Filed under: Big Banks, DEBT, deindustrialization, despotism, detroit, devaluation, Dictatorship, Economic Collapse, economic crisis, economic depression, Economy, Empire, Fascism, ghost town, global warming cult, Great Depression, Greenback, housing market, Inflation, middle class, real estate, US Economy | Tags: collapse of detroit, death of detroit, detriot extinction
Detroit family homes sell for just $10
London Telegraph
March 12, 2010
Family homes in Detroit are selling for as little as $10 (£6) in the wake of America’s financial meltdown.
The once thriving industrial city has suffered a dramatic decline following the global economic crisis.
According to Tim Prophit, a real estate agent, the crisis has led to a unprecedented portfolio of homes, but they are failing to sell.
He said there were homes on the market for $100 (£61), but an offer of just $10 (£6) would be likely to be accepted.
Speaking on a BBC 2 documentary, Requiem for Detroit, to be screened on Saturday, Mr Prophit said: “The property is listed by the city of Detroit as being worth $35,000 (£22,000), but the bank know that is impossible to ask.
The Death of Detroit (Pictures of an Economic Disaster)
Filed under: aristocrats, bailout, bank bailout, Bank of England, bankruptcy, bernanke, Big Banks, Carbon Tax, Co2, co2 tax, Credit Crisis, DEBT, depopulation, depression, despotism, devaluation, Dictatorship, Dollar, dollar drop, dollar dump, Economic Collapse, economic crisis, economic depression, Economy, Empire, environmental taxation, Eugenics, Fascism, Federal Reserve, GDP, global currency, global economy, global elite, global government, Global Warming, Great Depression, Greenback, hyperinflation, imf, Inflation, internationalist, main street, malthusian, malthusian catastrophe, middle class, New World Order, NWO, obama deception, oligarchy, One World Government, Population Control, Propaganda, ruling class, SDRs, single currency, slavery, Stock Market, Taxpayers, third world, US Economy, Wall Street, webster tarpley, World Bank, world currency, world government
America’s Impending Master Class Dictatorship
cryptogon.com
January 23, 2010
Holy shit, this one will scorch your eyeballs!
Forget my excerpts. Click through and read the whole thing. Highly recommended.
Via: Kitco:
Thanks to the endless barrage of feel-good propaganda that daily assaults the American mind, best epitomized a few months ago by the “green shoots,” everything’s-coming-up-roses propaganda touted by Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, the citizens have no idea how disastrous the country’s fiscal, monetary and economic problems truly are. Nor do they perceive the rapidly increasing risk of a totalitarian nightmare descending upon the American Republic.
One stark and sobering way to frame the crisis is this: if the United States government were to nationalize (in other words, steal) every penny of private wealth accumulated by America’s citizens since the nation’s founding 235 years ago, the government would remain totally bankrupt.
According to the Federal Reserve’s most recent report on wealth, America’s private net worth was $53.4 trillion as of September, 2009. But at the same time, America’s debt and unfunded liabilities totaled at least $120,000,000,000,000.00 ($120 trillion), or 225% of the citizens’ net worth. Even if the government expropriated every dollar of private wealth in the nation, it would still have a deficit of $66,600,000,000,000.00 ($66.6 trillion), equal to $214,286.00 for every man, woman and child in America and roughly 500% of GDP. If the government does not directly seize the nation’s private wealth, then it will require $389,610 from each and every citizen to balance the country’s books. State, county and municipal debts and deficits are additional, already elephantine in many states (e.g., California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York) and growing at an alarming rate nationwide. In addition to the federal government, dozens of states are already bankrupt and sinking deeper into the morass every day.
…
It is estimated that the top 1% of Americans control roughly 40% of the nation’s wealth. In other words, 3 million people own $21,400,000,000,000.00 ($21.4 trillion) in net private assets, while the other 305 million own the remaining $32,000,000,000,000.00 ($32 trillion). 77,000,000 (77 million) Americans (the lowest 25%) have mean net assets of minus $2,300 ($-2,300.00) per person; they live from paycheck to paycheck, or on public assistance. The lower 50% of Americans own mean net assets of $27,800 each, about enough to purchase a modest car. Obviously, it would be impossible to retire on such an amount without significant government or other assistance. Meanwhile, the richest 10% of Americans possess mean net assets of $3,976,000.00 each, or 143 times those of the bottom 50%; the top 2% control assets worth more than 1,500 times those in the bottom 50%. When you combine these facts with Wall Street’s typical multi-million dollar annual bonuses, you get an idea of wealth inequality in America. Historically, such extreme inequality has been a well-documented breeding ground for totalitarianism.
If the government decides to expropriate (steal) or commandeer (e.g., force into Treasuries) America’s private wealth in order to buy survival time, such a measure will be designed to destroy the common citizens, not the elite. Insiders will be given advance warning about any such plan, and will be able to transfer their money offshore or into financial vehicles immune from harm. Assuming that the elite moves its money to safety, there would then be $120,000,000,000,000.00 ($120 trillion) in American debt and liabilities supported by only $32,000,000,000,000.00 ($32 trillion) in private net worth, for a deficit of $88,000,000,000,000.00 ($88 trillion). In that case, each American would owe $285,714.29 to balance the country’s books. (Remember to multiply this amount by every person in your household, including any infant children.)
If the common people suspect that something diabolical was in the works, a portion of the $32 trillion in non-elite wealth could be evacuated as well prior to a government expropriation and/or currency devaluation, resulting in less money for the government to steal. What these statistics mean is that it is absolutely impossible for the government to fund its debt and deficits, even if it steals all of the nation’s private wealth. Therefore, the government’s only solutions are either formal bankruptcy (outright debt repudiation and the dismantling of bankrupt government programs) or unprecedented American monetary inflation and debt monetization. If the government chooses to inflate its way out of this fiscal catastrophe, the United States dollar will essentially become worthless. You can be absolutely certain that a PhD. in economics, such as Dr. Bernanke, is well aware of these realities, despite what he might say in speeches. For that matter, so are Chinese schoolchildren, who, when patronized by Treasury Secretary Geithner about America’s “strong dollar,” laughed in his face. One day, perhaps America’s school children will receive a real education so that they, too, will know when to laugh at absurd propaganda.
…
These deficits and debts are now so gargantuan that they have become surreal abstractions impossible even for sophisticated financiers to begin to comprehend. The common citizen has absolutely no idea what these numbers mean, or imply for his or her future. The people have been deluded into thinking that America’s arrogant, egomaniacal, always-wrong-but-never-in-doubt fiscal witch doctors and charlatans, including Greenspan, Rubin, Summers, Geithner and Ponce de Bernanke, have discovered a Monetary Fountain of Youth that endlessly spits up free money from the center of earth, in a geyser of good will toward the United States. Unfortunately, this delusion is false: there is no Monetary Fountain of Youth, and contrary to the apparent beliefs of the self-deified man-gods in Washington, D.C., the debt and deficits are real, completely out of control, and 100% guaranteed to create catastrophic consequences for the nation and its people.
When government “representatives” deliberately sell into slavery the citizens of a so-called free Republic, they have committed treason against those people. This is exactly what has happened in the United States: the citizens have been sold into debt slavery that they and their descendants can never escape, because the debts piled onto their backs can never, ever be paid. Despite expensive and sophisticated brainwashing campaigns emanating from Washington, claiming that America can “grow” out of its deficits and debt, it is arithmetically impossible for the country to do so. The government’s statements that it can dig the nation out of its fiscal hole by digging an even deeper chasm have become parodies and perversions of even totally discredited and morally disgusting Keynesianism.
The people no longer have elected representatives; they have elected traitors.
The enslavement of the American people has been orchestrated by a pernicious Master Class that has taken the United States by the throat. This Master Class is now choking the nation to death as it accelerates its master plan to plunder the people’s dwindling remaining assets. The Master Class comprises politicians, the Wall Street money elite, the Federal Reserve, high-end government (including military) officials, government lobbyists and their paymasters, military suppliers and media oligarchs. The interests and mindset of the Master Class are so totally divorced from those of the average American citizen that it is utterly tone deaf and blind to the justifiable rage sweeping the nation. Its guiding ethics of greed, plunder, power, control and violence are so alien to mainstream American culture and thought that the Master Class might as well be an enemy invader from Mars. But the Master Class here, it is real and it is laying waste to America. To the members of the Master Class, the people are not fellow-citizens; they are instruments of labor, servitude and profit. At first, the Master Class viewed the citizens as serfs; now that they have raped and destroyed the national economy, while in the process amassing unprecedented wealth and power for themselves, they see the people as nothing more than slaves.
Know Your Enemy-The Oligarchs
Filed under: AIG, bailout, bank bailout, bankergate, Big Banks, central bank, corruption, Credit Crisis, DEBT, deception, despotism, Deutsche Bank, devaluation, Dictatorship, Dollar, dollar collapse, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, Empire, end the fed, Federal Reserve, geithner, Goldman Sachs, Great Depression, Greenback, hyperinflation, Inflation, main street, Merrill Lynch, middle class, obama bailout, obama deception, scandal, SEC, Société Générale, Taxpayers, Tim Geithner, Wall Street
SEC Orders AIG Info Sealed Until November… 2018!
Business Insider
January 12, 2010
Good news. It looks as though we’ll be getting access to secret data on the bailout of AIG and its counterparties.
The bad news: We’re going to have to wait until November of 2018, according to Matthew Goldstein at Reuters.
- In May, the SEC approved a request by AIG to keep secret an exhibit to a year-old regulatory filing that includes some of the details on the most controversial aspect of the AIG bailout: the funneling of tens of billions of dollars to big banks like Societe Generale, Goldman Sachs (GS.N), Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) and Merrill Lynch.
The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, in granting AIG’s request for confidential treatment, said the “excluded information” will not be made public until Nov. 25, 2018, according to a copy of the agency’s May 22 order.
The SEC said the insurer had demonstrated the information in the exhibit, called Schedule A, “qualifies as confidential commercial or financial information.” More
By then, Wall Street will have significantly recycled many people (and probably some more firms) and perhaps the American public just won’t care about how Tim Geithner helped bail out a gigantic black hole of a firm, upon which so many ostensibly rock solid firms had their foundation.
Filed under: Big Banks, central bank, Credit Crisis, DEBT, depression, despotism, Dictatorship, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, Empire, Great Depression, housing bubble, housing market, hyperinflation, Inflation, job market, main street, middle class, mortgage crisis, Stock Market, unemployment, US Economy, Wall Street
No Jobs for The Next Ten Years?
Daily Bell
December 30, 2009
The decade ahead could be a brutal one for America’s unemployed – and for people with jobs hoping for pay raises. At best, it could take until the middle of the decade for the nation to generate enough jobs to drive down the unemployment rate to a normal 5 or 6 percent and keep it there. At worst, that won’t happen until much later – perhaps not until the next decade. The deepest and most enduring recession since the 1930s has battered America’s work force. The unemployed number 15.4 million. The jobless rate is 10 percent. More than 7 million jobs have vanished. People out of work at least six months number a record 5.9 million. And household income, adjusted for inflation, has shrunk in the past decade. Most economists say it could take until at least until 2015 for the unemployment rate to drop down to a historically more normal 5.5 percent. And with the job market likely to stay weak, some also foresee another decade of wage stagnation. Even though the economy will likely keep growing, the pace is expected to be plodding. That will make employers reluctant to hire. Further contributing to high unemployment is the likelihood of more people competing for jobs, baby boomers delaying retirement and interest rates edging higher. All this would come after a decade that created relatively few jobs: a net total of just 464,000. By contrast, 21.7 million new jobs were generated between 1989 and 1999. – Huffington Post
Dominant Social Theme: It’s looking grim?
Free-Market Analysis: There are a lot of statistics cited in this article but like many articles with a mainstream tone, most of them are besides-the-point or shed little illumination about what is going on. First of all the jobless rate in America is closer to 20-30 percent, we figure, when you throw in everyone who wants to work but can’t find work, even part-time work. And second, we distrust the other unemployment figures cited in this article. Finally, we look in vain for a reason as to why all this is happening. Can we find it somewhere else in the body of the article? Here’s some more:
That’s mainly because the economy’s recovery, sluggish by historical standards, isn’t expected to regain its vigor over the next few years. As a result, companies will be in no rush to ramp up hiring. Other analysts think the economy will recover the jobs wiped out by the recession by 2013 or 2014 but that the unemployment rate will stay high. They note that the healing economy will cause more people to stream back into the labor force, vying for too-few jobs.
In addition, baby boomers whose retirement accounts have shrunk could put off retiring and stay in the work force longer. That would leave fewer positions available for the unemployed. Other contributing forces – businesses squeezing more work from employees they still have and relying more on part-time and overseas help – have intensified. And record-high federal budget deficits and the threat of inflation could drive up interest rates, which could hobble growth and restrict job creation. All those factors could combine to keep unemployment high.
“It will be the mother of all jobless recoveries,” predicts economic historian John Steel Gordon. On the other hand, it’s possible some technological innovation not yet envisioned could generate a wave of jobs. Yet at the moment, most economists aren’t betting that any such breakthroughs will rescue the labor market.
The last time the jobless rate reached double digits, in the early 1980s, it took six years to bring it down to normal levels.
Unemployment hit a post-World War II high of 10.8 percent at the end of 1982 as the country was emerging from a severe recession. The rate fell to around 5 percent in 1988. It took less than two years for the number of jobs to return to its pre-recession level. In this recovery, the economy is far more fragile. Hard-to-get credit is exerting a drag. Wounds from the banking system’s worst crisis since the Great Depression will take years to fully heal. People and companies, scarred by the crisis, are likely to restrain borrowing, spending and investing.
From our perspective this article does what all such articles do, it describes what’s going on without explaining anything. You can read the whole article, and you’ll never come up with a reason why 20 percent or more of America is unemployed. Is it because people are lazy? They don’t want jobs even though they pretend they do?
We would write the article differently. We would start by explaining that for the past 100 years America’s manufacturing might has been disintegrating even though the country has looked relatively healthy. But the combination of the income tax and central banking, introduced in the ‘teens, has robbed the country of its industrial muscle. Many big companies have moved away rather than be subject to the income tax. And employees have given up productive trade and agricultural jobs to chase after the latest Fed-stimulated bubble. The tech sector looked attractive in the 1990s, and the mortgage business was great during the 2000s. But neither business lasted because they weren’t real. They were the chaff of central bank monetary stimulation.
The income tax and central banking have hollowed out American industrial capacity. This is the reason that jobs will not return to America – and the world – for a long time. It wasn’t enough by the way that all this happened over a period of nearly 100 years now, but every time there’s a cyclical bust, the West stimulates – throws good money after bad that only prolongs the agony by confusing the market signals that the economy would otherwise present to rational investors.
Conclusion: Deprived of market signals, investors have a hard time determining what’s an efficient business and what is not. They’ve decided, with considerable reason, that too-big-too-fail banks are probably a good investment. Well, this may be so, but it does nothing for the larger economy. Putting good money after bad into these large fiat-money sinkholes only retards real innovation and sets the economy up for another bout of inflationary bleeding and boom-bust madness. What’s needed is a return to a private market gold-and-silver standard that will provide real feedback to those who want to purchase equity in winning entrepreneurial companies. See, it’s not hard to explain, but for some reason, the story just doesn’t get told, certainly not in the mainstream press.
Filed under: Afghanistan, Africa, civil unrest, DEBT, depression, despotism, Dictatorship, Dissent, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, Empire, famine, global economy, Great Depression, hyperinflation, Inflation, Iran, malthusian, malthusian catastrophe, middle east, Ordo Ab Chao, Pakistan, Protest, recession, riot, third world, US Economy | Tags: 2010 forecast, 2010 predictions
2010 could be a year that sparks unrest
Economist.com
December 31, 2009
IF THE world appears to have escaped relatively unscathed by social unrest in 2009, despite suffering the worst recession since the 1930s, it might just prove the lull before the storm. Despite a tentative global recovery, for many people around the world economic and social conditions will continue to deteriorate in 2010. An estimated 60m people worldwide will lose their jobs. Poverty rates will continue to rise, with 200m people at risk of joining the ranks of those living on less than $2 a day. But poverty alone does not spark unrest—exaggerated income inequalities, poor governance, lack of social provision and ethnic tensions are all elements of the brew that foments unrest.
Filed under: DEBT, depression, despotism, devaluation, Dictatorship, Dollar, dollar collapse, dollar dump, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Empire, GDP, Great Depression, Greenback, health care reform, hyperinflation, Inflation, john williams, middle class, obama care, obamacare, riot, unemployment, Weimar, Zimbabwe
U.S. Halfway to Depression Level
ShadowStats.com founder John Williams explains the risk of hyperinflation. Worst-case scenario? Rioting in the streets and devolution to a bartering system.
Fairfield Weekly
December 31, 2009
Do you believe everything the government tells you? Economist and statistician John Williams sure doesn’t. Williams, who has consulted for individuals and Fortune 500 companies, now uncovers the truth behind the U.S. government’s economic numbers on his Web site at ShadowStats.com. Williams says, over the last several decades, the feds have been infusing their data with optimistic biases to make the economy seem far rosier than it really is. His site reruns the numbers using the original methodology. What he found was not good.
Maymin: So we are technically bankrupt?
Williams: Yes, and when countries are in that state, what they usually do is rev up the printing presses and print the money they need to meet their obligations. And that creates inflation, hyperinflation, and makes the currency worthless.
Obama says America will go bankrupt if Congress doesn’t pass the health care bill.
Well, it’s going to go bankrupt if they do pass the health care bill, too, but at least he’s thinking about it. He talks about it publicly, which is one thing prior administrations refused to do. Give him credit for that. But what he’s setting up with this health care system will just accelerate the process.
Where are we right now?
In terms of the GDP, we are about halfway to depression level. If you look at retail sales, industrial production, we are already well into depressionary. If you look at things such as the housing industry, the new orders for durable goods we are in Great Depression territory. If we have hyperinflation, which I see coming not too far down the road, that would be so disruptive to our system that it would result in the cessation of many levels of normal economic commerce, and that would throw us into a great depression, and one worse than was seen in the 1930s.
What kind of hyperinflation are we talking about?
I am talking something like you saw with the Weimar Republic of the 1930s. There the currency became worthless enough that people used it actually as toilet paper or wallpaper. You could go to a fine restaurant and have an expensive dinner and order an expensive bottle of wine. The next morning that empty bottle of wine is worth more as scrap glass than it had been the night before filled with expensive wine.
We just saw an extreme example in Zimbabwe. … Probably the most extreme hyperinflation that anyone has ever seen. At the same time, you still had a functioning, albeit troubled, Zimbabwe economy. How could that be? They had a workable backup system of a black market in U.S. dollars. We don’t have a backup system of anything. Our system, with its heavy dependence on electronic currency, in a hyperinflation would not do well. It would probably cease to function very quickly. You could have disruptions in supply chains to food stores. The economy would devolve into something like a barter system until they came up with a replacement global currency.
Filed under: carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, China, climate change, Co2, copenhagen, Copenhagen treaty, despotism, Eugenics, famine, Genocide, george soros, global tax, Global Warming, global warming hoax, Hoax, imf, India, infanticide, third world, World Bank
India, China, Africa walk out of Copenhagen talks – The Real Reason Why
Developing nations discovered neo-colonial agenda behind globalist carbon tax scam
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
December 14, 2009
Developing countries have walked out on the Copenhagen climate talks, but one of the primary reasons as to why nations like China and India have boycotted the summit is being hidden by the corporate media – namely the fact that the negotiations were doomed once poorer countries learned of the globalist’s neo-colonial agenda as a result of the Danish text leak.
“Negotiations at the UN climate summit have been suspended after developing countries withdrew their co-operation,” reports the BBC.
“Delegations were angry at what they saw as moves by the Danish host government to sideline talks on more emission cuts under the Kyoto Protocol. As news spread around the conference centre, activists chanted “We stand with Africa – Kyoto targets now”.
However, the media has completely failed to highlight the real reason behind the walk out – the fact that funds from climate financing, originally allocated to go to the UN and then be doled out piecemeal to third world nations, would instead be paid directly into the coffers of the World Bank and IMF, organizations that have made a habit out of looting poorer countries with crippling debts that cannot be paid back, forcing such countries to hand over their entire infrastructure to globalist loan sharks.
In the leaked Copenhagen text that emerged last week, leaders of third world countries were horrified to discover that developed nations would take on less of a burden than anticipated and that more would be demanded of poorer countries despite the fact that any further cuts in CO2 emissions would further cripple their flimsy economies and poverty-stricken people.
Billionaire elitist George Soros subsequently told Copenhagen delegates how poorer nations would be forced to take on what he described as “green loans” in the name of combating climate change, a policy that would land the already financially devastated third world with even more debt, payable to globalist institutions such as the IMF.
Soros said that $100 billion should be provided in loans to poorer nations to help slow global warming. The proposal would entail third world countries paying back interest to the governments of the richer nations to stem a perceived crisis that they have had little or no direct involvement in creating.
In what amounts to little more than modern day colonialism, debt forgiveness requires countries to sell their health, education, electric, water and other public services to globalist corporations. Such “structural adjustment conditionalities” have led to massive cuts to health and education budgets in the third world.
Poorer countries have also had to discontinue subsidies and trade restrictions that support local business and development.
As we have documented, third world nations are already laboring under skyrocketing food prices caused by climate change policies. This has led to millions of people starving to death because the cost of even the most basic staple foods has spiraled beyond their means. In places like Haiti, people who were scraping a living on mud pies now cannot afford them and are dying in droves.
Poorer countries continue to be politically neutralized and socially and economically dismembered by such policies. This is the primary reason why these countries are now boycotting the Copenhagen summit, but you won’t hear a word about it in the mainstream media, because it is owned by the same globalists who want to keep the lid on the fact that the global carbon tax scam is set up to benefit themselves and themselves only.
Poorer countries who were promised a slice of the pie are now discovering that they in fact face a further plundering as a result of the very same policies that were introduced in the name of helping them.
Filed under: CFR, Congress, Darrell Issa, despotism, Dictatorship, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, Empire, Great Depression, Herb Kohl, House, Jane Harman, John Kerry, Mark Warner, middle class, obama care, obamacare, Senate, Taxpayers, US Economy
editors note: How could they know what the average American needs when they have no idea what poverty is?
Report: 237 Members Of Congress Are Millionaires
Politico
November 6, 2009
![]() John Kerry (CFR), worth about $208.8 million |
As Washington reels from the news of 10.2 percent unemployment, the Center for Responsive Politics is out with a new report describing the wealth of members of Congress.
Among the highlights: Two-hundred-and-thirty-seven members of Congress are millionaires. That’s 44 percent of the body – compared to about 1 percent of Americans overall.
CRP says California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa is the richest lawmaker on Capitol Hill, with a net worth estimated at about $251 million. Next in line: Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), worth about $244.7 million; Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), worth about $214.5 million; Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), worth about $209.7 million; and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), worth about $208.8 million.
All told, at least seven lawmakers have net worths greater than $100 million, according to the Center’s 2008 figures.
“Many Americans probably have a sense that members of Congress aren’t hurting, even if their government salary alone is in the six figures, much more than most Americans make,” said CRP spokesman Dave Levinthal. “What we see through these figures is that many of them have riches well beyond that salary, supplemented with securities, stock holdings, property and other investments.”
Filed under: 4th amendment, 9/11, Abu Ghraib, airstrikes, al-qaeda, C-Span, CIA, Cindy Sheehan, Congress, Coup, DEBT, Dennis Kucinich, despotism, Detainee, Dick Cheney, Dictatorship, Economy, Empire, Extraordinary Rendition, fallen soldiers, False Flag, false information, Fascism, federal crime, FISA, Founding Fathers, George Bush, Guantanamo, House, House Subcommittee, Impeach, Iran, Iraq, iraq deaths, john ashcroft, John Bolton, judiciary committee, Karl Rove, Martial Law, Media, military strike, nation building, Nazi, neocons, Neolibs, occupation, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, Propaganda, Protest, republic, Robert Wexler, Saddam Hussein, scooter libby, secret prisons, Shock and Awe, Tehran, Torture, Troops, US Constitution, US Economy, vincent bugliosi, War Crimes, war games, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap, WMD, WW3, ww4 | Tags: doug fife, fallujah, harriet myers, House Judiciary Committee, impeachment hearing, jonathan turley, judiciary hearing, kucinich, steve king, vincent bugliosi
Dam Breaks as Media Covers Bush Impeachment Hearing
Prisonplanet.com
July 25, 2008
The House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Bush Administration’s use of executive power has finally been covered by the corporate media:
LA Times: Is hearing to impeach Bush merely ‘anger management’?
FOX News: Rep. Kucinich Gets His Day to Air Impeachment Article
The Hill: Kucinich raises Bush impeachment at hearing
CBS: Big Crowd Gathers For House Judiciary Hearing On Bush “impeachment”
AP: Bush critics get an unimpeachable forum
Videos from the hearing:
Rep. Wexler recommends impeachment hearings
Rep. Steve King of Iowa argued there was no evidence that the Bush administration had committed any high crimes and misdeameanors.
Conyers: These Are Not Impeachment Hearings
George Washington’s Blog
July 23, 2008
John Conyers is now taking the position that no one at Friday’s impeachment hearing can accuse Bush or Cheney of any crime, or any impeachable offense, or dishonorable conduct, or even lying.
Moreover, Conyers is now saying that he will shut the hearing down if anyone does accuse the boys of crimes, impeachable offenses, or otherwise being naughty.
As David Swanson summarizes it:
“Apparently the rules of Congress are designed to allow impeachable offenses to be discussed only in impeachment hearings. Apparently this didn’t occur to Chairman Conyers when he decided to hold a non-impeachment impeachment hearing. As a result, his hearing may be quickly shut down, and he will have a choice of holding a real impeachment hearing, resigning, or dropping the pretense that he intends to resist Cheney and Bush in any way whatsoever.”
Please watch this must-see 10 minute video.
And read this.
Takes Phone Calls On Impeachment
http://www.cbsnews.com/storie../thecrypt/main4292489.shtml
Cindy Sheehan Kicked-Out of Judiciary Hearing
http://rawstory.com//news/20..eehan_exits_Judiciary_hearing_0725.html
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep John Conyers Plans Bush Impeachment Substitute
http://www.daily.pk/world/world..eachment-substitute.html
Fallujah Braces For Another Assault
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43248
Iraq Official: U.S. Troops May Leave By 2010
http://ap.google.com/articl..YeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD9228UM00
Turley fears Dems will let alleged ‘Bush crimes’ stay buried forever
http://rawstory.com//news/2008/.._pardons_prevent_0723.html
’Imperial presidency’ hearing to feature 13 witnesses
http://rawstory.com//news/2008..earing_to_feature_13_0724.html
Filed under: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bank of England, California, Canada, central bank, Credit Crisis, DEBT, despotism, ECB, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, european central bank, Federal Reserve, gas prices, global economy, gold, Great Depression, Greenback, housing market, Inflation, interest rate cuts, Iran, Northern Rock, Oil, OPEC, Petrol, rate cut, Russia, Stock Market, United Kingdom, US Economy, Venezuela
World stocks plummet after global banks take action in bid to avoid recession
Daily Mail
December 13, 2007
Stocks worldwide have plummeted in the wake of yesterday’s unprecedented decision by leading central banks to pump billions into money markets in a bid to avoid a worldwide recession.
The Bank of England has joined the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and their counterparts in Canada and Switzerland to pump at least £55billion into money markets.
However this morning the FTSE 100 fell more than 70 points to 6458.7 and the markets in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan all suffered nervous starts to the day’s trading.
Investors are worried that the shock decision by the world’s banks could mean that the credit crisis is likely to get worse.
It is hoped that the loans – £ 22.7billion of which will go to the UK – will help make lending between banks easier, avoiding any repeat of the Northern Rock crisis.
The Rock ran into trouble because the current economic climate has encouraged banks to hoard their cash, rather than lend it to each other.
Russia to dump waning dollar
Press TV
December 14, 2007
Russian oil firm Rosneft will follow the lead of Gazprom and LUKOIL to sell crude in rubles amid the ongoing depreciation of the dollar.
“Our specialists are looking at all possibilities that could be beneficial for the company,” Rosneft Spokesman Nikolai Manvelov said. “Everything depends on economic viability.”
Russia’s largest independent oil producer, LUKOIL earlier announced that the company will switch to the ruble in its gas and crude deals within two years.
“Selling for rubles is much more attractive,” Deputy Chief Executive Officer Leonid Fedun said on December 12. “Gazprom is considering introducing ruble-denominated contracts and I think that technically Russian companies can do it by 2009 if the banks are ready.”
“We consider the idea of selling our resources for rubles to be quite possible,” Gazprom’s Vice President Alexander Medvedev said at a recent conference in New York.
Last month, Iran and Venezuela proposed to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to switch to a basket of currencies in its oil deals.
Iran, the world’s fourth most prolific oil exporter, has already abandoned the dollar, Iran’s Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari said on December 9, describing the currency as unreliable.
U.S. Stocks Decline as Fed Fails to Assuage Recession Concern
http://www.bloomberg.com/a…yi2xynL0&refer=us
Report Says That the Rich Are Getting Richer Faster, Much Faster
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/…ThcWg&oref=slogin
LA Times Says Gold For Conspiracy Theorists
http://www.latimes.com/wireless/avantgo/la-fi-gold16dec16,0,465745.story
Fed To Announce New Mortgage Rules
http://www.washingtonpost.co…007121401875.html
‘A financial tsunami is upon us’: Schultz sees an apocalypse now
http://www.marketwatch.com/new.34-A49..dist=TNMostRead
Mortgage Crisis Inflicts Collateral Damage
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22246203
Schwarzenegger To Declare Fiscal Emergency
http://www.nbc11.com/news/14858065/detail.html
Russia may dump weakening US dollar in its energy deals
http://www.dailyti…2007%5C12%5C15%5Cstory_15-12-2007_pg5_43
Money-Market Rates Fail to Respond to Bank Measures
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?…d=a9anSVhH.NOQ&refer=home
November Consumer Prices Rise More than Forecast
http://www.bloomberg.com…4BNlo&refer=home
Greenspan: Odds of recession ‘clearly rising’
http://noworldsystem.com/2007/…ession-clearly-rising/
Central Banks to Pump Billions into World Financial System
http://www.nytimes.com/200..8-8QuVU5oMlm5w8E6dIl7JlQ
GAO: “USA is living beyond its means”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjZBOCAgR64
U.S. Economic Collapse News Archive
Filed under: Big Banks, bill moyers, black tuesday, Congress, Credit Crisis, DEBT, despotism, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, Federal Reserve, George Bush, Globalism, Great Depression, Greenback, housing market, Inflation, IRS, John Kerry, Senate, Stock Market, US Economy, Wall Street
Income inequality worst since 1920s, according to IRS data
Nick Juliano
Raw Story
October 12, 2007
The superrich are gobbling up an ever larger piece of the economic pie, and the poor are seeing their share of earnings shrink: new IRS data shows the top 1 percent of Americans are claiming a larger share of national income than at any time since before the Great Depression.
The top percentile of wealthy Americans earned 21.2 percent of all income in 2005, up from 19 percent in 2004, according to new Internal Revenue Service data published in the Wall Street Journal Friday.
Americans in the bottom 50 percent of wage earners saw their share of income shrink to 12.8 percent in 2005, down from 13.4 percent.
“Scholars attribute rising inequality to several factors,” the Journal reports, “including technological change that favors those with more skills, and globalization and advances in communications that enlarge the rewards available to ‘superstar’ performers whether in business, sports or entertainment.”
The data could cause problems to President Bush and Republican presidential candidates, who have played up low unemployment and a strong economy since 2003, crediting Bush’s tax cuts for contributing to both. In an interview with the Journal, Bush downplayed the significance of the income gap, saying more education is the answer to narrowing it.
“First of all, our society has had income inequality for a long time. Secondly, skills gaps yield income gaps,” Bush told the Journal. “And what needs to be done about the inequality of income is to make sure people have got good education, starting with young kids. That’s why No Child Left Behind is such an important component of making sure that America is competitive in the 21st century.”
The Journal notes that many Americans fear the economy is entering a recession, and the IRS data show income for the median earner fell 2 percent between 2000 and 2005 to $30,881. Earnings for the top 1 percent grew to $364,657 — a 3 percent uptick.
Scholarly research suggests that top earners did not have such a large share of total income since the 1920s, the Journal reported.
The Journal reports that a recent stock boom likely contributed to higher earnings among those in the top income bracket, with hedge fund managers and Wall Street attorneys seeing their incomes skyrocket in recent years.
Another prominent pool or wealthy Americans gathers regularly on Capitol Hill to write the nation’s laws. The Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign spending and politicians’ wealth, says more than a third of Congress members are millionaires, with at least half the Senate falling into the millionaires club.
Forbes reported that last year’s incoming class of new Senators did “little to shake the Senate’s image as a millionaires club,” with half of the newly elected members having seven- eight- or nine-figure personal fortunes.
Freshman Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) is worth between $64 million and $236 million, and newly elected Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D-MO) fortune is between $13 million and $29 million. R
Roll Call estimates Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) is the chamber’s richest member with an estimated net worth of $750 million; another Democrat, Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl, is among the chamber’s richest with between $220 million and $234 million in personal assets.
Man who correctly predicted Black Tuesday makes another prediction in NY Times: ‘Country is facing… a depression’
NY Times
October 13, 2007
Paul Tudor Jones II leans back in his chair and grins. The stock market is going to crash, and he knows it. “There will be some type of a decline, without a question, in the next 10, 20 months,” he says in his rich Memphis drawl. “And it will be earth-shaking; it will be saber-rattling.”
Coming from a financial speculator as prominent as Mr. Jones, a man with about $19 billion of short-term trading capital at his disposal, the words might be enough to send ripples through a stock market that, apparently defying logic, has been hitting new highs each day.
Except that the crash to which Mr. Jones refers occurred Oct. 19, 1987. His prognostication — brazen, and as impudent as the man himself — was made in a documentary called “Trader,” which was filmed in the year preceding that day.
Now, 20 years after the 508-point decline, several strategists are anticipating that the earth will shake again. Valuations are stretched beyond historical comparisons. The market, ever more volatile, is reaching new highs, ignoring a buildup of bad news. Most crucially, the strategists say, the sentiment that the market’s rise is infinite seems to have taken permanent hold.
“The overvaluation of stocks is more extreme than the 1929 high,” said Robert R. Prechter Jr., an independent market forecaster in Gainesville, Ga., and a well-known follower of Elliott Wave theory, which examines the extent to which investor psychology creates stock market patterns. “Which tells me the next bear market will be the biggest in many years, probably since 1929-32.”
At the end of the day Oct. 19, 1987, stocks were down 22 percent — precisely the “Acapulco cliff dive” predicted by Mr. Jones in the video. The day ruined the careers of many, but it made the reputations of Mr. Jones and Mr. Prechter, whose professional relationship dates to the mid-1980s.
In the video, Mr. Jones can be seen huddled over a graph, comparing the market’s peak in 1987 with a previous high in 1929.
As Elliott Wave theory would have it, the two market tops may have been 60 years apart but the herdlike exuberance of investors pushing stocks ever upward was the same. On Oct. 5, 1987, Mr. Prechter, then and now the best-known proponent of the theory, told his subscribers to sell.
While the rest of Wall Street counted its losses, Mr. Jones, at age 32, returned 200 percent for his investors that year and drew a payday of an estimated $100 million for the year, an almost unheard-of sum at the time.
No one, including Mr. Prechter himself, claims that Mr. Jones relied solely on Mr. Prechter’s call. Indeed, in the video Mr. Jones can be seen as early as 1986 making a case that the market would fall. But the crash did not last long. Prices rebounded the next day, and within two years, the market had regained all that it had lost that day.
Now, Mr. Prechter is suggesting that the country is facing not just a market crash, but also a depression. On every measure, he says, the market is more overvalued than it was in 1987 before the reversal. The price-to-book ratio of the S.&. P 500-stock index today is 4.04, compared with 1.73 in 1987. And measures of the bullishness of Wall Street traders confirm Mr. Prechter’s assessment of the overvaluation.
To be sure, the one feature of every long-running bull market is the small clutch of market pessimists whose clamor that the end is nigh seems to rise in pitch with each successive peak.
But Mr. Prechter’s gloominess may resonate, especially in light of Mr. Jones’s high regard for him. “Prechter is the best because he is the ultimate market opportunist,” Mr. Jones said in the book “Market Wizards,” a collection of interviews with successful traders compiled by Jack D. Schwager.
That is not to say that Mr. Prechter has any undue sway over Mr. Jones, who since he started Tudor Investment in 1986 has generated a return of 26 percent a year and has seen his assets grow from $125 million to $19 billion. Indeed, Mr. Prechter’s relentless bearishness has not made him a favorite of bullish hedge fund managers.
At a time when hedge fund trading is dominated by computer trading programs and traders with Ph.D.’s, Mr. Jones, who got his start trading bales of cotton on the New York Cotton Exchange, is of the older style, relying on intuition, market smarts and the force of his personality. A macro trader, he is known for making big sweeping bets on the direction of stock exchange indexes, commodities and currencies.
As for his view on the market, Mr. Jones declined to comment for this article. Over the last 17 years, he has rarely publicly expressed an opinion about stocks, bonds or currencies — a reflection of his influence as a trader.
This summer, his funds were hit by the credit crisis and lost 5 percent in August. Through September, Mr. Jones is barely ahead, up 2.5 percent, and he could end up having his worst year in more than a decade.
“He has had a tough time lately,” said Byron R. Wien, a friend of Mr. Jones and a strategist at Pequot Capital Management, a rival hedge fund. “But he is a talent. You go through cold periods, but you don’t lose it.”
It happens to every fund manager, the spell when the magic touch disappears. And although all the top traders preach the discipline of not letting your losses get to you, the video suggests that even the best feel the almost physical pain of trading defeats.
In one scene, Mr. Jones, his knee jiggling with such violence that his tie sways, is shown losing $6 million in one day, in December 1986. It was a big loss, given that he had only $125 million under management at the time. “This is what is known as the agony,” he says, slumping in his chair. “This is devastating. An intellectual blow.” He stops talking. He looks distant and distracted. “I hate it.”
Mr. Prechter, who keeps in touch with Mr. Jones through e-mail and the occasional phone call, says that Mr. Jones, his recent rough stretch notwithstanding, is best placed to survive a crash.
“He does not go cold and clammy,” Mr. Prechter said. He does not know if Mr. Jones shares his dark view of the market, though he allows that “Paul is certainly aware of the risk of an extensive bear market” and “is well aware that stocks are vulnerable.”
But don’t expect Mr. Jones to relive his 1987 glory. One investor who has spoken with him in the last week, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak publicly about Mr. Jones’s investment strategies, said that the recent rate cut had made Mr. Jones increasingly bullish. Indeed, as opposed to 1987, Mr. Jones is said to be reminded of 1998, when cuts by the Federal Reserve led to the stock market boom of the late 1990s. “I have not heard him mention Prechter in a long time,” this investor said.
The 1987 video offers an intriguing window into the everyday life of big-league traders, and it has the feel of a time capsule. Full of swagger and braggadocio, Mr. Jones can be seen skiing in Gstaad, Switzerland, or riding a horse on his estate overlooking the Chesapeake Bay — when he is not screaming out orders to his traders. He comes across as a young Gordon Gekko. Greed was not only good; it was fun.
Although the video was shown on public television in November 1987, very few copies exist. Those that do are hoarded by traders who watch the hourlong movie in the hope of gleaning possible trading tips from Mr. Jones. On the Internet, bids for the video start at $295. According to Michael Glyn, the video’s director, Mr. Jones requested in the 1990s that the documentary be removed from circulation.
It is no surprise that Mr. Jones wants some distance from that version of himself. He was a bit of a cowboy, out to prove he was the best. Now, 20 years later, he sits atop the new hedge fund rich. He is married to a former model from Australia, has a mansion in Greenwich, Conn., and owns a big-game reserve in Tanzania. Forbes estimates his net worth to be $3.3 billion.
On Wall Street, the roles are reversed. Mr. Prechter foresees a return to the Depression; Mr. Jones, who himself said a depression would follow the 1987 crash, may well be fully invested.
“People will be gasping,” Mr. Jones says with glee in the video, referring to the 1987 crash that he was sure would come. “It will be total rock ‘n’ roll.”
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U.S. Economic Collapse News Archive