From The Ramparts

The Current Economic Collapse Is Deliberate

The Current Economic Collapse Is Deliberate

“The mighty wheels of commerce have rusted in place. Nothing is moving. Only the sense of panic continues to grow. Trillions of dollars poisonous CDOs need to unwind, but the banks cannot put them up for bid for fear that they’ll only get pennies on the dollar. This is what a slow-motion train-wreck looks like. The Fed’s cheap credit won’t help either. At best, it’ll just buy a little time before the true value of these bonds is established and trillions of dollars in market capitalization vanish into cyber-space. Banks, equities, hedge funds, insurance companies and pension funds are all in line to suffer major losses. The irony, of course, is that the Federal Reserve created this mess by lowering interest rates to 1% and flushing trillions of dollars into the economy. That cheap money created a series of lethal equity-bubbles in housing, credit, stocks and bonds which are quickly falling to earth. Expanding the money-supply might be a short-term fix, but it’s really just throwing more gas on the fire. Why add hyper-inflation to the long-list of existing problems? The volatility in the stock market is a red herring. We should be paying attention to the underlying problems which are just now beginning to surface. The banks have been originating loans and bundling them off to Wall Street to avoid the normal reserve requirements. Now they’ve been 'caught short' and don’t have adequate funding to cover their bets. If the Fed doesn’t help out, we’ll see at least one or two major bank closures.” Stock Market Brushfire; Will there be a run on the banks? by Mike Whitney http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6534

Once more and again the banking elites and their sock puppets who determine policy for credit and money have rigged the game in their favor so that in the coming collapse (and one is coming sooner or later) they and their cronies will be able to gobble up real estate, resources, companies and business at pennies on the dollar. Plus they will also be the ones who determine exactly how the US will get out of the mess its in, either through a general default, the creation of a consolidated North American economy or via perpetual wars and a domestic police state to control all the wage peons and debt slaves their policies have created. None of this is new. Crashes, depressions and economic downturns don’t happen by accident, nor are they spontaneous and unplanned. They happen because of actions by a select group of financiers and bankers who have the political influence to execute their plans, programs and agendas. “Greenspan has successfully piloted the nation into virtual insolvency. In fact, the parallels between our present situation and the period preceding the Great Depression are striking. Just as massive debt was accumulating in the market from the purchase of stocks ‘on margin’, so too, mortgage debt between 2000 and 2006 soared from $4.8 trillion to $9.5 trillion. In both cases the ‘wealth effect’ spawned a spending spree which looked like growth but was really the steady, insidious expansion of debt which generated economic activity. In both periods wages were either flat or declining and the gap between rich and working class was growing more extreme by the year. As Paul Alexander Gusmorino said in his article, ‘Main Causes of the Great Depression’: ‘Many factors played a role in bringing about the depression; however, the main cause for the Great Depression was the combination of the greatly unequal distribution of wealth throughout the 1920's, and the extensive stock market speculation that took place during the latter part that same decade’. The same factors are at work today except that the speculation is in real estate rather than stocks. Just as in the 1920’s the equity bubble was not created by wages keeping pace with productivity (the healthy formula for growth) but by the expansion of personal debt. Also, one could buy stocks without the money to purchase them, just as one can buy a $600,000 or $700,000 house today with zero-down and no monthly payment on the principle for years to come. The current account deficit ($800 billion) could also weigh heavily in any economic shake-up that may be forthcoming.” US Housing Market Crash to result in the Second Great Depression http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article383.html
Make no mistake there will be problems galore despite the recent infusion of massive amounts of worthless paper money and credit to prevent a run on the stock market, banks, and hedge funds around the world. The day of reckoning is upon us but the shysters who operate the stock market Ponzi scam, are trying vainly to forestall the obvious consequences of their criminality. “A crash is unavoidable because the policies were designed to create a crash. It’s that simple. The Federal Reserve is a central player in a carefully considered plan to shift the nation’s wealth from one class to another. And they have succeeded. Nearly 4 million American jobs have been sent overseas, the country has increased the national debt by $3 trillion dollars, and foreign investors own $4.5 trillion in US dollar-backed assets. While the Fed has been carrying out its economic strategy; the Bush administration has deployed the military around the world to conduct a global resource war. These are two wheels on the same axel. The goal is to maintain control of the global economic system by seizing the remaining energy resources in Eurasia and the Middle East and by integrating potential rivals into the American-led economic model under the direction of the Central Bank. All of the leading candidates—Democrat and Republican---belong to secretive organizations which ascribe to the same basic principles of global rule (new world order) and permanent US hegemony. There’s no quantifiable difference between any of them. The impending economic crisis is part of a much broader scheme to remake the political system from the ground-up so it better meets the needs of ruling elite. After the crash, public assets will be sold at firesale prices to the highest bidder. Public lands will be auctioned off. Basic services will be privatized. Democracy will be shelved.” Stock Market Meltdown by Mike Whitney http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6467
I was doing some research on the 1929 Stock Market Crash and trying to locate the findings of the Pecora Commision that investigated the 1929 Stock Crash. You can see a brief synopsis of the Commission at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecora_Commission but you will be hard pressed to locate or the results of the Commission’ investigation. I saw something a while ago about how in 1928 and ‘29 the large Wall Street investment bankers made it easy for massive stock market speculation and rigged the stock market so things would appear to be going well when in reality, the economy was unraveling. The Pecora Commission findings obviously have been suppressed and flushed down the memory hole ala what George Orwell wrote about in his novel 1984.
Like 1929, the current economic unraveling is another of the ruling elites’ rip offs ala the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980's and the Dot.com pump and dump scheme of the 1990's. Is there a silver lining I all this? In a way. Be glad the bankers' sock puppet George W. Bu$h wasn’t able to privatize Social Security. If Bu$h and his cronies had been successful in their attempt to get the Wall Streeters hands on the Social Security funds we would be in real doo doo! As things unravel even further the government will move to initiate a “bailout” of favored bankers (given the size of the collapse a true bailout is virtually impossible.). The US government will simultaneously clamp down on Joe and Jane Sixpack as the AmeriKKKan public wakes up and finds they are in debt up to their eyeballs with no way out and immigrants are taking the last of their good paying jobs. But in the meanwhile many pension funds, 401K funds and stock and bond portfolios of the ordinary folks will take major hits due to the mortgage collapse and the ripple effect in the hedge and derivative funds. Once the public awakens from their media induced coma, all hell will break loose. There may even be runs on mutual funds as well as banks. The government will have to act to quell the outrage and the police state will ratchet up to the point martial law and “homeland security” will make Stalin, Hitler and their totalitarian regimes look like Nirvana!!
For Black folks this piece may not mean much because we aren’t involved in the US economy that tough. We don’t have a lot of stocks or bonds, some of us may be into mutual funds but they will take a hit also! We will however, be swept up in the resulting drama, chaos, panics, hyperinflation and fascist police state. We will have to find ways to barter amongst ourselves, share goods and services and provide the basics for survival. It will not be pretty. None of this has occurred by accident it has all been planned and executed by the ruling elites. Whatever happens no matter how bad things may get, don’t panic. We have the intelligence to save ourselves we just have to wake up and see what is happening. Pay attention to what is going on even though we are not an integral part of the system. Free your mind the rest will follow.

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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 8:52 PM