a few inches off when I want too.
Keep in mind they [the Fed] destroyed any chance of Boomers taking care of themselves when they turned the markets into casinos, and put the interest rates at near zero. Say you want to live in old age modestly, say $25K a year. Tell me where you can invest to get that return, and how much you must have. Now you know why a lot of boomers are still working even though they are past retirement age. They have to.
Now the idiot boomers I know that took out second mortgages to buy 'his and her' Harleys, well, I hope they enjoy the dog food from China.
The 1% elitists and mainly America's billionaires should get the best Christmas gift ever, a home invasion!!! Merry Xmas!!!! Share the wealth bitchez....by choice or by force.
Billionaires employ XE
rebranded to Academi now
Who do you think is doing the invasion?
'The problem with globalization is that it requires assimilation; it demands that sovereign nations adopt the fiscal character of their neighbors in order to present the face of a single entity. Of course, when these countries are unable to do this because of their cultural differences, or their incongruent economies, something has to be slapped together instead.'
Except you missed something: Who's idea is this and why does it demand assimilation?
'Artificially tying together societies by forcing them to financially harmonize is, in my view, a criminal act of collectivism. Now that this crime is being unveiled for all the world to see, though, the corrupt governments and banking puppeteers of Europe have suggested even MORE of the same!'
You could make the same analogy using the divide in the US using the federal vs states but nobody seems to point out their own problems only that of others.
'This includes digital currencies like the failed “Bitcoin”, which swagger about in the classy looking threads of technology and diversity while flashing us impromptu peace signs. Digital currencies are a Star Trek theme park distraction, and just like any paper fiat currency, they make promises they cannot keep.'
Bitcoin is actually not failed, but an idea that is going to keep expanding while the current CBing system crumbles. All this will only be visible over the long term.
you mean "give me...., or give me...." ?
Vampirism is not the best analogy..
The banks are a monoculture crop, the Central Banks are systemic pesticide and the citizens of the world are the dead honey bees.
The debt disbelievers are the locusts that have developed an immunity to the pesticide and their swarm stretches from horizon to horizon.
Stop using the word "WE". I began making the hard decisions a few years ago and I'll be damned if I get lumped in with the asshats that can't see through the fog of their own greed and stupidity. There is no easy way out, it takes hard work, honesty, integrity and yes, even sacrifice...........those who willfully lack those attributes will receive no mercy from me during these dark days of reckoning. The pity of it all is they will wear the boot-stamp on their heads like it's some kind of fucking badge, begging for more all the while.......like addicts always do.
"The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests." ~ The Rothschild brothers of London writing to associates in New York, 1863.
Gold only has value because people think it has value.
(Jon Nadler, chief brainwasher at Kitco.com, parent company HSBC)
bruceWayne just called
he wants me to tell everybody that all bats are beautiful and asks people to consider how these particular radar-guided highly acrobatic flying mammals got "named"
then...missPiggy called...
The dollar only has value because people are still convinced that the US government is fiscally responsible and will get its spending under control.
It's Christmas -let's skip the diarhea
goddam motherfuckers are evil - they were then and remain so today - can we please waterboard them with diarhea before we burn them at the stake?
That would make it 'diarrhea-boarding', would it not?
And after we're finished with that, let's puke-board the rest of them.
Stuff them each inside the other like a Matroskya-Mother-Tur-Fucker-ducken!
"The disgust many feel when considering the virulent feeding habits of the common mosquito or the slithering leech does nothing to compare to the utter gut churning revulsion I feel when studying the financial habits of banks like the Federal Reserve and the “too big to fails”. They are without a doubt the most malignant form of social cancer imaginable."
Come on. Tell us how you really feel! :-)
Don't forget blood sucking fleas,. At first they are an annoyance, then they are really a problem as they grow and reproduce-eventually if you don't manage to control or erdadicate them -they are a serious health hazard - fleas were the cause of the bubonic plague. I see some very serious parallels. Only here, it's as if the fleas have managed to fog up and dim the lighting -or somehow screw up our eye glass prescriptions - or plied so many of us with drugs and alcohol, so we simply do not notice the degree of the flea infestation that is sucking away our lifeblood. To them, we are nothing but a blood source -a meal--very similar to vampires I would say
They can only suck fiat blood from the masses, then use it to secretly buy gold. They couldn't suck gold directly from the masses, because then it would be visible theft, like when feudal lords lords or Roman soldiers would ride into town heavily armed to collect taxes. Fiat money reduces this process to the steril surgical percision of an operating room when the patient is under anasthesia.
I heard tell fleas are good for a dog. Keeps its mind off being a dog.
The Vampire Squid rules all now. Their people run Italy and Greece (replace leaders with Goldman Sachs banksters), not to mention the US government. It's for the benifit of Goldman Sachs not for the benefit of the people. Sucking all the wealth out of whatever they can.
The first attempt at central planning and control by a central authority is recorded in the biblical story of Nimrod's city and tower of Babel. God gave us a clue about how to deal with such an abomination of man ruling man by absolute power. He jumbled the language and set mankind free by disabling the central planner's ability to comunicate a central view. Later He tells us to "get out of Babylon" when the last central planning authority has taken control of the earth because once again He will deal with the planners Himself. For whatever it is worth I would suggest that we learn to live a contrarian life to that proposed by Babylon. If we help our families and neighbors they will not need the central planner's help. A new city that speaks a new language can be built where life and resources flows outward not inward.
Good one cowsense.
Funny you should mention that.
The architects of the EU literally got their inspiration from the tower of babel.
There is a 1563 painting of the Tower of Babel, by Pieter Brueghel. Obviously he never saw the tower of Babel but the painting is what he perceived it to look like. Now look at the posters and pamphlets produced by the European Union symbolically depicting their mission. Look at what they aspiring to build and what biblical concept they draw their inspiration from.
Side-by-side: http://biblelight.net/Tower-of-Babel.htm
You don't have to believe in religion. But the point of the matter is these people, the elites in Europe, do. The thing is, they are doing so from the wrong side of the coin, deliberately embracing what they believe is evil.
God is present in and distributed throughout every person who has a soul, unlike the concentration of ponzi banksters in their centrally planned vortex driving straight to Hell.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. We get it. Yawn.
Fiat money, and a tax on incomes "however derived" that includes taxing the nominal gains solely due to inflation, is the grandest scheme of theft of private wealth ever devised in human history. When combined with tax information exchange agreements, humanity is slowly being placed in a form of indentured servitude for purposes of services the massive debt. Governments have become addicted to spending, borrowing and inflating to support socialist wealth transfers (redundant) and now cannot allow interest rates to rise to market levels, and cannot allow citizens to escape lest they take their money with them.
Now we enter the next to last phase, when government are so addicted to socialism they must create their own money. This frees government from being dependent upon its citizens for tax revenue to some extent and embolddens government, for there is less and less to lose. We now have the rise of the self-serving, self-funding Leviathan State, where the citizen is kept by the State to maximize the State's take from him.
We must take every opportunity to decline to give aid to Leviathan, and to withdraw our assets from his reach, and to refuse to empower him even more.
Can't have industrialization w/o debt. Get rid of all the current debt tomorrow and the world would have to take on the next day new debt equal to what was extinguished in order for our precious pet enterprises to function.
It is the enterprises that are defective not the debts taken on to finance them.
Except that all these new debts have interest attached, and so the only way to pay the new debts is to create more money. And when you have a debt based currency this guarentees that total debt is constantly growing until the system can no longer sustain itself and it breaks down. Why is it impossible to have industrialization on the back of capital savings instead of credit? I don't buy that for a second.
"Why is it impossible to have industrialization on the back of capital savings instead of credit?"
Because the banksters can't make a living if people use their savings instead of going into debt!!
Because then you have to pay people enough to buy the products they make and 'pay a tax' to labor directly instead of through Uncle Sam.
Au contraire, Most of the early industrial revolution was financed by equity partnerships, not debt.
Yeah, the speculative excesses of the Railway Mania are an awesome edifice on which to build an economy.
(Too Big to)...Fail.
Steve from Virginia,
I agree. And another thing, just about every one of us is a taker, even most of the "pro-liberty" crowd.
As Christians we should turn the other cheek - if Lloyd Blankfein wants to suck the blood out of your neck -turn the other neck also. God will reward you in the afterlife. God said 'I will bless thee that bless thee and curse thee that curse thee" -how much clearer can he get that we should succumb to the will and desires of the chosen people? - never mind that most of them are Asiatic Khazzars - that is irrelevant. As Christians, Jesus tells us that we should eat his flesh and drink his blood - these vampires are doing the same to us - is it really all that different? Let's all join in the spirit of Christmas and send a small contribution to the Goldman Sachs bonus fund. I know that is hard for many of you, but Jesus will be pleased and will reward you abundantly -if not in this life, then certainly in the next. Let's also pray for the health of Bibi Netanyahu and that God will soon give us the go ahead to nuke Iran- bomb Syria into the stone age, and kill a whole lot of Muslims. Merry Christmas and God bless you all.
Hope this is sarcasm.
sadly -it is sarcasm -it is sad because here in texas there are millions of zio-Christians who think this way. Really -they really do think this way. I have been very active in Republican politics for many years - I used to ally with these people in some very significant political primary battles. Now I am a Ron Paul supporter -I turned on the neocons in 2002 after 911 - Bush and Perry are phonies -anyone with a brain knows that -except millions of Christian right zombies in Texas and all over the country. Pray for Iowa - I was born there. It would be sad if the Christian wackos had also ruined that state. If Iowa is lost -and texas is lost -so is the country.
The gods gave Pandora a box that contained 7 types ofpure evil , and told her to never open it , she did, out of it came 6 types of pure evil, but the 7th type was HOPE to deal with the evil, but the gods said there was 7 types of evil, so what was HOPE.
ROFLMFAO
Wooden stakes and mallet? Check.
Silver bullets? Check (there are Werewolves too, I'm certain).
Garlic necklace? Check.
Cross of Gold? Check.
No personal debt? Check.
Picture and writings of Ludwig von Mises? Check.
If you had sat me down and told me ten years ago we would be where we are now, I would have bet against it.
Of course, at the time I didn't believe in Vampires or blood sucking squid, either.
Wicked Witch of the West: You cursed brat! Look what you've done! I'm melting! melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness? Oooooh, look out! I'm going! Oooooh! Ooooooh!
~//~
Wicked Witch of the West: Going so soon? I wouldn't hear of it. Why my little party's just beginning.
~//~
Wicked Witch of the West: Just try and stay out of my way. Just try! I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!
As long as passive attitudes exist among an oppressed nation's citizens concerning the intentions of usurpers, the predations can persist until the host literally dies.
The solution to US citizenism? More US citizenism.
As told by US citizens.
Some 1931 Dracula quotes:
Count Dracula : " To die, To be really dead, That must be glorious"
Mina Seward: " Why count Dracula"
Count Dracula: " There are far worse things awaiting man... Than death"
I heard silver helps
We're in the Age of Banker Sovereignty. The bankers are immune, unaccountable, and are calling all the shots. Democracy and self determination are gone. We are just cluttering up their world and getting in the way. Follow the money, all the way to the printer. The central bankers control the currency and control you. The politicians closest to the money printing are just taxpayer subsidized agents defending the bankers who get to do unto others as they please.
GE Settles U.S. Investigation Into Muni-Bond Bid Rigging
The settlement will bring to $743 million the amount that banks have paid to end the case, some of which is being returned to localities that were overcharged in the scheme. Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., UBS AG and Wells Fargo & Co. previously settled similar cases.
No shit, why aren't the corporate charters of these thieves pulled and the corporate officers all put in jail or hung from the nearest tree. Teflon coated. Bankers rule.
I agree with you Kali. I have always said that the only way that we even start to get our country back from this parasitic class, is to force the prosecution of the criminals and of all of those aiding the criminals.
The best way to beat a stronger enemy is to use their strength against them. We have a police state, we have a people that have been programmed accept and demand a punitive justice system that locks people up for life, sometimes killing people with lethal injections.
There are the RICO conspiracy laws that have been used, so unfairly, on millions of people for non violent drug crimes, and they should be used now, to prosecute the parasites and financial terrorists.
All you need is a few good men, and the will of the people to force this to happen.
It can be done. There are AG's in certain States that are standing up for what's right and going against Washington to prosecute the financial terrorists. People need to start supporting these AG's, good judges, law makers and others, and voting out the ones that have sided with the thieves against the American people.
It's up to everyone of us, to force, change and we can all start by moving our money from the TBTF banks into credit unions and taking our money out of stocks that Congressmen and women are currently holding, JP Morgan, Visa/Mastercard come to mind.
The Foreclosure Watchdogs That Didn't Bark
"Why there hasn't been more robust prosecution is a mystery," said Brescia, the visiting professor at Yale. (What a dope!)
Excellent article describing the fight re: Mortgage fraud. Involving many of the same banks. The fraud, everywhere, is so blatant, yet one of the simplest tools to get rid of these MFers would be to not allow them to exist anymore. Criminal activity is one basis for pulling corporate charters. It has not been used and the States are the ones taking the lead on trying to get the mortgage crimes prosecuted. I mean, we all know WHY they aren't being prosecuted (regulatory capture). I am sick to death of the Feds colluding with these people. "Oh, we'll pay a fine, just don't throw us in jail. You get to keep most of the fine and maybe send a few peanuts to the victims" say the banks. The Federal government is illegitimate, these corporations are illegitimate. We need to get rid of both, but it looks like the only way to do that is not palatable to most people as it would involve sacrifice. And I am not talking about buying a 48" LCD TV instead of a 72" one.
To echo another commenter here, we all know what needs to be done. Pull your money out of TBTF, starve the Feds of taxes and, perhaps, when no other options exist, overthrow/secession/????
Democracy: best system to keep slaves asleep/happy
Wooden stake through the hearts or dragging them into the sunlight will kill the vermin. People don't see the vampires for what they are and the vampires have been quite exellent in disguising themselves and making the people adore them.
Ignore the people. Fend for yourselves! There's not enough too feed the people all the time anyway. They'll soon go hungry. When that happens they may not want to hear about vampires but start looking at you first.
lower taxes and we all win lol merry christmas
The people are powerless when their representatives are corrupt and bought by the banker elites. The system that should protect us against the filth like Blankfein and Dimon is broken, and to fix it, the corrupt politicians must vote to change it? Won't happen.
What is the alternative? You know what it is.
John Galbraith said a 1929-type depression would happen again and it has...for the exact same reasons:
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Crash-1929-Kenneth-Galbraith/dp/0547248164
Consider also the effect lawyers have had on everything. There influence on legislation has messed up almost all aspect of actually providing a product or service. Medical cost, liability cost, and just the sheer cost of being dragged into civil court has made manufacturing in the US nigh unto impossible. They are the source of the politicians that enable the crony bankers to do what they do. Between bankers, lawyers, inane and insane accounting regs. we are in deep do do.
Severe whine and rant to follow.
Lawyers are hired guns. Mercenaries. Their opinion is whatever they are paid to opine. They will believe in whatever you pay them to believe in...which explains why so many of them go into politics.
Whores, one and all.
Geez, could the author spew a little more bile? I think we get it- you hate the banksters.
Much is made on this site about The Sheeple, or how stupid the populace is, how they make dumb decisions when they should know better. This is brought on by two things: the supreme narcissism of the financial industry/class and the psychologically easier path of blaming the victim than examining the greed and avarice our society and its inhabitants subscribe to.
Maybe The Sheeple will never wake up to the rigged game being played with the monetary supply because, really, it's not that important. This whole thing is about money, which not everybody cares about. It's a boring, dirty and underhanded business. If the dollar collapses tomorrow, the Sun will still rise, the Earth will still bear fruit, people will survive. So Joe Sixpack is probably going to have a little bit of time at least to adjust to the new order of things; no big emergency. As an aside to you gun-toting survivalists: everything will go a lot smoother if you work with and help out your neighbors and the people around you rather than staging a tactical overthrow of the local Wal-Mart.
Only here, where the people gather who care about the beautiful mechanism of commerce that has been built, and is now almost finished being utterly destroyed by the termite infestation of bankster greed, we're the ones who marvel at the empty box that is the economy. The Sheeple don't have any money, or skin in the game. Maybe some paltry investments here and there. The downfall of the economic system effects them collaterally.
We, The Sheeple, the 99%, we have no control over either the political or economic systems. These are games for other people to play, so why care more than tangentially. More often, you can distract people with false controversies like Obama being black, or gay marriage, or something else long enough to extract a political contribution. That's what political parties are for - extracting political donations; the political-industrial complex. So let the whole fucker come down. Who cares? Any retort to this question, one need only imagine a grizzled old farmer saying, "So? I'll survive. Always have," as the answer.
And another thing: the blaming of the victim. People were too stupid, taking out too much for their houses, too easily duped. Fuck you. When you work inside the system, when you give your consent to be governed, you cannot be an expert in everything. When the greed of the entire system becomes such that it is a common practice to screw people, as the BofA//Countrywide settlement yesterday is absolute proof of, people often have no choice but to walk into the trap thinking they are going to get the thing they desire in their lives on the other side. If the system tells you that the way something is done is the only way to get to the thing that you need, you do what the system says. That's one thing the article does get right. It was the regulators all along, not the regulations.
The whole thing is disgusting. I'll be here after it falls, trading homebrewed beer for fruits and vegetables, if that's what it is.
Happy Holidays everybody! Don't take it all so seriously, it's just paper at the end of the day.
Blah blah blah. Classified as 'Ranter cr@p.' Lots of mediocre writing that needs a ton of editing on syntax/prose with weak analogies and supporting arguments. Not an actual number to support any of the assertions made.
Then, by all means, don't read it.
Plent of other inane comments starting with, "Blah blah blah," for you to read.
I wasn't talking about the comments. 90% of the comments here are just idle chatter too although I find some interesting analysis & links that are useful.
Part of the problem with the Internet is that it creates a torrent of garbage writing like this.
Perhaps you should pen your own article and submit it for publication so you can show us how it's done. No doubt you could put together something more insightful and lucid while keeping the pace and plot humming along like an Elmore Leonard novel.
You do write, don't you?
Technical writing nowadays most of the time given my profession where things are brief & concise with fairly limited verbage. It doesn't need to be Elmore Leonard if it is fiction. Just something that makes something of a coherent point. That's all.
You don't like how this article was written. That's your right. It's not your cup of tea. You like short technical readers digest sort of thing.
Some of us enjoy some dance with language and enjoy an occasional rant.
We each have our own tastes.
What you write, "technical writing"...it would bore me to the point of making me consider jumping out a 15 story window in order to avoid having to read it in it's entirety regardless of it's brevity...But I don't say it's "garbage".
If you classify it as a 'rant' I understand where you are coming from but even then the writing from syntax/compression is poor even by basic high school standards. Something a basic editor/copywriter would take a wholesale ax to including this paragraph which has mutiple errors in it in every single sentence in the paragraph:
"The bottom line; we are being drained of our lifeblood as a country. However, the mainstream media is rife with talk of “recovery”, and one might ask how this could be possible. An overwhelming spectrum of solutions has been presented over the past 3-4 years, and each one has given the stock market a little push towards the green, so what’s the problem?"
One of the biggest issues today in the US is that besides an education system that doesn't teach people enough analytic and math skiils, we have created a nation of people who can't even write basic paragraphs. That's poor writing. Period.
You are a sanctimonious ass.
At times yeah but you are going to argue this article is well-written?
STFU
Yes. The problem here is that you define "good writing" on a purely mechanical, technical basis. Had you been a publishers, you would have dismissed some of the greatest writers of our time on those same grounds.
This is not an instruction manual. This is not a technical paper. This has emotion. This has attitude. Those things sometime get messy...and that's what makes them good.
You seem like a total prude.
I guess if you enjoyed it. It just reminded me a bad rant and not anything that interesting or compelling from a stream of conscience/gonzo approach.
Just struck me as a bad knock-off of what Matt Taibbi would write. That's all.
No, you are a little foo foo dog that doesn't stop barking. You have written what? to put you in Matt's league. Anybody have a muzzle? Lol.
Didn't say I have written anything nearly that interesting or compelling. Not what I do for a living and to be honest I find writing well hard and challenging.
You comment on here a lot about the stupidity of others and mocking other often that you seem to have little humility or insight yourself.
I feel like I'm talking to my college English teacher. He never published anything either. But he hated all the authors I loved...for all the same reasons you have just pointed out.
For someone that is blathering on about the merits of writing, you have the most pathetic diction.
"...is that besides an..."
"...enough analytic and math skills..."
Physician, heal thyself.
If at this point you don't know the numbers that are being referred to in this article...it is because you do not WANT to know them. And if you do not want to know...why are you here?
Que? Instead of leaping all over the place like a manic depressive off their lithium, why doesn't it stick with a narrower topic & bring some of those charts, numbers, etc to make a more concise and compelling point?
Then write something. Show us how it's done.
On what exactly? There are so many diverse topics in this single article that I don't even know what point the author is really trying to make. Do you?
Good writing should not provide answers it should provoke questions. It should make you think not think for you. If this article provokes no thought for you then it is not for you. That does not mean that others are not getting something out if it.
It depends on what your writing about, whom you are writing to, and what you are trying to convey. There are plenty of times where you need to provide answers to an audience.
Hardest thing in the world is to write well both from a content and technical standpoint in as few words as possible. I have improved at it but it is something that I have struggled with. You also need a few good teachers along the way in school & at work that provide useful feedback.
for fuck sake, I give up.
Thank god this was not a film so I didn't have to hear you pontificating about how the editor should have cut the scene 14 frames sooner and the cinematographer should have gone with the 85mm rather than the 50mm for the final scene....That would have just been too much to bare. I would have jumped out my window.
Alright - I'll be blunt. What the f@ck is this guy even arguing for? A return to the gold standard? A bi-metal standard? Doing any with the SEC? When he talks about 'local and sustainable' what exactly he is talking about?
I have no use for sh!t like this like this because it offers no insight and or solutions. It is just somebody pissing in wind like a 14-year old.
I have to agree with MeBizarro that the above article was not that thrilling or informative. At first, I thought that MeBizarro was attacking another poster's rant and I thought he was being really mean and a bit of a jerk, but when I realised that he was speaking about the article, I kind of agreed with him and since he was getting attacked from all quarters, I thought I would chime in for whatever it's worth.
First, when you publish something, you're pretty much fair game for criticism, so I don't feel badly doing it, it's different than attacking a layman. And while it's fine to rant badly as a poster, if you're doing it professionally, please be funny, like Max Keiser who makes me want to cry he makes me laugh so hard. Or be erudite like Reggie Middleton or Ellen Brown, or blind me with out there conspiracy theories that make my head spin like Benjamin Bulford. Other than that, personally, I'd rather read rants from ZH posters than from a half assed pro any day of the week. There are people here that give this guy, whoever he is, a run for his money.
But one thing, I would really like to hear more of, are some solutions to our current situation, because we all need to do our part, or we're part of the problem, so after all the bitching, it would be great to talk more about that.
Thanks. That was my general point. I have been a reader here for a while & this article prompted me to post because it was so bad.
Much more useful to see what Smith actually mean about 'decentralization' and 'localization.' If those are your proposed solutions and you advocate completely dropping out of the current system in all aspects, then you better have a lot more compelling stuff beyond some BS, half-baked 'barter network' system idea in Montana. Like reading crappy commune stuff from the 60s/70s or tons of various literature in the 19th century when this was tried numerous times through out the US for different reasons (e.g., religion, philosophy, etc).
hey, me_Z_ro!
it looks like this is the 2nd article you've posted to and the author, who is not new here, does make a point, imo
and, (to me) he makes it pretty clearly: b/c the "vampirism" is almost certainly gonna lead to changes [collapse?] to benefit the folks who are engineering the change/collapse, 'we' need to (paste): "...construct our own localized economies separate and insulated from the mainstream..."
this is something which a person says Y/N to, individually, and if the answer is Y, we go to something like: how? what can i do? where do i start? and, again, any answers are one's own
the vary fact that uRhere with a great avatar & handle indicates (to me) that your superior intellect and good looks have already dealt w/ this on some some level and you're gonna do just fine...
...trust me...
...smoke?
No he doesn't. He just rants in broad-sweeping generalities with little to no insight. It basically is -"the current system is rotten, nothign has changed since 2008, and it is being manipulated for the benefit of a relative few largely in gov't and finance."
As for 'what I canI do', I would be much more interested in seeing what he would have to say about that or more specifics on how it is being specificially manipulated/what he thinks might occur.
since he is a regularly-published financial journalist and opinion writer, one might consider that he assumes folks might know what he is talking about w/ the "vampires! protect yourself!" theme, but if that doesn't float your boat, it just doesn't
SPECIFICS: look down below @ di_Z_fingers (time 16:09) & goldi's response, if you would, please, ok?
do you know what they are communicationg about?
who is annBarnhardt and why is she throwing down the gauntlet? (paste) And this is why I am now formally calling for the financial industry blogging community to officially push for and declare a general market strike. I call for all decent people of good will to withdraw ALL FUNDS from the financial markets and cease to trade in solidarity with the MF Global rape victims until such time as the MF Global BK is properly filed as a Subchapter IV commodity brokerage liquidation and their private property is FULLY RESTORED.
annB is calling for a fund withdrawal from all brokerages and a trading STRIKE! by the freaking blogging community!
you, me, all us BiCheZ!
what is wrong with the way MFGlobal filed for bankruptcy? and why does she insist the bankruptcy be PROPERLY FILED?
these are things that the author, brandonS, may assume his readers know something about. zeroHedge has been following the MF bankruptcy case since before it happened [on halloween]; annB has been featured here; nomiP took it up; mattT; and also the zeroZ who are priveleged to post along the top of the page
so, how do you think that bankruptcy shoulda been filed, and why? just what are the SEC and the SIPC trying to pull on people here with these fuking VAMPIRES and zombies?
huh?
How does he remotely say to 'protect yourself?'
The comment was interesting and insightful. As for MF Global, I'll be completely honest and state that I haven't had time with Christmas coming up and family issues (chemo for a close relative of my wife who we have helped coordinating care), to pay much attention to it besides very basic level activity including some of Corzine's testimony before Congress.
How does he remotely say to 'protect yourself?'
please see my first comment, and the paste from his piece with the first two bold words in that comment; it is a general, not a specific approach
here's the MFGlobal situ Click Here
best wishes to you and yours & see you around!
I did look up his 'credentials' as a financial journalist and they are thinner thah Soviet gulag gruel. No formal degree and background experience in financial or economics in any capacity. How does that make Smith credible on this topic in any regards besides just a basic laymen's opinion?
L0L!!!
http://box-view.com/video/B72fbXDQ7Lg/Dog-Malfunction-Yappy-Dog.html
Current banking/gov't system is bad. Got it. Credentials/experience don't matter either. Just what someone thinks & feels. It is pretty sad that he is published here regularly. Sign of how weak most of the op-ed contributors are if he is published regularly. Just avoid these in the future.
Hahaha!
those are your ideas, not mine
seriousness aside, ubiZ_z0, i don't read all the contributors, here, myself. and if you want to lambaste somebody, this is the place to do it, and i see you have others who don't think this is much of an essay
i haven't tried to evaluate this essay, or rather i have tried not to evaluate and just paste in what his point was and later try to tie it into the MF bk as an example
perhaps we all get defensive and protective w/ our personal econ when we see significant dangers; i certainly do
perhaps you do not experience some of the economic dangers altho this is from you:
"Current banking/gov't system is bad. Got it."
do ya really?
10. It is not always the job of people shouting outside impressive buildings to solve problems. It is often the job of the people inside, who have paper, pens, desks, and an impressive view.
11. Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending.
Lemony Snicket, Occupy Writers http://occupywriters.com/works/by-lemony-snicket
"We WANT to be sold on the proposal of an easy way out."
That pretty well sums up roughly 98% of all the people I know.
Most people would rather hear a lie that makes them feel good than hear a truth that makes them think. And this will be our undoing.
+ X INFINITY!!!!
where's Van Helsing when you need him
This anti bank meme is getting old.
I've been directing people to this site as a place to get the inside scoop and top notch analysis for making investment decisions. I've always warned them not to pay attention to the crazies I'n the comments section.
But more and more often I'm seeing lengthy op ESA that seem to be written by those crazies. No analysis, no insight, just racist, redneck, anti-capatalist, conspiratorialist bs.
their is nothing inherently evil about banks. Their is no secret cabal that's running the world behind the scenes. Their is no PPT. Their is no silver conspiracy. Their is no illuminati or trilateral commission. Goldman Sachs doesn't run the world. Their is no Bigfoot or little green men.
What has happened is that socialist governments have spent to much and borrowed to much and their will be some defaults and deflation, then some printing and inflation.
It probably won't lead to war. It's certainly not been planned.
Most good companies will make it. Most crappy one won't.
Now can we go back to analyzing which companies fall into which category and Breaking news about which bank is I'n trouble - so that we can all join the 1% or move higher up within it. Rather then pissing and moaning and pretending we are part of the 99%.
But there is some piss poor spelling, RoadKill.
Your post is so confused and full of holes that it's barely worth responding to. Still, I'll take the bait.
What do you know about any one of us here? What do you know about our viewpoints, our backgrounds, our political beliefs, how much money that we do or do not have, which groups we do or do not support? You know nothing! You know jack squat. It's clear that you aren't even paying attention.
What unites most of us is a general understanding that the financial system the world over is screwed up beyond repair, and little reporting is being done on this, that our governments are completely corrupted, and this will have ramifications for us all. How you translate this into "racist" or "anti-capatalist" is beyond me.
You don't even understand basic math: by definition, 1% of any group cannot include the whole group! This is the same type of magical thinking that leads people to believe if we just print enough money, we'll all become rich.
Other than this little crumb, though, I won't feed the troll anymore. You have alot of learning and work to do buddy, for your own sake.
Road Kill
It's sounds like you've been drinking too much informercial media sheeple Kool-aid, but don't worry your pretty little head, everything will be just fine. The other party will win and make everything better.
I always love seeing someone proclaim that there is no PPT as a way of proving how smart they are. It accomplishes the exact opposite:
The Working Group on Financial Markets (also, President's Working Group on Financial Markets, the Working Group, and colloquially the Plunge Protection Team) was created by Executive Order 12631,[1] signed on March 18, 1988 by United States President Ronald Reagan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Group_on_Financial_Markets
http://barnhardt.biz/
I'm Calling for a General Financial Market Strike Posted by Ann Barnhardt - December 20, AD 2011 9:10 PM MST I have received a few emails asking if I was still content with my decision to shut down my brokerage. Not only am I content, but after seeing the news that broke over the weekend, I am of the considered opinion that the entire financial blogging community should formally call for a general financial market strike. And I’m not kidding. A couple of things have happened regarding the MF Global mess that I don’t think got the attention they should have because they broke over the weekend. So let me fill you all in.First, all notions of personal property rights were essentially destroyed when the MF Global “trustee” began seizing customers’ gold and silver bullion held in storage if that bullion was purchased through contracts brokered by MF Global. In case you’re not following, let me restate. MF Global customers who traded in precious metals and actually took delivery and OWNED bullion, as in outright, free and clear OWNERSHIP, complete with a warehouse receipt (aka title) with SERIAL NUMBERS designating exactly which physical bars they OWNED, and were PAYING RENT to STORE their own property in a “secure” VAULT, complete with statements indicating that these storage fees were paid in full, are having THEIR PROPERTY THAT THEY OWN AND ARE PAYING RENT TO STORE CONFISCATED by the MF Global trustee in order to feed the gaping maw that is the MF Global “estate”.
This would be EXACTLY like if you rented a little storage space at one of the thousands of storage facilities that dot this nation, and stored a car there. I used to do exactly this when I had multiple cars. Imagine the owner of the storage facility went bankrupt. Now imagine that a “trustee” SEIZED YOUR CAR, sold it, and used YOUR PROPERTY to feed the storage franchise owner’s BK. Nevermind that you had an explicit RENTAL AGREEMENT and that you had receipts proving that you were paying monthly rent on said storage space, and that you could produce clear title to the car showing that you owned it, and that the VIN numbers matched.
Do you understand what is happening now? This is outright confiscation of personal property. After having their money stolen out of their accounts and being locked out of their accounts, unable to trade or even liquidate WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, these people are now having their PERSONAL PHYSICAL PROPERTY stolen and redistributed to the MF Global estate, in order to feed Corzine’s gambling debts – MADE ILLEGALLY WITH FUNDS STOLEN OUT OF THE CUSTOMER ACCOUNTS – to repay counterparties with J.P. Morgan at the fore.
So guess what? This is now establishing the precedent that ANY property held by a third party can be seized and confiscated to feed a bankruptcy of said third party. This includes BANK DEPOSITS. Now, please consider that all of the major banks in the United States are insolvent, and insolvent MULTIPLE TIMES OVER. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi, all of them. When these banks collapse – and they WILL collapse - any deposits they are holding WILL BE CONFISCATED and redistributed to their counterparties. Citation URL here at Market-Ticker.org:
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=199356
Oh, but there’s more.
Also announced over the weekend was the jaw-dropping, yet illuminating fact that the MF Global bankruptcy was fraudulently, nefariously and illegally drawn up as a Chapter 7 BK for a SECURITIES DEALER and NOT a commodity brokerage as it should have been. Look, MF Global was the second-largest non-bank FCM in the United States next to NewEdge which is the old FIMAT. If MF Global wasn’t an FCM, then there are no FCMs. Of course it was an FCM. It had $7.2 billion in customer seg funds as of August 31, 2011. And yet MF Global was immediately, from the get-go, put into Chapter 7 BK as a SECURITIES FIRM. This is fraud. MF Global’s BK should have OBVIOUSLY been established under Subchapter IV of the Chapter 7 code as a COMMODITY BROKERAGE.
Why wasn’t this done? Because in a Subchapter IV liquidation of a commodity brokerage firm, guess who is absolutely and unequivocally at the front of the line? You guessed it: the CUSTOMERS. In the Chapter 7 liquidation of a securities firm, guess who goes to the front of the line? Uh-huh. The “creditors”, aka the counterparties on the firm’s proprietary positions. As in . . . J.P. Morgan, et al.
Now we know why this unprecedented action of raping the customers has happened. It was set up that way. Now are you telling me that NO ONE at the CFTC appreciated the difference between the BK subchapters? Are you honestly telling me that Terry Duffy and NO ONE at the CME understood the difference between a securities firm liquidation and a Subchapter IV commodities firm liquidation and the massive consequences to the customers? Not a single one of them understood this massive difference? Bullshit. Of course they knew. They set it up that way from day one. And they continue to know. And this fricking charade just keeps going and going, and the rape and confiscation of the customers' property continues apace. The fix was in on the customers and J.P. Morgan was put at the front of the line willfully, intentionally and with extreme malice aforethought by all those parties concerned. Citation Hotlink here:
Click Here to read the ZeroHedge reportage.
And this is why I am now formally calling for the financial industry blogging community to officially push for and declare a general market strike. I call for all decent people of good will to withdraw ALL FUNDS from the financial markets and cease to trade in solidarity with the MF Global rape victims until such time as the MF Global BK is properly filed as a Subchapter IV commodity brokerage liquidation and their private property is FULLY RESTORED.
If this is how they’re going to play, I say let’s shut the whole damn thing down. Let’s show these rat bastards how we do things in the Civilized World. Molon Labe.
Peter Schiff interviews Ann Barnhardt Dec 21, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18A698QQex0&feature=player_embedded
Dizzy fingers,
Who cried for all of the investors in Washington Mutual, Bear Stearns, Lehman, Ambk, Nfi, New Mortgage, Countrywide, Aig, Gm, Freddie Mack, Fanny May. Plus, too many others to mention.
Did you worry about the above Company's and their Share Holders or Bond Holders? Or did you feel protected because you were a Commodities Trader? Did you squawk about all of those Traders that lost their life savings or is it different this time because YOU lost money?
Wow, are people cranky today? Everyone is sniping at everyone. LOL.
Sparkles, maybe it is just the straw that broke the camel's back? Or, that instead of deceptive manipulation, this is outright STEALING people's property? Honestly, everything about all the things you listed have been driving me totally insane for 3+ years, but borderline insane for about 30+ years. Sometimes it just gets to ya and ya lose it for awhile.
Merry Xmas everyone, try to spread some cheer this weekend. We sure do need it.