More Government BS Amidst Real Economic Disaster
More BS Amidst Real Economic Disaster “The banks and other financials have more losses from the subprime-mortgage mess on their books that they haven't yet confessed. Worse, the mortgage debacle has spread to other types of debt, with banks and other financial companies reporting mounting losses in their credit card and auto loan portfolios. And worst of all, the next big leg of the crisis -- the one I think will mark the true bottom -- has just started. As the economy slows, the default rate is rising for corporate debt, especially for the high-risk, high-yield corporate debt called ‘junk’ by many of us. That's opening a Pandora's box of potential write-downs that could dwarf the losses in the mortgage market.” The next banking crisis on the way By Jim Jubak http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal
The US economy is in deep trouble but for the most part AmeriKKKans have no clue just how precarious the situation really is. AmeriKKKans are woefully ignorant about how the economy works for numerous reasons: an educational system that fails to teach real world realities, a mass media wedded to the class interests and agenda of the ruling oligarchy whose mission is to distract and bamboozle us. The media and government treat us like mushrooms, they deliberately keep us in the dark and feed us excrement so we will not connect the dots and comprehend the totality of corruption, fraud and treachery that exists. The government lies and manipulates the figures in their economic reports and statistics. Not just the Bu$h administration although they are the most egregious liars in AmeriKKKan history but every administration since WWII. “
The popularly followed economic series are subject to two forms of manipulation. First is the event-driven alteration of data, where specific employment numbers, for example are massaged to help political circumstances. Such is the nature of what appears to be happening at present, with presidential approval ratings doing some historical bottom bouncing. The second type of manipulation is more insidious, though, where reporting methodologies are altered so as to build reporting biases into a series. Changes in CPI weighting methodology during the Clinton administration (and as proposed by the earlier Bush administration), for example, were designed to understate the CPI so as to cheat social security recipients out of some of their cost of living adjustments. That purpose was espoused particularly by former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. Here is how the reporting system shenanigans have evolved over time. The first regular reporting of now-popular statistics such as gross national/domestic product (GNP/GDP), unemployment and the consumer price index (CPI) began in the decade following World War II. Modern political manipulation of the government's economic data began as soon as practicable thereafter, with revisions to methodology often incorporating positive reporting biases. As a result, investors and most economists, relying on the government's data, often miss underlying economic reality.” MANIPULATING THE MASSES
by John Williams http://www.conservababes.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php
By that reckoning, if Henry Paulson the Secretary of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are calling for immediate government intervention to stem an impending economic downturn, you know things are really really bad. Yet George W Bu$h a man with subterranean public approval rating and no credibility whatsoever expects the public to believe “the economy is strong.” Bu$h gives an entirely new meaning to the term “village idiot”. Conditions are so bad the worst news has yet to be reported. The whole system is imploding and the various components are starting to topple like dominoes. There are so many bubbles out there that have burst or that are about to burst its scary: mortgage, credit, credit card and soon the shadow banking industry, hedge funds and derivatives, will soon start to unravel.
“But it's the emerging problems in the corporate-junk-bond market that really worry me. The sector and the problems are big enough to produce another big setback for financial companies and the economy as a whole. Actually, I'm worried not so much about the junk-bond market itself as the huge market for a derivative called a credit-default swap, or CDS, built on top of that junk-bond market. Credit-default swaps are a kind of insurance against default, arranged between two parties. One party, the seller, agrees to pay the face value of the policy in case of a default by a specific company. The buyer pays a premium, a fee, to the seller for that protection. This has grown to be a huge market: The total value of all CDS contracts is something like $450 trillion. Because buyers and sellers of insurance usually create multiple "policies" as they attempt to control risk, that number includes a lot of duplication. Real exposure, says the Bank for indefensible Settlements, may be only 20% of that, or $90 trillion. Some studies have put the real credit risk at just 6% of the total, or about $27 trillion. That puts the CDS market at somewhere between two and six times the size of the U.S. economy. The CDS market has been a good place to make money in the past few years because default rates in the junk-bond market have been historically low. The default rate for all junk bonds declined to 1.7% in 2006. That's the lowest rate since 1996. With defaults that low, sellers were paid insurance premiums but didn't have to cough up much in return. But that default rate started to rise in 2007, climbing to 2.6%. And Standard & Poor's projects the rate will climb to 3.4% by October. At that rate, 56 bonds would go into default in 2008, compared with 14 in 2007.” The next banking crisis on the way By Jim Jubak http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal
If bond and insurance markets start to fall and the evaporating trust between bankers spreads across the board, major panic will set in. Eventually the whole house of cards will tumble. Quiet as its kept, Bu$h’s “economic stimulus” is more smoke and mirrors designed to dupe the masses into thinking the government’s actions will jump start a collapsing economy. The “stimulus package” Bu$h , the Democrats, Paulson and the Fed are pushing is nothing more than a PR scam. It represents more of the same, fiscal irresponsibility and failed policies that got us in this mess in the first place. Cranking up the Fed printing presses, borrowing to dole out “tax rebates” or passing more tax reductions for business will further drive the value of the US dollar down and drastically increase the already indefensible federal debt. Additional money stock (true inflation) will cause the cost of living to increase but only producing marginal results employment wise.
“Critics contend that rebates ‘inject’ new money into the economy, increasing demand and therefore production. But every dollar that government rebates ‘inject’ into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy (and even money borrowed from foreigners brings a reduction in net exports). No new spending power is created. It is merely redistributed from one group of people to another. The same critics respond that redistributing money from ‘savers’ to ‘spenders’ will lead to additional spending. That assumes that savers store their savings in their mattresses, thereby removing it from the economy. In reality, nearly all Americans either invest their savings (where it finances business investment) or deposit it in banks (which quickly lend it to others to spend). Therefore, the money is spent whether it is initially consumed or saved. Given that reality, isn't it more responsible for the saver to keep that money and save for a new home or their children's education, rather than have Washington redistribute it to someone else to spend at Best Buy?” Tax Rebates Will Not Stimulate The Economy by Brian M. Riedl http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary
The problem with Brian Riedl’s explanation is, AmeriKKKa has a negative savings rate.
“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the savings rate in January was a negative 0.7% -- that is, the average American household spent 0.7% more than it made. I'm not going to get into whether the savings rate is an accurate measure of American household wealth; whether it is or isn't, the savings rate has been in a steady decline since spending most of the 1970s above 10%. We've now had a complete year of a negative savings rate -- the first time since the Great Depression.” http://www.fool.com/personal-finance/retirement/2006/03/09/ AmeriKKKans don’t have any savings. We spend more than we make because our wages are stagnant while the cost of living is rising steadily. Household debt is off the hook.
“Americans have increased their borrowing on their credit cards to the point that the credit card industry took in $43 billion in fee income from late payments, over-limit, and balance transfer fees in 2004, up from $39 billion in 2003. In 2005, credit card late fees alone totaled over $11 billion. Consumer debt has doubled since 1990, to $7.5 trillion—-more than $50,000 per household, over $25,000 for every man, woman and child in America. Average household credit card debt has increased 167% between 1990 and 2004.” Economic Cannibalism http://www.new-enlightenment.com/econ_crash.htm
Keep in mind, the federal government is broke and in hock also. This means most of the money for the tax rebates must be borrowed or printed out of thin air by the Federal Reserve. Either way it will not solve the problem because the Fed’s inflationary policies caused the problems in the fist place!
By now you get the drift, Bu$h’s “stimulus package” is more okey-doke, more PR smoke and mirrors. Bu$h tried that in 2001 and it didn’t work. Just like then, the rebates did not really stimulate the economy nor did they trickle down and improve the lot of the majority of AmeriKKKans. The so called recovery didn’t produce the requisite number of jobs to meet annual increases in the work aged population, which is why unemployment is so high.
Bu$h’s latest tax rebates are not going to stop the off shoring of AmeriKKkan jobs nor will they reverse the negative impacts of globalization. The US economy will continue to stagnate. AmeriKKKans’ purchasing power and standard of living will continue to decrease while debt will rise (unless we wake up and stop being mindless consumers) due too the workings of compound interest. Nevertheless Joe and Jane Sixpack will take the rebates and run, not realizing they will suffer in the long run. They will spend the money oblivious to the truth, there is no free lunch.
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Will John White A Black Man Recieve Justice?
Will John White A Black Man Receive Justice? On December 22, 2007 a Suffolk County New York jury composed of ten whites one black and one Latino found John White, 54 of Miller Place Long Island guilty of second degree manslaughter and criminal weapons charges in the death of Daniel Cicciaro Jr. Cicciaro a white teen and four intoxicated friends trespassed onto White’s property last summer threatening White’s 19 year old son Aaron, White and his wife. White was found guilty following a tense and emotionally charged four week trial. The case and trail generated emotional strain because it pitted Aaron, John and Sonia White an African-American family whose peace and property had been disturbed by five drunken, hostile white youth on Thursday August 9, 2007. The boys came onto the White’s property threatening their son Aaron White then 19 years old. According to reports Aaron had been at a party and was confronted by Cicciaro who accused him of threatening to rape a fifteen year old white girl. Aaron left the party, went home woke his father up and told him some white boys were coming after him. According to Mr. White’s testimony his son was petrified when he came in and told him what had happened. According to the father, Aaron became even more frightened when the whites rolled up onto their property around 11:30 that night.
The father got up, got dressed, secured his shotgun and a pistol but put the shotgun down before going outside to confront the rowdy and boisterous youth. On the way out the door White told his wife to call 9-11. According to Mrs. White’s testimony she froze and didn’t do anything, she just stood there in shock and horror. The boys outside her house at the end of her driveway were disrespectful shouting racial slurs and threatening to do bodily harm to the whole family. Mr White went outside confronted the boys and according to him Cicciaro tried to grab White’s pistol. The gun discharged hitting Cicciaro in the face fatally wounding him.
When the case went to trial in December the courtroom atmosphere was tense. The trial lasted four weeks. African-Amerian supporters of the White family sat on one side of the courtroom and white supporters of the Cicciaros the other. News accounts said several jurors cried when Mrs. White shared her experiences that fateful night. By all accounts the jury was having a difficult time reaching any verdict in the emotionally charged case, repeatedly asking for clarification from presiding Judge Barbara Khan. After four days of deliberations, two jurors were still holding out for various reasons when Judge Khan asked them around 8:30 Saturday night for a Sunday schedule . Her request gave some jurors the impression they may have to report for jury duty the next day which was a Sunday two days before Christmas. The jurors retired to the deliberation room, the two holdouts eventually relented coming back with a guilty verdict within an hour.
After the verdict one juror Mr Francois Larche a former citizen of South Africa told the local press he felt pressured to go along with his fellow jurors. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny-limill1226,0,4641371.story Larche said during deliberations his fellow jurors chastised him and the other juror fo not going along. Things were so tense during the trial members of the Nation of Islam accompanied the Whites to and from the courthouse serving as protection for the family. After Cicciaro’s death, Aaron White received threats over the Internet prior to the trial. He reported them to the authorities and the local police were able to track the juvenile and identify him. But no arrests were made. According to Larche’s public statements, White was justified in his actions.
During the trial, prosecutors seemed to disregard the actions of Cicciaro and his four intoxicated companions, focusing exclusively on John White’s actions. The White’s live in Miller Place an essentially segregated area of Long Island a borough that doesn’t have a lot of African-Americans. The family resides a home Mr White who is a construction foreman built for his family. Defense attorneys depicted White as a hard working, quiet, church going family man and a good citizen. White is free on bail and is awaiting sentencing which will take place on February 21, 2008.
Following the verdict Rev. Al Sharpton and his Black Action Network staged a march and demonstration at the Suffolk County courthouse to bring more attention to the case. The ethnically diverse crowd at the demonstration numbered about four hundred participants and onlookers. Sharpton took the opportunity to raise the very pertinent issue of why the white youths who came to White’s home and threatened his son, his wife and him were not arrested, charged or prosecuted? Why were they allowed to go Scott free? White could face 5-15 years in prison. All eyes are on this case to see what type of sentence White will receive and what his attorneys will do if the Judge takes a hard line on him.
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Martin Luther King Jr vs The New World Order
Martin Luther King Jr. vs The New World Order
“And when one tries to pin down advocates of violence as to what acts would be effective, the answers are blatantly illogical. Sometimes they talk of overthrowing racist state and local governments and they talk about guerrilla warfare. They fail to see that no internal revolution has ever succeeded in overthrowing a government by violence unless the government had already lost the allegiance and effective control of its armed forces. Anyone in his right mind knows that this will not happen in the United States. In a violent racial situation, the power structure has the local police, the state troopers, the National Guard, and finally, the army to call on, all of which are predominantly white. Furthermore, few, if any, violent revolutions have been successful unless the violent minority had the sympathy and support of the non-resisting majority. Castro may have had only a few Cubans actually fighting with him and up in the hills (Yes), but he would have never overthrown the Batista regime unless he had had the sickness of the vast majority of Cuban people. It is perfectly clear that a violent revolution on the part of American blacks would find no sympathy and support from the white population and very little from the majority of the Negroes themselves. This is no time for romantic illusions and empty philosophical debates about freedom. This is a time for action. What is needed is a strategy for change, a tactical program that will bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life as quickly as possible. So far, this has only been offered by the nonviolent movement. Without recognizing this we will end up with solutions that don't solve, answers that don't answer, and explanations that don't explain.” Martin Luther King Jr "Where Do We Go From Here?" Annual Report Delivered at the 11th Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference 16 August 1967 Atlanta, Georgia
As we celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr, it is supremely ironic that forty years after his murder rooted in the very sicknesses he single handedly forced AmeriKKKa to face, these pathologies are still alive and well. Imperialism, militarism, racial superiority complexes and corporatist fascism like a massive cancer have metastasized during the past forty years to the point AmeriKKKa is rotted at its core. The stench is so foul now it can no longer be disguised or hidden. The same arrogance, greed and racism that prompted the US to take the baton from France in an unsuccessful attempt to maintain a European death grip of colonialism in Vietnam under the guise of stopping global communism, drives the US imperial machine today. Only now they occupy, choke, bomb, plunder and murder Haitians, Iraqis and Afghans in the name of their bogus Global War on Terrorism. Human beings are creatures of habit. We tend to do the same things over and over. So it is no surprise forty years later, the same out of control military industrial baning cabal is shedding US blood, dissipating the US treasury and expanding the powers of the police state at home.
Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered for daring to challenge the status quo, for forcing Joe and Jane Sixpack to look at how the US system was responsible for much of the world’s suffering. He became persona non grata for demanding a systemic restructuring and redistribution of wealth in AmeriKKKa. While the US elites claimed King was a communist, he was not. King knew communism was a bankrupt ideology and plainly said so,
“I'm not talking about communism. What I'm talking about is far beyond communism. My inspiration didn't come from Karl Marx; my inspiration didn't come from Engels; my inspiration didn't come from Trotsky; my inspiration didn't come from Lenin. Yes, I read Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital a long time ago, and I saw that maybe Marx didn't follow Hegel enough. He took his dialectics, but he left out his idealism and his spiritualism. And he went over to a German philosopher by the name of Feuerbach, and took his materialism and made it into a system that he called ‘dialectical materialism.’ I have to reject that. What I'm saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.” "Where Do We Go From Here?" Annual Report Delivered at the 11th Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference 16 August 1967 Atlanta, Georgia
King eloquently called for a radical restructuring of AmeriKKKan society and a re-examination of notions of wealth, justice and brotherhood. He put his action behind his words often finding himself alone, misunderstood and under relentless attack from whites and handkerchief head Negroes as he opposed the Vietnam War, the socio-economic disparities at home, and he challenged the spiritual and psychological cancers rife in AmeriKKKa. For this he was murdered.
But, wait, the real irony is the ruling elites were also planning and executing a radical restructuring of AmeriKKKan society and a definite redistribution of wealth. Only their plans call for the wealth to flow from us to them. The culmination of their plan is what we see happening now through: globalization, the bogus War on Terror and the current economic meltdown. As Joe and Jane Sixpack lose their homes, their savings and their constitutional rights in 2008, the same forces that profited from the Vietnam War and AmeriKKKan apartheid in 1968, are getting over like fat rats manufacturing ordnance that will bomb babies around the world, incarcerate millions in AmeriKKKa, and terrorize AmeriKKKans in the name of a War on Terror.
The military industrial complex working through their FBI and CIA cohorts chose to “neutralize” (their term for murder) King because they viewed him as a potential “Black Messiah” . The Martin Luther King Jr who was murdered on April 4, 1968 was not the “I Have A Dream” King the mind control apparatus keeps pumping out despite the fact the beginning of his
I Have A Dream speech was a scathing indictment of AmeriKKKa’s failure to live up to her promises and creed. King was way ahead of his time. He was not the Milquetoast sell out some have erroneously painted him. King like Malcolm was keenly aware of the nexus between European racism, imperialism, and global exploitation. King too opposed the New World Order of Western neocolonialism. He wisely eschewed violence because he knew we were out gunned and lacked the requisite organization, arms or support. His plan was to bring AmeriKKKa to heel via exposure, economic boycotts and civil disobedience. His Poor People’s Campaign would have further embarrassed, humbled and disrupted business as usual. The ruling elites could not tolerate that. So they ordered him killed.
King was a major casualty in the war against US fascism. The general is dead but his strategy will still work. In fact it is the one sure way we all win, by using economic leverage to force change. This is the most revolutionary thing we can do, not spend our money to support a system that dehumanizes us! Even the depraved Bu$h administration can’t put us all in jail, fill up the concentration camps or the waiting US Army labor camps because we refuse to support a system that oppresses us. Food for thought as we celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.
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US Economic Breakdown Eminent
US Economic Breakdown Is Eminent “Just as viruses mutate to become resistant to lower level antibiotics, we are now seeing new types of recessions brewing that will no longer respond to the usually prescribed ‘treatment’ of lower interest rates. Under normal circumstances, recessions can be temporarily alleviated and even turned into another boom by injecting more ‘credit’ (debt) into the economy. This is done by lowering interest rates, and central banks have a number of ways of achieving that. But when banks don’t trust each other and stop loaning money to each other, that’s when you have a real problem on your hands. If they don’t trust each other, you can bet that they trust their customers less. We are already seeing mortgage lending standards tightening up - and that is happening even though interest rates have been lowered 75 basis points since the credit crunch hit this past summer, and further significant rate cuts are expected.” Credit 'Crunch' - or Credit Collapse? http://www.small-business-goldmine.com/credit-crunch.html
Even the mainstream corporate media disinformation apparatus anticipates a significant US economic recession during 2008. Some economists and analysts are saying we are already in one. The problem for working folks is, the corporate media’s primary objective is to fool, distract and bamboozle us so we think up is down, evil is good and war is peace. At any given time we are being lied to or at the very least given enough misinformation to create a distorted reality whereby the ruling elites can easily manipulate our orientation and behavior. Someone once remarked, “They treat us like mushrooms, they keep us in the dark and feed us manure”. So it’s no coincidence most AmeriKKKan are clueless about the real economic situation this country is in or the precarious economic situation of the West.
The economic situation facing AmeriKKKa today is extremely dire yet most people think it only impacts their immediate household budget, that is, they realize it is harder to make ends meet, because from their experiences, the ends are getting farther apart. Consequently we tend to think it’s just us and maybe our social circle. In truth it’s systemic, the whole system is teetering on the brink of implosion. The supreme irony of the predatory US capitalist system is that it is anchored in “trust”, meaning for the system to work the majority of its’ investors, bankers and business people must believe the system works and that it is essentially an ethical and transparent operation.
But the reality is this system is neither ethical nor transparent. It is predatory and exploitative in nature. But the ruling elites through their values instilling institutions (education, organized religion entertainment etc) keep the masses believing there is a homogeneous, fair and ethical system at work here. Just as you had slave holders, murderers and rapists spouting off about “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness” while they brutally attempted to dehumanize our ancestors, slaughtered the indigenous inhabitants of this hemisphere and eventually set up a giant Ponzi scheme called the “stock market”, their modern hypocritical heirs are now scrambling to prevent the collapse of their whole system. The primary reason it is unraveling is because the element of trust between the main actors (the bankers, financiers and their flunkies in government) has dissipated due to their greed and reprehensible practices. In prior years the elites at least tried to maintain a veneer of class solidarity, but now they are so greedy they have wantonly sown the seeds for their own destruction and the crippling of their vaunted system.
“The banks, though, have now finally shot themselves in the foot. Their quintessential need to get more and more people into debt so that the banks themselves can prosper, has led them to generate more and more creative ways of finding more and more potential borrowers. Their last resort was to make loans to home buyers who really didn’t qualify for a mortgage. They felt constrained to loan to people who really didn’t demonstrate the requisite future productive power they could pledge in return for the ‘credit’ the bank created on their accounts. So, when times eventually got a little tougher as interest rates rose, they began to default on their mortgages - in growing numbers. Those borrowers didn’t have much to lose. They got their homes for zero or near-zero down payments, based on fictitious ‘stated income’ figures which the mortgage brokers were encouraged to dream up for them in order to make it look on paper as if the loan was justified. The loan broker’s supervisor closed both eyes, issued the loan, and bagged his bank-sponsored bonus vacation for having found yet another sucker who would go for this gambit, and the world kept spinning. These mortgages are now the epicenter of the so-called credit crunch. But they are no different in nature than the very ‘money’ that everybody earns and spends, the very money that governments, banks, and businesses now fear may one day stop flowing as abundantly as it has so far. The sad truth is that both the mortgages and the money they are supposed to be repaid with are nothing more than - debt.” Credit 'Crunch' - or Credit Collapse? http://www.small-business-goldmine.com/credit-crunch.html
In the past banks and mortgage companies would resell your home mortgage to another bank or mortgage company so they could spread out the income from your interest payments to their colleagues and generate even more debt (income for themselves via fractional lending) from the sale of your mortgage. In recent years the Fed and investment bankers devised ways to make even more money by bundling shaky loans as “bonds” and exotic sounding entities like collateralized debt obligations (CDO) or structured investment vehicles (SIV) then selling them around the world. The problem is the shaky loans, adjustable interest rates, overextended credit, bogus bond ratings and fraudulent bookkeeping on the part of the bankers have caused the shriveling of trust amongst bankers because so many banks both large and small are on the verge of insolvency. Or they have massive amounts of defaulting loans, devalued CDOs and SIVs on their books. Now these banks are scrambling to remain solvent because they are overextended in bad loans and devalued investment packages. As a result, they are not revealing their true fiscal situation. Now the banks don’t even trust each other. Things are so bad they won’t lend to each other for fear the borrowing bank(s) will default or be victimized by a run on their funds like what happened in 1929!
“Normally, banks fear that individual or business borrowers won’t be able to repay them in time. Now, they are afraid of each other because no single bank knows what the other’s real exposure to the credit crunch really is. You have read about the gargantuan losses of the biggest financial houses in the world. Some of these losses go into the tens of billions of dollars. Smaller banks have similar problems albeit on a smaller scale. Knowing this, and knowing that these losses stem from banks’ exposure to disappearing mortgage assets, no bank in its right mind would loan to the other money that the lending bank itself sorely needs to fund its own operations. That little problem has made the interest rate at which banks loan each other money shoot straight up. By now, not only subprime mortgages are at risk, but even prime borrowers with sterling credit are defaulting. Their mortgages (debt) were sold by the originating lenders to other outfits called “SIVs” or ‘specialized investment vehicles’ - a fancy term for what boils down to sham corporations set up to buy the mortgages.” ibid
This lack of trust, liquidity and credit are forcing the Fed and other private central banks around the world to bail out insolvent investment banks, commercial banks and mortgage companies just to keep the sham going! The Federal Reserve Bank is a privately owned banking cartel that is not part of the US government. It alone dictates US monetary and credit policy and creates money (debt) out of thin air. Its’ policies created this monetary/credit mess and its policies along with collapsing internal trust levels within the global banking (and shadow banking) communities are setting the economy up for an inevitable meltdown.
“The $4.6 trillion already vaporized in the 2001 Wall Street crash—and the trillions more which are now at risk because of the housing bubble burst--constitute the life savings of tens of million of working people in America. Millions of workers are discovering that their 401(k) plans, which have become a widespread substitute for guaranteed pensions, will no longer sustain them in a decent retirement because of recurring stock market collapses. Three-quarters of the funds held by 401(k) plans, about $1.7 trillion, are invested in the stock market. If you don't believe Americans have allowed themselves to be cannibalized, talk to the millions who've lost savings set aside to buy a new home, finance their children's college education, or protect against the threat of a major illness. American workers are living on the edge of disaster.” Economic Cannibalism http://www.new-enlightenment.com/econ_crash.htm.
A collapse is coming and it will not be pretty. Despite the efforts of the Fed and bankers to forestall an implosion, one is coming. In some ways it may resemble the one in 1929; while in most areas it will be a whole new experience. Think of Katrina on steroids only nation wide without the hurricane and the flood. Once the glue that holds the whole system together (trust) evaporates; its all over but the shouting. Keep an eye on the financial news, seek out reliable sources like http://www.ft.com/home/us or http://www.marketwatch.com. Be on the lookout for stories about banks, hedge funds and derivatives earnings, folding, merging, going belly up or having to write off massive losses. When (not if) that becomes more frequent, its all over.
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Imperialistic Karma
Imperialistic Karma “One of the severe side effects of imperialism in its advanced stages seems to be that it rots the brains of the imperialists. They start believing that they are the bearers of civilization, the bringers of light to "primitives" and "savages" (largely so identified because of their resistance to being "liberated" by us), the carriers of science and modernity to backward peoples, beacons and guides for citizens of the "underdeveloped world." Such attitudes are normally accompanied by a racist ideology that proclaims the intrinsic superiority and right to rule of "white" Caucasians. Innumerable European colonialists saw the hand of God in Darwin's discovery of evolution, so long as it was understood that He had programmed the outcome of evolution in favor of late Victorian Englishmen.” Chalmers Johnson
Most AmeriKKKans having been brainwashed and dummied down by an educational system that promotes white supremacist ideology, who live a deluded lives actually believing AmeriKKKa is a “free” and “democratic” nation. While it is true that up until recently some AmeriKKKans could travel without hassle, could take advantage of a higher standard of living and a consumer culture second to none, they were content not to know about the horrors their government and its corporate puppeteers were perpetrating around the globe in their names. These AmeriKKKans, would argue to the death AmeriKKKa is not an empire nor is it a predatory imperialist nation. They maintain this inaccurate point of view despite the fact the AmeriKKKan government has since day one been engaged in genocidal, extraterritorial encroachment and intrigue. The infant government's first campaigns were against the indigenous inhabitants of this land. Subsequently their covetousness spread to the rest of the hemisphere, into the Pacific (the Philippines and Hawaii) and then the world.
The AmeriKKKan plutocracy shouldered the mentality and mantle of European imperialism which was inherent in the founding of this nation. They steadily built upon it to the point they coveted recognition as an imperial equal amongst their European brethren. Their avarice was the root cause of the Mexican and Spanish American Wars and was the main reason AmeriKKKa was invited to the Berlin Conference where whites carved up Africa in 1884.
The Europeans’ blood lust caused incessant wars and violence amongst themselves and the non-Europeans they encountered around the world in the modern era from the fifteenth century onward. The twentieth century saw the dawn of global warfare which caused the deaths of millions and massive devastation on a global scale. European barbarism during that war culminated in the dropping of two atomic bombs on a non white civilian population by the United States. Following the second World War and the devastating drain on the Western imperialists’ coffers due to that war, AmeriKKKa took the baton of Western hubris and continued the quest for global domination.
The AmeriKKKan empire distinguished itself by the use of economic coercion as well as military force. But like all empires, AmeriKKKa now finds itself standing at the inevitable moral and fiscal precipice leading to destruction and decay. AmeriKKKa has arrived at this point in a much shorter time span than its Spanish, Dutch, Anglo and French predecessors. But unlike empires that exacted tribute from their conquered vassals that enriched the nobles, the imperial class with a few benefits trickling down to the lower classes in the form of higher standards of living, new and exotic foodstuffs and material goods; the bulk of the benefits of the AmeriKKKan empire are going to the corporations and super rich.
Today all we have to show for our empire status is a few new electronic gizmos and gadgets and a sinking standard of living. As many historians, social critics and astute person have/are pointing out AmeriKKKa has sunk into a deep moral abyss and we may have passed the point of no return. “Under President Clinton, the U.S. empire expanded far beyond the frontiers of any president since Harry Truman. From the Baltic countries to the Balkans and then onward toward the southern tier of what was formerly the USSR, the U.S. has established a series of client states, which are either new NATO members or ‘peace associates’ (clients-in-waiting). In Asia, the U.S. military has incurred in China’s airspace, modernized Taiwan’s military, bought into South Korea’s major industries, and challenged the stagnant Japanese economy for supremacy in the region. Today, the U.S. has military bases on the frontiers of Russia, its missiles only five minutes from Moscow. Washington bombs Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Somalia with impunity, and organizes international ‘Show trials’ in the Hague where it parades its defeated rivals. Washington has military bases in its new satellite states—Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo and via NATO in Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, etc.
Euro-American empires have succeeded in imposing neo-liberalism on five continents, opening the door to takeovers of lucrative national enterprises (both public and private), and penetration of markets, thus extending and deepening imperial control over the economies of the Third World. The Clinton legacy with regard to the domestic economy, revealed a 'two- faced' reality: on the surface an expansive economy covering nine years in which U.S. corporations were able to accrue enormous profits, in part based on the paper earnings of wild speculation on the stock market, the laundering by leading U.S. banks of hundreds of billions of ‘dirty money’ annually, highly indebted consumer spending and huge trade deficits. Clinton’s further deregulation of the financial system and economy led to the highest level of inequalities and concentration of wealth on Wall Street of any U.S. president since the turn of the 19th century.” Managing empire in a time of crisis By James Petras http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/jul01petras.htm
The Clinton and Bu$h II administrations have exacerbated the widening income gap between the super rich and working classes in AmeriKKKa. Both contributed to a rapid whittling away of Constitutional rights and security under the guise of an external threat of terrorism that their own policies have helped create. Under the pretext of fighting a bogus “global war on terrorism”, Bu$h and his puppeteers have ramped up the military aspect of the empire; to the displeasure of much of the world and the people at home. “The US has suffered a significant loss of power and prestige around the world in the years since George W. Bush came to power, limiting its ability to influence international crises, an annual survey from a well regarded British security think-tank concluded on Tuesday. The 2007 Strategic Survey of the non-partisan International Institute for Strategic Studies picked the decline of US authority as one of the most important security developments of the past year – but suggested the fading of American prestige began earlier, largely due to its failings in Iraq.” http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/da91e5ce-615e-11
It should come as no surprise that the Bu$h administration’s lies and blatant imperialism in Haiti, Iraq, in Afghanistan and in proxy resource wars in Africa and Latin America have cost the US support around the world. The uncovering of (despite attempts by the Bu$h administration and the US corporate media to suppress and trivialize) wide scale torture, atrocities and heavy handed tactics by the US military in Iraq have damaged the veneer of respectability the US constructed for itself around the world.
The arrogance and hubris of elements within the US plutocracy have come back to haunt them. The ongoing imperialist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are taking a heavy toll on the fiscal stability of the country. Bu$h’s reintroduction of Reaganomics has decimated the US treasury and threatens to further erode and undermine the “social safety net” of the socialistic New Deal and “Great Society” programs. The US populous is beginning to see the class warfare being waged against it and opposes the elites’ imperialism. They want change but the politicians are dancing to the tune of their special interest, lobbyist and corporate puppeteers rather than the people's wishes.
The consequences (Karma) of decades of imperialistic machinations is now becoming increasingly evident. Wall Street has been one beneficiary (along with the Military Industrial Complex and other “special interests groups”) of these machinations and policies which were planned with their direct input. (See a synopsis of Wall Street influence on US foreign policy by reading Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy by Murray N. Rothbard at http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard66.html ) The cunning and conniving business and political relationships revealed in Rothbard’s piece should awaken readers to the role class interests play in domestic politics and international affairs. For a military perspective read, War Is A Racket by Major General Smedley Butler at http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm .
The problem for the bankers and plutocrats is much of the world isn’t buying their entitlement to rule attitudes. At home Joe and Jane Sixpack are alarmed by the increasing drift towards fascism and are becoming more antagonistic towards the business as usual politicians as witnessed in the recent Iowa caucus voting results. Whether what we are seeing is a real movement towards independence or an anomaly the plutocrats will eventually co-op and exploit to their own advantage remains to be seen. Whatever happens, the inevitable Karma inherent in the actions and policies of the ruling elites must be paid. If the masses don’t wake up and assert their will and their right to alter the government as articulated in the US Declaration of Independence,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” the impending Karma will be all the more painful and devastating.
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