Hank Paulson

"So far, inflation has fallen only slightly and remains in positive territory. Fears in early 2009 that rapid deflation might break out and  cause the economy to collapse as in 1929 to 1933 proved unfounded, luckily. I have advanced the hypothesis that rampant price-cutting has failed to appear because businesses are in equilibrium and perceive that price-cutting has bigger costs than benefits. If the hypothesis is wrong and businesses are finally responding to five years of slack by cutting prices, the generally optimistic tone of this section could be quite mistaken. The bottom could fall out of the economy as it did in the Great Depression."

The US Federal Reserve read somewhere that if people 'feel' wealthier, they'll borrow and spend more. Simple enough, all they had to do was to make people feel wealthier and when it comes to wealth in America, there’s no better barometer than the stock market. One can see that as the Federal Reserve printed more and more money, the stock market increased more and more as well. This made Ben Bernanke a happy man. Yes, Americans are now wealthier and now all the world has to do is wait for them to start their borrowing and spending engines. Except this hasn’t happened. It’s our view that as economic, political and social lives experience very little progress, governments and central banks will not only continue with their same failing policies, but they will actually implement more of these same failing policies.

This insane world was created through decades of bad decisions, believing in false prophets, choosing current consumption over sustainable long-term savings based growth, electing corruptible men who promised voters entitlements that were mathematically impossible to deliver, the disintegration of a sense of civic and community obligation and a gradual degradation of the national intelligence and character. There is a common denominator in all the bubbles created over the last century – Wall Street bankers and their puppets at the Federal Reserve. Fractional reserve banking, control of a fiat currency by a privately owned central bank, and an economy dependent upon ever increasing levels of debt are nothing more than ingredients of a Ponzi scheme that will ultimately implode and destroy the worldwide financial system. Since 1913 we have been enduring the largest fraud and embezzlement scheme in world history, but the law of diminishing returns is revealing the plot and illuminating the culprits. Bernanke and his cronies have proven themselves to be highly educated one trick pony protectors of the status quo. Bernanke will eventually roll craps. When he does, the collapse will be epic and 2008 will seem like a walk in the park.

When mistakes are made, lawsuits happen and lawyers, and guys with capital make money.

It would appear that (apart from Tesla, for now) that any thing related to electric cars is going up in flames. From Fisker's fubar (and blowing all that hard-earned government funding) and Chevy's Volt dysphoria to A-123 Systems (the Lithium-Ion battery-maker) and now Coda - which Yahoo Finance notes was among an emerging crop of California startups seeking to build emission-free electric cars three years ago. After selling just 100 of its $37,250 five-passenger vehicles, Coda filed Chapter 11 today taking a few well-known investors with it. On the bright side, the government was not involved (from what we can tell), but on the even brighter side, none other than former US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was among those burned by the company going up in flames (as was Harbinger's Phil Falcone).

Think the revolving door for Morgan Stanley's diaspora of clutch interests goes only from the private sector outward, with the recent appointment of MS' darling Mary Jo White (who will promptly recuse herself in virtually all major cases involved her former clients at Debevoise for years to come) to head the SEC? Think again. Moments ago, Reuters reported that according to a memo sent internally today, Morgan Stanley has hired Michele Davis, "a public relations official and policy director who helped shape the Treasury Department's strategy during the financial crisis, to become global head of corporate affairs, according to a bank memo sent on Monday."

When the final "bailout" structure of the Cypriot deposit-confiscatory bail-in was revealed in late March, the implied victory for the Troika (which has since notched up its demands for the insolvent country to now sell its 14 tons of gold) was that instead of the deposit haircut passing as a tax, and thus needing a parliament ratification, it would come in the form of a bank resolution, with Laiki bank liquidating and being subsumed by the remaining Bank of Cyprus, and with uninsured depositors in both banks ending up crushed. However, as previously reported, in the interim period deposit outflows have continued and accelerated despite the assorted ineffective "capital controls" which has led to additional underfunding for the local banks, and to a second bailout of Cyprus, this one rising to €23 billion or a 35% increase from the original, as part of which the Troika has demanded that Cyprus sell their gold in the open market. Now, a month later, it appears that the Troika's initial victory may have been a Pyrrhic one, as yesterday the Cypriot attorney general announced, and today the government's spokesman confirmed, that the parliament will have to ratify the €23 billion bailout of the tiny island nation after all, thereby refocusing the popular anger from some ephemeral technocrat in Europe to the country's own elected representatives, thereby changing the calculus of the Cypriot decision by 180 degrees.

There is the potential for some drama - a Cyprus style raid on wealth is a potential outcome.

Since the Financial Crisis erupted in 2007, the US Federal Reserve has engaged in dozens of interventions/ bailouts to try and prop up the financial system. Now, I realize that everyone knows the Fed is “printing money.” However, when you look at the list of bailouts/ money pumps it’s absolutely staggering how much money the Fed has thrown around.

Elon Musk - "megalomanical promoter". Ben Bernake - "befuddled academic". Janet Yellen - "career policy apparatchik". Paul Krugman - "fibber". Fred Mishkin - "preposterous".

We can only imagine the lines around the block in readiness for this Chicago Booth lecture "Career Advice From Hank Paulson" urging students not to obsess about positioning themselves for the top job - or perhaps, as we might sub-title it, "Don't obsess - your efforts to make $478m tax-free like me are completely futile."

The fiscal cliff is permanent and insurmountable. It stands at the edge of a $20 trillion abyss of deficits over the next decade. And this estimation is conservative, based on sober economic assumptions and the dug-in tax and spending positions of the two parties, both powerfully abetted by lobbies and special interests which fight for every paragraph of loophole ridden tax code and each line of a grossly bloated budget. Fiscal cliffs as far as the eye can see are the deeply troubling outcome of the Great Deformation. They are the result of capture of the state, especially its central bank, the Federal Reserve, by crony capitalist forces deeply inimical to free markets and democracy. Why we are mired in this virtually unsolvable problem is the reason I wrote this book. It originated in my being flabbergasted when the Republican White House in September 2008 proposed the $700 billion TARP bailout of Wall Street. When the courageous House Republicans who voted it down were forced to walk the plank a second time in betrayal of their principled stand, my sense of disbelief turned into a not-inconsiderable outrage. Likewise, I was shocked to read of the blatant deal making, bribing, and bullying of the troubled big banks being conducted out of the treasury secretary’s office, as if it were the M&A department of Goldman Sachs.

As is now confirmed, at least one of many JPMorgan margin calls directed at Lehman in the days before the world's biggest bankruptcy became fact, were based on glaringly erroneous information and an error so profound one wonders if this was not a premeditated "hit" on one bank by another bank. Yet a purposeful "hit" orchestrated by one bank, even JPMorgan, would require the involvement of the highest echelons of the US government. So was the US government complicit and give its blessing in this historic liquidation? The Abu Dhabi Investment Council would like to know.

How many trillions of Dollars are we going to let the Fed spend? The Fed balance sheet is now over $3 trillion… making it larger than the GDP of France, the UK, or Brazil. Indeed, if the Fed’s balance sheet were a country, it’d be the FIFTH LARGEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.

Collectively, the world’s Central Banks have pumped over $10 trillion into the financial system since 2007. This money printing has resulted in a massive expansion of Central Bank balance sheets, spread inflation into the system, and done nothing to address the key solvency issues that lead up to the great crisis.