2008 Financial Collapse: The Greatest Calamity The World Has Ever Known
The year is 2010 and to anyone not in denial, the industrialized nations have entered the greatest calamity the world has ever known:
- 35 Million Americans on Food Stamps: 12 Percent of U.S. Population on Food Stamps Highest Since Records Kept in 1969, and that’s before the Obama administration announced a planned three-year budget freeze on government discretionary spending. (My Budget 360)
- 18 Million empty houses in the United States and 39 million Americans who are no longer working or looking for work, and that’s before Federal Reserve finishes rewriting the rules of American “capitalism” as US Housing, the Automobile Industry and the American Dream are dismantled. (The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M., David E. Sanger)
“There are now well over 150 million Americans who feel stress over these things on a…
The Bank of the Fed is Closed…Forever
In an effort to explain our escalating financial crisis, an American Nightmare (an Environmental Dream), the pundits are focusing their angst on the 44th POTUS, who might very well go down as the single most inept president in all of American history. (How to Squander the Presidency in One Year, David Michael Green)
Barack Obama is not inept, greedy or stupid and he isn’t one of “us”.
He rose from obscurity to power with his top economics adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the co-founder of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission and he travels in the same circles as other members of the super-secret Skull & Bones Society at Yale University, who pretend to be running for president every four years.
The decision to have Obama preside over the greatest financial calamity since the Great Depression was…
U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion
Via the Onion:
WASHINGTON — 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.
Calling it “basically no more than five rectangular strips of paper,” Fed chairman Ben Bernanke illustrates how much “$200″ is actually worth.
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…
Gold Posts Biggest One-Day Loss Since 2008
You can almost predict the oft-repeated explanations the pundits offer up every time the precious metals behave irresponsibly.
- The trouble with being a contrarian is that you can never be quite contrarian enough. We began having doubts about the ‘feds inflate…gold soars’ hypothesis last year. It was too easy…too obvious. And if it were that easy to inflate a nation’s currency, how come the Japanese couldn’t get the hang of it in the ’90s?
- Inflation, yes…but not for a while. And gold? Well, we are in it for the long run. In the short run, anything could happen.
- To clarify our view on gold, The Daily Reckoning is not bearish on the metal. It is not bullish on the metal either. It is buggish. We are gold bugs. In the long run, gold…
Secret Banking Cabal Emerges From AIG Shadows
David Reilly sounds like he’s about to join the anti-New World Order crowd, writing in a surprising venue—bankers’ staple news source Bloomberg News:
The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week’s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all.
Wednesday’s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.
We’re talking about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose role as the most influential part of the federal-reserve system — apart from the matter of AIG’s bailout — deserves further congressional scrutiny.
The New York Fed…
Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke Gets 2nd Term in Closest-Ever Senate Vote
Guess being Time’s “Man of the Year” gets you places in life. JEANNINE AVERSA and JIM KUHNHENN write on the AP via Yahoo News:
Embattled Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke won confirmation for a second term Thursday, but only by the closest vote ever for the crucial post and after withering criticism from lawmakers for bailing out Wall Street while other Americans suffered in recession.
The Senate confirmed Bernanke for a new four-year term by a 70–30 vote, a seemingly solid majority but 14 votes worse than the closest previous vote for a Fed chairman.
The battle over Bernanke’s confirmation has been a test of central bank independence, a crucial element if the Fed is to carry out unpopular but economically essential policies. Its decisions on interest rates can have immense consequences, from the…
Revealed: See Who Was Paid Off In The AIG Bailout
Ryan Grim and Shahien Nasiripour write on the Huffington Post:
A key question at the heart of the controversial bailout of AIG is just how much money the government lost. The Federal Reserve and Treasury Department have worked to keep that number secret and to conceal who was on the winning end.
An unredacted document obtained by the Huffington Post list the damage in detail. Goldman Sachs alone, for instance, got $14 billion in government money for assets worth $6 billion at the time — a de facto $8 billion subsidy, courtesy of taxpayers.
The list was produced as part of a congressional investigation led by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee into the federal bailout of AIG…
Federal Reserve Seeks to Protect U.S. Bailout Secrets
David Glovin and Thom Weidlich writes on Bloomberg:
The Federal Reserve asked a U.S. appeals court to block a ruling that for the first time would force the central bank to reveal secret identities of financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest government bailout in U.S. history.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan will decide whether the Fed must release records of the unprecedented $2 trillion U.S. loan program launched after the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. In August, a federal judge ordered that the information be released, responding to a request by Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.
“This case is about the identity of the borrower,” said Matthew Collette, a lawyer for the government, in oral arguments today. “This is the equivalent of saying ‘I…
Fed Posts Record Profit for 2009
Reported on the AP via Yahoo News:
The Federal Reserve generated record profits last year, reflecting money made off its extraordinary efforts to rescue the country from the worst economic and financial crisis since the 1930s.
The central bank announced Tuesday it logged a record windfall of $52.1 billion. Of that total, a record of $46.1 billion gets turned over to the Treasury Department.
It marks both the biggest profit and payment to Treasury on records dating back to 1914, when the Fed began operating. The previous record payment turned over to the Treasury — of $34.6 billion — was registered in 2007. In 2008, the Fed reported a payment of $31.7 billion.
The Fed’s efforts to end the crisis are separate from the $700 billion taxpayer-funded financial bailout program authorized by Congress in…
Federal Reserve Smackdown: Bunning vs Bernanke
I spent a good part of today driving from New York to Philadelphia and back. It was a fantastic opportunity to listen to Ben Bernanke being grilled by the United States Senate and struggling to defend his record as Chairman of the Federal Reserve during a period that has been likened to the Great Depression. The very best part was a blistering attack on Bernanke by Senator Jim Bunning, a man who is definitely not afraid to tell it like it is. Respect Mr. Bunning! Felix Salmon obviously enjoyed it too, writing on his Reuters blog:
I wonder what it was like to be Ben Bernanke today, on the receiving end of an absolute lashing from Senator Jim Bunning. Here’s a taster:
Chairman Greenspan’s attitude toward regulating banks was much like his attitude toward consumer protection. Instead of close supervision of the biggest and most dangerous banks, he ignored the growing balance sheets and increasing risk. You did no better. In fact, under your watch every one of the major banks failed or would have failed if you did not bail them out.
Bunning then quoted Bernanke’s own words from his own confirmation hearing, when he said that “no bank is too big to fail”. No, Bunning wasn’t laughing either:
Rather than making management, shareholders, and debt holders feel the consequences of their risk-taking, you bailed them out. In short, you are the definition of moral hazard.
This is the sort of parliamentary rhetoric which we Brits are quite used to, but which is electrifying in the normally-staid confines of the US Senate. Good for Bunning for taking the gloves off.
Amen.
Congressman Ron Paul vs. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke
Ron Paul appears on Fox Business Channel on November 30, 2009:
Alex Jones: Americans Have A Gun To Their Heads
The Fall of the Republic, Obama’s unkept promises and lies, the economic crisis as part of a bigger new world order strategy, the swine flu hoax, the fraud behind the fed – Alex Jones talks about all this in an exclusive interview with RT’s Anastasia Churkina.
Audit The Fed Effort Wins Support From An Unusual Coalition
via HuffPo:
“An unusual coalition of progressive economists, labor leaders, and bloggers has decided to fight back against a congressional amendment that would allow the Federal Reserve to continue operating in secrecy.”
November 18, 2009
House Financial Services Committee
2129 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515Dear Chairman Frank, Ranking Member Bachus, and Members of the Committee,
During the past two years, the Federal Reserve dramatically changed its operating procedures. Instead of simply setting interest rates to influence macroeconomic conditions, it rapidly acquired a wide variety of private assets and extended massive secret bailouts to major financial institutions.
There are still many questions about the Fed’s behavior in these new activities, including potential cronyism and favoritism in its distribution of many trillions of dollars. As the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program recently wrote…
The Money That Is Sold Abroad Is YOU!
It is not dollars, treasuries, bonds and debt that is being sold by your government. Text and references: Freedomain Radio
“Bones” in the Money Pit
By Robert Singer
“Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.”—JFK.
Our consumer society didn’t just happen, it was planned. Not in 1910, or 1954, but in the year 1832, the year William Huntington Russell and fellow classmate Alphonso Taft at Yale University founded the Skull and Bones society, a branch of the Bavarian Illuminati.
According to most of the available biographical data on its early members, the money required to sustain the secret order’s campus affairs and its broader role in placing its members into key positions of influence upon their graduation from Yale was derived from the opium trade in the Far East.
Members, known as “Bonesmen,” include Rockefeller, Kuhn, Loeb and Morgan all connected to the House of Rothschild’s global financial empire. They are founders of the Federal Reserve, the…
Silver, But No Silver Lining
By Robert Singer
The end of our consumer society is on the horizon, which should be no surprise to anyone who took Economics 101. Do we really expect to spend our way out of this mess by buying and selling each other useless cheap stuff from China?
As the financial collapse gathers steam, gold and silver oracles like Butler, Friedman, Morgan and Turk who have been predicting for years the launch of the price of silver to the moon will see their prophecy fulfilled, but a celebration is not in order.
Being wealthy during the last 60 years of unprecedented prosperity at the expense of the Third World and the environment is one thing, but profiting from a bull market in silver when millions of hungry Americans are living in tent-cities next door…
Meat, Milk and Motors: The New China Syndrome
By Robert Singer
August 21, theatres around the nation screened the documentary I.O.U.S.A. and a live discussion with America’s most notable financial leaders and policy experts, including Warren Buffett; William Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute; Pete Peterson, senior chairman of The Blackstone Group and former U.S. Comptroller General, Dave Walker.
August 25, Mr. William Niskanen, CEO of the Cato Institute, confirmed his remarks on the I.O.U.S.A. post-broadcast panel discussion.
Dear Mr. Singer,
I do not have a tape of my remarks last Thursday evening. As I remember, however, I expressed being puzzled why the central banks of China, Japan, and South Korea have continued to invest so much in U.S. Treasury securities. For these central banks have earned a negative real return on these securities, for which the interest rate has been lower…
2008 Financial Collapse: An Inside Job
By Robert Singer
Maybe it’s the smoke from Mt. Vesuvius that keeps Arianna Huffington and the financial community from seeing that the economic collapse has nothing to do with the Fed “missing” the warning signs leading up to the October meltdown.
“Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.” John F. Kennedy
The Fed didn’t miss anything; the October meltdown was an inside job.
Capitalism never made sense
Professor Ebeling, the Ludwig von Mises professor of Economics at Hillsdale College, understood something was wrong when he wrote: “the perverse development and evolution of historical capitalism, the institutions necessary for a truly free-market economy have been either undermined or prevented from emerging.”
But when he claimed, “it is the principles and the meaning of a free-market economy that must be rediscovered” in order to overcome the…
