The two-million strong Home Land Security Department and its agencies were found to have no forewarning of the Newtown school shooting incident.
It is trains which are more dangerous than airplanes.
Trains carry hundreds of tank cars which contain the most deadly gasses and chemicals known to mankind. These tank cars pass through every major city in Canada and are capable of killing millions of people. Every tank car on the train is a potential WMD. 90-ton rail tankers filled with deadly chemicals and other hazardous materials roll slowly through our major cities every day over unprotected and unguarded rails, with no warning to those communities, and we are worried about some airplane. An assault on a chlorine tanker could create a toxic cloud extending up to 15 miles. It is estimated that up to 100,000 people could be killed or injured in less than a half-hour by such an attack. The federal government has "essentially done nothing" to reduce this threat.
Investigation reveals major gaps in railroad security
There are thousands of miles of track, most of it unguarded. And traveling on them are 10,000-ton trains
KOMO4 News
Hosts Dan Lewis and Mary Nam
Correspondent: Liz Rocca
November 08, 2011
(Flash Video)
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/133417833.html
Think Like a Terrorist
Why has investigative reporter Carl Prine been hailed as a truth-teller by some and attacked as an abettor of terrorists by others? What did his stories in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reveal about security conditions at some of the nation's chemical plants and storage facilities?
Reporter Carl Prine of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reveals security shortfalls in the nation's chemical plants.
PBS Expose Episode 201
Produced By Joe Rubin
Narrated By Sylvia Chase
June 22, 2007
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/expose/2007/...rist-pt-1.html
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pitt.../s_487117.html
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/133417833.html
Part I of II
(Flash Video)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/expose/2007/...rist-pt-1.html
Part II of II
Carl Prine expands his investigation to include the transport of deadly toxics via the U.S. railways.
In 2006, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Carl Prine resumed his investigations of chemical safety in the United States, this time focusing on the nation's railroad transportation system. Prine discovered that trains loaded with toxic and explosive chemicals pass through major metropolitan areas with inadequate or no security, and in some areas present a target extremely vulnerable to terrorist attack. During his investigation, Prine visited Seattle, Tacoma, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, San Francisco's Bay Area, and parts of New Jersey. EXPOSÉ returns with Prine to Las Vegas and other locales, where he demonstrates just how easy it is to access the rail cars carrying potentially lethal chemicals.
EXPOSÉ also speaks with Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-DE) who discusses the rail security bill inspired by Prine's reporting.
June 29, 2007
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/expose/expos...202/index.html
(Flash Video)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/expose/2007/...rist-pt-2.html
The No-Fly List is a ruse.
It is important for the Ruling Class to prevent "Professional" protesters from travelling around the country like they did in the 1930's, except they did it by railway. And, most importantly, the Rich Folks need the ability to travel without being harassed. The Rich Folks will be given a "Special" queue so as to avoid confrontations by protests. (Gated Communities and Gated Airports)
During the depression, the cops only needed to stand outside the train station and see who got on or off the train. It was very easy for the cops to beat down homeless people in Winnipeg train stations, and/or have Patton and Eisenhower ride into homeless tent camps in Washington and burn them down.
The Plot To Seize The Whitehouse
By Jules Archer
1973
http://www.clubhousewreckards.com/plot/plottoseizethewhitehouse.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
http://www.eclectica.org/v1n1/reviews/wharton_plot.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document.shtml
The reason that the RCMP became an important and indispensable asset to the Federal Government was because in May 1919, they "Excelled" at beating unemployed protesters in Winnipeg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnipeg_General_Strike
The Mounties in Alberta and Saskatchewan had increasingly focused their resources upon those outside the middle-class and ethnic mainstream: left-wing radicals who challenged the status quo, ethnic groups who refused to assimilate to the Anglo-Canadian ideal, other minorities who practiced activities deemed immoral by the Canadian majority, and workers of the employed and unemployed variety who protested against economic inequality. In doing so, Mounted Policemen made themselves indispensable to the Canadian state, ensuring the force's survival and turning it into one of the world's most powerful police forces.
http://library2.usask.ca/theses/avai...0202004-235919
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandal...nding_the_
The "No-Fly" List is to prevent "Organized" protests and keep the "Professional Protesters" (activists) from travelling around the country and speaking in different communities. They are now placing body scanners in bus depots and train stations.
Imagine having more than a million "Suspected Terrorists" on the No-Fly List?
Why aren't the "Suspected Terrorists" arrested and charged right today if they are a threat? Why are these suspected terrorists allowed to drive their cars on highways but not to be trusted getting on a plane?
Perhaps this was a genuine terrorist act:
The figure of 27,785 deaths caused by Vioxx is almost 10 times the number of people killed by terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. It doesn't take into account the estimated 100,000 people disabled by heart attacks and strokes. On the aniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks the TV news shows a woman reading aloud the names of those killed in the attack. No one ever reads aloud the names of Merck's victims. Merck was not denounced as a terrorist organization. The U.S. government continues to do business with Merck. Terrorists wreak death and destruction intentionally, claiming they have some noble purpose. The dangers of Vioxx were not unknown to Merck, they were ignored because profits loomed. Merck execs knew from an early clinical trial that Vioxx caused coronary damage. Once the drug was on the market, Merck intentionally suppressed data showing it caused strokes and heart attacks at twice the normal rate. Dorothy Hamill twirled on the ice and "It's a beautiful morning" lilted from every TV in the land as Merck pushed a drug that CEO Ray Gilmartin and the other top bosses knew would kill people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vioxx
http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/...ders/UCM103420
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...estimates.html
http://www.counterpunch.com/gardner09182009.html
Archive Reference: On Topic
U.S. Martial Law : Civil Unrest : Occupy Wall Street Movement : The War At Home
Articles and Commentaries by various writers and media pundits.
2000 - October 13, 2005
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Military-MartialLaw-OccupyMovement-01-2000--October13-2005.html
October 14, 2005 ---January 31, 2007
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Military-MartialLaw-OccupyMovement-02-October14-2005--January31-2007.html
January 26, 2007 --- June 03, 2008
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Military-MartialLaw-OccupyMovement-03-January26-2007--June03-2008.html
June 03, 2008 --- March 04, 2009
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Military-MartialLaw-OccupyMovement-04-June03-2008--March04-2009.html
March 16, 2009 --- January 29, 2010
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Military-MartialLaw-OccupyMovement-05-March16-2009--January29-2010.html
January 29, 2009 --- December 20, 2010
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Military-MartialLaw-OccupyMovement-06-January29-2009--December20-2010.html
January 10, 2011 --- May 15, 2011
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Military-MartialLaw-OccupyMovement-07-January10-2011--May15-2011.html
October 09, 2011 --- October 30, 2011
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Military-MartialLaw-OccupyMovement-October09-2011--October30-2011.html
November 23, 2011 --- February 06, 2012
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Military-MartialLaw-OccupyMovement-09-November23-2011--February06-2012.html
February 06, 2012 --- August 08, 2012
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Military-MartialLaw-OccupyMovement-10-February06-2012--August08-2012.html
September 07, 2012 --- December 26, 2012
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Military-MartialLaw-OccupyMovement-11-September07-2012--December10-2012.html
Archive Reference: On Topic
U.S. Justice: Flash Mob - Gang Violence
Articles and Commentaries by various writers and media pundits.
August 15, 2011 --- July 31, 2012
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Justice-FlashMob-GangViolence-01-August15-2011--December2011.html
Anger Mounting Toward Government
August 2006
http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll
http://www.huntingtonnews.net/images...SPIRACYbig.jpg
http://www.scrippsnews.com/images/911poll.jpg
Americans Express Historic Negativity Toward U.S. Government
Several long-term Gallup trends at or near historical lows
By Lydia Saad
September 26, 2011
A record-high 81% of Americans are dissatisfied with the way the country is being governed, adding to negativity that has been building over the past 10 years.
Majorities of Democrats (65%) and Republicans (92%) are dissatisfied with the nation's governance. This perhaps reflects the shared political power arrangement in the nation's capital, with Democrats controlling the White House and U.S. Senate, and Republicans controlling the House of Representatives. Partisans on both sides can thus find fault with government without necessarily blaming their own party.
http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/...cbmd9dztja.gif
http://www.gallup.com/poll/149678/Am...overnment.aspx
The U.S. Capitalists must be chuckling aloud .....
The media constantly informs us that the protesters are complaining about the faults of capitalism, while all the while the media knows full well that Capitalism is passé. ..... Because the Capitalists have moved on to "Globalization". The Capitalists moved on and polluted every bank vault on the planet with worthless derivatives, and under the guise or the pretense of a "Free Market Economy"
The protesters need to begin using the term "Globalization" or they will be stuck with ancient capitalist arguments presently being fed to us by the corporate media.
The "Criminal Network Broadcasting Consortium" (aka: CNBC aka: Criminal News & Bankster Crimes) are
pleased to announce their upcoming investigative show about how their masterful propaganda to the
masses graduated to form capitalist ideologies and which has now constructed right wing delusions.
History has many examples of economical and/or societal collapse.
Free Trade was not about the trade of manufactured goods. As an example; China can sastify the North American refrigerator market with just what falls off the assembly line.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-socks10apr10,0,4497784.story
According to the National Academies, the U.S. is graduating 70,000 engineers a year. By comparison, the Chinese are graduating 600,000 a year, the Indians 350,000.
http://fermat.nap.edu/catalog/11463....ewsdoc10122005
China has a workforce of 300 million employees that will work for one dollar a day and no benefits.
Free Trade was all about the ability to move money and wealth off the North American Continent. The ability to Abandon the North American Continent with the unfettered ability to move assests and wealth off shore.
The largest export which the U.S. has with China is "Waste Paper and Scrap Metal".
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-number-one-u-s-export-to-china-waste-paper-and-scrap-metal
Just as America is doing now, from 1883 to 1913, as the British Empire was failing, it increased its dependence on imported goods following the introduction of free trade. And during this time, the "Capitalists" abandoned the England and moved their wealth and assets into North America.
An Empire Like No Other By John Derbyshire
September 01, 2003
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:82AK8diMH4IJ:www.olimu.com/Journalism/Texts/Commentary/BritishEmpire.htm+An+Empire+Like+No+Other
http://olimu.com/Journalism/Texts/Commentary/BritishEmpire.htm
America aping Britain's decline through free trade
By Ian Fletcher
September 29, 2010
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6385.shtml
Oil and the origins of the 'War to make the world safe for Democracy'
By F. William Engdahl
June 22, 2007
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/History/Oil_and_the_Origins_of_World_W/oil_and_the_origins_of_world_w.HTM
About 1870 the German Reich emerged as a new economic player on the map of Continental Europe in the same way that China is doing so at this moment in time.
In August 1914, Britain declared war against Germany in an attempt to stop the development of Germany’s economy which was a threat to British hegemony.
Immediately following the end of World War I, Britain collapsed as an "Economic Power" and America became the dominant world power.
The Balfour agreement (1917) initiated by the British and giving the Jewish Folks a home in Palestine was in return for Jewish Banking assistance during World War I.
Britain’s World War II costs were financed by American banks and Britain did not complete repayment of these American loans until December 2006.
An Ottoman warning for indebted America
Future historians will look back on the current decade as a turning point comparable with that of the Seventies. No, not the 1970s. This is not going to be another piece pointing out the coincidence of an unpopular Republican president, soaring oil prices, a sagging dollar and an unwinnable faraway war. I am talking about the 1870s.
At first sight, the resemblances across 130 years may not seem obvious. The 1870s were a time when conservative leaders such as Benjamin Disraeli, British prime minister, were powerful and popular. It was a time of falling commodity prices, after the financial crash of 1873 and the opening up of the American plains to agriculture. And it was an era of currency stability, as one country after another followed the British lead by pegging to gold.
Yet, on closer inspection, we are indeed living through a global shift in the balance of power very similar to that which occurred in the 1870s. This is the story of how an over-extended empire sought to cope with an external debt crisis by selling off revenue streams to foreign investors. The empire that suffered these setbacks in the 1870s was the Ottoman empire. Today it is the US.
By Niall Ferguson
January 01 2008
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/6667a18a-b888-11dc-893b-0000779fd2ac.html
"Capitalism will never fail because socialism will always be there to bail it out."
--Ralph Nader--
"History is littered with post-crisis regulations. If there are undue restrictions on the operations of businesses, they may view it to be their job to get around them, and you sow the seeds of the next crisis."
--Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment analyst, CharlesSchwab & Co., a leading US provider of investment services.--
"We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve a greater prosperity and opportunity for all."
--Lord Brian Griffiths, Goldman Sachs international advisor, 2009--
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
--John Kenneth Galbraith--
"For in every city these two opposite parties (people v. aristocracy) are to be found, arising from the desire of the populace to avoid oppression of the great, and the desire of the great to command and oppress the people.... For when the nobility see that they are unable to resist the people, they unite in exalting one of their number and creating him prince, so as to be able to carry out their own designs under the shadow of his authority."
--Machiavelli, The Prince, Chap IX--
"We have stricken the shackles from 4,000,000 human beings and brought all labourers to a common level, but not so much by the elevation of former slaves as by reducing the whole working population, white and black, to a condition of serfdom. While boasting of our noble deeds, we are careful to conceal the ugly fact that by our iniquitous money system we have manipulated a system of oppression which, though more refined, is no less cruel than the old system of chattel slavery."
--Horace Greely--
"The pot was empty,
The cupboard was bare.
I said, Papa,
What’s the matter here?
I’m waitin’ on Roosevelt, son,
Roosevelt, Roosevelt,
Waitin’ on Roosevelt, son."
http://www.history.com/shows/the-peo...d-of-roosevelt
"Various figures denote vexing social problems. They include 10,000 (the number of new baby boomers eligible for Social Security and Medicare every day), 10.2 percent (what the unemployment rate would be if 1.2 million discouraged workers had not recently stopped looking for jobs), $9.9 trillion (the Government Accountability Office calculation of the gap between the expected revenue and outlays for state and local governments during the next 50 years), $76.4 trillion (the GAO's similar estimate of the federal government's 75-year fiscal shortfall)."
--George F. Will, For black children, daunting divides in achievement and family life, August 29, 2010--
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...082703805.html
Unfunded Liabilities
-- $13.9 trillion for Social Security;
-- $18.4 trillion for prescription drugs
-- $73.3 trillion for Medicare/Medicaid
Total: $105.7 trillion.
http://www.usdebtclock.org
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/1...itlements.html
--Stephen Lendman, Obamacare Targets Entitlements, October 21, 2009--
The $1.3 trillion budget deficit would be $4.2 trillion if the change in the current cost of Social Security and Medicare promises during fiscal 2011 were included.
The typical U.S. household has been promised retirement payments totaling $1.2 million, more than 1,200 percent of its median net worth of $96,000.
The current costs of Medicare and Social Security total $33.8 trillion, which is more than 1,400 percent of the federal government’s 2011 revenue.
--Bryan R. Lawrence, The trillions the government doesn’t account for, March 01, 2012--
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...ZlR_story.html
U.S. funding for future promises lags by trillions
Medicare: $24.8 trillion
Obligation per household: $212,500
-----
Social Security: $21.4 trillion
Obligation per household: $183,400
-----
Federal debt: $9.4 trillion
Obligation per household: $79,900
----
Military retirement/disability benefits: $3.6 trillion
Obligation per household: $31,200
----
Federal employee retirement benefits: $2 trillion
Obligation per household: $17,000
----
State, local government obligations: $5.2 trillion
Obligation per household: $44,800
--Dennis Cauchon, U.S. funding for future promises lags by trillions, June 06, 2011--
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...security_n.htm
Archive Reference: On Topic
U.S. Finance: How Much Is A Trillion Dollars? (Infographic)
Articles and Commentaries by various writers and media pundits.
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Finance-HowMuchIsATrillionDollars-Infographic-01-December29-2012.html
$114,500,000,000,000. - US unfunded liabilities
To the right you can see the pillar of cold hard $100 bills that dwarfs the
WTC & Empire State Building - both at one point world's tallest buildings.
If you look carefully you can see the Statue of Liberty.
http://173.32.43.70:9090/NEWS/US-Finance-FederalDebt-08-Photo-114Point5TrillionDollars-UnfundedLiabilitiesAugust2011.jpg
Source: Federal Reserve
August 2011
http://usdebt.kleptocracy.us
A National Debt Of $14 Trillion? Try $211 Trillion
DAVID GREENE, host: Now, S&P says this downgrade might not even be the last one if the nation's debt keeps ballooning. So how to turn this around? Listen to the prescription from Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff.
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: What you have to do is either immediately and permanently raise taxes by about two-thirds, or immediately and permanently cut every dollar of spending by 40 percent forever. So I'm talking about cutting Medicare benefits, Medicaid, Social Security, defense spending, you name it, by 40 percent forever, starting today. That's what the CBO's numbers say we have an absolutely enormous problem facing us.
DAVID GREENE: Big tax increases, huge cuts to military spending and entitlement programs - good luck getting that through Congress - and the problem Kotlikoff says is a whole lot bigger than this $14 debt we've been talking about.
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract off all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is 211 trillion. That's the fiscal gap. That's our true indebtedness.
DAVID GREENE: It's a big number. Why aren't we hearing more about that as these big debates and all the drama go on in Washington?
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: Well, the politicians have chosen their language carefully to keep most of the problem off the books, and they've done this for decades. So this is Enron accounting to the 10th power, I mean, millionth power, actually.
DAVID GREENE: Quite a strong accusation.
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: Well, it's, you know, it's true. Why are these guys thinking about balancing the budget? They should try and think about our long-term fiscal problems. We've got 78 million baby boomers who are poised to collect, in about 15 to 20 years, about $40,000 per person. Multiply 78 million by 40,000, you're talking about more than $3 trillion a year in today's dollars just to give to a portion of the population. That's an enormous bill that's overhanging our heads, and Congress isn't focused on it.
DAVID GREENE: So Americans just watch this drama play out in Washington. I mean, is your message to them that this was all just a useless process?
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: This is a sideshow. The Democrats and Republicans have been having a food fight for decades. Underneath that fa ade of conflict, what's really going on is that older generations are taking from young generations on a ongoing basis. And we've consistently done too little, too late, looked too short-term. Well, guess what? You can't keep putting off these problems. And we've used language to disguise what's really going on here, which is this mess of Ponzi scheme.
DAVID GREENE: We've been speaking to Laurence Kotlikoff, professor of economics at Boston University. He joined us from member station WBUR in Boston. Thank you so much, professor.
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: My pleasure.
NPR - All Things Considered
Host David Greene interviews Laurence Jacob Kotlikoff
August 06, 2011
Transcript:
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcr...ryId=139027615
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/06/139027...y-211-trillion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Kotlikoff
(.MP3 Format)
http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/a...806_atc_02.mp3
Or:
/*****ust06-2011.mp3
The U.S. Debt Is Actually 200 Trillion Dollars
The actual figure of the US' national debt is much higher than the official sum of $US13.4 trillion ($14.3 trillion) given by the Congressional Budget Office, according to analysts cited on Sunday by the New York Post.
In 1980, the debt - the accumulated red ink incurred by the Federal Government - was $US909 billion.
This represented some 33 per cent of gross domestic product, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Thirty years later, based on this year's second-quarter numbers, the CBO said the debt was $US13.4 trillion, or 92 per cent of GDP.
The CBO estimates the debt will be at $US16.5 trillion in two years, or 100.6 per cent of GDP.
But these numbers are incomplete.
They do not count off-budget obligations such as required spending for Social Security and Medicare, whose programs represent a balloon payment for the Government as more Americans retire and collect benefits.
Mr Kotlikoff says the debt is actually $US200 trillion.
Mr Moylan says the number is likely about $US60 trillion.
--Gregory Bresiger, US Government 'hiding true amount of debt', September 20, 2010--
http://www.news.com.au/business/brea...-1225926567256
Debt crisis looming as Washington hides the real fiscal cliff numbers
The US national debt is twenty times higher than is officially reported, approaching $222 trillion, and today’s children could soon be paying their parent’s debts, reputed American economist Laurence Kotlikoff told RT.
*According to Kotlikoff, the true extent of the growing fiscal gap has been concealed by Washington for years, a process that could ultimately result in debt disaster: China and Japan, top American money-lenders, could simply stop the cash flow.
Moreover, in the last few years the Federal Reserve has raised the base money cap from $800 billion to $3 trillion, creating the foundation for possible hyperinflation, Kotlikoff said. The whole situation remains unnoticed by the public while politicians try to avoid the problem, leaving it to future generations to reach a solution.
SOPHIE SHEVARDNADZE: Laurence Kotlikoff, Economics Professor at Boston University, pleasure to have you with us today.
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: It’s great to be with you and great to be in Russia.
SOPHIE SHEVARDNADZE: You’re the one who stated that America is rogue and in even worse state than Greece and Ireland. How so? What exactly do you mean by that?
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: Laurence Kotlikoff: Well, we economists look at all the bills the government has to pay, and in the US case we have enormous bills that have been kept off the books. They’re not the official debts, but they are very real. For example, paying me my social security benefits, my old-age pension – that’s a real obligation. It’s not part of the official government debt, but it’s very important because there are 78 million baby boomers who’re going to get their social security payments, and, in addition, medical payments from the government. If you look at all those payments, they are about $3 trillion a year. So we have these huge bills, nobody has thought about paying for them, and Congress and the presidents over the years have just focused on official debt, and basically have not told the public about these big bills.
SOPHIE SHEVARDNADZE: You said the amount of the fiscal gap in the United States is, in your estimation, $222 trillion. This is an astonishing number, which is like three times the world GDP. This is more than what the world makes.
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: Twenty times higher than the official debt in the hands of the public, which is $11 trillion. So if you add all the spending obligations into the distant future, and you compare them with all the taxes, and you include in the spending all the interest payments, and principal payments on the debt, and the official debt, you have $222 trillion of present value. Now, this is 12 per cent of GDP on an ongoing basis, and we need to get 12 per cent more in GDP either in tax increases or spending cuts in order to have the fiscal gap in zero.
We’re doing far too little, too late. It’s like operating on a person with cancer, and you say, “Well, there’s a big tumor here, we’re just going to take a little bit out today, and we’ll come back in five years, and we’ll take out some more.” But maybe in five years the patient is dead because the tumor got bigger. So this is why we are in worse shape than Greece – in Greece, it’s about 10 per cent of GDP they need on an ongoing basis, in Italy it’s about 5 per cent, in Germany it’s about 5 per cent. So when you look at it from this perspective, it’s a whole different story than if you look just at the official debt because these governments are making choices what to call official obligations, and what to call unofficial.
SOPHIE SHEVARDNADZE: So are they intentionally hiding the enormity of it?
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: They’re intentionally hiding this. They’ve been spending in our country six decades, running a massive Ponzi scheme, taking from young people, giving to old people, and then telling the young people, “Don’t worry, you’ll get yours when you’re old,” promising pensions, promising healthcare benefits. And you know this is happening in all countries. Russia has a pension system, but it doesn’t seem to be in better shape than ours in terms of paying for its benefits in the future.
SOPHIE SHEVARDNADZE: I mean, this number – $222 trillion – where exactly is this money going, who is spending it? I mean, certainly not the average American. What is it, 1 per cent of the superrich? The military?
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: Well, you’ve got a lot of old people now, they are getting very high benefits, about $30,000 per person. It’s scheduled to go up to $40,000 when I retire, which is about 15 years. So you see we’re just very generous to the old people in our country.
SOPHIE SHEVARDNADZE: What do you suggest: cut spending, raise taxes? They would be suicidal to any American president.
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: If we’re running the country, we have to act like adults because our main responsibility as adults is to make sure our kids have a good future. So we have to reduce the growth rate of the benefits to the elderly, and that requires being much more careful about how much we spend on healthcare because the healthcare benefits have been growing at twice the growth rate of per capita GDP for 40 years. So it can’t continue because it’s going to kill the country. We have a huge problem, it’s being hidden, it’s not being described and discussed and disclosed.
SOPHIE SHEVARDNADZE: You just mentioned that you need to take care of the future generations, ‘clash of generations’ was the term you used to describe what future awaits the American children paying up the debts of their fathers, but the United States when you look at it, really has lived on debt ever since WWII, and increasingly so in the past 30 years, and they have somehow managed not to collapse. Why do think that the new generation will manage it?
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: Well, over time, the official debt will become a bigger and bigger share of GDP, and at some point the Chinese and other people will stop lending us money, and our interest rates will go up dramatically. We’ll have a bond market collapse and, at that point, the deficit will get even bigger. The official debt will cumulate even more rapidly. And our government is also printing a lot of money to pay for these bills. So I see big problems, and they might not be in 30 years, they might be in five years or two years. The Chinese and other people start to understand how bad the situation is. And then we will be in situation of Greece where people won’t lend us money and then we will have to make big cuts and everybody will be injured.
SOPHIE SHEVARDNADZE: You mentioned China and Japan – they top the list of American lenders. It’s more than $1 trillion of US debts. Should they get used to the idea they are not getting their money back? They can’t just come out and say: “Hey, I want part of American GDP.”
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: If I were anybody – whether Chinese, Japanese or Russian – I would not be buying 30-year US government treasury bonds. They are yielding 3.5 per cent or something right now because we have printed so much money since 2007 – it’s really unbelievable. The Federal Reserve has tripled what is called ‘the base money’ – the basic money supply, the monetary base. It’s actually gone from $800 billion to about $3 trillion now. This is more than tripled. So we have the basis in place for more than tripling the price level right now. We have created the foundation for hyperinflation. And the baby-boomers have yet to retire. So right now 12 per cent of all the federal spending is based, being financed and paid for by just printing new dollars – that is what is going on.
So we are acting very much like a developing country in terms of actual finances. I have been concerned about this and writing about it and speaking about it since the late ’80s. The other economists said about it as well as some politicians, but it’s getting worse. It’s not like anybody’s actually looking carefully at these numbers. The politicians are looking at the official debt numbers and are not really discussing the magnitude of what is coming.
SOPHIE SHEVARDNADZE: A lot of people like you who are critical of the current American financial system have come out in the street. The Occupy Wall Street movement voiced their concerns and protests. Do you think a movement like this is actually capable or able to solve real issues or is it just a red herring?
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: Well, Occupy Wall Street was concerned about inequality, and they were concerned about what Wall Street was actually doing. And I think we need to radically change our financial system because we have too big problems. And this is true in every country including Russia. The traditional banking system, the model, is on a very high leverage. Banks borrow a lot of money, promise to repay and then there is opacity – they take the money and they do something with it but they are not telling you what they are doing with it. So people get very concerned at some points about whether the banks actually can repay. And then you can have runs on the bank, just overnight.
So it’s a very unstable situation when you promise people things and then you don’t show what you are doing with their money. And that’s what happening with Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns and Merrill Lynch – these companies went under one after the other. Everybody started worrying because they couldn’t see the assets. So what we need to do is get rid of this “faith-based banking”. We need to have no leverage and we have to have transparency. The government has to disclose what the assets are. The government has to do verification and disclosure.
We should have the government agency verify that somebody’s mortgage is actually a reasonable mortgage: that person has a job, that person has an income, that person’s house which is collateral to the mortgage has actually this value. So we should not have any liar loans. And we should also have all the banks become what are called ‘mutual funds’ which just sell shares to these funds. They take all the money on an equity basis. They don’t borrow money – they just sell shares of stock: the money comes in and then they buy these disclosed assets – the mortgages, for example. If you have equity-based finance and then if the mortgages don’t work out, somebody doesn’t repay, the shareholder takes a loss, but the financial intermediary, which is a mutual fund, never fails and never goes bankrupt. So you have a banking system that can never fail. If it’s made of equity finance and mutual funds who are buying transparent fully-disclosed assets – that’s what we need.
The protesters of Wall Street didn’t know what they wanted, but this is what they need. Now what we need is also protesters among the young about their fiscal treatment – that’s a different thing.
SOPHIE SHEVARDNADZE: That’s the thing. The fiscal cliff and the possibility of America defaulting that we hear a lot around us – is this symptomatic agony or is it maybe artificial political crisis?
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: I think the young people don’t fully understand how they are being treated. In the debates, in the entire campaign, not one of these two candidates talked about the magnitude of the problem. President Obama said that our social security system, our basic government pension system has a small problem that needs to be tweaked, is what he said. If you actually look at the system and at the trustees report, the thing is 31 per cent underfinanced. So it’s not a small problem. According even to social security actuaries. It’s a huge problem. So he is on a different planet from the reality.
Romney felt we could just lower taxes and get more revenue. So he was equally, you know, crazy on this stuff. And unfortunately we have children whose future is at stake here. And they are also under a lot of pressure in other ways because they are competing with other people all over the world and they are also competing with these new smart machines that are taking people’s jobs away. So in our country when you go to a grocery store or a drug store the checkout person is a machine: there is nobody working there, it’s just a machine these days. There is actually maybe one person to help you use the machine. And that replaced a lot of jobs, so we have young people who are having troubles finding jobs. Even college graduates are having trouble.
SOPHIE SHEVARDNADZE: Laurence Kotlikoff, thank you very much for a very interesting insight you gave us on the ongoing financial crisis and it’s great to have you with us again.
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: My pleasure. Thank you.
RT - Interview
Host Sophie Shevardnadze interviews Laurence Jacob Kotlikoff
February 05, 2013
http://rt.com/usa/news/debt-crisis-us-kotlikoff-535
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Kotlikoff
(.MP4 Format)
http://rt.com/files/usa/news/debt-cr...48_int.mxf.mp4
Or:
(.AVI Format)
/*****ary05-2013.mp4
"One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, 'My son, the battle is bet ween two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.'
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: 'Which wolf wins?'
The old Cherokee simply replied, ‘The one you feed.’"
--The Rev. Kealahou C. Alika, Keawala‘i Congregational Church, United Church of Christ (USA), January 20, 2008--
http://www.keawalai.org/sermons/01-20-2008.html
Financial Crisis and Social Friction
Part Three
BNN - Business News Network
Host Howard Green
Ian Brown
Thomas H. Bender
John William Michael Bliss
March 19, 2009
http://www.bnn.ca
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Brown_(journalist)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_H._Bender
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bliss
(Flash Video)
http://watch.bnn.ca/headline/march-2...09/#clip151906
Or:
(.AVI Format)
/*****rch19-2009.avi
"For a riot to begin, it is necessary but not sufficient that there be many people who want to riot and who believe that others want to riot too. One more hurdle has to be overcome. Even in an unstable gathering, the first perpetrator of a misdemeanor is at risk if the police are willing and able to zero in on him. Thus, someone has to serve as a catalyst–a sort of entrepreneur to get things going–in Buford’s account usually by breaking a window (a signal that can be heard by many who do not see it).
In civil rights, anti-war or anti-abortion marches, it is probably pretty common to find participants eager to expose themselves to arrest in exchange for the chance to optimize the desired impact of their protest. This sort of self-sacrifice is certainly rare in ordinary riots, where potential rioters’ behavior is consistent, we suppose, with something like the following calculation: “If somebody else gets the riot started, I can participate without much risk. But if I stick my neck out and nobody follows, I’ll be the only one arrested. So I’ll wait for somebody else to go first.” If every would-be rioter reasoned thus, nobody would cast the first stone, and the riot would not ignite. This is a typical free-rider problem, as economists have called it. It is usually sufficient to prevent riots from occurring, even where there is a plentiful supply of disposed participants. Riots await events that surmount the free rider problem."
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj14n1-13.html
"Have you ever though about the meaning of the phrase, "law enforcement agency," the phrase used to identify police of various kinds? If you have, you surely realize that it makes no sense. Police do not enforce, that is, make people obey, the law. In fact, police have nothing to do until the law has been broken. A society of lawful people needs no police, and the more police a society needs, the more lawless it is. Police are not agents of order; they are agents of retribution. And lawlessness in a society is not an indictment of people, it is an indictment of government. A well governed, well ordered society needs no police or guard workers."
--Professor John Kozy, Nation of Laws and Lawlessness: America is Policing Itself and the World, April 16, 2010--
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=18703
Archive Reference: On Topic
U.S. Justice: Police Force Militarized
Articles and Commentaries by various writers and media pundits.
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Justice-PoliceForceMilitarizedMarch12-2012.html
"Get off this estate."
"What for?"
"Because it's mine."
"Where did you get it?"
"From my father."
"Where did he get it?"
"From his father."
"And where did he get it?"
"He fought for it."
"Well, I'll fight you for it."
--Carl Sandburg--
Can anyone provide an example in history and where the Rich Folks ever gave anything to the Poor Folks without the threat of violence?
Does anybody really think that Roosevelt introduced the "New Deal" because it was "Kind To Animal Week"?
"It's worth remembering that America has faced moments like this before and those moments have produced some of the most important progressive victories in the history of this country.
Now, I want to return, I want to bring our minds back to another moment of profound crisis after the market crash of 1929. That was the moment that created the New Deal.
And, it didn't happen because FDR was a great guy. It happened because people in this country were so radicalized, were so determined, were so organized, that he was able to sell the new deal to the elites as a compromise because the alternative was revolution."
--Naomi Klein, National Conference for Media reform, June 07, 2008--
Without the threat of violence, the Ruling Class ignores you.
The Machine" Or How To Demoralize A Movement
"....The organizers have misunderstood the messages of Gandhi and King. They are trying to make resistance harmless and turn it into a circus sideshow. Both violent and nonviolent tactics are necessary to end the corporate ownership of our government."
Members of the liberal intelligentsia, the liberal elite, are often heard to say things like "violence begets violence" or "if you use violence against exploiters, you become like the exploiter". Where they got such notions no one seems to know. They probably picked them up on sale at the same place where they got the ideas that the nonviolent antiwar demonstrations of the 60s and 70s had something to do with ending the Vietnam War or that the nonviolent demonstrations of Martin Luther King resulted in the civil rights legislation of the 60s. The same superstore of revised history also sells an interesting yarn about how the nonviolent demonstrations of Mohandas Gandhi brought about Indian independence.
By John A. Murphy
October 07, 2011
http://wrongkindofgreen.org/2011/10/07/stop-the-machine-or-how-to-demoralize-a-movement
http://dailyreckoning.com/wp-content...11-01-11-2.gif
http://dailyreckoning.com/wp-content...11-01-11-3.gif
20-year-old Elizabeth Nichols
A police officer deployed pepper spray at SW Yamhill, between the JP Morgan Chase bank and Pioneer Courthouse Square. The photo was taken from the southeast corner of the square, looking toward the intersection of 6th and Yamhill after a day of marching through downtown Portland, Ore., by Occupy Portland participants.
By Randy L. Rasmussen
The Oregonian
November 17, 2011
http://media.oregonlive.com/oregonia...8-standard.jpg
http://photos.oregonlive.com/oregoni...d_n17_237.html
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/natio...accident/45186
UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike uses pepper spray to move Occupy UC Davis protesters who were blocking officers' attempts to remove arrested protesters from the Quad on Friday afternoon.
By Wayne Tilcock
Enterprise photo
November 18, 2011
http://davisenterprise.s3-website-us...OccupyUCD3.jpg
http://www.davisenterprise.com/media...ent/occupyucd3
"Kind words and a machine gun will get you more than kind words alone."
--Al Capone--
Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
--Gilligan's Island, episode #6, "President Gilligan"--
Quiz: What kind of Anarchist are you?
By BiffoTheBear
http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=37281
It's about demographics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
There are alot of young people in our society. Not as many as there was during the 60's and 70's .... but the largest group of young people since then. Employment prospects for young people is the worst it has been since 1948 and becoming worse.
That is the problem.
In a sense, it could very easily become Kent State overnight. Schools and campuses could be taken over by activists just like during the 60's and 70's.
Year - Unemployment Rate
1929 - 3.2%
1930 - 8.7%
1931 - 15.9%
1932 - 23.6%
1933 - 24.9%
1934 - 21.7%
1935 - 20.1%
1936 - 16.9%
Young people today will be named as "Anti-Semetic Terrorists" simply because many Jewish Persons are gainfully employed on Wall Street.
The Muppets backlash has begun
October 21, 2011
Yes, there always going to be rich and poor. But we used to live in country where rich owned factory and make 30 times what factory worked make. Now we live in country where rich make money by lying about value of derivative bonds and make 3000 times what factory worker would make if factories hadn't all moved to China.
Capitalism great system. We won Cold War because people behind Iron Curtain look over wall, and see how much more plentiful and delicious cookies are in West, and how we have choice of different bakeries, not just state-owned one.
It great system. It got us out of Depression, won WWII, built middle class, built country's infrastructure from highways to Hoover Dam to Oreo factory to electrifying rural South. It system that reward hard work and fair play, and everyone do fair share and everyone benefit. Rich get richer, poor get richer, everyone happy. It great system.
Then after Reagan, Republicans decide to make number one priority destroying that system. Now we have system where richest Americans ones who find ways to game system - your friends on Wall Street - and poorest Americans ones who thought working hard would get them American dream, when in fact it get them pink slip when job outsourced to 10-year-old in Mumbai slum. And corporations have more influence over government than people (or monsters).
It not about rich people having more money. It about how they got money. It about how they take opportunity away from rest of us, for sake of having more money. It how they willing to take risks that destroy economy - knowing full well that what could and would happen - putting millions out of work, while creating nothing of value, and all the while crowing that they John Galt, creating wealth for everyone.
That what the soul-searching about. When Liberals run country for 30 years following New Deal, American economy double in size, and wages double along with it. That fair. When Conservatives run country for 30 years following Reagan, American economy double again, and wages stay flat. What happen to our share of money? All of it go to richest 1%. That not "there always going to be rich people". That unfair system. That why we upset. That what Occupy Sesame Street about.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-m...ment-340869756
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/...nster_offe.php
Priceless: How The Federal Reserve Bought The Economics Profession
By Ryan Grim
September 07, 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/07/priceless-how-the-federal_n_278805.html
Money Talks
If you cover Wall Street, should you take Wall Street speaking fees?
By Paul Starobin
March-April 2012 Issue
http://www.cjr.org/feature/money_talks_marchapril2012.php
JPMorgan Chase Acquires Bear Stearns In Tedious-To-Read News Article
As a volatile market reacts to news of the Bear Stearns fire-sale deal with a surge in stock prices but reduced bond yield, officers from JPMorgan Chase announced Monday that they were close to finalizing plans to purchase the securities giant in an incredibly complex series of financial maneuvers and obscure legal jargon that can only be described in the most mind-numbingly dense and unreadable way. Successfully adding yet another infuriating block of text to an already indecipherable paragraph, some investors said they hoped to stave off bankruptcy for Bear Stearns, which, during last year's impossible-to-write-about mortgage crisis, saw its value depreciate almost as quickly as readers' interest in this story. "Critics on the equity side have no economic standing because the deal valuation is based on intrinsic pricing models," said analyst Jack Pinard, only further bogging down the news for anyone who might be remotely interested in grasping what the fuck is going on. While speculation spread on Wall Street that shareholders might angle to boost the selling price beyond JP Morgan's very low but federally guaranteed bid, others claimed to be absolutely amazed that you even made it to the end of this sentence.
March 21, 2008
http://www.theonion.com/articles/jpm...edioustor,6076
Modern Monetary Theory
Max Keiser talks to Dr. Michael Hudson about Modern Monetary Theory at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and about the Chicago Boys gutting the economic competition, literally.
Post-Keynesian economist
RT - The Keiser Report
Host Max Keiser interviews Michael Hudson
March 08, 2012
(Flash Video)
http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report...259-max-keiser
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...ian_economists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago...l_of_economics
http://michael-hudson.com/2012/02/mm...cb-alternative
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hudson_(economist)
http://cas.umkc.edu/econ/economics/f...udsonmain.html
http://www.chicagobooth.edu
(.MP4 format)
http://rt.com/files/programs/keiser-...report-259.mp4
Credit Rating Agencies:
At the very core of the "U.S. Capitalist System" are the credit rating agencies. Standard and Poor or Moody's and The Clowns.
For the Financial System to garner any faith or confidence, the Credit Rating Agencies must remain pure as snow. Above reproach. All faith and confidence towards the U.S. Capitalist system is built upon the "Saintly" activities and oversight by Standard and Poor or Moody's and The Clowns.
The Credit Rating Agencies have been found to have actively participated and actively promoted Worthless Paper Derivatives (600 Trillion Dollars Of Toxic Assets were rated as Triple A Credit Risk) and which in turn were then "Insured" or "Guaranteed" by the U.S. Government/Taxpayer.
Only these three "Privately Owned" Commercial Rating Corporations are allowed to distribute government bonds. This fact alone would explain that Capitalism is for the very few. No competition allowed in this type of work. Hundreds of other companies have asked the SEC to be licenced and the SEC refused. A monopy. Check-Out who owns these three rating agencies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agency
Archive Reference: On Topic
U.S. Finance: Credit Rating Agencies
Articles and Commentaries by various writers and media pundits.
April 27, 2008 --- December 14, 2011
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Finance-CreditRatingAgencies-01-April27-2008--December14-2011.html
Rating the raters
Why haven’t the credit rating agencies paid any price for their involvement in the 2007 financial crisis? Are they being too severe on the EU members? Is it a way to make up for their fatal mistakes? Or can they be trusted when rating the sovereign debt as they’re not paid for it? Is there a way to regulate them without undermining their independence?
RT - CorssTalk
Host Peter Lavelle interviews Richard Eskow, Mark A. Calabria and Gary Witt
http://institute.ourfuture.org/users/new-4468
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_A._Calabria
http://fox.temple.edu/directory/profile/gwitt
December 14, 2011
http://rt.com/programs/crosstalk/crisis-raters-moody-standard
(.MP4 Format)
http://rt.com/files/programs/crosstalk/crisis-raters-moody-standard/lisbon-shout-slogans-protest.mp4
Barclays has been fined $450 million for trying to manipulate a key bank interest rate which influences the cost of loans and mortgages.
A financial crime wave
In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss ‘big boys’ and carding crimes, marmite pots and Olympic has-beens, wash trades and perfect games. In the second half of the show Max talks to former commodities analyst and blogger, Michael Krieger, about the meaning of the escalating and blatant financial crime wave.
RT - Keiser Report
Hosts Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert interview Michael Krieger
June 30, 2012
http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report...308-max-keiser
http://www.libertyblitzkrieg.com
http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr6289-12
http://www.scmagazine.com.au/News/30...ime-tools.aspx
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/r...00-of-the-time
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/business/12bank.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Koufax
(.MP4 Format)
http://rt.com/files/programs/keiser-...0af18d6.dv.mp4
Facebook's IPO Bombs, while "Hot" Tech Company's Cook the Books!
All eyes seemed to be on Facebook's IPO today. But we look at some of these hyped up social media and gaming companies that have gone public and ask if they can get away with some choose-your-own-adventure accounting methods to boost profits.
And back in March, our futures veteran Mark Melin told us MF Global was worth more to some entities dead than alive. Well now we know how much its carcass is worth to the legal team winding down the estate -- the team led by the trustee and former FBI director Louis Freeh. They've reportedly racked up $25 million in fees! Customers are reportedly upset, as their money is still missing. We'll talk about some possible MF Global enablers that seem to be getting a free pass from regulators and investigators: the auditors. Plus, the Financial Times reports JP Morgan's chief investment office has built up positions totaling more than $100 billion in complex risky bonds - the types at the center of the 2008 crisis. This is in addition to the positions in credit derivatives that led to the $2 billion dollar trading loss we learned about last week. Has the bank's reputation until now as an "excellent risk manager" allowed it to escape scrutiny when taking these risks? We discuss all of this with Francine McKenna on this episode of Capital Account. McKenna is author of the blog re: The Auditors, and a columnist for Forbes and American Banker.
----
Facebook Auditor Ernst & Young (EY)
Business Model is a network to sell your data to advertisers.
Value Recognition identical at 4 Social Networking companies.
Facebook uses exact same accounting policies as Zynga does.
Conflict of interest with Ernst & Young creating and then
Auditing their own policies and procedures.
Zynga is twelve percent of Facebook's revenues.
Zynga is Social Gaming not just not just gaming like gambling or casino like casino operations. And it is not just social like Facebook.
Should be the same accounting rules in place as AOL. Attract users and then sell advertising against it.
New accounting term "Non-GAAP Metrics"
Non-GAAP. Computations used to report corporate income and earnings that are not defined by generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) are described as non-GAAP metrics.
These measures, including core earnings, free cash flow, pro forma earnings, operating earnings, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), provide useful financial information about individual companies.
But lack of standardization in these calculations, plus the potential for creative accounting, make it difficult to draw relevant comparisons among companies or draw meaningful conclusions from these statistics.
http://financial-dictionary.thefreed...y.com/Non-GAAP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General...ing_principles
Facebook generates almost all of Zynga's revenues.
More like a wholly owned subsiduary or an off balance sheet special purpose vehicle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_%26_Young
Facebook, Groupon, Zynga and Google are audited by Ernst & Young.
http://www.groupon.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga
PricewaterhouseCoopers - PWC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PricewaterhouseCoopers
MF Global
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MF_Global
PriceWaterhouseCoopers has been invoved with JP Morgan since the 1960's
RT - Capital Account
Host Lauren Lyster interviews Francine McKenna
May 18, 2012
http://rt.com/programs/capital-account
http://retheauditors.com
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1PWlUlAFAk
Or:
/*****May18-2012.avi
Archive Reference: On Topic
U.S. Finance: R.I.P. : The Experts - 1929 - 2008
Articles and Commentaries by various writers and media pundits.
November 14 2008 --- May 28 2009
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Finance-FinancialExperts-01-November14-2008--May28-2009.html
Where were the rating agencies?
S&P: Moody's : Fitch ?
The rating service employees knew they were acting fraudulently.
Employees at Moody's Investors Service told executives that issuing dubious creditworthy ratings to mortgage-backed securities made it appear they were incompetent or "sold our soul to the devil for revenue,'' according to e-mails obtained by U.S. House investigators.
The Securities and Exchange Commission in a July report found the credit-rating companies improperly managed conflicts of interest and violated internal procedures in granting top rankings to mortgage bonds.
An e-mail that a S&P employee wrote to a co-worker in 2006, obtained by committee investigators, said, "Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters.''
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ac8Bkp_7F4Rc
"These errors make us look either incompetent at credit analysis or like we sold our soul to the devil for revenue, or a little bit of both."
--A Moody’s managing director responding anonymously to an internal management survey, September 2007--
Ratings Agencies "Sold Their Soul" . . . Joining Wall Street and the Government
This instant message exchange between two unidentified Standard & Poor's officials about a mortgage-backed security deal ... :
Official #1: Btw (by the way) that deal is ridiculous.
Official #2: I know right...model def (definitely) does not capture half the risk.
Official #1: We should not be rating it.
Official #2: We rate every deal. It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.
A former executive of Moody's says conflicts of interest got in the way of rating agencies properly valuing mortgage backed securities.
Former Managing Director Jerome Fons, who worked at Moody's until August of 2007, says Moody's was focused on "maxmizing revenues," leading it to make the firm more "issuer friendly."
October 22, 2008
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/10/ratings-agencies-come-under-fire-but.html
This program discussed the Senate Hearings:
Credit and Credibility
What role did the credit rating agencies play in the current economic crisis? This week, a former managing director at Standard & Poor's speaks out on U.S. television for the first time about how he was pressured to compromise standards in a push for profits. Frank Raiter reveals what was really going on behind closed doors at the credit rating agencies the public relies on to evaluate the safety of their investments.
"During this period, profit was primary; analytics were secondary," Raiter tells NOW Senior Correspondent Maria Hinojosa.
Who was watching the watchers? Surprising new revelations about the economic debacle, this week on NOW.
PBS NOW
Host David Brancaccio
Correspondent Maria Hinojosa
November 21, 2008
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/446/index.html
Debt Watchdogs: Tamed or Caught Napping?
By Gretchen Morgenson
December 07, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/business/07rating.html
Rating Agencies
Committee Holds Hearing on the Credit Rating Agencies and the Financial Crisis
Corporate Accountability
Chairman Henry A. Waxman
October 22, 2008
http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=2250
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/446/index.html
(Flash Video)
http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=2258
Moody’s Says Don’t Inhale the Smoke It’s Puffing
By Jonathan Weil
March 12, 2009
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aQzRB3sWOivE
.... WILLIAM K. BLACK: IndyMac specialized in making liars' loans. In 2006 alone, it sold $80 billion dollars of liars' loans to other companies. $80 billion.
BILL MOYERS: And was this happening exclusively in this sub-prime mortgage business?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: No, and that's a big part of the story as well. Even prime loans began to have non-verification. Even Ronald Reagan, you know, said, "Trust, but verify." They just gutted the verification process. We know that will produce enormous fraud, under economic theory, criminology theory, and two thousand years of life experience.
BILL MOYERS: Is it possible that these complex instruments were deliberately created so swindlers could exploit them?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Oh, absolutely. This stuff, the exotic stuff that you're talking about was created out of things like liars' loans, that were known to be extraordinarily bad. And now it was getting triple-A ratings. Now a triple-A rating is supposed to mean there is zero credit risk. So you take something that not only has significant, it has crushing risk. That's why it's toxic. And you create this fiction that it has zero risk. That itself, of course, is a fraudulent exercise. And again, there was nobody looking, during the Bush years. So finally, only a year ago, we started to have a Congressional investigation of some of these rating agencies, and it's scandalous what came out. What we know now is that the rating agencies never looked at a single loan file. When they finally did look, after the markets had completely collapsed, they found, and I'm quoting Fitch, the smallest of the rating agencies, "the results were disconcerting, in that there was the appearance of fraud in nearly every file we examined."
BILL MOYERS: So if your assumption is correct, your evidence is sound, the bank, the lending company, created a fraud. And the ratings agency that is supposed to test the value of these assets knowingly entered into the fraud. Both parties are committing fraud by intention.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Right, and the investment banker that — we call it pooling — puts together these bad mortgages, these liars' loans, and creates the toxic waste of these derivatives. All of them do that. And then they sell it to the world and the world just thinks because it has a triple-A rating it must actually be safe. Well, instead, there are 60 and 80 percent losses on these things, because of course they, in reality, are toxic waste.
BILL MOYERS: You're describing what Bernie Madoff did to a limited number of people. But you're saying it's systemic, a systemic Ponzi scheme.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Oh, Bernie was a piker. He doesn't even get into the front ranks of a Ponzi scheme...
BILL MOYERS: But you're saying our system became a Ponzi scheme.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Our system...
BILL MOYERS: Our financial system...
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Became a Ponzi scheme. Everybody was buying a pig in the poke. But they were buying a pig in the poke with a pretty pink ribbon, and the pink ribbon said, "Triple-A."
BILL MOYERS: Is there a law against liars' loans?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Not directly, but there, of course, many laws against fraud, and liars' loans are fraudulent.
BILL MOYERS: Because...
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Because they're not going to be repaid and because they had false representations. They involve deceit, which is the essence of fraud.
BILL MOYERS: Yeah. Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.
BILL MOYERS: You are.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely, because they are scared to death. All right? They're scared to death of a collapse. They're afraid that if they admit the truth, that many of the large banks are insolvent.....
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/transcript1.html
What about the property appraisers and their fraudulent appraisals?
http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/luap/articles/entry/1264
Insider Trading Defendants and Cases Charged Since August 2009
Defendant Charged Status
May 31, 2011
Total Charged: 49
Total Convicted: 39
Total Sentenced: 8
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/05/...trial-to-begin
Prosecuting Wall Street
Two high-ranking financial whistleblowers say they tried to warn their superiors about defective and even fraudulent mortgages. So why haven't the companies or their executives been prosecuted?
CBS - 60 Minutes
Correspondent: Steve Kroft
December 04, 2011
Transcript:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57336042/prosecuting-wall-street
(Flash Video)
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7390540n
/*****
Congressional Staffers Gain From Trading in Stocks
By Brody Mullins, tom McGinty and Jason Zweig
October 11, 2010
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703431604575522434188603198.html
In five of our 12 Patchwork Nation county types, 50 percent or fewer of the households have stock portfolios of any kind, including retirement accounts. Those county types are the socially conservative Evangelical Epicenters (14.6 million people), heavily Latino Immigration Nation (18.8 million), heavily black Minority Central (13.3 million), small town Service Worker Centers (30.6 million) and LDS adherent-filled Mormon Outposts (1.8 million).
http://patchworknation.org/communiti...cal-epicenters
http://patchworknation.org/communiti...gration-nation
http://patchworknation.org/communities/minority-central
http://patchworknation.org/communities/mormon-outposts
Madoff Whistleblower Tells KWN Banks Stealing From Pensions
In this King World News exclusive interview, Harry Markopolos the Whistleblower who brought down Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme reached out to KWN with the latest fraud he and his team have uncovered. Markopolos stated, “The Bank of New York is going to go down, Eric. Between Bank of New York Mellon and State Street, these two institutions have stolen between $6 to $10 billion from tens of millions of Americans retirement savings accounts. It’s been a hell of a crime spree for the bank, but now they are being brought to justice.”
Markopolos also told KWN, “The New York Attorney General filed suit on Tuesday (against Bank of New York Mellon) for stealing money from pension funds on currency transactions. This theft has been from tens of millions of Americans, policemen, firemen, librarians, municipal workers, judges and the list goes on and on and they’ve been doing it for decades.
At this pace Harry Markopolos and his team are fast becoming synonymous with fighting corruption and crime on a massive scale. Who knows, they may be this centuries new “Elliott Ness” and legendary team of law enforcement agents nicknamed “The Untouchables.”
Harry Markopolos is a Certified Fraud Examiner and CEO of Boston Security Analysts Society. Mr. Markopolos investigates fraud full-time against Fortune 500 companies in the financial services and health care industries. He and his team bring fraud cases to the U.S. Department of Justice, Internal Revenue Service, and various state attorney generals under existing whistleblower programs.
Author of “No One Would Listen”- David Einhorn from Greenlight Capital wrote the foreword for Mr. Markopolos’ new book and called Harry a hero for what he did.
----
In a King World News exclusive interview, the man who brought down Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme informed KWN, “Bank of New York is going to go down, Eric. Between Bank of New York Mellon and State Street, these two institutions have stolen between $6 to $10 billion from tens of millions of Americans retirement savings accounts. It’s been a hell of a crime spree for the bank, but now they are being brought to justice.”
Harry Markopolos has lead the team that spearheaded this investigation from the beginning. Harry and his team were the first to expose this fraud. Markopolos also told KWN, “The New York Attorney General filed suit on Tuesday (against Bank of New York Mellon) for stealing money from pension funds on currency transactions. This theft has been from tens of millions of Americans, policemen, firemen, librarians, municipal workers, judges and the list goes on and on and they’ve been doing it for decades.
It’s clear that the banks executives, their strategy is we have to lie to maintain the fraud. We can’t admit to our board how much we stole...of course we’d be fired. They are saying the charges are baseless and they are going to defend them vigorously. Well, talk is cheap. If they are going to defend them there is only one place to defend those cases and that is before a jury and they refuse to set trial dates. The government is ready for trial tomorrow. Why won’t the bank agree to trial dates if they are so innocent? The answer is they are not so innocent.
Every day, every time a state pension fund traded, the bank would steel approximately three tenths of one percent from every transaction. As an example, every time a pension fund bought a currency what the Bank of New York would do is look back twenty hours and assign all of the state pension funds purchase transactions at the high of the day.
Every time a state pension fund tried to sell a currency they would assign them a price at the lows of the day and the bank would pocket the difference. The bank has done this for not years, but for decades, every business day for decades. This bank didn’t learn to steal just ten years ago, they’ve been doing it for many decades.
I’m certain that the clients are concerned and calling the bank. If they read the complaints by the Florida Attorney General, by the Virginia Attorney General, by the New York Attorney General and by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Manhattan, if they read the emails and look at the math and look at how much was stolen, they would realize that they too are victims. They would have cause for concern and pull their accounts from the Bank of New York....
“I would expect the shareholders to be filing class action suits once they realize the extent of the fraud. I’m thinking that if Al-Qaeda had done this to Americans, Seal Team 6 would be dropping in, but the banks did this. So maybe law enforcement needs to drop into those corporate board rooms and treat them like Seal Team 6 treated Osama Bin Laden.
My whistleblowers tell me this is an industrywide practice and that all of the custody banks do it. So basically, anybody who has a retirement account that’s invested in international assets, whether it be bonds or stocks, has been a victim of this scheme and they need to get their money back.”
Markopolos also discussed how Americans are ripped off by banks when they travel, “Every American who travels overseas is a victim of foreign currency fraud. There is a bank cartel out there and they charge 3% foreign exchange transaction fees. They are charging people one hundred times more than what it costs them to trade foreign exchange. So they are stealing from you every day, in every way.
But finally, I think, thanks to these cases that we have against Bank of New York and State Street, you are seeing two firms break away from cartel pricing. I would like to congratulate them. Capital One offers zero foreign transaction fees, so they are treating you honestly.
The other one that is treating you honestly is American Express for the platinum and black card holders, there are no foreign currency fees. The rest of the credit card companies are out there to steal from you.”
Harry Markopolos is a national hero for breaking open the $65 billion Madoff Ponzi scheme and his internationally televised Congressional testimony which blasted the SEC.
Host Eric King interviews Harry M. Markopolos
October 06, 2011
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/10/6_Madoff_Whistleblower_Tells_KWN_Banks_Stealing_From_Pensions.html
http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2011/10/8_Harry_M._Markopolos.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Markopolos
Goldman left investors holding its subprime bag
Real News Network
Host Paul Jay interviews Greg Gordon
November 02, 2009
Transcript:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4410
(Flash Video)
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4410
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/11/03/77844/goldman-left-foreign-investors.html
Or:
(.MP4 Format)
http://videos.therealnews.com/gordoninv1030pt3_med.mp4
Will Goldman Sachs Exec fallout change Wall Street?
On Wednesday a resentful executive director at Goldman Sachs publicized his last day with the company in an op-ed in the New York Times. Greg Smith had been with Sachs for nearly 12 years and in the op-ed the former executive said, "I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it." Peter Schiff, president at Euro Pacific Capital, gives us his take on the brutal fallout of the op-ed.
RT
Host Elizabeth Wahl interviews Peter David Schiff
March 15, 2012
http://rt.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schiff
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/op...man-sachs.html
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVCHU_Zq5ZQ
Or:
(.MP4 Format)
http://www.pair-annoyed.com:9090/NEW...rch15-2012.mp4
http://www.flickr.com/photos/james_h_leblanc/3586998600
Our financial system is a "Religion" only.
It is all a myth.
This says it all ....
U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion
The Onion Magazine - Satire
February 16, 2010
The U.S. economy ceased to function this week after unexpected existential remarks by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke shocked Americans into realizing that money is, in fact, just a meaningless and intangible social construct.
What began as a routine report before the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday ended with Bernanke passionately disavowing the entire concept of currency, and negating in an instant the very foundation of the world's largest economy.
"Though raising interest rates is unlikely at the moment, the Fed will of course act appropriately if we…if we…" said Bernanke, who then paused for a moment, looked down at his prepared statement, and shook his head in utter disbelief. "You know what? It doesn't matter. None of this—this so-called 'money'—really matters at all."
"It's just an illusion," a wide-eyed Bernanke added as he removed bills from his wallet and slowly spread them out before him. "Just look at it: Meaningless pieces of paper with numbers printed on them. Worthless."
According to witnesses, Finance Committee members sat in thunderstruck silence for several moments until Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) finally shouted out, "Oh my God, he's right. It's all a mirage. All of it—the money, our whole economy—it's all a lie!"
Screams then filled the Senate Chamber as lawmakers and members of the press ran for the exits, leaving in their wake aisles littered with the remains of torn currency.
As news of the nation's collectively held delusion spread, the economy ground to a halt, with dumbfounded citizens everywhere walking out on their jobs as they contemplated the little green drawings of buildings and dead white men they once used to measure their adequacy and importance as human beings.
At the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday morning's opening bell echoed across a silent floor as the few traders who arrived for work out of habit looked up blankly at the meaningless scrolling numbers on the flashing screens above.
"I've spent 25 years in this room yelling 'Buy, buy! Sell, sell!' and for what?" longtime trader Michael Palermo said. "All I've done is move arbitrary designations of wealth from one column to another, wasting my life chasing this unattainable hallucination of wealth."
"What a cruel cosmic joke," he added. "I'm going home to hug my daughter."
Sources at the White House said President Obama was "still trying to get his head around all this" and was in seclusion with his coin collection, muttering "it's just metal, it's just metal" over and over again.
"The president will be making a statement very soon," press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters. "At the moment, though, his mind is just too blown to comment."
A few U.S. banks have remained open, though most teller windows are unmanned due to a lack of interest in transactions involving mere scraps of paper or, worse, decimal points and computer data signifying mere scraps of paper. At a Bank of America branch in Spokane, WA, curious former customers wandered aimlessly through a large empty vault, while several would-be robbers of a Chase bank in Columbus, OH reportedly put their guns down and exited the building hand in hand with security guards, laughing over the inherent absurdity of the idea of $100 bills.
Likewise, the real estate industry has all but vanished, with mortgage lenders seeing no reason to stop people from reclaiming their foreclosed-upon homes.
"I don't even know what we were thinking in the first place," said former banker Nathan Collins of Brandon, MS, as he jimmyed open a door to allow a single mother and her five children to move back into their house. "A bunch of people sign a bunch of papers, and now this family has no place to live? That's just plain ludicrous."
The realization that money is nothing more than an elaborate head game seems to have penetrated the entire country: In Wilmington, DE, for instance, a collection agent reportedly broke down in joyful sobs when he informed a woman on the other end of the phone that he had absolutely no reason to harass her anymore, as her Discover Card debt was no longer comprehensible.
For some Americans, the fog of disbelief surrounding the nation's epiphany has begun to lift, with many building new lives free from the illusion of money.
"It's back to basics for me," Bernard Polk of Waverly, OH said. "I'm going to till the soil for my own sustenance and get anything else I need by bartering. If I want milk, I'll pay for it in tomatoes. If need a new hoe, I'll pay for it in lettuce."
When asked, hypothetically, how he would pay for complicated life-saving surgery for a loved one, Polk seemed uncertain.
"That's a lot of vegetables, isn't it?" he said.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/us-...zes-money,2912
Money is memory
This paper examines the sets of feasible allocations in a large class of economic environments in which commitment is impossible (following Myerson, the standard definition of feasibility is adapted to take account of the lack of commitment). The environments feature either memory or money. Memory is defined as knowledge on the part of an agent of the full histories of all agents with whom he has had direct or indirect contact in the past. Money is defined as an object that does not enter utility or production functions, and is available in fixed supply. The main proposition is that any allocation that is feasible in an environment with money is also feasible in the same environment with memory. Depending on the environment, the converse may or may not be true. Hence, from a technological point of view, money is equivalent to a primitive form of memory
By Narayana Kocherlakota
1996
http://journalogy.net/Publication/36448317/money-is-memory
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/12/bitcoin-is-ludicrous-but-it-tells-us-something-important-about-the-nature-of-money
http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoins-have-no-value-2013-4
http://www.theonion.com/articles/us-economy-grinds-to-halt-as-nation-realizes-money,2912
(PDF Document)
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr218.pdf
[B]Or:[/B]
/*****US-Finance-NarayanaKocherlakota-MoneyIsMemory1996.pdf
Archive Reference: On Topic
U.S. Finance: Insider Trading
Articles and Commentaries by various writers and media pundits.
October 21, 2009 --- March 29, 2013
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Finance-InsiderTrading-October21-2009--March29-2013.html
Archive Reference: On Topic
--- Manipulation Of Interbank Libor Rates
--- Intercapital - ICAP : London-Based Firm Manipulate ISDAfix - Interest-Rate Swaps
--- Inside The Global Offshore Money Maze
--- The Myth Of The Populist Stock Market
Articles and Commentaries by various writers and media pundits.
Last Updated: April 27, 2013
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Finance-Manipulate-StockMarkets-Apri27-2013.html
Somebody is found to have 134 billion dollars in U.S. "Financial Instruments" and not investigated.
Economic Apocalypse
$134 Billion in U.S. Bonds Seized In Chiasso, Italy
1% of U.S. GDP
FOX News 134 Billion Dollar in US Bond seized at Italian border
Border guards in Chiasso see plenty of smugglers and plenty of false-bottomed suitcases, but no one in the town, which straddles the Italian-Swiss frontier, had ever seen anything like this. Trussed up in front of the police in the train station were two Japanese men, and beside them a suitcase with a booty unlike any other. Concealed at the bottom of the bag were some rather incredible sheets of paper. The documents were apparently dollar-denominated US government bonds with a face value of a staggering $134bn (£81bn).
How on earth did these two men, who at first refused to identify themselves, come to be there, trying to ride the train into Switzerland carrying bonds worth more than the gross domestic product of Singapore? If the bonds were genuine, the pair would have been America's fourth-biggest creditor, ahead of the UK and just behind Russia. No sooner had the story leaked out from the Italian lakes region last week than it sparked a panoply of conspiracy tales. But one resounded more than any other: that the men were agents of the Japanese finance ministry, in the country for the G8 meeting, making a surreptitious journey into Switzerland to sell off one small chunk of the massive mountain of US bonds stacked up in the Japanese Treasury vaults.
FOX News
Host Glenn Beck interviews Joe Weisenthal, Editor, Business Insider
June 15, 2009
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-06-15/wall_street/30029819_1_fox-news-outlet-talks
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a62_boqkurbI
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/5586543/Is-this-the-death-of-the-dollar.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/business/global/26fake.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601208&sid=afX0BWHToC1g
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Italy-confiscates-euro20-apf-1927243563.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ayy1QKcwcGN0
http://divinecosmos.com/start-here/davids-blog/995-lawsuit-end-tyranny
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttSmZknU9mI
You would think that they would find the "Missing Money" elsewhere and before any cuts were made to social programs.
The Missing Money
Trillions Of Dollars Are Missing From The U.S. Government
Trillions of dollars are missing from the US government. What's going on? Where is the money? How could this happen? Where are the checks and balances? How much more has gone missing? What would happen if a corporation failed to pass an audit like this? Or a taxpayer? Who is responsible for this? Would your banks continue to handle your bank account if you behaved like this? Would your investors continue to buy your securities if you behaved like this?
http://solari.com/archive/missing_money
Rabbi Dov S. Zakheim
During his term as Comptroller, he was tasked to help track down the Pentagon's 2.6 trillion dollars ($2,600,000,000,000) worth of unaccounted transactions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dov_S._Zakheim
No One Knows Truth About $300 Billion Bonds From Alleged Crash
By A. Craig Copetas
January 18, 2012
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-18/no-one-knows-truth-about-300b-bonds-from-alleged-plane-crash.html
Italian police seize $6 trillion of fake T-bonds
Fake securities valued at more than a third of the US national debt
February 17, 2012
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46428102/ns/business-world_business/t/italian-police-seize-trillion-fake-t-bonds
Italian police seize fake bonds worth a third of US national debt
A huge batch of fake US Treasury bonds worth some $6 trillion – more than a third of the US national debt – has been seized by Italian police. Eight Italians have been arrested and accused of a large-scale international fraud.
The fake bonds and other securities were seized from a Swiss trust company during a joint operation by Italian, Swiss, and US authorities. The fake certificates signed "Chicago, Illinois, Federal Reserve Bank" were stored in trunks stamped with “Federal Reserve System, Treaty of Versailles” marks. The bonds were carrying the false date of issue of 1934.
The forgers were planning to use the fake certificates as collateral to secure loans in a number of Swiss banks, prosecutor of the southern Italian city of Potenza said as cited by Reuters.
The investigation began over a year ago as a trivial probe into Italian mafia loan-sharking. However, after the Italian authorities uncovered an international network plotting a full-scale fraud, they called upon their Swiss and US colleagues. The US experts helped to identify the bonds as fakes.
This is not the first attempt to defraud Swiss banks with fake US bonds, but the most ambitious so far.
In 2009 the officers of the Italian financial police arrested two Japanese nationals who tried to cross the Italian border and enter Switzerland with a suitcase full of fake US treasury bonds worth $134.5 billion.
In a similar incident in 2009 two Filipinos were arrested at Milan Airport with a bag of fake US bonds amounting to some $180 billion.
In January last year six smugglers were arrested during a routine search at a highway rest shop. They were carrying a briefcase full of fake bonds valued at approximately $20 billion.
RT
(No Audio)
February 18, 2012
http://rt.com/news/fake-us-treasury-bonds-661http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17076378
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/why-were-trillions-fake-bonds-held-chicago-fed-crates
http://www.divinecosmos.com/start-here/davids-blog/1023-financial-tyranny?start=3
http://members4.boardhost.com/offshorebanking/msg/1319204795.html
(.MP4 Format)
http://rt.com/files/news/fake-us-treasury-bonds-661/i1065597c014b1d6fe2ac230dd6c961a4_00a63fc2.mp4
[B]Or:[/B]
/*****US-Finance-RT-ItalianPoliceSeize6TrillionDollarsInCounterfeitBonds-Potenza-Italy-NoAudioFebruary18-2012.mp4
Unless somebody can explain where the world found at least 60 trillion dollars of value during the past 18 months which they then created a "Financial Instrument" with, (in order to save mankind), then it is quite obvious that our Economic System is based upon "Faith" alone. You can’t really see the money …. You can’t really reach out and touch it ….. It is just a "Financial Instrument" ….. like an 11th Commandment.
When you watch our government/financial officials explain how they are going to "Work Hard" at a solution .... it is just for appearances only. There is no "Work" involved. It must "Appear" to be "Work" and "Effort" because nobody wants to hear that they are just gonna print a "Financial Instrument" and invent or create another 2 or 3 Trillion Dollars of "Imaginary Wealth". All the he-haw is about "Working" on a solution is because the Ruling Class don't want anybody to especially realize that money does really grow on trees. (At least on their street anyways.) The "Ruling Class Streets" are filled with "Magicians" who can create wealth out of thin air and at a much faster rate of scale then the U.S. Treasury can. Joe Citizen can win at the ballot box and make all the "Regulations" possible, but the 20 percent Ruling Class always get what they want because they print money which causes inflation and thus devalues your pay cheque. A currency printing press has more power than a ballot box. The reason why CEO and corporate pay scales and golden parachutes are so huge is because the Ruling Class use "Money Supply" and not the "Inflation Rate". The 1% tie their salary structure and retirement plans to the ratte of the "Money Supply" because it is a more accurate projection of real inflation.
When you picture a meeting with Ben Bernake and the 12 members of the Federal Reserve, it is exactly like Jesus Christ and The Last Supper.
Our financial system (Economists) are no different than a person who left university with a degree in Christendom. An economist believes in all his "Charts" and "Graphs" just like a Preacher does with the bible.
Both the economist and the preacher have the identical "Skills" in order to pass themselves off as the "Gods" of "Hidden Knowlege" (Faith) in their respective fields. Their biggest "asset" is that they are great salespersons or propagandists. (Priceless!)
In Olden days when there were Queens and Kings, there were Court Magicians.
Nobody knew or could explain the "Magic" and the magicians were given a special honoured place within the Royal Court. They even dressed differently than other Royal Court members. (Just like bankers do today.)
For 2 thousand years, both the preachers and economists have been scrambling around the globe trying to prove that a "God" is speaking directly with them.
It would probably take 2 thousand years just for the U.S. Capitalists to do an accurate audit of total assets and liabiliies. About as long as the preachers have been trying to prove that Jesus and The Boys were real.
Let's return to 1980 ..... It was "Morning In America".
"Trickle-Down" economics.
The "Magicans and Court Jesters" had the "Evidentiary Charts" to guide us, (like a crew of Palm Readers sorting Tarrot Cards.)
But it was "Trickle-Offshore"
"When Ronnie Ray-Gun exclaimed "Morning In America", it meant that each and every morning the Ruling Elite were transferring their wealth offshore.
The Perfect System ..... with a Perfected Trickle.
JP Morgan owns 80% of the Gold Derivatives on the planet! HSBC owns the other 20%.
That is how the U.S. "Manipulates" the value of the U.S. dollar. The U.S. Capitalists owned all the gold and were able to manipulate the "Real" devaluation of the U.S. dollar with claims that Free Trade was the best thing since sliced bread .... And all the while, the Capitalists were moving their wealth offshore.
A total duopoly.
And in other commodities, JPM holds a similar position as well as part of their overall $78 trillion derivatives book which is heavily dominated by interest rate and credit derivatives. JPM IS the market and where 95 Percent of their transactions are still OTC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-counter_(finance)
(PDF Document)
http://www.occ.treas.gov/topics/capital-markets/financial-markets/trading/derivatives/dq111.pdf
The U.S.A. is a "Corporation".
The United States Isn't a Country — It's a Corporation!
The District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871
http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/us_corporation.htm
http://www.teamlaw.org/HistoryOutline.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_Organic_Act_of_1871
Psychopathic Traits And The Behavior Of Corporations:
-- Callous unconcern for the feelings for others
-- Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships
-- Reckless disregard for the safety of others
-- Deceitfulness: repeated lying and conning others for profit
-- Incapacity to experience guilt
-- Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior
--Psychologist Dr. Robert Hare--
"It is an infallible rule that a prince who is not wise himself cannot be well advised … wise counsels, from whoever they come, must necessarily be due to the prudence of the prince, and not the prudence of the prince to the wise counsel received."
--Niccolo Machiavelli--
Presidents are "Public Relation Managers" and President Barack Obama is just "Managing" the decline of the American Empire.
Politicians are not Wack Jobs ..... They are ventriloquists in a Puppet Harem.
Achive Reference: On Topic
U.S. Politics: Land Of The Puppet People
Library Content
Audio/Visual and Documents - Including Descriptions
Last Updated: September 11, 2012
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Politics-LandOfThePuppetPeople-00-Audio-Visual-Document-Listing.html
They have learned to lie with sincerity while running a three-legged race in the Land of Puppet People.
Archive Reference: On Topic
U.S. Politics: Republican Dictionary
Articles and Commentaries by various writers and media pundits.
February 10, 2005 --- December 27, 2012
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Politics-RepublicanDictionary.html
“Wall Street Terrorists” from the “Kingdom Of Evil"
Archive Reference: On Topic
U.S. Politics: Leadership Without A Conscience
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Politics-LeadershipWithoutAConscience.html
The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others
SILVIA CATTORI: "When you come to understand that the reins of political and economic power are in the hands of people who have no conscience, who have no capacity for empathy, it opens up a completely new way of looking at what we call "evil". Evil is no longer only a moral issue; it can now be analyzed and understood scientifically."
LAURA KNIGHT-JADCZYK: "When psychopaths are the policy makers in government and the CEOs of big business, the way they think and reason - their 'morality' - becomes the common culture and 'morality' of the population over which they preside. When this happens, the mind of the population is infected in the way a pathogen infects a physical body. The only way to protect ourselves against this pathological thinking is to inoculate ourselves against it, and that is done by learning as much as possible about the nature of psychopathy and its influence on us. Essentially, this particular 'disease' thrives in an environment where its very existence is denied, and this denial is planned and deliberate."
HENRY SEE: "First of all, it needs to be said that "mad people" don't need the support of large populations, only a powerful minority that can both "drive" the population and control it. Look at the polls in the United States. Bush has been hovering around 30% popularity for years - and that is the population as a whole. But because he is backed by a very powerful minority, the people who own the media, the arms industry and their military supporters, the oil companies, among others, popular discontent doesn't matter. And as long as Bush's politics don't overtly affect the ordinary American negatively, they don't care enough to do anything about it."
--Henry See, Laura Knight-Jadczyk, Silvia Cattori, January 31, 2008--
http://ponerology.blogspot.com/2008/02/trick-of-psychopath-trade-make-us.html
Archive Reference: On Topic
U.S. Politics: Leadership Without A Conscience
http://www.dotandcalm.com/calm-archive/US-Politics-LeadershipWithoutAConscience.html
I strongly suspect that the main reason why many blacks and other minorities are not seen actively promoting the Occupy Movement, is because they don't want to destroy the first black president. The minority population has been hit much more acutely with job losses in manufacturing. And, I feel it to be a certainty for Obama to win a second term. Only President Barack Obama can "Sell" more "Hope" amidst the decline.
The politicians can't even hold TownHall meetings because they are getting Mic-Checked. And thus we are seeing endless debates in TV-Land.
Elections …. are a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledummer. There is little difference between the candidates or political parties …. It will be an election of Regime Rotation between the Democrats and Republicans ….and which, in truth, provides only an illusion of a functioning democracy
Paul O'Neill, The Democrats, And Regime Rotation
Regime rotation provides the illusion of a functioning democracy. The damning revelations posed by Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill (et al.) signal that the Bush administration’s usefulness has come to an end, a verdict not accepted by the White House which warns that the 2004 election might be delayed or suspended if a “mass casualty-producing event” occurs.
Michel Chossudovsky
January 15, 2004
http://www.snowshoefilms.com/mchoss.html
Transcript:
http://www.snowshoefilms.com/transcriptChossRegimeRotation.html
(Windows Media Presentation)
http://madison.indymedia.org/usermedia/video/8/16089_1.wmv
"For there shall arise false mesiahs,
and false prophets,
and shall shew great signs and wonders;
insomuch that, if it were possible,
they shall deceive the very elect."
--Mathew 24--
"Do not put your trust in princes..."
--Psalm 146:3--
President George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals
In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday 10, Monday 17 and Monday 24 October), Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.
Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"
Abu Mazen was at the same meeting and recounts how President Bush told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."
October 06, 2005
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10_october/06/bush.shtml
Lyndon Johnson told Austrian ambassador Ernst Lemberter in 1966 that the Holy Ghost regularly visited him..."He comes to me about 2 o'clock in the morning," Johnson said, "--when I have to give word to the boys, and I get the word from God whether to bomb or not."
--Ronnie Dugger, The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson, May 1984--
http://www.amazon.com/Politician-Life-Times-Lyndon-Johnson/dp/039301598X
http://sheilastuff.blogspot.com/2009/11/god-has-left-building.html
Ronnie Ray-Gun claimed to be a Christian and God-Fearing man.
Direct quote from the just published Reagan Diaries
The entry is dated May 17, 1986
"A moment I've been dreading. George brought his ne're-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work."
http://www.tnr.com
The First Lady dabbled in astrology as far back as 1967.
For the Reagan-Gorbachev Washington summit, she cast the charts of both men and determined that 2 p.m. on Dec. 8, 1987, was the most propitious moment for them to sign the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty. At Nancy's behest, the entire summit was built around that hour.
--Donald T. Regan, For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington, May 1988--
http://www.amazon.com/Record-Wall-Street-Washington/dp/0151639663
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Regan
When the chips were down and Ray-Gun needed "Truth" and "Advice", Ronnie Ray-Gun turned to Astologers and was found in the arms of a Tarrot Card reader. The very "Godless Idol" which Ray-Gun's bible ranted against.
"Not since the days of the Roman emperors—and never in the history of the United States Presidency—has an astrologer played such a significant role in the nation's affairs of State."
--Joan Quigley, What Does Joan Say?: My Seven Years As White House Astrologer to Nancy and Ronald Reagan, May 1992--
http://www.amazon.com/What-Does-Joan-Say-Astrologer/dp/1559720328
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Quigley#Relationship_with_Nancy_Reagan
The Reagans and Astrology
Joan Quigley, planned almost all presidential travel, press conferences, and even the president's cancer surgery......... based on astrology.
It might be difficult to believe the fact that the Reagan presidency was literally controlled by astrology. Ronald Regan who became the president of America in 1980 relied heavily on astrology in making important decisions in the White House. His entire schedule is said to have been coordinated by his astrologer, Joan Quigley.
It was in 1988 that former chief-of-staff Donald Regan in a 'tell-all' book revealed that the Reagan administration relied heavily on astrology. Jeane Dixon, an astrologer who became famous for her prediction of the assassination of President Kennedy, was once an astrological advisor to the Reagans. Jeane gained the Reagan's favor by predicting in 1962 that he would become the Governor of California and later President of the United States. But in 1976, Nancy Reagan dropped Jeane when she predicted that Reagan would not gain the presidency in 1976, which however turned out to be correct. It was then that Joan Quigley was hired as the Reagan's astrologer, even though she too predicted that 1976 would not be the year for Reagan.
Ronald and Nancy Reagan had a long history of relationships with astrologers and psychics. Another astrologer associated with the Reagans was Joyce Jillson who helped the Reagans in selecting Reagan's Vice President from a list of seven candidates. According to Jillson, George Bush was the only choice because Bush was a Gemini - the most compatible sign with Reagan who was an Aquarian.
Nancy learned from Quigley about Reagan's chart, which indicated that March 30 would be a terrible day for him. And like as predicted, on March 30, 1981,there was an assassination attempt on President Reagan. It was from then on that Quigley's role was transformed from a casual astrologer friend into that of an astrological protector of Ronald Reagan. Nancy also became aware of the "Presidential Death Cycle." This is the 20-year cycle involving a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, also known as the "zero-year curse." Every president since William Harrison who was elected at the same time as this conjunction has died while in office
--Kevin Williams, Astrology and the "Presidential Death Cycle"
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation080.html
Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, injure, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse. The inventor of civilization — the first tribal chieftain who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers—was almost certainly a genetic psychopath. Since that momentous discovery, psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non-psychopaths in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies — especially military hierarchies.
Military institutions are tailor-made for psychopathic killers. The 5% or so of human males who feel no remorse about killing their fellow human beings make the best soldiers. And the 95% who are extremely reluctant to kill make terrible soldiers — unless they are brainwashed with highly sophisticated modern techniques that turn them (temporarily it is hoped) into functional psychopaths.
