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Thirteen Years Later
Via Mark J. Grant, Author of Out of the Box,
There have been many grand experiments in social engineering during the past several centuries. We have witnessed the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the American Civil War, Communism and finally 1999 and the founding of the European Union. It is an interesting exercise to consider the long view as I have wondered what the world looked like in 1789 which was thirteen years after the commencement of the American experiment. It is also interesting to note, when comparing the two restructurings of society, that the new construct in the United States was founded upon assuming our own destiny and throwing off the yoke of the British Empire which was a common bond for the individual states which was not present and is not present, except in a curious twist, for the Europeans to cling to in times of significant decision. The “curious twist” is Germany which is seeking to dominate Europe through its economic prowess which would have been like Virginia or New York trying to dominate the United States in its infancy which was not possible due to the construct of a Senate and a Congress and a George Washington who rejected being the King. Unfortunately, the Europeans did not have an Adams, Hamilton or Jefferson to help guide the process, this is my opinion, and so the paradigm for Europe is so flawed in structure that in times of stress, such as the current recession in most of Europe; the structure itself may defeat the cause. What we are witnessing now in Europe is then a serious pushback against Germany and its policies, the rise of Nationalism coupled with real anger against the German interventions and a German economy which will certainly go into decline as affected by its neighbors and trading partners which will exacerbate Germany’s internal issues I submit before the end of this year.
Tomorrow, April 28, commemorates the date of the Mutiny on the Bounty in 1789 which, curiously enough, was the British Navy throwing off the shackles of the absolute power of a Naval Captain and an event which ultimately changed the British laws at sea. The year 1789 was also earmarked with 25% of the people in Paris being without work and the date of July 14, 1789 which was the storming of the Bastille and the beginning of the French Revolution. In America, thirteen years after our founding, George Washington was elected President and the first Congress and Senates began and the proposal for a “Bill of Rights” was approved. Finally, in 1789, American established our Judiciary which was another ground breaking act for our fledgling country. It seems then historically that thirteen years after America began we were in a process of formation and working towards national goals as a coalition of individual States while we find the European Union, thirteen years after its inception, following quite a different route.
In times of great stress I have often noticed that ridiculous comments get made and the more the stress; the more delusionary the statements. Let us then examine a few comments made today.
“The EU fiscal pact cannot be re-negotiated.”
-German Chancellor Merkel
Who is kidding whom? Of course it can be renegotiated and any time enough nations decide to change it. The fiscal pact can be thrown out, amended, or burned at the stake when enough nations in Europe do not wish to pursue its goals and governance by German fiat is not yet operative except in the minds of the German politicians it appears.
“Mortgages get paid in good times and in bad. Anyone raising this problem as one of the issues
for the Spanish financial system is saying something stupid.”
- Banco Santander SA Chief Executive Officer Alfredo Saenz
This fellow is living way out beyond the edge in the land make-believe. America has just experienced this during the last four years and we know exactly what happens when in a financial crisis and when the reign of foolish money ends. It is my opinion but the Spanish proclamations of only a 3.00% mortgage delinquency rate in their country is nothing more than grand rush into the land of attacking windmills. It may well be that the banks do not wish to recognize the delinquent loans or that they have packaged them into massive securitizations and pledged them as collateral at the ECB who also does not wish to recognize any losses but with an unemployment rate at 24.4% now which will cause a further economic contraction, according to official figures, of $1.3 billion; the official mortgage delinquency rate is just a preposterous claim.
“Nobody has asked Spain, either officially or unofficially to turn to Europe’s bailout mechanisms. We don’t need it.”
-Spanish Finance Minister de Guindos
S&P just downgraded the country to BBB+; down two notches. It is not just the horrid unemployment numbers but the severe contraction in the economy and a Real Estate market that is down 25% and projected to head down another 20-25% that would make any rational person realize that Spain will soon be forced to seek outside help. A clear reading of Spain’s financials cannot lead to any other conclusion. They have come up with a plan to liquidate the banks’ Real Estate positions to outside, private companies. That much is fine except when they see what private companies wish to pay I predict that the retching will commence in Madrid. This exercise will also force the Spanish banks to take actual losses so that the balance sheets of the banks in Spain will begin to look like ground chorizo when/if this plan is implemented. In my view now; there is just no other way out except some sort of rebellion.
Reversals
Reversals are curious things. Everything is just fine right up until the day when it is not. On October 9, 2007 the Dow Jones Index stood at 1464.53 and then it bottomed on March 9, 2009 at 6547.05 which was a 54% decline. On 10/9/07 CNN reported, “Stocks rallied Tuesday, sending the Dow and S&P 500 to all-time highs as investors breathed a sigh of relief that the minutes from the last Fed meeting supported hopes for another interest rate cut by the end of the year.” The decline began gradually enough and then strengthened with America’s economic contraction, the Bear Stearns buy-out and then the fall of Lehman Brothers. Any notion of what is going on in Europe will not affect America is just as silly as Germany supposing that they will be immune from the effects of the recession in Europe. That is not the way the world works and that will be proven again shortly. May 6 may mark the date when the sleeper finally awakens as Greece and France may both vote in such a manner as to significantly change the political landscape on the Continent. I submit that we are quickly coming to a major reversal in both equities and in credit/risk assets and that instead of being aggravated that it took so long that you should be thankful that you had the luxury of time to prepare for it.
“That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
-Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
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That which can not be sustained, won't, regardless of what the talking heads are saying, same as it ever was.
I hope they wriggle through the net ala Iceland.
this is Social Engineering!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my8Za0sbPYA&feature=relmfu
my responses to youtube sure to be removed!
And of course my calling card!
Free!! Speech??? or how about letting the TRUTH stay Posted???
and YouTube is NOW! not linking to Twiitter for video links!
I am guessing the Google Plus 1 Wars have started!
No Nerdy Coverage for that?
Mis-information.. Plays a LARGER ROLL! in Social Engineering that Accurate Information as Provided by Corporate Owned Media.
Forgive my actual example if it does Not! Suit Your Pedestrian Taste.
and to the Ladies of ZeroHedge in the Office.. I SO! Love! Being a Marginal Personality Here! it suits me, dont chya think?
well? dont you?
Excerpts from a recent article:
In 1930, Heinrich Bruning became chancellor in Germany… Bruning cut salaries, pensions, social benefits, wages, interest rates, freedom to travel, freedom of the press, and the powers of the parliament.
In 1939, Sebastian Haffner wrote a pre-history of Nazism.
"Yet, paradoxically, his [Bruning’s] actions were rooted in the conviction that he was defending the republic. Understandably, the republicans began to ask themselves whether there was anything left to defend."
Haffner's description of Bruning:
"Anyone who takes the trouble to study Bruning's rule in depth will find all those factors that make this sort of government the inevitable forerunner of the very thing it is supposed to prevent: its discouragement of its own supporters; the way it undermines its own position; its acceptance of a loss of freedom; its lack of ideological weapons against enemy propaganda; the way it surrenders the initiative; and its collapse at the final moment when the issue is reduced to a simple question of power."
“ He was 'tolerated.' He was the lesser evil, the strict schoolmaster who accompanied the chastisement of his pupils with the words 'This will hurt me more than you,' rather than a sadistic torturer."
People went along out of fear, or belief in the system, or a desire to change the Nazi Party from within, or from the value they placed in doing their work well, whatever that work might happen to be. People went along as the mythical frogs on whom we impose human behavior in the story of the boiling water. They did not understand. They did not want to understand. They did not want to consider that young people who understood might be right. They slowly began speaking the language of brutal stupidity: Einsatz (strike force), Garant (pledge), fanatisch (fanatical), Volksgenosse (racial comrade), Scholle (soil), artfremd (racially alien), Untermensch (subhuman), Heimat (Homeland).
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30553
Do not underestimate what governments can do.
Clearly they will print the money required. Will it be inflationary? Maybe not. Money is disappearing, people. Every mortgage that defaults is an asset on a bank balance sheet that disappears. That is money supply erasure. Printing replaces it.
2011 should have taught us that they will do anything to keep the ball rolling. It is offensive and horrifying to folks who thought that there was something pure and sacred about the concept (if not the practice) of a free market. But it doesn't matter if we're horrified. They will intervene. They consider the markets a problem, not a solution.
There is no monetary doom coming. Oil is the end of this charade. Not man made things like money.
Every mortgage that defaults is an asset on a bank balance sheet that disappears...
That statement is patently false.
Only false, if the banks and their proxy in CONgress can't write it into law (as they always have with previsous crimes). Besides, who is really paying attention anyway?: Baaahhhhh!
Banks don't hold mortgages anymore, especially non-performing mortgages. The mortgage agencies hold them and go begging to congress every few months for more money. Deflation is a myth.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/fannie-demands-another-51-billion-aid-trea...
Yeah, but who started the whole MBS thing again?
It's simply not false.
The most you can claim otherwise is the asset is offset by taking ownership of a house, but that house's price has collapsed -- and continues to collapse -- so the asset loss continues.
The bank also has a sudden property tax liability, insurance liability and sales commission liability, the net present value of which serve to further decrease the value of the asset on the books.
When a mortgage defaults, the bank's assets plummet on that event, and money supply disappears.
And this is mostly about Spain and Europe, so Congress is not relevant.
Read my comment above.
I did. Fannie and Freddie don't do business in Europe/Spain, which is what the article is about.
You are correct. Europe will handle the socialization of malinvestment differently than the usa has.
More usa-centric thinking. (link from thread above)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/26/us-usa-housing-negative-idUSBR...
Fuck 2011.
They will 'intervene', until they do not intervene, thats all. And no one knows when that is, months from now is just as likely next week. There is no point to the pump, without the dump, and nothing lasts forever.
The only thing here is theyre screwed, no one to dump to. They held a stock market bubble rally, and no one showed up to buy the garbage off their hands. Thats all youre seeing here, no 'Great Plan', theyre just covering up monetizing the debt as the last resort, making people think its all about bubble stocks. Anyone concentrating on what they do with ridiculous stocks is just being brainwashed.
Well, the fuel behind equities is the government intervention that redefined mark to market and suddenly ascribed value to trillions in MBS in US bank balance sheets.
This means P/E means nothing because the value of E is effectively unknown. Truth is those MBS should be leaking value every day as housing continues its fall, but the FASB doesn't require that.
Then there is also the bad bank concept, and we'll be seeing that in Europe soon. All the bad paper will go to the bad bank and the remaining banks will look suddenly solvent. The bad bank will be horribly bad, and will mostly exist only on paper.
This will all be orchestrated by governments as part of their intervention. When the banks transfer their bad paper to the bad bank, they'll be paid full price for that paper (as if it was good paper), by the governments. The bad paper will be plugged into the bad bank at full price (since that's what governments paid for it) and it will then commence to leak lower in value -- reducing money supply.
It's all delusional. Money is artificial. You can do anything with it. It's not gravity. It's just an idea.
Do you mean to imply that the laws of the Blessed and Most Holy Invisible Hand aren't inscribed in the very fabric of the universe - just like the cosmic contant, or the value of pi?
BLASPHEMER!
And you still have plenty of time to prepare because The Boyz are not out of fire power yet. Game still in 4th inning. They can stretch it out far longer than logic and reason would make you think. They will not go down easily and will not go down without a fight. They have waaaay too much to lose to simply roll over and let their world fall to pieces. Ask yourself "If I was backed into a corner would I give in without a fight?". All The Boyz have done so far is to try to escape from the corner by deception, manipulation, and bribery - trying to con and buy their way out. They will do this until the wolves draw ever closer at which point The Boyz will then have no other choice but to fight. So sit back, grab a couple beers, some popcorn, pretzels, silver, gold, etc - and relax. Its going to be awhile.
It sure as fuck will be...
'Relax, plenty of time'? Yea I wouldnt bet on it myself.
I'll bet anybody the 'usual amount' - takers?
case in point....
“The European Stabilization Mechanism Treaty due to pass in July this year will take care of whatever money is required by Spain or any other Euroland nations for effective bailout. It starts with $700 billion in capitalization and has an open call for additional capital infusion with no limit placed on these calls and no further agreements required.
“New additional capitalization called on by this treaty is mandatory, not elective and therefore will go to infinity.
“The member nations have 7 days to pay up when ordered to by the management of the EMS who are protected against any form of attack or litigation to legislation. It will be backed by the US Fed via swaps while the US publicly denies it is adding any capital to the IMF or this new entity, ESM.
“It is the mechanism for QE to infinity in Europe.
“QE to infinity, properly understood, is debt monetization on steroids. Denials will be legion, but this debt monetization on steroids will not and cannot be avoided.
“The advent of the ESM Treaty establishing the European Stabilization Mechanism is economically Earth shaking and recognized by almost no one out there. It cannot be otherwise, it cannot be avoided. It can be denied but it will occur.”(emphasis added, ed.)
“ESM Will Supply Whatever Money Is Needed In Euroland”
Jim Sinclair, JSMineSet.com, 4/24/12
The Boyz don't fight. The Boyz will get us and our children to fight. The Boyz are warming up in the ME as we speak. They will then bet on which team will be the winner. Some of The Boyz will bet on both teams. They will call that "hedging their bets". The Boyz will also be selling beer and TV rights. A good time will be had by all (except for the mothers).
Dead-on! They are the Commander in Chiefs, the Supreme Rulers, you know, Kings. Think we really got rid of Kings? They just went underground where they are more dangerous. They aren't stupid. There's only one way they will go down and it ain't gonna be pretty. Go long fallout shelters.
Right--elections in Greece (!) and France (!?!) will "remake" the European landscape.
What a load of shit--Europe will be "remade" when Angela Merkel says so.
"May 6 may mark the date when the sleeper finally awakens as Greece and France may both vote in such a manner as to significantly change the political landscape on the Continent."
Not if SCYTL gets their way.
The US 13 colonys broke away from King George. The Euro States joined up with the prick.
Meanwhile, as Europe implodes, the EURUSD rallies to a high for the last 30 days. Everything is OK right?
http://vegasxau.blogspot.com
Last time I looked the French decided to engage the British Empire in a Global War and funded American Colonists rebelling against British taxes to pay for that war. It was French gunpowder that kept Washington going against Burgoyne.
It was paying for that American War that bankrupted France with Jacques Necker using LOANS instead of TAXES to fund the DEFICIT.......then belatedly the French STate trying to TAX the Elites on their LAND and finding they didn't want to pay. So the Rich wouldn't pay and the Poor couldn't Pay - so they had a REVOLUTION in France just 13 years after funding the US Revolt.
Sound familiar ? Oh ...has the US been funding wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria ?.........Obviously the Rich will pay more TAXES !!!
Good points, however our problem is different in that it lies in the fact that people believe something can "change" with casting a vote every 2 or 4 years.
Obama's tell- First he ixnays Chicago for the G-8 No explanation and no questions asked. Now (not reported in the MSM)
City of Chicago and the Secret Service Tell Milwaukee Red Cross to Prepare To Evacuate Chicago During NATO Summit.Since when does "unrest" serve as a reason for evacuation?
If they expect protests to get out of hand, the last thing they would do is tell everyone to leave their homes and evacuate. If there are protests they would want people in their homes, not trying to leave their homes.
Evacuation is for disasters, not street protests.
If true, the plan suggests preparation for something larger than a few demonstrations and tires burning in the streets.
It's like any martial art. Feignts and counterparries.
I just think they've lost complete control, they're having to move up the NWO timetable before the radiation starts causing massive economic problems, and they're winging it completely.
500 years of planning out the window, with Fukushima killing us all, rich and poor, alike. No wonder they're bringing in Russian troops to keep the peace. They're too ignorant to understand the effects of the Fuku radiation on themselves. Hard to find a better set of required DHS employee skills.
When someone gets a tire put over them and it's lit on fire then it is a disaster
Obama's tell- First he ixnays Chicago for the G-8 No explanation and no questions asked. Now (not reported in the MSM)
City of Chicago and the Secret Service Tell Milwaukee Red Cross to Prepare To Evacuate Chicago During NATO Summit.