Fear and Loathing of Wall Street: The American People Just Say No.

 

What Happened to the Bailout?

The President of the United States didn’t like it.  The leaders of Congress didn’t like it.  The Presidential Candidates didn’t like it. Our allies around the world didn’t like it.  But the House of Representatives Failed to pass the Wall Street Bailout! 

Why?

Poisonous ideological/ political speech and posturing greatly compounded, if not derailed, the process entirely. This Congress, under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has proven itself to be a do-nothing congress even if told the nation is in mortal economic peril.  Simply put: Our Political Rhetoric has undermined the ability of our democratic institutions to conduct the nations business. Even a supposed national emergency like this one is dealt with through the prism of politics to such a point where any pretence of serving the country is seen as passé’.  Politicians serve whatever ideological movement they belong too and have made it too difficult and costly for their betters to effectively challenge incumbents.

The American Taxpayer simply refuses, overwhelmingly, to pay for the mistakes of a few thousand people on Wall Street who’ve betrayed good judgment and character.  The American people have been in denial for a long time and they seem far more ready to face an economic depression than the people on Wall Street and Government who created the problem.  We understand that the pain is going to be real, and last a long time, but we’re willing to go through the gauntlet.  There are free market solutions that would be too offensive to the democrats like cutting business tax rates and the like that would change the game on Wall Street. We don’t have to change to socialism to solve this thing and we’re not going to just go along without holding politicians responsible this time. Don’t tell us a better solution is off limits because Speaker Pelosi might be annoyed.  THE PEOPLE WANT A FREE MARKET SOLUTION OVERWHELMINGLY AND THEY DON’T WANT TO GROW THE GOVERNMENT!  We don’t want socialism.  Period.

The American Media who is supposed to inform us has lost so much credibility, in partisan advocacy masquerading as objective news reporting, that people are far less willing to believe them when they shout that the economic sky is falling.  Listening to Chris Mathews on MSNBC I have the feeling that I’m being browbeaten and indoctrinated rather than informed.  NBC used to have a decent reputation, as did other news organizations before they sold out to the idea that objective reporting is a myth and so they might as well substitute “advocacy” for rational objective analysis of the facts.  Look at Dan Rather!  Look at Jason Blair at the New York Times! People listen to very bad information and take it at face value.  You can’t do that with today’s journalists. The Profession of Journalism has become corrupt and largely failed us.  Journalism must be reformed.

Years of Denial among both political parties about the state of the American Economy and our ability to sustain our present life style, given the known challenges of the Demographic Crisis, The Energy Crisis, The Debt Crisis, for both Government and Citizens, The Education Crisis, The Political Civility Crisis, The Islamic Terror Crisis just to name a few. The Liberal Baby Boomer and his or her ideas about a better world have failed, been discredited, and bankrupted us in addition to future generations. Political Correctness made it impossible to talk about entitlements and social programs for fear of being demonized.  This shut down of the debate and made for terrible social policy decisions. We can’t be for drilling because we might “offend” environmentalists.  We can’t close schools that don’t work or kick out kids that wont behave because that discriminatory. We can’t stop Political Correctness because that’s a violation of free speech and it’s not really self serving liberal propaganda its “advocacy”.

The Rejection of Traditional Moral Values like telling the truth, working hard, putting others before yourself, and sacrificing for the future instead of demanding easy credit, and saving money instead of instant gratification.  If we define something as a problem in Washington; it’s not even questioned anymore, we just throw money at it.  Money hasn’t solved education; it hasn’t eliminated poverty, AND IT WON’T FIX WALL STREET NOW!  The consequences of the credit crisis will demonstrate with great eloquence why we need honesty and integrity and common sense on Wall Street. We used to vote for what we thought was best for the country not for what’s best for ourselves.  (No one talks that way anymore.) Kids cheat like crazy in school today and we don’t confront it because saying that cheating is wrong is a value judgment and we don’t want to impose our beliefs on others. It has become more virtuous to tolerate lies, cheating, stealing, and sexual excess and deliberate misrepresentations of the truth, than to confront the manipulative lies inherent in silencing good people with the false value of political correctness. Now we’re upset because the banks made risky loans and tried to hide it from us……   What do we expect?

It’s a person’s right to reject religion but it’s a person’s duty to uphold some basic values that keep our shared society functioning well. It’s true that values are often derived from religion but that doesn’t make them any less meaningful or invalidate them in any way if they otherwise compete well in the marketplace of ideas. Show me better and wiser values and I’ll adopt them.  It’s not permissible for an accountant to be cooking the books, or a journalist offering a biased report, to say that “truth” is an imposition of our religious ideas and therefore they’re free to act on whatever is expedient or claim a separate truth.

The Use of Big Government to Solve Social Problems has failed over and over again. Government has tried and failed to solve the following:

 Poverty, the great society failed and welfare dependence made conditions worse for those in now institutional poverty.

Social Security is bankrupt.  There was too much money in the trust fund for politicians to resist using that money to buy votes.

Medicare is likewise bankrupt.  Free prescriptions are bankrupting the system at a much faster rate.  There are no free prescriptions any more than free lunch.

Healthcare has been raped and gouged by the legal profession who’ve made the smallest medical mistake an opportunity to win the lottery.  As a result of the outrageous lawsuits that command huge payoffs the insurance industry raises rates to reflect the level necessary to withstand the legal scavengers.

Housing Projects for the poor became ghettos and Integration and high taxes in cities led to urban sprawl and the loss of the urban tax base. 

The list is endless and yet half of us thing that we can have Universal Health Care, Retirement, College Educations, without paying for it.  WE all pay for it and now the money is gone.  Did government lie to us?  Yes   Was it too good to be true?  Yes.  Who should we blame for it?  We should blame ourselves.  We let this happen. Think about it: WERE WE BORN YESTERDAY!

What’s the Solution?

We need an effective way to combat the proponents of political correctness so that even the most difficult issues can be realistically and truthfully discussed in our news reporting and Schools so that no one is demonized and arguments are judged on their merits according to the facts.  NOT HOW WE FEEL ABOUT THE FACTS! Those who are easily offended need to get over it and show us the merit of their position without recourse to a manipulative strategy like political correctness. The art of compromise, on which our system is built, is not possible if one side demonized the other.  Compromise is not possible in such an environment because your opponent is not simply wrong he’s dangerous or evil and a horrible human being.  How can you compromise with someone you treat as if they were Satan for disagreeing with you?  You can’t: and that has to end.  Partisans who are too over the top need to be punished because people like that can’t be reasoned with; and they can’t effectively and wisely compromise.

We need to break up the system of elections that favors the incumbent to the degree we do now.  We need to make it easier for newcomers with fresh ideas and less money to compete with the professional political class who  place their personal interests ahead of the nations interests.  THAT WOULD BE CHANGE I CAN BELIEVE IN!  Our politicians are motivated by their next run for reelection rather than what’s best for the nation.  They rationalize their corruption and elevation to Washington Elite Status as something they earned by their courage and conviction rather than their willingness to play ball with contributors and power brokers.  I’m becoming a believer in national term limits for congress because there’s just too much money and power available in Washington for most to avoid being tainted to one degree or another.  When Politicians hear the peoples voice, clearly, as they have on the Wall Street bailout, they need to heed our will or do a better job of making their case.  They need to pay a price when they act against our wishes and that’s not the case today.

The Media needs to be sanctioned for mistakes that influence the outcome of stories they’re supposed to be reporting.  They need to be sanctioned for allowing too much of their political agenda to influence their reporting. Shows that are opinion driven need to be clearly labeled as such and “hard reporting” must pay scrupulous regard to getting the facts right and not editorializing.  News organization should not used gimmicks, like biased polls, to drive stories they created with the biased poll!  Objectivity must be the order of the day and those that can’t or won’t do it should be kicked out of journalism.  Journalists should not analyze the facts but make it easy for their readers, viewers or listeners to do that.  THERE IS NO PLACE IN JOURNALISM FOR ANY FORM OF ADVOCASY! You are an advocate or a journalist but you are never both.

We need to celebrate the return of consequences to our world.  If a kid acts up in school be gets punished up to getting kicked out.  If a congressman is taking bribes he gets arrested and sent to jail.  If a Speaker of the House presides over the most ineffective congress in history she gets voted out regardless of her race, creed, color or gender or “affection preference.” Real life is about consequences and how to manage and choose between them.  When consequences are not enforced we get a crazy image of the world, and ourselves; that’s not helpful.  We do no good to people we excuse from the consequences of their behavior and it matters not if they’re living in the ghetto, or on Pennsylvania Avenue, or on Wall Street.

We need to agree on some national values regardless of our cultural heritage. You don’t have to be religious in any way to support the idea that we tell the truth, and reward those who do, and shun those who don’t.  Being sexually responsible or honoring the commitments of marriage are good things and those who do them are to be respected while those who don’t have some moral failings to atone for.  We don’t celebrate being sexual irresponsible and we don’t honor those who don’t live up to their marriage vows. We don’t condemn them either but we don’t pretend it’s a “lifestyle choice”.  Vows mean something and should be respected by all. 

You don’t have to be religious to know that it’s wrong to cheat on a test or to be filled with envy such that you refuse to live within your means.  You don’t have to be religious to know that government doesn’t owe you a living, housing, education or free health care paid for by someone else.  It’s well to be self reliant and to work toward being the best you can be.  You don’t have to be religious to know we should respect the laws and each other and to understand that the ends do not justify the means.  These are values that we should be able to agree on without saying those who advocate such things are just trying to impose their religion on others.  Society needs values to function and the above are some pretty good values that have long served people well. 

We live in an age where people who believed in government are coming to see the folly of their ways.  Europe is seeing the mess that socialism has made even while we are lurching toward it at the behest of crazed bankers and an unwise Treasury Secretary. When you create big government you don’t solve problems you institutionalize them.  Big government corrupts because all that power is bad for people to be around and it’s very few who can’t be changed by proximity to all the money and power.  Government is not your mommy, your daddy or your Uncle George and it’s not there to solve your problems in a free society.  That government is best that governs least is one of those truisms that get’s proven by events over and over again.  Government invariably creates as many problems as it solves so nongovernmental solutions are always preferable to government based solutions.  Government is not the answer.

               We need a national cleansing from the craziness we’ve indulged for a generation and we need to pay our own way instead of handing the bills to future generations.  It would seem that the People may be willing to start on that today while the politicians try to stave off the consequences of how our society has behaved.  I don’t know what the outcome will be, if Wall Street will get a bailout, or if congress will be able to do anything but I do know that we’ve made a mess and eventually our day of reckoning will come. Since that’s the case let’s try to affect a solution that we don’t have to be ashamed of and lets clean up our national act.  It’s long overdue.

An October Surprise: Terrorist Attack Feared Before American Election

 

 

Just when you were resigning yourself to constant bank failures and shamefaced politicians running around throwing money at Wall Street and blaming capitalism for wrecking the market, along comes another crisis.  It’s not the Russian again, it’s not oil prices spiking, it’s not another hurricane, it’s our old friend the War on Terror.  I suspect this may be a bad time to be in New York because Jihadists love to keep attacking a target until they finally succeed in destroying it. If terrorists were to launch another operation in the USA it’s entirely possible, if not probable, that they’ll go after New York City again. As if New York didn’t have enough to do with Wall Street melting down and our banks failing there may be credible suggestions out in the press that there’s real danger in the immediate future of a big time attack or wave of attacks. Consider the following from World Net Daily:

 

A coast-to-coast dragnet has been launched partly in response to leads developed in the arrest of one of al-Qaida’s “fixers” in the U.S., say FBI officials. They report the bureau is in a race against time to identify Pakistan-trained sleeper cells and disrupt a possible pre-election “October surprise.”

The FBI’s new rules and current sense of urgency follow the recent interrogation of al-Qaida operative Aafia Siddiqui, an M.I.T.-educated scientist who fled to Pakistan after 9/11. She was arrested this summer in Afghanistan and brought back to the U.S. after sustaining injuries from a gun battle.

According to a federal indictment, Siddiqui was found with handwritten notes that referred to a “mass casualty attack” and listed various locations in the U.S. including Wall Street, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Plum Island and the Brooklyn Bridge. In addition, certain notes referred to the construction of “dirty bombs,” chemical and biological weapons and other explosives

 

            At a time when the American Financial System is hanging by a thread, the recent oil shocks showed the world a shocking vulnerability in American planning and development, when our congress and president are lame ducks with the lowest approval ratings in history, this would have to be the best possible time to get the most out of a terror attack against us.  Terrorists love election season as when they attacked Spain and changed the outcome of an election by destroying a train. If they were able to stage one big attack or a wave of small ones the nation would be very vulnerable.  We’ve already seen the financial crisis redound to the benefit of Senator Barak Obama of Illinois and if we added a major terror attack to a possible depression I think Obama may well win in a landslide.  The one claim to fame of the Bush years was the fact that the terrorists had not been able to get off another attack on our soil.  Take that fig leaf away and you’ve got terrible trouble for the “Bush legacy” and you’ve got a tired old man and war hero with a bad temper that’s a day late and a dollar short.  Obama’s oratory and another 1929 economic event were made for each other and the Republican stewardship of the economy and congressional spending has been deplorable.  Obama will hasten the expansion of government into all areas of the economy until it’s impossible to stop the socialism. A terrorist attack would be a decisive blow to the republicans and hand the democrats the white house on a silver platter if the new depression were not enough in its own right.

 

            Over about the past six months I’ve seen lots of stories that were short and low key about this possibility of an October surprise and I suspect that this time the hype is real.  It would seem our anti terror warriors are ramping up for something and it’s a sure bet that its something we would rather not face.  Terrorist attacks are not limited to election season but I would be astonished if we don’t have some sort of terrorist event before we go to the polls….

 

As always:  Be careful out there! 

While the USA Experiences Economic Paralysis the Wolves Circle

 

The Continuing Adventures of Vladimir the Terrible

Vladimir Putin hasn’t been idle while the economic meltdown consumed most of our attention.  Putin has been very busy indeed, working day and night against the US interests far and wide.  A display of any kind of weakness, in any area of our national life, becomes a green like for a would-be dictator to exploit the situation.  Recently our national attention has been on the financial crisis and even though it’s become something of a global crisis, definitely impacting Russia, the dictator Putin is free to create mischief because he has no reelection worries. Here are a few of Putin’s antics while our backs have been turned:

·        Putin said just yesterday he would be only too willing to help Hugo Chavez the President of Venezuela get a nuclear program started.

·        A Pair of Russian Long Range Nuclear Capable Bear Bombers are parked in Venezuela while we speak.

·        Russian Warships are holding “exercises” with the Venezuelan Navy in the Caribbean.

·        At least Five Russian Warships are docked at an old Soviet Naval Base in Syria as Russia continues its policy of turning the Middle East into a theatre for Great Power Conflicts.

·        The State run Russian Company assisting Iran is preparing to ship and fuel a nuclear reactor.

·        Russia has delivered very sophisticated missile batteries to Iran to help guard their nuclear facilities from attack.

·        Russia in talks with Iran about opening a Russian Naval Base on Iranian soil.

North Korea Breaks the Seal

It seems like just yesterday that Madeline Albright was dancing with the Korean Dictator!  Of course Korea has promised to trash its nuclear program in the past but they inexplicably started up again and said as much to the hapless United Nations Nuclear inspectors. No one knows if Kim is alive or dead but what’s frightfully apparent is their willingness to take advantage of a US crisis to resume work on nuclear bomb making.  North Korea has shown a willingness in the past to sell just about anything to terrorists if the price is good enough and one can’t help but wonder if they plan to accidently loose a few bombs to terrorists planning to take down the USA.

China Puts Away its Abacus

A few days ago the Chinese Government ordered its banks to stop lending money to any American Banks.  China is our leading creditor and it would see that the USA has hit its credit limit with the communist Chinese.  The potential ramifications of this to the US Economy are staggering.

Israel Prepares to Attack

The latest rumor of war is that Israel has sought Washington’s buy in on an attack on Iran but the Bush Administration told them they would not support the attack at this time.  Rumors are rampant that the USA might have traded, through backchannel negotiation, a Red Light on the Israeli attack for Iran’s support in keeping down the price of oil recently.  If true the moral and geo political implications of such a deal are staggering. It would be as if the USA has been bribed by Iran to keep our economy afloat to it can finish its nuclear project and get on with the work of blowing our ally, Israel, off the map.  One can only hope that Bush would be incapable of such a deal.

Syria Masses Troops

Syria has amassed 10,000 troops along the border with Lebanon and is capable at any moment of launching another invasion of northern Lebanon which would change the strategic balance in the region against the USA and Israel.  One can’t help but speculate that those troops are awaiting the declaration of a depression in the USA or the declaration of an Israeli attack against Iran.  Naturally Syria’s friends the Russians have five warships parked at a naval base in Syria and Putin has said that the Russian presence in the Middle East will help to deter Israel and the US from attacking Iran.

Germany says we’re No Longer a Financial Superpower

Our German Friends have chastised us in NATO for pushing much to hard a line on standing up to Russia lest Putin become emboldened by his Georgia adventure.  Our German Friends have built the Russian pipeline that Reagan warned them never to build.  Our German Friends along with Russia and China have refused to go along with greater sanctions against Iran in the face of mounting intelligence that Iran has super charged its nuclear program.  And now our German Friends have said this in the Financial Times:  http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1d6a4f3a-8aee-11dd-b634-0000779fd18c.html

“The US will lose its status as the superpower of the world financial system. This world will become multi­polar” with the emergence of stronger, better capitalised centres in Asia and Europe, Mr Steinbrück told the German parliament. “The world will never be the same again.”

Pakistan Takes Pot Shots at Us!

Our ally Pakistan has traded fire with the United States of America in the border region of Afghanistan during anti terror operations. The incident lasted five minutes and the Pakistan government isn’t making a big thing out of it yet.  They are however repeating at every chance they get that we will not be allowed to violate their sovereign territory.

Osama’s Revenge

I’ve seen no legitimate reporting on possible targets but it seems as though we might be in for a major terror attack between now and the election.  There is no hard evidence except, a strange urgency if the few stories discussing the possibility and the seeming M.O. of the al Qaida group as they see us distracted, and very vulnerable, to another outrage on our shores.  It would be their last chance to bloody the nose of the hated George W. Bush.  If there’s an unlooked for shoe to drop out there I would have to say a terror attack on us would be a good bet on what it might be.

Our status as a financial superpower, as our friends the Germans has said, is correct:  Financially the USA is a piece of toast.  While that financial condition remains there will be a very large geopolitical vacuum created while we nurse our wounds and try to put it back together.  That’s a time of danger for everyone in the world and even now the wolves are beginning to circle. Are armed forces are possible only though our financial strength and that is gone.  It’s going to take time to get it back assuming we have the determination and the time.

The Basics of the Financial Crisis: How We Failed Future Generations.

 

            Equality of opportunity was never meant to be construed as equality of outcome as many 60,s generation baby boomers have done.  A market economy and capitalism has many different levels that are inherently unfair, or scrupulously fair, depending on how you look at things.  People are rewarded according to what they produce and how much of a market they can create for themselves and those with low ambition or with handicaps, such as autism, will necessarily command lower wages in such a system. This is economic law and you can condemn it with various social justice mantras but it remains economic law.

The Baby Boomers took to socialism in collage, while they were busy ignoring their stodgy establishment professors, burning bras and draft cards, and feeling guilty for all the gifts they received by the hard work of their forbears. It was the greatest generation who made an economy where their kids could be educated and prosper, according to their gifts, and determination. They gave their kids, the thankless Boomers, a CHANCE at a better life not a guarantee.  They set up a system where more people than ever before had a CHANCE at a better education and a better life but the only guarantee was “Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. 

            The Baby Boom 60’s generation has misconstrued the CHANCE of a better life for the RIGHT to a better life. You have a right to Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness;  not a right to free Health Care,  a Home,  a Car,  free sexual expression,  social acceptance no mater your behavior,  to free education, and to Pensions,  free drugs, and to be protected from trans-fat in Kentucky Fried Chicken. This is not to say that access to medicine, a pension, education, housing, health care, and even a bite of KFC once a year, is necessarily a bad thing; these are good things.  They are things to strive for: not things to which everyone is entitled. 

            Then the Baby Boomers, the 60’s types, misconstrued the word FREE and tried to sell this word as the holy grail of public policy.  Everyone should have free cradle to grave entitlements because they were owed this as a basic human right. It’s not that you should have FREE health care it’s that health care should be free because it’s a basic human right to have it.  The Boomers saw government, with all the money it could take from its citizens, as an unlimited piggy bank to which it could outsource its Christian Duties to the poor, free of charge, while the boomers pursued other questionable avenues of happiness from the sexual to the psychedelic.

In a just society, they reasoned, government should take care of everyone because everyone has human rights.  They reinvented a Roman saying about bread and circuses being a right of the people.  There is a basic law of life that affluent societies have tripped over for as long as we’ve had recognizable society: there’s no such thing as free. 

Baby Boomers have refused to face the fact that free health care, educations, mortgages, fill in the issue, is in fact health care, education, mortgages THAT SOMEONE ELSE PAYS FOR. Why should I pay for the health care of a smoker?  Why should I pay for the health care of someone engaging in high risk behavior?  Why should they pay for my health care if I’m over weight?  Once you get into why you should pay for your neighbor, who like you and I is a compellation of his or her choices in life, the issue gets very complicated indeed and it quickly breaks down.

Why should someone who doesn’t work as hard as you make the same as you?  If all work is honorable why must we all go to college when we need janitors far more than women’s studies professors? We need plumbers as well as math teachers and we need doctors as well as basketball players. Within these occupation is a wide variation in skill sets, and education, but most would contend that they’re all have a role in our society.  All of them represent choices about how different people make different decisions and reap different rewards and have different tradeoffs. The outcomes are not the same by any stretch of the imagination but the outcomes were never intended to be the same until the Baby Boomers discovered “Social Justice”.  The opportunity to develop into any of these things by your effort and work is what the founding fathers of this nation gave us.

From the time of his election in 2001, the Bush Administration has been warning congress about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  These quasi government organizations were pressured by the congress to buy up loans made to people who couldn’t afford them in an effort to have 60’s style social justice where everyone gets a home, as a basic human right, and no attention is paid to their ability to pay for it or maintain it. Congress was warned by former Fed chief Allan Greenspan in 2005 that if they didn’t stop it they would have a situation exactly like this one we face today.  Over and over they were warned but the baby boom liberal congress members clung to their ideology about themselves, and government, rather than facing the facts squarely.  Of course you don’t loan to people who repay the loan!  If you do: you go bankrupt and that’s true if you’re a hardware store owner in Minneapolis or a United States Congressman in Washington.  Even the government can go bankrupt and see its money become toilet paper overnight.  The result is that the people they were trying to help, as well as the people who did it right,  pays a terrible, painful, agonizing  price.  The reward of the people who worked hard, increased their skills, and gave to their churches, paid taxes ,and lived within their means: is financial devastation because Baby Boomers won’t admit that their ideology is not the truth.

Mortgage lenders would not have given mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them if there were not a willing Government sanctioned market in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to buy them.  Even the most stupid individuals would not have gone after these mortgages if the government did not buy them!  Not only did the government buy bad mortgages they encouraged those who could not afford them by telling them it was their right to have a great home regardless of their means.   With the Quasi Government implied guarantee behind Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the Banks and Financial institutions bought their paper, as well as foreign governments, thinking the investment, being government backed, was as sound as a dollar.  As I study this “crisis” I must conclude that this is entirely of the governments making from the role of Baby Boom Radical Liberal politics to the failure to update necessary regulations as our financial system evolved, to the partisan delays in congress, right now , on the rescue package. 

Washington politicians like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Chris Dodd are pontificating right now, and loading this bill up with more and more pork, to their pet constituents: while the United States teeters on the edge of a depression that’ll  make the 1930’s look like a folk dance. Washington Politicians are DOING NOTHING ABOUT THE ENERGY CRISIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF ANY AND ALL ENERGY SOURSES POSSIBLE!  Do they think the energy crisis is just going to go away?  Washington Politicans are doing nothing as China stops lending to USA banks because they no longer think their money is safe or that we’ll pay them back!  The Washington Politicians allowed the creation of the Federal Reserve who has huge impact on our economy, if not outright control, in defiance of our constitution and with calloused disregard that the Fed has its own interests and allegiances that have nothing to do with our national interests. Washington Politicians are lecturing Wall Street on fiscal sobriety and good judgment when Washington created the problem and is so bankrupt both fiscally and morally that at this late hour they’re likely too late to solve this crisis.

Consider this from Reuters:

BEIJING, Sept 25 (Reuters) – Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.

The Hong Kong newspaper cited unidentified industry sources as saying the instruction from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) applied to interbank lending of all currencies to U.S. banks but not to banks from other countries.

“The decree appears to be Beijing’s first attempt to erect defences against the deepening U.S. financial meltdown after the mainland’s major lenders reported billions of U.S. dollars in exposure to the credit crisis,” the SCMP said.

A spokesman for the CBRC had no immediate comment. (Reporting by Alan Wheatley and Langi Chiang; editing by Ken Wills)

Now consider this from The Washington Times:

In the dark of night over the weekend when most people were snoozing, the Treasury dramatically expanded its bailout plan to include buying student loans, car loans, credit card debt and any other “troubled” assets held by banks.

The changes, which were included in draft language that also opened the bailout program to foreign banks with extensive loan operations in the United States, potentially added tens of billions of dollars to the cost of the program.

Although it was a major addition to what was already the nation’s largest-ever bailout, it did not become part of the debate between Democrats and the Treasury over details of the program. A Monday counterproposal by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd included such consumer loans as well as mortgages, just as the Treasury’s draft did Saturday night.

Such a large takeover by the government will surely be accompanied by adverse, unintended consequences,” said Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy group. “Already, other companies and industries are lining up at government’s door asking for their own bailout.”

I could go on, and on, but you get the picture. 

How did we get here?  We got here by listing to the liberal ideology of the baby booms fantasies of how the world should work instead of focusing on the facts of how the world does work.  We got here by letting the liberal indoctrination of our schools go unchecked  while we allowed the Jewish and Christian values, that are our heritage, be maligned and marginalized until we lost the ability to tell right from wrong as well as  true from false.  We did this by empowering all this liberal stuff that sounds great at the expense of using our heads and making sound judgments about public policy and elected officials.  We did this to ourselves and the cost is going to be unimaginable.

Choose Whom You Will Serve This Day: Rediscovering Freedom, Faith and Country.

 

 

 

Americans are in bondage to many things these days.  As we look honestly at our lives we’re working harder and harder and yet our children are going down the tubes at record rates.  At a time when our material goods are threatened and our wealth as a nation is draining into foreign coffers we need to remember our origins and our basic heritage as Americans.  We’ve been through the ringer before and come out the other side.  The past few weeks have heralded the advent of another generational test for the American people, who’ve long live lives of great privilege compared to much of the world.  It’s good to look our problems in the eye as more and more people are doing these days but in being willing to look big time trouble in the eye we need to remember that these problems have much to teach us if we open our minds and hearts to instruction. 

Here are some reminders about the very real benefits we’ll regain as we pass through the gauntlet of the very real problems now arrayed against us:

Today we’re anxious and so we return to faith.  The fear out there is palpable as everyone waits in breathless expectation for the latest news from Wall Street.  We get anxious because we’ve been too long under the idea that we’re in control of things instead of God.  We have everything we need to manage the problems of this day if we turn to God and Each Other.  The real economy, the only one that counts is the economy of love and our circle of loved ones and how we grow that even at the expense of Wall Street.

Today we feel alone so we return to family and friends. I don’t thing personal responsibility and rugged individualism was ever supposed to come at the expense of participation in our community.  In our drive through culture with our drive thru dining, prescription service and even our drive by media, we’ve let silly things divide us and we’ve hidden one from another to the disadvantage of everyone. There is something to be said for loving and helping your neighbor but first you have to notice your neighbor! A neighbor is not just someone you wave to in the fleeting seconds after you push the garage door opener and drive in but rather is a fellow human being and a member of your community. In the olden days people helped and socialized with each other, we might get to try that again!

 Today we’re concerned about what we might lose and so we return to being thankful for what we’ve got.  We take so much for granted from the material things to the community we live in to the God who made us and the idea of noticing what we’ve got, and being truly thankful for it, has become an empty once a year ritual of overeating. We have so much and with all the stuff we’ve got have come an insatiable appetite for more and more until appetite is all that remains.  We’ve mistaken the idea of being productive for being fruitful.  We’ve forgotten that were supposed to blossom like a fig tree and not pay out like a slot machine. We’ve replaced ambition for ideals and called it virtue while our society and culture degrades with each passing year. When once again our eyes are open and we see how much we’ve been blessed with we’ll rediscover a gratitude that goes far beyond the material.

Today we’re divorced from each other and even from reality and so we return to a commitment to love and truth.  What we say, when we take vows, it needs to mean something because when we act on our commitments and the truth we grow as human beings.  When we break vows and speak lies we act only on expedience and craven self interest and we end up living in Wall Street world where nothing is as it seems and fear rules our hearts. We let our impulses and craving rule our daily lives instead of being devoted to the discipline of love and speaking the truth.  Without a commitment to something truly good our lives become a meaningless quest for a better deal that never comes.  We have forgotten the difference between our grandparent’s fine china and the ubiquitous sheet of wax paper that our Quarter Pounder with Cheese comes wrapped in.  Where commitment is absent there is no such thing as a better deal because everything loses value with a world view that sees other humans or the truth as valueless to be discarded at whim because what we see does not please us in the moment.

Today we feel as if we’ve been sold into bondage and so we turn to the meaning of freedom and a new quest to obtain it.  Freedom is about having a choice about what’s important to you and where you spend your time.  Bondage is about going through the motions to create a world where wealth is proof of worth and poverty is proof of worthlessness. When we give ourselves to material acquisition and conspicuous consumption we have sold ourselves into bondage but when we give ourselves to God and each other we find work that’s not servitude and rewards beyond a Rolex watch and a BMW. We can be slaves to the market economy and let it drive us to exhaustion and mental and spiritual bankruptcy or we can drive our market economy by our commitment to each other, gratitude and love and it’s ourselves, who make that choice not someone else.

Today we feel deeply in debt and so we turn to an examination of what real wealth is and what its proper role in our lives might be.  We’ve forgotten that real wealth is not about your credit score; it’s about not needing a credit score because of your savings and commitment to live within your means. When you’re in debt, you’re a slave to others but when you’re free of debt, you have a chance to build real wealth.  Wealth is about having the resources, because you always live within your means, while credit is about not having the resources, but being willing to enslave yourself to those who do, to pretend to be who you are not. We have confused equality of outcome with equality of opportunity in our personal finances and even in our governmental finances.

Today we’re afraid of the many tyrants and dangers in the world and so we return to courage in facing our fears instead of letting our fears make our choices.  We’re confronted by myriad dangers from economic meltdowns to resurgent cold wars to an all pervading sense of purposelessness. Whatever dangers we confront this day from our national dependence on foreign oil to our desire for a $5 Starbucks we’d be better off without lets relentlessly act in accord with our faith in God given values that have never failed us:  Let’s face the facts with courage.  Let’s understand what’s really important to us and act relentlessly on that.  Let’s disregard bondage to easy fixes and rediscover the freedom to take the hard road that actually fixes the problems. Let’s recommit to each other as Christians and Americans and divorce this idea that anyone else is less a child of god than we are and let’s treat everyone with the dignity and respect they merit even if it’s not readily apparent! Let’s be grateful for this day, our family and friends and let’s have the faith to recommit to God and each other our best efforts in whatever comes our way today.

Everything that happens has advantages and disadvantages if we have the eyes to see it.  Let’s walk with our eyes wide open and understand that even the hardest of times have advantages that have the power to grant us a new beginning and a renewed commitment to God and each other.  No matter how hard it gets we always have a choice, we can always return to God, we can always return to how we know we should live.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Law of Unintended Consequences Part 1: Government Bailout and Oil Prices

 

 

Just when you thought it was safe to take an extra trip in the car to stimulate the economy with a non essential purchase those nasty oil prices are heading north again!  When the Oil prices began to spike it was because the dollar was so weak and in the intervening time the government has labored mightily to make it even weaker.  It’s very simple, really, if you think the dollar isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on you use it to purchase hard assets like gold and oil and that’s the bases of the commodities boom that gave us the abominable gas prices of a few months back.  Guess what?  The government’s throwing dollars around like it’s Monopoly Money,  funding bailouts it hasn’t the money to fund and sending commodity prices into orbit. The single minded fixation to fix the financial system may end up destroying confidence in the dollar which would make any depression, coupled with the destruction of the currency, many orders of magnitude worse.  Consider the following quotes from CNBC online:

 

Oil prices spiked more than $24 a barrel Monday as anxiety over the government’s $700 billion bailout plan battered the dollar and touched off frenetic buying of safe-haven investments including crude.

U.S. light, sweet crude jumped over $24 to almost $130 in afternoon trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. 

The Nymex temporarily halted electronic crude oil trading after prices breached the $10 daily trading limit. Trading resumed seconds later after the daily limit was increased to $20.

Oil’s sharp gains came as energy traders grappled with the implications of the government’s proposed initiative to stem the U.S. financial crisis by absorbing billions of dollars of banks’ bad mortgage-related securities.

“There is no logical reason as to what we are seeing now,” Stephen Schord, editor of The Schork Report told CNBC. “My biggest fear now is that we’re right back to where we were last September.”

“The Fed is signaling that they’re going to make money cheap again, cheap money is going to start piling into commodities—this is my biggest fear and it looks like this fear is coming into reality right now. We could be back on the road to what could be $150 crude oil, regardless of the supply-demand fundamentals,” he said.

“They’re going to have to continue auctioning off a whole lot of Treasuries’ to finance these projects, so the dollar is going to suffer,” said Matt Zeman, head trader at LaSalle Futures in Chicago.

 

            All of the bail out plans are coming at an amazing speed and are lacking deliberation typical of  moves made by pure desperation.  This hasty ill advised government intervention is not restoring safety and security to the market its raising Cain with the markets by introducing more shocks to commodities and oil prices.  What do the geniuses at the Treasury Department and the Hall of Greed otherwise known as the Nefarious Federal Reserve think is going to happen when China says “Hell no” or when we don’t have enough printers to print the money fast enough to stave off disaster? As I’m sure we can all recall, the oil shock was one thing but then the price of EVERYTHING started to go up especially groceries.  That’s going to happen again while the value of the dollar goes into the dumper.

            They may have saved the financial industry; but a dozen eggs is going to cost you $50 and a tank of gas for your car will be $500! Somehow I don’t think the market rescue plan is ready for prime time just yet and these hastily conceived stop-the-imminent-disaster moves seem to be making things worse.  This is like undergoing a long painful course of chemo therapy whose aim is to kill the cancer without killing the patient.  The end result of a massive economic depression is the same if you get there from the collapse of the world finance industries or the destruction of all business by running oil up to $700 a barrel and the dollar to 2 cents.  The end result is the same: a broken economy and lots of suffering unseen in our living memory.

            The Federal Reserve is playing its own nefarious game, and the US Department of the Treasury is just trying to keep it all together, but it’s becoming clearer and clearer that we can’t avoid an economic crash.  Truly the system is broken and the solution hinted at on Thursday afternoon, and sent to congress on Saturday afternoon, is not systemic enough to steer us away from a massive economic event.  The government has been run on debt for many years, like too many of our American households, and debt is not the way of a wealthy society.  Now you have a fiscally out of control and out of touch congress trying to give fiscal responsibility lectures and moral instructions to Wall Street.  As this keystone cops spectacle plays out on the world stage you have the rest of the nations of the earth looking at us with an understandable lack of confidence if not contempt for our greed and foolhardiness.

            How much longer is it going to take before the world writes off the Dollar and the USA as unsalvageable?  When will China and the Saudi’s move to mitigate the fallout because it’s clear America can’t fix this mess?  If you were China, would you buy any more American Debt?  Neither would I.

            Our congress can’t control the spending, the Republicans turn out to be bigger spenders than the Democrats, the President is a lame duck and the Presidential Candidates haven’t got the first clue of what to say or do. Bush has given us massive debt, entitlements we can’t afford, and now: back door socialism. Our Presidential Candidates will either pretend it’s not socialism, in McCain’s case, or institutionalize the socialism, if Obama wins, and make it the law of the land.  

            The proposed rescue plan creates as many problems as it’s supposed to solve, and the spectacle of commodities going through the roof and the dollar going through the cellar is not acceptable.  Neither the government nor Wall Street has a handle on this yet and it’s crystal clear to the whole world.  If this doesn’t work; do they have a plan H, I, J, K, L and so on?  At what point does the government admit the reality that this is too big for them to fix and what happens then?  Such a day is coming and I haven’t heard a plan to stop it that won’t lead to the same financial devastation by way of a different road.  Heaven help us all.

Like a Skunk at a Picnic: World Economies Angry at Wall Street and Washington

 

The condemnation of the United States is beginning, in earnest, from Europe to Asia, the world is beginning to weigh in on the greed and stupidity of our stewardship of the worlds reserve currency; and our dominance of the global economy. Such an outcry was inevitable, and deserved, because our national conduct and financial stewardship of the planets strongest economy was very poor indeed.  Unfortunately the crisis is far from over and when the law of unintended consequences has time to truly work its magic with the hastily conceived bailout we may look back at last week as a fairly tame week. Consider the following from the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-euromood20-2008sep20,0,7535469.story

 

LA Times 9/20/08

By Sebastian Rotella and Janet Stobart, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
September 20, 2008

LONDON — It’s a rare day when finance officials, leftist intellectuals and ordinary salespeople can agree on something. But the economic meltdown that wrought its wrath from Rome to Madrid to Berlin this week brought Europeans together in a harsh chorus of condemnation of the excess and disarray on Wall Street.

“Greenspan was considered a master,” Tremonti declared. “Now we must ask ourselves whether he is not, after [Osama] bin Laden, the man who hurt America the most. . . . It is clear that what is happening is a disease. It is not the failure of a bank, but the failure of a system. Until a few days ago, very few were willing to realize the intensity and the dramatic nature of the crisis.”

But fear accompanied gloating. The crisis threatens to worsen woes — inflation, unemployment, weak growth — of regional powerhouses including Britain, Spain and Italy. Joaquin Almunia, an ideologically moderate Spanish Socialist who is the European Union’s economic commissioner, offered a simple analysis.“It has been a problem of greed,” he told El Pais newspaper. “In Europe it can’t be said that we did nothing, European banks bought toxic products. . . . Nobody knows when this will end.”

 

 

            It’s by no means the Americans who are terrified at the size and scope of this thing it’s the financially literate of every country across the planet.  The big question is will the bailouts and rescue efforts succeed in saving the financial system from ruin and from launching us into another Great Depression?  I personally have my doubts based on some of what the Chinese are saying in their newspapers.  Here is some astonishing criticism of the United States and its economic conduct coming from the last great communist power on earth.  When you realize its coming from communist, totalitarian, Red China, it makes your skin crawl to realize this is what the leading buyer of our debt is thinking right now.  This was from a story done by Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSPEK4365020080917?sp=true

 

BEIJING (Reuters) – Threatened by a “financial tsunami,” the world must consider building a financial order no longer dependent on the United States, a leading Chinese state newspaper said on Wednesday.

“The eruption of the U.S. sub-prime crisis has exposed massive loopholes in the United States’ financial oversight and supervision,” writes the commentator, Shi Jianxun.

“The world urgently needs to create a diversified currency and financial system and fair and just financial order that is not dependent on the United States.”

“The Chinese government is well aware of the fact that the United States, which is the world’s largest developed country, and China, which is the world’s largest developing country, should have constructive and cooperative economic and trade relations,” he said.

China is a major buyer of U.S. Treasury bonds, and through its sovereign wealth fund it has taken stakes in two large U.S. financial institutions.

(Emphasis added by me)

What does it tell you about the future of the American economy if the largest buyer of our debt, China, tells the world that we need a financial system that’s not dependant on the USA?  What does it tell you when the cry for a diversified currency and financial system that’s fair and just and doesn’t depend on the USA is coming not from Europe: but from Communist China? The Europeans have been spouting the New World Order stuff forever but to hear agreement from communist China is astounding to say the least.  I just wonder if the magic bullet that unites Russia, Communist China, Europe, the Third World and the USA in the need for a global currency, with global regulation and oversight, is the current economic crisis we’re now experiencing.    

Given the management élan and moral rectitude that the United Nations has displayed in managing its money, the prospect of such a global system being less corrupt than Wall Street gives me pause.  When it comes to corruption the UN makes Wall Street look like primary school children. What does it tell you about the future of the American Economy if the people of the world would rather have a new global currency, which is in no way dependant on the United States, rather than continue to fund our debt, our rampant consumerism, and our “overuse” of the world’s recourses?

            Investment banking as we knew it was destroyed last week and the remaining investment banks, Morgan Stanley and Goldman have officially become, this very day, plain old ordinary mortal banks whose use of leverage has been harshly curtailed. Flawed as they may be they gave propellant to our economy for many years and developed many companies and products.  They have become extinct in a week and while that may give some a sigh of relief and a grim moment of satisfaction it’s possible that we will miss them as our economy slows down. I suspect that’s going to be the prime outcome after a period of unimaginable economic upheaval, our economy will never emerge as the engine of growth it once was. One wonders if they had been properly regulated if they might have played a critical role in a dynamic twenty first century economy after all.  Have we driven a steak of Holly through the very heart of Capitalism and did we have enough information and moral conviction to have legitimately made such a decision? Have we cut off our nose to spite our face based on the emotions of the moment? 

            It’s not just the American Economy and financial system that’s changing it’s the global economy and financial system that seems to be emerging from the ashes of our system.  I don’t think you can stop this swing to globalization and if that’s true the world must take the position that our system must be made ashes if a global system is to have dominance.  Given what we’ve been through in the last week and the prospect of what’s to coming our way in the immediate future its looking like the global economy will be rejecting American financial leadership soon.  Last week marks the end of the American Era and from here on out we’ll be managing the fallout, perhaps for years.

This thing isn’t over yet, not by a long shot, it may take a couple of years but in a few years try to remember what it was like a few weeks ago and look around at what confronts you now.  We’re headed for hard times and its already begun so take a breath, stay close to your family and friends, think about all the mistakes we’ve made in the last thirty years and pray we get a chance to correct it all.  Either way its going to be a long and bumpy road through a likely economic depression and a possible currency failure in which the world will come to truly despise us, this time with good reason.  This is looking more and more like the incident that removes the United States from world leadership and transfers it to Europe as the Bible predicted thousands of years ago.

Who Benefits? Follow the Money, Honey!

 

What a week it’s been on Wall Street!  As I consider the events of this week I couldn’t resist doing something of a scoreboard for the winners and losers.  I doubt that we’ve seen the end of financial crisis but as I watch the world markets leap, like a gazelle on too much caffeine, I can’t resist a cynical smile, and shake of my head, amid the jubilation going on in the markets this morning.  Here are my notes on the winners and losers:  anyone want to bet on what’ll happen next week?

Who won?

·        Big Transnational Financial Institutions who gobbled up the small fry to become even bigger.

·        The Federal Reserve (Global Money Trust) with Greatly Expanded Powers.

·        All the major central banks of the world for coming up with a global solution to a global problem

·        Socialists, Nationalizing all those companies makes our market economy look like a complete fraud.  “Deregulation” is about to become a swear word.

·        Barak Obama, before the crisis he was in deep trouble now he back on top with a real issue that resonates with the people. He could well ride this crisis to the White House.

·        Those who favor big government to ride herd on the “corporations” to make sure the “people are protected”.

·        Regulators:  the wave of regulation reform that’s about to hit Wall Street and spill over to Main Street is going to be a tsunami unseen in modern history. 

·        The environmentalists: With less than two months to go until the election, this give Obama a big leg up, and means that “pie in the sky” energy sources like wind and solar will get the money while drilling and new domestic sources of oil will get the back burner.

·        The World Government Proponents who have been pushing the need to have global institutions for a global economy.  Surely we’ve seen the need for a “Global Central Bank” for problems that are bigger than any one country? 

·        The Opponents of the Nation State:  A transnational solution was affected when the power of our Federal Reserve and Treasury Department weren’t quite enough to restore confidence. The rhetoric will tend more and more to a “citizen of the world” mentality and “nationalism” will be seen as passé as well as unworkable in a globally competitive environment. Nationalism will be a new swear word soon.

·        China: They’re making extraordinary gains by their new economic warfare as their ability to economically crush the economies of the West in general and the USA in particular goes on unabated and even welcomed. They are the creditor nation we used to be and they’re the manufacturing nation we used to be.  They have the money.  We have a mountain of debt

·        Iran:  There’s nothing like the threat of a financial Armageddon to take the minds of Israel and the USA off the needed attack on Iran.  (I still think that Israel will attack Iran before the new year and that’s going to be another big crisis with economic as well as geopolitical repercussions!)

 

 

Who Lost?

·        Competition in the financial industry:  Lots of companies of various sizes ensure competitions which make the system much fairer for everyone.  Concentration of financial companies into super transnational companies gives too much power to massive transnational banks who’s allegiance  it to itself not any given nation state.

·        The United States Government:  No crisis in my lifetime has served to illustrate the impotence and obsolescence of our current government, as when the Congress and the President turned control of our fate over to the Global Money Trust, also known as the Federal Reserve. It makes our model of government look like a fraud. as perhaps it may be. as Ben Bernanke calls the shots and the politicians quail in the shadows.

·        Conservatives:  The market economy died in this crisis without a meaningful word of protest by the conservative movement who wanted a painless solution to the economy, just as much as everyone else, and went along with this policy of nationalizing everything rather than taking the course best for the country. Conservatives talk a good game but placed the value of their stock portfolios above the nation’s interests on this occasion.

·        John McCain:  He lost the initiative and he made some bone headed comments about the “strength of the economy” that will haunt him until Election Day.  Obama is regaining his mystique as the “change agent” and making McCain look like the Washington insider who helped create this mess. Obama asked a telling question at one of his rally’s this week:  What does John McCain call the old boys’ network on Wall Street and in Congress?  A staff meeting. That’s going to resonate with the voters in the weeks remaining until Election Day.

·        Those who favor smaller government:  People will simply demand that this sort of thing never happen again and they want the government to do something about it.  The Government is going to dust off another huge organization, like the Resolution Trust Corporation, and buy bad debt while helping struggling corporations survive because their failure might upset Wall Street’s bottom line.  It’s still massive and crazy government intervention, using our tax dollars, but hidden in such a way as not to alarm Wall Street: or be noticed by the American Tax Payer.

·        Smaller Companies and banks:  With the regulation and staying power needed to stay in the banking and finance game, the idea of new companies starting up in banking and finance seems quite unlikely.  The big companies will have a huge advantage and doubtless crush smaller competitors at will. The concentration of financial power will loom large in the future.

·        American Industries: The wave of regulation won’t just stop in the finance industry but the wave will continue into environmental and energy regulation as well.  All this regulation will harm smaller companies who can’t seem to cut through the red tape as well as the bigger companies with all the money.  Our economy is going to slow down a lot.  It’s already begun.  Just wait until the carbon cap and trade measures are enacted and see what happens to American Industries.

·        Defenders of National Sovereignty:  Anyone who tries to roll back the clock on this increasing “globalism” is going to continue to look more and more crazy; just as anyone who favors “unilateral action” if necessary, will be condemned for being dangerously out of touch. Unilateralist will take its place beside “Racist” and “Sexist” and “Homophobe” as a new swearword.   A craven “group think” will triumph over individualism and “morality” as well as “truth” will become a product of consensus.

·        Proponents of the Nation State:  As Global solutions, like the bail out of the credit market by the world central banks, are seen as necessary, credible and desirable, the cry for global governance in other fields like the “environment” and perhaps “peace keeping” will naturally follow.  The farther removed the government from the people the more corruption and the more prone to misuse it becomes.

·        The United States:  We’re out of control on spending and debt and we needed the world central banks to save our sorry butts.  Social Security and Medicare can’t continue in this form much longer and the US Dollar is in the dumper and may well fail.  If you add up all our debt it may be around the 53 trillion mark and there’s no “solution” other than radical economic change and very likely a much lower standard of living for everyone; it’s just a matter of time. We’re being shaped and remade by our responses to the markets ups and downs; the market’s in charge, not us.

·        Russia:  Putin got a bloody nose from the “markets” lately and while it’s likely not a permanent setback; I suspect that Vladimir will take into account the economic realities of our world before he flaunts his military power again.  He can use all the quite power of economic pressure and covert action to intimidate the former client states back into his empire but the overt use of military has economic consequences that he won’t forget in the future.  Right now he’s got egg all over his face and looks kinda stupid.  That won’t last and he’ll be back worse than before.  You can take that to the bank.

End Game: The Emergence a Global Central Bank and a Socialist America

In order to avoid a terribly painful economic depression, the United States of America has shredded its constitution and changed its form of government to de facto socialism.  The USA has nationalized the mortgage lending industry and a huge chunk of the Insurance industry and the end is nowhere in sight.  This action was undertaken by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Benjamin Shalom Bernanke representing the Global Money Trust of the world’s super rich and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for entrenched Wall Street Interests and the US Government. They nationalized our mortgages and insurance with only cursory meetings with Congress and the President, God only knows if they talked to the Courts, and without fanfare or  even a whimper of dissent they turned us outright Socialist.  Look for us to nationalize the Automakers, Energy Production and Airlines in the days to come.  When we’ve consolidated enough industries into our new socialist government; I have the sneaking suspicion that our currency will crash and new global institutions will rise to clean up the mess.  The nations of the formerly democratic West have merged, us and Europe, into the precursor of a global financial system if not a global government.

Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks rose as the world’s biggest central banks planned to pump $247 billion into the financial system and regulators cracked down on abusive speculation against bank shares.

About $3.6 trillion of market value has been erased from global stocks this week, triggered by the bankruptcy filing by Lehman, once the fourth-largest U.S. securities firm.

 

As Rowe V Wade was to making abortion the law of the land against the people will so the Financial Crisis of 08 will be to our form of government except none of the three branches of government had any say in the matter if in fact they were even consulted.  The Market Economy is gone and we’re about to see a wave of regulation and consolidation in the Financial Markets that will make official the new Socialist nation: The Transnational States of America Inc.  You and I are no longer citizens but employees of the greatest corporate takeover in history and the official death of the nation state in favor of corporatism and rule by a transnational oligarchy of the super rich.  No shots were fired.  No one protested.  As the world’s central banks pumped in the money we were grateful and blissfully ignorant of the price we will pay for generations, perhaps forever.

Everyone will be happy if things just calm down on Wall Street and we don’t have to be afraid any more. We now work for the owners and the sham and pretence of our “government” was never more obvious in its impotence and irrelevance as when Bush simply stayed out of the crisis and congress followed suit even adjourning!  They weren’t needed by the real decision makers whose public face is the placid Chairman of the Federal Reserve: Ben Bernanke.

Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) — The Democratic-controlled Congress, acknowledging that it isn’t equipped to lead the way to a solution for the financial crisis and can’t agree on a path to follow, is likely to just get out of the way.

Lawmakers say they are unlikely to take action before, or to delay, their planned adjournments — Sept. 26 for the House of Representatives, a week later for the Senate. While they haven’t ruled out returning after the Nov. 4 elections, they would rather wait until next year unless Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who are leading efforts to contain the crisis, call for help.

One reason, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday, is that “no one knows what to do” at the moment.

“When you rush to judgment, you usually make mistakes,” said Sherwood Boehlert, a former Republican congressman from New York. “This is something you can’t go on forever without addressing, but Congress in a short span of time is best served by going home.”

 

            Not only has our President and the Congress been complicit in this corporate takeover of our county by its conspiracy of silence, it’s been an open cheerleader for it!  The congress in a stunning admission of its impotence and unimportance is outright advocating the Fed (The Global Money Trust) to take charge of the “crisis” and do whatever it thinks best for America! Where is Sovereignty?  Where is Democracy?  Where are the courts and the Constitution?  The decisions made by the global money trust on our behalf in the last week will forever change the foundations of the United States of America: How can the Congress and the President outsource this to the world’s super rich?   Consider the following quotes from Bloomberg:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the decision of Congress to adjourn. Lawmakers can always be recalled to Washington “if there is a need to do so,” she told reporters yesterday. In the meantime, House and Senate committees will hold hearings and the financial crisis will be studied by Congress, she said. “Our work will continue even if we are not still on the floor,” she said.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said Congress could give the Federal Reserve authority to pay interest on bank reserves sooner than originally scheduled.

“They already have the authority; it’s just a question of moving it up a couple of years,” Frank, of Massachusetts, told reporters yesterday. “We’re trying to work that out.”

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said the Fed also has the power to buy and dispose of bad debt stemming from the subprime-mortgage crisis.

“The Fed has the authority to move in this area,” Dodd told reporters in Washington.

 

Lots of people have been warning for years about the Federal Reserve’s “cheap money policy” and what it was doing to the mortgage lending markets whose meltdown triggered all this. The Fed set the interest rates, we all enjoyed the real estate boom, and human greed and avarice did the rest.  The Global Money Trust (The Fed) will say that we didn’t force you to spend all that money and we didn’t force you to make all those crazy loans in the mortgage market and that will be true.  But is the Fed who is now running the country and changing our government without complicity in this mess? 

Back in the Great Depression people blamed the Fed for that crash as well.  They said that it was an engineered crisis and that it was probably done by design and not by error as is the popular fiction.  The Multi Millionaires of the Twenties, The Rockefellers, Warburg’s, Rothschild’s and Morgan’s emerged at depressions end; as the world’s first Billionaires.  I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.  At the end of this crisis they may just emerge as the world’s first trillion-airs.  I’m sure that will be another coincidence.

 

 

Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks rose as the world’s biggest central banks planned to pump $247 billion into the financial system and regulators cracked down on abusive speculation against bank shares.

About $3.6 trillion of market value has been erased from global stocks this week, triggered by the bankruptcy filing by Lehman, once the fourth-largest U.S. securities firm.

 

Consider this fascinating passage from the German Der Spegal Online paper:

And then came the announcement that would dominate all of Thursday’s market activities: Morgan Stanley — the venerable Wall Street institution and one of the last two US investment banks left standing — had lost massive amounts and was fighting for survival. Media reports were saying that it was even in talks about a possible bail-out or merger. Rumor had it that possible suitors might include Wachovia or China’s Bank Citic.

China?

“Folks,” economist Larry Kudlow, a host on the business channel CNBC begged his viewers that evening, “let’s not let this magnificent country go down!”

End of an Era

In fact, it really does look as if the foundations of US capitalism have shattered. Since 1864, American banking has been split into commercial banks and investment banks. But now that’s changing. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch — overnight, some of the biggest names on Wall Street have disappeared into thin air. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the only giants left standing. Despite tolerable quarterly results, even they have been hurt by mysterious slumps in prices and — at least in Morgan Stanley’s case — have prepared themselves for the end.

“Nothing will ever be like it was before,” said James Allroy, a broker who was brooding over his chai latte at a Starbucks on Wall Street. “The world as we know it is going under.”

Many are drawing comparisons with the Great Depression, the national trauma that has been the benchmark for everything since. “I think it has the chance to be the worst period of time since 1929,” financing legend Donald Trump told CNN. And the Wall Street Journal seconds that opinion, giving one story the title: “Worst Crisis Since ’30s, With No End Yet in Sight.”

 

To recap then: here is what I see as the major fall out, so far, of the financial crisis:

·       By our outright nationalization of key industries we’re now a socialist nation. 

·       The Financial Crisis is consolidating financial power in fewer and fewer hands.

·       Our political leadership has abdicated responsibility to a Global Money Trust known as the Fed.

·       The Fear of a massive economic depression keeps the people quiet and controllable while these massive changes go on.

The basic conclusion is that the USA has been taken over not by another nation but by a global financial cartel. 

The New World Order is no joke it’s the reality we face today.  I’ve always read, with skepticism, the claims that in the last day we would have one world government and one world economy but today I can see it.  God help us if we don’t wake up and smell the socialism.

The Spanking of Vladimir Putin: Russia Humbled by Economic “Market” Forces.

Vladimir Putin is discovering that the power of warships, nuclear missiles and tanks and artillery are one form of power but a greater power is simply money.  Control of money and the economy are worth all the arsenals in the world.  I remember a quote that was attributed to  one of the Rothschild Banking Empire:  Give me control of a nations money and I care not who writes the laws.”

In a similar mystery of history that underlines the importance of money to would be Caesars’ is the strange behavior of Adolf Hitler. We all know that the Treaty of Versailles enacted crippling war reparations on the German people but Hitler continued to pay them up until a month before he shot himself in his bunker.  That means that while Hitler had taken over France he continued to pay WWI war reparations to “France” even after he owned the place and did it up until he a month before he died in Berlin!  Why would he do that?

Perhaps Hitler was afraid of annoying Swiss credit agencies calling him all the time, trying to get a payment out of him.  Did the bankers have more Panzer Divisions than Hitler?  Couldn’t Adolf find a better use for the money than paying reparations to a country he now owned?  What kind of power is it that makes a homicidal sociopath like Adolf Hitler faithfully write checks he would rather not write to faceless bankers in Switzerland who should have been terrified of him? 

The message being sent to Vladimir Putin is more elloqent than Shakespeare, more terrifying than Steven King novels, more powerfull than a locomotive and its being delivered by a nameless, faceless, transnational amorphous thing called the “Global Economy”.  What the Americans and NATO couldn’t do the global financial markets and forign investors are doing with great zeal: they’re rubbing Putins nose in the fact that he cant be a czar without the money.

Consider this from an article on Bloomberg:

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) — Russian markets stopped trading for a second day after emergency funding measures by the government failed to halt the biggest stock rout since the country’s debt default and currency devaluation a decade ago.

The ruble-denominated Micex Stock Exchange suspended trading indefinitely at 12:10 p.m. after its index erased a 7.6 percent gain and plunged as much as 10 percent within an hour. The benchmark fell 17 percent yesterday, the biggest drop since Bloomberg started tracking the gauge in May 2001. The dollar- denominated RTS halted trading after similar declines.

The government yesterday injected $20 billion into the interbank lending market via central bank and Finance Ministry auctions in a bid to contain soaring borrowing rates as credit dried up in the wake of the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. bankruptcy. The one-day MosPrime overnight rate, a gauge for monitoring liquidity demand, leapt 25 basis points to a record 11.08 percent today.

The Finance Ministry attempted to stop the selloff by offering 1.13 trillion rubles ($44 billion) of budget funds to the country’s three biggest banks, OAO Sberbank, VTB Group and OAO Gazprombank, for at least three months. That measure came as KIT Finance, a Russian brokerage, said it’s in talks to find a buyer after failing to meet some financial obligations related to repurchase agreements.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=apkUIIiQMF9s&refer=home

Ever since he invaded Russia and indulged in beligerance with NATO and the USA he’s had problems with the markets in Russia but now he’s getting handed his head.  Either Putin, like Hitler before him, learns to play ball and kiss up to the big bankers or he can kiss his new empire good bye.  I doubt that he is missing the import of these events and I’m sure he remembers the insane economy after the Soviet Union dissolved and I doubt he wants to repeat the experience.  He risks getting shot himself if he doesn’t join with the West to calm the financial markets.  The US economy may be well and truly in the outhouse right now but it seems a message that he could be in much worse shape than us is being delivered in a way that he can’t ignore.  The formerly booming Russian economy gave Putin the money to try and threaten the other players on the world stage and without that money no one cares about his dream of reconstituting the Soviet Empire.

I suspect that Russia will be more accommodating in the times to come until it feels it has enough of a strangle hold on world oil supplies that might give it the power to go up against the supreme ruler of our world: money.  Until then the Russians will doubtless slink away and learn to play this money game until it can beat the global economy and its masters at its own game.  On a week when so much is going up in smoke in Wall Street and the confidence people have in America its interesting that the Russians have it worse than us at the moment anyway. Russia will be back however.  You can take it to the bank.