Quantum Pranx

by testosteronepit
Posted August 30, 2011 

DEAR BEN,
Please print us more money. We want you to prop up the stock market. Everybody knows it’s a Ponzi scheme that will collapse without your support. You don’t want us to end up like Bernie Madoff’s clients. No, Ben, we love Ponzi schemes. We get in early and get out before they collapse. That’s why we’re rich. The bad thing is that they sometimes collapse before we can get out. But you already bailed us out twice in the last couple of years through printing trillions of dollars. Why not a third time?

That will also keep the bond-market bubble inflated. We have to admit that you’ve done an excellent job there, hands down. Negative real yields all the way up the yield curve! Awesome. Now if you could just print a few trillions and buy up the sovereigns from the PIIGS. Euro crisis over. End of story. And we’d get richer because we’d sell them to you at face value though we bought them at fifty cents on the dollar.

And why not forever? Just keep printing. Because as soon as you stop, stock markets will crash again, and credit markets will seize, and then we’re back on this awful ride to hell.

Of course, it’ll cause inflation, which is good. You yourself said that. You stated many times that you want inflation. In fact, you said that one of the goals of the Fed, after propping up the markets, is to create inflation. So stick to it, Ben. Don’t slack off suddenly just because some cowboy threatened you.

Inflation, in conjunction with your near-zero yields, has all sorts of benefits. For example, it will eat up the Social Security trust fund, whose $2 trillion balance is invested in treasuries. Fixed-income investors, retirees, and everybody who has any savings will also be demolished. And homeowners. But don’t worry. They won’t figure it out. They don’t get a statement every month that shows how much inflation cost them. It’s a quiet way of stealing from them, and it’ll impoverish them over time, but it’ll make us, the recipients of the money you print, richer.

You see, Ben, we can charge higher prices for our goods and services. And even if we have to pay more for raw materials, we look good. Our inventories increase in value, and we can claim sales jumped 10% because we raised prices by 10%. Analysts dig that.

Recently, Ben, you’ve done a decent job on inflation. In July, we were running at an annual rate of 6%. Not bad. But you need to preempt any cooling off. So keep printing.

Now, we’re not talking about wage inflation. Oh no. We have to keep wages down. We need cheap labor, or else we’d have to send these jobs to China—which we’re doing anyway. And not just to assemble iPhones. Heck, our lawyers in India are doing the same work as our local lawyers for one-tenth the pay. So, if our local lawyers want to be competitive…. Just think how much more profit we could make if wages collapsed!

Real wages have been declining for ten years and fell another 1.7% since July 2010. But that’s not enough. So get with it, Ben. Print more. And don’t worry about the wusses out there who say that choking the middle class like that will put us into a permanent recession. Just get the banks to loan them lots of money so they can buy our stuff, and when the loans blow up, you buy them from the banks at face value. Full circle, Ben.

The trillions you’ve printed and handed to us, well, we put them to work, and we created jobs in China and Mexico and Germany, and we bought assets, and it inflated prices, and now we’re even richer. We’re proud of you, Ben. Think of the influence you have. And not just here. Around the world, Ben! Look at the Middle East and North Africa. See the food riots, rebellions, and civil wars it caused? Thousands of people died and entire governments were toppled…. Oh, wait. That’s a bad example.

And then there is Congress. We invested in them through campaign contributions and other mechanisms to get them to spend trillions of dollars every year on our products and services, and they even started a few wars, and it made us richer—without taxing our companies or us. It’s a wonderful system.

But the deficits have become so huge that they exceed what the Treasury can borrow. So we’re glad, Ben, that you stepped up to the plate and printed enough money to monetize the deficit. But Ben, you can’t just stop now! You’ve got to keep at it. Or else, the whole system will blow up. Well, it’ll blow up anyway, but we don’t want it to blow up now. So, Ben, you don’t have a choice. Otherwise, we’d lose a lot of money in our schemes, and nobody wants that.

from The Daily Bell
Posted August 30, 2011

The deflationary hurricane of deteriorating social mood

Deteriorating social mood is like a very slow-building, very slow-moving hurricane: The longer it goes on, the stronger it gets. And while some policymakers may be praying like St. Augustine for chastity, and others for a book of dry matches, I’d be moving to higher ground to stand on. The path I am most worried about is not the long-term sustainable inflationary economic one, but the much nearer-term deflationary storm path that comes with deteriorating social mood. For the northeast, Irene may have now passed. But for all of America, there is another, much bigger storm that bears watching closely. – Minyanville.com

Dominant Social Theme: Everything is OK and don’t you worry. The elites know how to handle the economy, and you will retire rich, even if you don’t think so now.

Free-Market Analysis: The writer of this article, Peter Atwater, has hit upon a kind of anti-meme. He believes that “Everything we [in the West] need to do for long-term economic, if not societal, success and stability comes with very severe short-term consequences.” And thus it has not been done. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke‘s monetary stimuli are not the answer, he argues. More radical solutions are required. What is necessary is a severe reinforcement of economic “chastity.” Banks must be strengthened; nations must cease to spend; citizens must accept austerity.

Of course, this is a power elite theme of itself: that the larger world (and Western) economy is an irresponsible one and that the West’s leadership has proven inadequate to the task. Here at the DB, we disagree. The issue is not austerity or cost-cutting. Responsible leadership in our view is that which demands an end to the elite’s ruinous central banking economy and a return to some sort of competitive money, which would inevitably feature silver and gold.

Somehow, despite Atwater’s concerned gloom, we don’t sense he’s ready for the really radical reconfigurations necessary to build healthy economies. He apparently feels that reshuffling the proverbial deck chairs is a revolutionary act.

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China’s shifting economic sands

Is China’s economic miracle built on sand or cement? It won’t exactly make world headlines, but in the Chinese port city of Dalian there was another accident today in the city’s sprawling petrochemicals development zone. This time a fuel tank caught fire in an oil refinery belonging to state major PetroChina. This is the same city, you’ll remember, that was hit by serious protests a fortnight back after a paraxylene chemical plant was nearly breached by a storm surge caused by a passing typhoon. In that case, the local government caved in and agreed to shut down the plant. What’s amazing – and disconcerting for many living in Dalian – is that this is the FOURTH major safety alert in the petrochemicals complex in the last 12 months or so. – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: Don’t worry about China. This is one powerful and far-sighted country.

Free-Market Analysis: This article in the Telegraph about China is an interesting one because unlike many mainstream articles it dares to ask the question whether the “Chinese Miracle” is nothing but hype and the proverbial madness of crowds.

Every night when he goes home to his Beijing apartment, the author writes, he catalogues the way that the apartment is “quietly crumbling.” Look carefully, he writes, “and you’ll see the flagstones in the public areas are subsiding drunkenly, the access road to the rear is shot to pieces, the bathroom fittings are corroding and the façades are starting to peel. With an apartment that hardly matters, but when it comes to railways, bridges, petrochemical complexes, 40,000 dams (as my colleague Malcolm Moore reported this week) and even nuclear power stations, we’ll have to pray higher standards have been enforced.”

Actually, the article’s feedback comments are even more alarming, speculating that the same sort of sloppy construction may doom modern Chinese dams to catastrophic failure within the next ten years. As for domestic harmony, we find the article has generated the following feedback from Scott Jensen: “In 2005, China stopped publicly reporting how many riots occur each year in its country because the rate of increase was rapidly increasing year after year. Some now speculate there are at least 120,000 riots in China a year. That’s over 10,000 a month.”

We’ve been writing about the demise of the Chinese Miracle for several years now. And articles like this one only reinforce our conclusions. China’s old communist leaders simply don’t know what to do. They’ve thrust China into the modern era, but in a manipulative and controlled way (see Sino-Forest Corp.) that is merely storing up problems for the future. Eventually, the dam is likely going to break – metaphorically and in reality. The catastrophic results may shake the world.

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Is bank recapitalization the answer?

European banks set cash test by IMF chief … European banks face ordeal by fire this week after the International Monetary Fund called for “urgent” action to shore up their defences, if necessary with state money and under legal compulsion. Recovery is in danger if we don’t shore up defences, says Christine Lagarde – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: Strengthen the banks to strengthen the EU.

Free-Market Analysis: One of the problems with gaining Christine Lagarde as the IMF’s new chief, is that she seems to believe it is incumbent on her to be vocal about the Western economic system. Thus, she set off what the Telegraph calls “tremors” at a recent financial conference by warning that the global economic system was on “thin ice.”

“We are in a dangerous new phase. The stakes are clear: we risk seeing the fragile recovery derailed, so we must act now,” she said. “Banks need urgent recapitalisation. If it is not addressed we could easily see the further spread of economic weakness to core countries, even a debilitating liquidity crisis. The most efficient solution would be mandatory substantial recapitalisation,” she said.

Lagarde is a lawyer by training, so perhaps we should give her the benefit of the doubt. But such warnings are merely part and parcel of a larger elite charade in our view (and Lagarde now works directly for the elite). The “reserves” a bank holds in the modern era are nothing but paper certificates. It is difficult to see how holding more or fewer of them contributes to a bank’s solvency.

If she were to demand that banks hold gold or silver reserves, we would be more impressed. But that would be too sensible. Instead, she will no doubt continue to offer this sort of nonsensical rhetoric. In the age of central banking, a bank’s solvency is far more dependent on the largesse of central banks.

If Lagarde were truly sincere about bank recapitalization, she would examine the linkages between central bankers and their commercial banking brethren. Those with the strongest relationships would been seen as having the healthiest banking prospects. No doubt, this is an overly cynical recipe. But it is a realistic one.

by Tyler Durden
Posted Zero Hedge
August 8, 2011

EVERY TIME WE DISCUSS THE FUTILITY of the nth bailout of [Greece\PIIGS\Europe\the Euro] we make it all too clear  that the trade off between Germany taking on board ever more peripheral financial risk in one after another all too brief attempt to prevent the implosion of European capital markets and its currency, is not only a relentless creep higher in German default risk (and lower in the German stock market, as August has so violently demonstrated) but increasing political discontent, which after claiming countless political regimes across the world, has finally settled down on one that truly matters: that of German chancellor Angela Merkel.

And as Reuters reports, Merkel’s disappointing response to an ever escalating set of crises, both domestic and international, means that the beginning of her end (and by implication of the Eurozone, and of the Euro) may be as soon as September 23, when the vote over the expansion of the latest and greatest European bailout lynchpin, EFSF, will take place.

To wit: “Germany’s Angela Merkel faces the biggest challenge to her leadership since coming to power in 2005, with traditionally loyal conservative allies openly criticizing her approach to the euro zone crisis and her hands-off Libya policy in shambles….it is Merkel’s piecemeal approach to the euro zone’s worsening debt crisis that has come under fire over the past week and now threatens her iron grip on power in Germany.” The biggest problem for Merkel is that she has gone “Japanese” in the opinion of the public: doing neither nothing, nor enough, to halt the European crisis in its tracks: “For some in Germany, she has gone too far by bailing out stricken euro zone members and agreeing to intervention in the bond markets to prop them up. For others at home and abroad, she has not done enough, shirking bold steps that might solve the debt crisis because they would be unpopular at home.” This latest attempt to placate everyone, while achieving precisely the opposite, will come to a head on September 23 when the vote to expand the EFSF takes place: she is for the time being expected to have a sufficient number of votes to pass the critical for the eurozone proposal. “If it’s not enough, Merkel would be forced to resign. It would lead to a crisis.” And should there be a crisis, it will be the end for the European experiment as well, since with the political situation at the Euro’s biggest financial backer in flux, the free fall in European risk will be one that no one, certainly not the ECB, will be able to arrest. Cue even more improvised bailouts by the central banker oligarchy, yet without Germany, the credibility of any and all such deseprate measures will be nil. This incremental political uncertainty will likely make the life of the FOMC’s Sept 20-21 meeting slightly easier, as an adverse monetary announcement by the Fed, contrary to that priced in, coupled with the risk of a full blown European crisis, will be very frowned upon by the Status Quo^TM.

From Reuters:

Seen for much of the past six years as a reliable, steady leader whose competence and knack for brokering deals made up for a lack of bold vision, Merkel’s image has taken a beating over the past months and polls show an increasing number of Germans view her government as directionless.

The chancellor’s troubles can be traced back to two decisions taken in March, when she abruptly dropped her long-standing support for nuclear power in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, and days later backed Germany’s abstention from a U.N. vote authorising military action in Libya.

Coming shortly before a crucial state election, which her conservatives subsequently lost, the steps looked to many in Germany and abroad like cynical political ploys to placate domestic opinion.

For some in Germany, she has gone too far by bailing out stricken euro zone members and agreeing to intervention in the bond markets to prop them up. For others at home and abroad, she has not done enough, shirking bold steps that might solve the debt crisis because they would be unpopular at home. This conflict will come to a head next month. Merkel’s coalition has a comfortable 20-seat majority in the lower house of parliament. But if she is hit with dissent in her own ranks, and is forced to rely on opposition parties to pass legislation to expand the single currency bloc’s rescue mechanism – the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) – then her coalition could collapse, sparking early elections.

“The euro crisis entered a new phase over the past week,” influential German weekly Der Spiegel said on Sunday. ”Before the main question had been how the common currency could be saved. Now it is also about saving Merkel’s chancellorship. If her coalition does not deliver a majority for the enhanced euro rescue mechanism in the autumn, people close to the chancellor say, the coalition is all but finished.”

On the significance of September 23: The chances of Merkel failing to secure her own majority in the EFSF vote, which is likely to take place on Sept. 23, still seem slim.

Her Christian Democrats (CDU), hovering at a weak 30 percent in opinion polls, have little incentive right now to bring forward an election that is not scheduled to take place until the autumn of 2013. Merkel’s conservative bloc — composed of the CDU, Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) and Free Democrats (FDP) — has shown discipline in previous euro zone aid votes, with only a handful of lawmakers rebelling.

“I expect she will get majority backing from her own coalition,” said Gerd Langguth, a political scientist at Bonn University and biographer of Merkel, putting the number of dissenters at around fifteen. “If it’s not enough, Merkel would be forced to resign. It would lead to a crisis. No one is interested in an early election.”

Slim… but getting bigger:

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by David DeGraw
of AmpedStatus
Posted August 25, 2011

THERE ARE MANY FACTORS THAT CLEARLY DEMONSTRATE WHY IT WOULD BE DISASTROUS for the Federal Reserve to repeat their vicious Quantitative Easing (QE) policy. If you want to know a significant reason why they cannot get away with another round of QE, here is an equation for you:

(Quantitative Easing + Extreme Weather = Revolution + World War III)

From the very beginning we knew that the Federal Reserve’s QE program was going to cause the cost of food to rise and the dollar to decline in value, and that these intended results would lead to an increase in poverty and civil unrest.

Are food prices approaching a violent tipping point?

A provocative new study suggests the timing of the Arab uprisings is linked to global food price spikes, and that prices will soon permanently be above the level which sparks conflicts. There is a specific food price level above which riots and unrest become far more likely. That figure is 210 on the UN FAO’s price index: the index is currently at 234, due to the most recent spike in prices which started in the middle of 2010 [coinciding with QE2].

Lastly, the researchers argue that current underlying food price trends – excluding the spikes – mean the index will be permanently over the 210 threshold within a year or two. The paper concludes: “The current [food price] problem transcends the specific national political crises to represent a global concern about vulnerable populations and social order.” Big trouble, in other words. The next part of the study identifies that the serious unrest in North Africa and the Middle East also correlates very closely with [the QE2] food price spike. Bar-Yam also notes: “Several of the initial riots in North Africa were identified in news stories as food riots.” From there, the researchers make their prediction of permanently passing the 210 threshold in 12-24 months.

In other words, if the Fed engages in another round of QE, the global unrest that they have already ignited will go hyperbolic. Before getting into the details on how the Fed deliberately made these food prices spike, let’s look at another new study, which also helps demonstrate the obvious, extreme weather is linked to war:

Climate cycles linked to civil war, analysis shows

Changes in the global climate that cut food production triggered one-fifth of civil conflicts between 1950 and 2004. Cyclical climatic changes double the risk of civil wars, with analysis showing that 50 of 250 conflicts between 1950 and 2004 were triggered by the El Niño cycle, according to scientists. El Niño brings hot and dry conditions to tropical nations and cuts food production, to outbreaks of violence in countries from southern Sudan to Indonesia and Peru.

Solomon Hsiang, who led the research at Columbia University, New York, said: “We can speculate that a long-ago Egyptian dynasty was overthrown during a drought. This study shows a systematic pattern of global climate affecting conflict right now. We are still dependent on climate to a very large extent.” Mark Cane, a member of the team, said global warming would have greater climatic impacts than El Niño, making it “hard to imagine” it would not provoke conflicts. [read full report]

Put all these factors together and you have, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution [and/or] World War III.”

In summation, Ben Bernanke and the Fed’s economic central planners were clearly aware of the hostile climate and weather patterns when they engaged in QE2. The Fed’s infamous policy, as I said before, “deliberately threw gasoline all over those brush fires. QE2 was another economic napalm bomb from the global banking cartel.” They knew that they were deliberately attacking (sacrificing) tens of millions of people, but that was secondary to keeping their global Ponzi scheme going by pumping another $2.1 trillion into their fraudulent, insolvent banking system through both QE programs. This is why Ben Bernanke is guilty of crimes against humanity. Now, let’s revisit what I’ve been reporting on for the past year:

Centrally Planned Economic Repression

The IMF has a well-worn strategy that they use to conquer national economies. As I warned four months ago, we have now progressed into Step 3.5: World Wide IMF Riots. Back in October, in a TV interview with Max Keiser, we discussed leaked World Bank documents that revealed the IMF’s strategy. I stated the following:

“They have a four-step strategy for destroying national economies. We are about to enter what they would call Step Three. Step Three is when you’ve looted the economy and now food and basic necessities all of a sudden become more expensive, harder to get to. And then, Step 3.5 is when you get the riots. We are headed to, as the IMF said, and as they plan, Step 3.5: IMF Riots. That’s what’s coming…”

Fast-forward four months to today, and now we see country after country rebelling against high food prices. Since our October interview, food prices have spiked 15%. According to new World Bank data, since June 2010, “Rising food have pushed about 44 million people into poverty in developing countries.”

As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced another round of Quantitative Easing (QE2), those of us paying attention knew that the trigger had been pulled and Step Three had been executed. It was a declaration of economic war, an economic death sentence for tens of millions of people – deliberately devaluing the dollar and sparking inflation in commodities/basic necessities. It was a vicious policy that would impact people from Boston to Cairo.

When QE2 was announced, I warned: “Food and Gas Prices Will Skyrocket, The Federal Reserve Just Dropped An Economic Nuclear Bomb On Us.” I also wrote: “The Federal Reserve is deliberately devaluing the dollar to enrich a small group of a global bankers, which will cause significant harm to the people of the United States and severe ramifications throughout the world. The Federal Reserve’s actions are already causing the price of food and gas to increase and will cause hyperinflation on most basic necessities.”

To be clear, there are several significant factors contributing to rising food prices, such as extreme weather conditions, biofuel production and Wall Street speculation; but the Federal Reserve’s policies deliberately threw gasoline all over those brush fires. QE2 was another economic napalm bomb from the global banking cartel.

In a recent McClathy news article entitled, “Egypt’s unrest may have roots in food prices, US Fed policy”, Kevin Hall reports:

“‘The truth of the matter is that when the Federal Reserve moved on the quantitative easing, it did export inflation to a lot of these emerging markets. There’s no doubt that one of the side effects of the weak dollar and quantitative easing has been rising commodity prices. It helped create this bullish environment for commodities. This is a very delicate balancing act.’

It’s a view shared by Ed Yardeni, a veteran financial market analyst, who reached a similar conclusion in a research note to investors. He joked that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke should be added to a list of revolutionaries, since his quantitative easing policy, unveiled last year in Wyoming, has provoked unrest and change in the developing world

‘Since he first indicated his support for such a revolutionary monetary change, the prices of corn, soybeans and wheat have risen 53 percent, 37 percent and 24.4 percent through Friday’s close,’ Yardeni noted. ‘The price of crude oil rose 19.8 percent over this period from $75.17 to $90.09 this (Monday) morning. Soaring food and fuel prices are compounding anger attributable to widespread unemployment in the countries currently experiencing riots.’”

The people throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa, on the fringe of the Neo-Liberal economic empire and most vulnerable to the Fed’s inflationary policies, are the first to rebel. The conclusion that we reach, the unfortunate reality of our current crisis: the Federal Reserve and global economic central planners have declared war on us. We are under attack. We must remove Ben Bernanke from power and hold him and the rest of the global banking cartel accountable. We must also break up the “too big to fail” banks. This a message I, along with many others who have analyzed our economic situation, have been repeating over and over for the past three years.

Hopefully, a critical mass of people will soon understand this reality and back it up with non-violent civil disobedience before riots and violence rip our society apart. For these reasons, let’s all go to Wall Street on September 17th and show these tyrants that we’ve had enough.

by Jim Quinn
The Burning Platform
Posted August 23, 2011

“LENIN IS SAID TO HAVE DECLARED THAT THE BEST WAY TO DESTROY THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.” – John Maynard Keynes – The Economic Consequences of the Peace

While Barack Obama vacations on Martha’s Vineyard this week he’ll be thinking about his grand vision to save America – again. There is one thing you can say about Obama – he’s predictable. He promises to unveil his “new” plan for America in early September. The White House said Obama will give a speech after the September 5 Labor Day holiday to outline measures to boost hiring and find budget savings that surpass the $1.5 trillion goal of a new congressional deficit-cutting committee. It is heartening to see that Barack has turned into a cost cutter extraordinaire. He should be an inspiration to the Tea Party, except for one little problem. The plan he unveils in a few weeks will increase spending now and fret about spending cuts at some future unspecified date.

I can reveal his plan today because the White House has already leaked the major aspects of his plan. He will call for an extension of the Social Security payroll tax cut of 2% for all working Americans. This was supposed to give a dramatic boost to GDP in 2011. Maybe it will work next time. He will demand that extended unemployment benefits be renewed. Somehow providing 99 weeks of unemployment benefits is supposed to create jobs. It’s done wonders thus far. He will propose some semblance of an infrastructure bank or tax cuts to spur infrastructure spending. It will include a proposal for training and education to help unemployed people switch careers. He will attempt to steal the thunder from the SUPER COMMITTEE of twelve by coming up with $2 trillion of budget savings by insisting the Lear jet flying rich fork over an extra $500 billion.

You may have noticed that followers of Keynesian dogma like Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, Brad Delong, Richard Koo, John Galbraith, every Democrat in Congress, and every liberal pundit and columnist have been shrieking about the Tea Party terrorists and their ghastly budget cuts that are destroying our economy. They contend the stock market is tanking and the economy is heading into recession due to the brutal austerity measures being imposed by the extremists in the Republican Party. There is just one small issue with their argument. It is completely false. It is a bold faced lie. This is 2011. The economy has been in freefall since January 1. No spending cuts have occurred. Nada!!! As the CBO chart below reveals, the horrendous slashing of government will amount to $21 billion in 2012 and $42 billion in 2013. Of course, those aren’t even cuts in spending. They are reductions in the projected increases in spending. Politicians must be very secure in the knowledge that Americans are completely ignorant when it comes to anything other than the details of Kim Kardashian’s wedding and who Snooki is banging on Jersey Shore.

I’d like to remind the Harvard educated Keynesian economists that Federal government spending is currently chiming in at $3.8 trillion per year. Federal spending was $2.7 trillion in 2007 and $3.0 trillion in 2008. Keynesians believe government spending fills the gap when private companies are contracting. Obama has taken Keynesianism to a new level. Federal spending will total $10.8 trillion in Obama’s first three years, versus $8.4 trillion in the previous three years. Even a Harvard economist can figure out this is a 29% increase in Federal spending. What has it accomplished? We are back in recession, unemployment is rising, forty six million Americans are on food stamps, food and energy prices are soaring, and the middle class is being annihilated. The standard Keynesian response is we would have lost 3 million more jobs, we were saved from a 2nd Great Depression and the stimulus was too little. It would have worked if it had just been twice as large.

The 2nd Great Depression was not avoided, it was delayed. Our two decade long delusional credit boom could have been voluntarily abandoned in 2008. The banks at fault could have been liquidated in an orderly bankruptcy with stockholders and bondholders accepting the consequences of their foolishness. Unemployment would have soared to 12%, GDP would have collapsed, and the stock market would have fallen to 5,000. The bad debt would have been flushed from the system. Instead our Wall Street beholden leaders chose to save their banker friends, cover-up the bad debt, shift private debt to taxpayer debt, print trillions of new dollars in an effort to inflate away the debt, and implemented every wacky Keynesian stimulus idea Larry Summers could dream up.  These strokes of genius have failed miserably. Bernanke, Paulson, Geithner and Obama have set in motion a series of events that will ultimately lead to a catastrophic currency collapse. We have entered the second phase of the Greater Depression and there are no monetary or fiscal bullets left in the gun. Further expansion of debt will lead to a hyperinflationary collapse as the remaining confidence in the U.S. dollar is exhausted. We are one failed Treasury auction away from a currency crisis.

John Maynard Keynes argued the solution to the Great Depression was to stimulate the economy through some combination of two approaches: a reduction in interest rates and government investment in infrastructure. Investment by government injects income, which results in more spending in the general economy, which in turn stimulates more production and investment involving still more income and spending and so forth. The initial stimulation starts a cascade of events, whose total increase in economic activity is a multiple of the original investment.

It sounds so good in theory, but it didn’t work in the Depression and it hasn’t worked today. It is a doctrine taught in every business school in America with no actual results to support it. Who needs facts and actual results when a good story believed and perpetuated by non-thinking pundits will do? Every Keynesian play in the playbook has been used since 2008. The American people were told by Obama and his Keynesian trained advisors that if we implemented his $862 billion shovel ready stimulus package, unemployment would peak at 7.9% and would decline to 6.5% by today. The cascade of recovery was going to be jump started by a stimulus package that equaled 27% of the previous year’s entire spending. Obama’s complete package was implemented. The outcome was an eye opener.

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by Arnie Gundersen
Posted August 24th, 2011

New data supports previous Fairewinds analysis, as contamination spreads in Japan and worldwide

NEWLY RELEASED NEUTRON DATA FROM THREE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA San Diego scientists confirms Fairewinds’ April analysis that the nuclear core at Fukushima Daiichi turned on and off after TEPCO claimed its reactors had been shutdown. This periodic nuclear chain reaction (inadvertent criticality) continued to contaminate the surrounding environment and upper atmosphere with large doses of radioactivity.

In a second area of concern, Fairewinds disagrees with the NRC’s latest report claiming that all Fukushima spent fuel pools had no problems following the earthquake. In a new revelation, the NRC claims that the plutonium found more than one mile offsite actually came from inside the nuclear reactors. If such a statement were true, it indicates that the nuclear power plant containments failed and were breached with debris landing far from the power plants themselves. Such a failure of the containment system certainly necessitates a complete review of all US reactor containment design and industry assurances that containments will hold in radioactivity in the event of a nuclear accident. The evidence Fairewinds reviewed to date continues to support its April analysis that the detonation in the Unit 3 Spent Fuel pool was the cause of plutonium found off site.

Third, the burning of radioactive materials (building materials, trees, lawn grass, rice straw) by the Japanese government will cause radioactive Cesium to spread even further into areas within Japan that have been previously clean, and across the Pacific Ocean to North America.

And finally, the Japanese government has yet to grasp the severity of the contamination within Japan, and therefore has not developed a coherent plan mitigate the accident and remediate the environment. Without a cohesive plan to deal with this ongoing problem of large scale radioactive contamination, the radioactivity will continue to spread throughout Japan and around the globe further exacerbating the problem and raising costs astronomically.

http://www.fairewinds.com/content/new-data-supports-previous-fairewinds-analy…

US Government makes Strategic Decision to DOWNPLAY Fukushima (Arnie Gundersen) 8/14/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqmgLOzeKiM

Agenda 21, Read it.
http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/english/Agenda21.pdf

*Note: Single radiation dose of 2,000 millisieverts (200,000 millirems) and above causes serious illness.

by Matthew K
Posted 23 August 2011
on Le Café Américain

IT’S BEEN A ROUGH FEW WEEKS FOR THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM, WHICH BESTRIDES THE GLOBE like a teetering colossus. Not only has there been stock market turmoil worldwide, and the temporary threat of a US default on its debts, but an esteemed, mainstream economist suggested that Karl Marx was right. In the Wall Street Journal, no less! Karl Marx Was Right

That would be Nouriel Roubini, whose claim to fame came from timely warnings about the US housing bubble and subsequent US stock market collapse. It is important to note that he only said that Marx was right in that capitalism could collapse on itself,  not that it actually would.

Most people are familiar with the spectacular failures of central planning in the Communist regimes. According to the resurgently fashionable Austrian school of economics, an economy is too complex to be managed by one expert, or even one committee of experts, regardless whether the clubhouse door reads “Politburo” or “Shark Tank.”

According to the Austrians, society’s fastest path to prosperity consists of allowing every person to decide freely what is in their best interest, with the emphasis on individual transactions.

A biological analogy comes from flocks of birds, schools of fish, and ant colonies, among others. These swarms function extremely well, despite being composed of simple creatures following simple rules, and despite the anarchic lack of a leader directing things. Our own “simple critter rules” in modern society are probably along the lines of “try to get a higher paying job, and pay lower prices for stuff, within the laws of the land, and without making too many enemies.”

A business analogy comes from Toyota. Their quality went from hopeless to fearsome by training every employee to be competent enough to figure out how to do their own job better, and then allowing them to do so. If their management tried to dictate how each task was to be done, they might have peaked at early-80’s American car maker quality levels.

In a similar way, they decided not to try to predict the right production levels for each model, colour, and trim. Instead they pre-built enough cars to fill dealership inventory, and each time a customer purchased a vehicle, they would build one more of that same model, colour, and features. In economic nerd speak, they responded to that “market signal”. So if 5% of Corolla drivers wanted a green car with deluxe extras, in the long run 5% of Corolla production would consist of deluxe green vehicles.

Since the flaws of central planning and benefits of distributed decision-making occur in the public sector, the private sector, and even in biology, we can generalize that the USSR’s economic problem was ultimately that a small group of people would decide how to (mis)allocate most of the country’s resources.

In the past thirty years, there’s been an immense concentration of wealth — particularly in Anglo-American countries (the US, UK, us, the Aussies). The US is at the leading edge of this trend, with the top 1% owning 42% of the wealth, or about six times as much as the bottom four fifths of the population, and a significant portion of the means of production and public information (media) and influence over the course of society.

In recent decades Western capitalism has moved towards the central planning model of a relatively small number of people in charge of directing the allocation of resources. This narrowing of perspective has in turn led to policies progressively more disastrous for the moved and the shaken… which was the Soviet denouement.

I have to credit the influence of the thoughtful blog of a well-to-do American entrepreneur and military strategist, and especially this particular posting: Central Planning and the Fall of US Empire

Capitalism’s path back from the self-perpetuating central planning will require a more equitable, or at least a less inequitable, distribution of wealth and power, by which to rebuild the middle class and promote decision making based on individual choice and a more widely based entrepreneurial meritocracy. Which is what Roubini was complaining about, in saying that too much wealth was being redistributed from labour to capital.

It would be a terrible irony if Marx was proven correct, and unchecked capitalism destroyed itself by evolving the self-crippling features of a centrally planned communist economy. One can only hope that we can reform our current market systems before things get worse.

from The Economic Collapse Blog
Posted August 18th, 2011

IF YOU THOUGHT THAT 2011 WAS A BAD YEAR FOR THE WORLD ECONOMY, just wait until you see what happens in 2012. The U.S. and Europe are both dealing with unprecedented debt problems, the financial markets are flailing about wildly, austerity programs are being implemented all over the globe, prices on basics such as food are soaring and a lot of consumers are flat out scared right now. Many analysts now fear that a “perfect storm” could be brewing and that we could actually be headed for an economic apocalypse in 2012.

Hopefully that will not happen. Hopefully our leaders can keep the global economy from completely falling apart.  But right now, things don’t look good. After a period of relative stability, things are starting to become unglued once again. The next major financial panic could literally happen at any time. Sadly, if we do see an economic apocalypse in 2012, it won’t be the wealthy that suffer the most. It will be the poor, the unemployed, the homeless and the hungry that feel the most pain.

The following are 20 signs that we could be headed for an economic apocalypse in 2012….

#1 Back in 2008 we saw major rioting around the world due to soaring food prices, and now global food prices are on the rise again.  Global food prices in July were 33 percent higher than they were one year ago.  Price increases for staples such as maize (up 84 percent), sugar (up 62 percent) and wheat (up 55 percent) are absolutely devastating poverty-stricken communities all over the planet.  For example, one expert is warning that 800,000 children living in the Horn of Africa could die during this current famine.

#2 The producer price index in the U.S. has increased at an annual rate of at least 7.0% for the last three months in a row.  We are starting to see huge price increases all over the place.  For example, Starbucks recently jacked up the price of a bag of coffee by 17 percent.  If inflation keeps accelerating like this we could be facing some very serious problems by the time 2012 rolls around.

#3 The U.S. “Misery Index” (unemployment plus inflation) recently hit a 28 year high and many believe that it is going to go much, much higher.

#4 Jared Bernstein, the former chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden, says that the unemployment rate in this country will not go below 8% before the 2012 election.  In fact, Bernstein says that “the most optimistic forecast would be for about eight-and-a-half percent.”

#5 Working class jobs in the United States continue to disappear at an alarming rate.  Back in 1967, 97 percent of men with a high school degree between the ages of 30 and 50 had jobs.  Today, that figure is 76 percent.

#6 There are all kinds of indications that U.S. economic growth is about to slow down even further.  For example, pre-orders for Christmas toys from China are way down this year.

#7 One recent survey found that 9 out of 10 U.S. workers do not expect their wages to keep up with the rising cost of basics such as food and gasoline over the next year.

#8 U.S. consumer confidence is now at its lowest level in 30 years.

#9 Today, an all-time record 45.8 million Americans are on food stamps.  It is almost inconceivable that the largest economy on earth could have so many people dependent on the government for food.

#10 As the economy crumbles, we are also witnessing the fabric of society beginning to come apart.  The recent flash mob crimes that we are starting to see all over America are just one example of this.

#11 Some desperate Americans are already stealing anything that they can get their hands on.  For example, according to the American Kennel Club, dog thefts are up 32 percent this year.

#12 Small businesses all over the United States are having a really difficult time getting loans right now.  Perhaps if the Federal Reserve was not paying banks not to make loans things would be different.

#13 The U.S. national debt is like a giant boulder that our economy must constantly carry around on its back, and it is growing by billions of dollars every single day.  Right now the debt of the federal government is $14,592,242,215,641.90.  It has gone up by nearly 4 trillion dollars since Barack Obama took office.  S&P has already stripped the U.S. of its AAA credit rating, and more downgrades are certain to come if the U.S. does not get its act together.

#14 Tensions between the United States and China are rising again.  A new opinion piece on chinadaily.com is calling for the Chinese government to use its holdings of U.S. debt as a “financial weapon” against the United States if the U.S. follows through with a plan to sell more arms to Taiwan.  The U.S. and China are the two biggest economies in the world, so any trouble between them would mean economic trouble for the rest of the globe as well.

#15 Most state and local governments in the U.S. are deep in debt and flat broke.  Many of them are slashing jobs at a feverish pace.  According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, state and local governments have eliminated more than half a million jobs since August 2008.  UBS Investment Research is projecting that state and local governments in the U.S. will cut 450,000 more jobs by the end of 2012.  How those jobs will be replaced is anyone’s guess.

#16 The U.S. dollar continues to get weaker and weaker.  This is renewing calls for a new global currency to be created to replace the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the world.

#17 The European sovereign debt crisis continues to get worse.  Countries like Portugal, Italy and Greece are on the verge of an economic apocalypse.  All of the financial problems in Europe are even beginning to affect the core European nations.  For example, German industrial production declined by 1.1% in June.  There are all kinds of signs that the economy of Europe is slowing down and is heading for a recession.  French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are proposing that a new “economic government” for Europe be set up to oversee this debt crisis, but nothing that the Europeans have tried so far has done much to solve things.

#18 The Federal Reserve is so desperate to bring some sort of stability to financial markets that it has stated that it will likely keep interest rates near zero all the way until mid-2013.  The Federal Reserve is operating in “panic mode” almost constantly now and they are almost out of ammunition. So what is going to happen when the real trouble starts?

#19 Central banks around the world certainly seem to be preparing for something.  According to the World Gold Council, central banks around the globe purchased more gold during the first half of 2011 than they did all of last year.

#20 Often perception very much influences reality. One recent survey found that 48 percent of Americans believe that it is likely that another great Depression will begin within the next 12 months.  If people expect that a depression is coming and they quit spending money that actually increases the chance that an economic downturn will occur.

There is already a tremendous amount of economic pain on the streets of America, but unfortunately it looks like things may get even worse in 2012. The once great economic machine that was handed down to us by our forefathers is falling to pieces all around us and we are in debt up to our eyeballs.  The consequences of our bad economic decisions are hurting some of the most vulnerable members of our society the most. As the following video shows, large numbers of formerly middle class Americans are now living in their cars or sleeping in the streets….

It is a crying shame what is happening out there on the streets of America today. Please say a prayer for all of those that are sleeping in cars or tents or under bridges tonight. Soon even more Americans will be joining them.

by NewAmericaNow
Posted June 26, 2011

from The Daily Bell
Posted Thursday, August 11, 2011

CENTRAL BANKERS ARE RACING to shield their economies from fiscal tightening and lopsided currency swings that threaten a new global recession. In the 72 hours after a Group of Seven conference call on Aug. 7, the Federal Reserve pledged to keep interest rates near zero through at least mid-2013, the European Central Bank intervened in bond markets and the Bank of England indicated it’s ready to add more stimulus if needed. Japan signaled renewed concern about the yen and Switzerland yesterday stepped up its fight to curb an “overvalued” franc. … While the actions aren’t as directly coordinated, the push is one of the broadest since the Fed, ECB and four other central banks cut interest rates together in October 2008 to limit fallout from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.‘s collapse. – Bloomberg

Dominant Social Theme:
The experts at the world’s central banks are on the job.

Free-Market Analysis:
This Bloomberg article is just another in a long line of disappointing mainstream financial reports that does nothing to address the real issues causing the crisis and, in fact, does everything to try to misinform the public into believing that the “experts” have all under control.

Well, we do not think more jaw-jaw is what people want to hear right now, or that the money magicians are capable of doing anything to stop the rapid erosion of public confidence. And based on the recent upward move in Honest Money, it is quite obvious the markets don’t want to hear it either.

Regardless of what Bloomberg wants people to believe, the world’s central banks are NOT independent banks led by teams of “experts” dedicated to establishing prudent national monetary policy. No, they are nothing of the sort and never were intended to be. They are simply a cartel-like crime syndicate that operates under the direction of the Swiss-based “super central bank,” the Bank for International Settlements. And the BIS is just one more tool in the arsenal of elite monetary control of the world.

The BIS sits like a great spider at the heart of the corrupt and ruinous central banking mechanism that the Anglo-American elite has successfully foisted upon the world. It coordinates the policies of these ruinous entities – not to any great effect – but to ensure that the Anglosphere maintains control of what it has built.

The Western elite’s banking scheme is a central part of how the Anglosphere has managed to dominate the world behind the scenes. Through central banking and the BIS, the Anglo elites have a stranglehold over economies worldwide. Even though most of the world was aligned against a presumed to be corrupt BIS after World War II, it somehow managed to escape dissolution. This is because it is a prime asset of the City of London, that mysterious one-square mile patch of real estate at the heart of London where the Bank of England itself is located.

However, today all of the elite’s poisonous machinations face an unprecedented decline in public confidence. And nowhere is the threat of total collapse more intense than on that most important elite edifice of all – the central banking system itself.

It is only the confidence of the public that enables the continuous printing of unrestrained fiat currencies – which combine to provide the base of an international Ponzi scheme. But something’s happening around the world that the money masters didn’t plan on. People are waking up.

But you wouldn’t know it by reading articles like this one, excerpted above. No, Bloomberg, a mainstream media outlet to be sure, would rather you believe that there are sweaty-browed experts working around the clock to fix the situation. So what magic tools do they have? What are the experts doing about this financial mess? Here’s more from the article:

Finance ministers and central bankers from the G-7 nations, which include the U.S., U.K. and Germany, said in a statement Aug. 7 that they will “take all necessary measures to support financial stability and growth in a spirit of close cooperation and confidence.” …

The next day, the Frankfurt-based ECB, which last week restarted its bond-purchase program after an 18-week hiatus, extended its focus to include debt of Italy and Spain, the region’s third- and fourth-largest economies.

The Fed’s decision Aug. 9 to hold its key interest rate at a record low through mid-2013 and signal it’s ready to use additional tools comes as U.S. politicians are tightening the nation’s fiscal belt and the economic stimulus enacted by President Barack Obama in 2009 comes to an end.

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King told reporters in London yesterday that headwinds buffeting the nation’s economy are intensifying “by the day” and officials can expand stimulus if the outlook for growth deteriorates further.

Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said Aug. 9 that volatile exchange rates could have a “negative impact” on the economy, after the central bank last week added 10 trillion yen ($130 billion) of stimulus and the country unilaterally intervened in the currency market to weaken the yen.

Switzerland’s central bank said yesterday it will increase the supply of francs to fight the currency’s “massive overvaluation.”

That’s it? The central banksters have decided to do MORE OF THE SAME. They’re all going to work to make sure they “print-in sync” as much new money as “necessary” so that none of them face total collapse and threaten to take down the entire game? That’s the plan? And they will directly intervene in the market to create the illusion of demand/strength by buying the garbage debt from countries like Spain and Italy? This is the plan? Isn’t that called market manipulation?

Wow. Well, here’s a better plan. Stop the insanity! You cannot fix a dysfunctional monetary system that is built on a fraudulent premise by simply increasing the degree of the crime. The impossibly wealthy families who desire one-world governance will stop at nothing – including the use of force – to complete their centuries-long mission. But arrogantly, they will refuse to cease their devious efforts and instead will try to use these crises to bind the masses into accepting a fear-based international monetary solution. Out of chaos… order.

In fact, just the other day one of China’s faceless mouthpieces, the Xinhua News Agency, came out in an editorial to the world and stated, “International supervision over the issue of U.S. dollars should be introduced and a new, stable and secured global reserve currency may also be an option to avert a catastrophe caused by any single country.”

And then there is this statement from Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, “Policy makers must respond forcefully, creatively and decisively … crises that are international in scope require an international response.”

Can’t you just see the smile on Christine Lagarde’s face as she gleefully embraces her new position as Head of the International Monetary Fund? For surely there is an IMF logo engraved on the international boot readying itself to slam down on the faces of current and future generations. But hold on a minute… will the puppets/experts running the world’s central banks – and Money Power standing behind them – be able to pull off this global manipulation?

We’re not so sure they will. And we certainly don’t wish them luck.

All across the world, the modern Internet Reformation is beginning to reshape the way people relate to power in the modern age. While it is not as obvious as during the era of the Gutenberg Press, there is formal doctrine accepted by Western societies that is beginning to shatter. That formal doctrine may be termed regulatory democracy and it has been leavened with numerous assumptions that on closer inspection turn out not to be true. Like what money is and what it is not. And it is the Internet itself that allows for information to spread that undermines the various precepts of regulatory democracy.

It is this hierarchy that promulgates regulatory democracy and its various dominant social themes – the fear-based promotions that the Western power elite uses to control the conversation and to further centralize power and authority worldwide.

And one of those fear-based promotions that the masses have been bombarded with is the “expert” theme. The public is constantly being promoted into accepting a passive position with respect to how the financial world operates. They are meant to be overwhelmed with facts and complicated economic formulas so they feel helpless, confused and generally incapable of mastering their own financial destinies. After all, how could anyone understand such a complex subject as money?

Well, all around the world people are starting to understand that the system is rigged and money really isn’t complicated at all. The Internet Reformation reveals the cartel’s synchronized efforts to manipulate public confidence so they can continue their fraudulent and manipulative wealth redistribution game.

Conclusion:
The reality of the situation is this: there are no magic monetary tools that can fix the global monetary crises hidden in the basement of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, or any of the others. The fiat money instruments themselves – dollars, euros, yen, etc. – ARE THE PROBLEM.

And in this alternative media-led ‘Net era, the old men hiding behind the central banking curtains are starting to look rather pathetic. The illusion is fading and people are waking up. In fact, the European Union is failing, various serial wars of conquest are not going well, and the fear-based memes of the elite are continually being debunked by an Internet that adds more to humankind’s real knowledge base every day. It will take decades if not centuries to control the damage that has already been done (from an elite standpoint), and what has been done cannot be undone.

Will the international power elite lose their destructive ability to create money out of nothing and their control over legislative power that currently prohibits private money competition? Will the elite be forced to take a step back in the face of a massive public awakening? Or will an Orwellian-style society be forcibly foisted upon us all with the UN, IMF, World Bank, BIS, NATO, WHO, ICC and all the other edifices of world government eventually control every aspect of our lives? Only time will tell, but the Internet Reformation gives one great hope that the “best laid plans will be laid to rest.”