Posts Tagged ‘Fed’
Image via Wikipedia
AmpedStatus.org Editor’s Note: The following report includes adapted excerpts from David DeGraw’s book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.” Release Date: 9.28.11
Abstract: Welcome to World War III
Despite increasing personal financial hardship, most Americans remain unaware of the economic world war currently unfolding. An all-pervasive corporate and government propaganda campaign has effectively obscured this blatant reality. After extensive analysis, it is evident that World War III is a war between the richest one-tenth of one percent of the global population and 99.9 percent of humanity. Or, as I have called it, The Economic Elite Vs. The People [18]. This war has been a one-sided attack thus far. However, as we have seen throughout the world in recent months, the people are beginning to fight back. The following report is a statistical analysis of the systemic economic attacks against the American people.
Introduction
The American public has sustained intensive economic attacks across broad segments of the population. While the attacks have been increasingly severe in scale over the past four years, they have been implemented with technocratic precision. They have been incrementally applied thus far, successfully keeping the population passive and avoiding any large-scale civilian unrest, while effectively reducing living standards for the majority of the population. As you will see in this report, the 55 million Americans that have been hit the hardest have thus far acquiesced due to temporary financial assistance, such as food stamps and extended unemployment benefits.
The global Economic Elite have been much more strategic in handling the American public, as they are potentially the greatest threat to their continued consolidation of wealth, resources and power. National populations that are not as powerful, and on the periphery of the Economic Elite’s global empire, have been dealt with in much harsher fashion. In many smaller and less powerful countries the dramatic rise in food prices and costs of living have led to all-out revolt — Tunisia, Algeria, Albania and Egypt were among the first to rebel. While the contagion of rebellion has rapidly spread throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East, it is also spreading in a decentralized manner throughout most of the world, now threatening popular rebellion throughout Europe. Like the US population, the geographically clustered European nations represent a potentially powerful countervailing force to the Economic Elite’s continued domination.
Submitted by Tyler Durden
“With all the mess going on at the moment, I thought it was worth while stepping back a little and trying to look at the bigger picture.” So begins Andy Lees’ latest must read letter to clients whch explains succinctly virtually the entire story of where we were, how we got to where are now, how the current trajectory is unsustainable, why due to decades of capital misallocation anything that the Fed does now is essentially irrelevant, why our untenable debt pile does nothing but perpetuate an unsustainable ponzi scheme which will result in an unseen explosion in the true cost of capital: gold, and why the bond market will eventually, and inevitably, force an epic repricing in the cost of non-gold capital absent the arrival of the deux ex machina of real, actionable innovation that the Fed, and all global central planners, keep hoping for. Because the longer we keep plugging away with that worthless substitute, financial innovation, which is anything but, the greater the final collapse. Andy’s conclusion: “Until the debt is cleared and capital starts to be properly allocated, economic growth per unit of additional debt will continue to sour. Until we get some real breakthrough technology, requiring large amounts of capital to both innovate and then roll out, we have no chance of supporting the economy.” Too bad than that this absolutely spot on observation reflect precisely the opposite of what the Fed is pursuing.
Why are we here: simple – years of central planning resulting in the greatest experiment in capital misallocation in history.
We are in this mess because of excessive leverage and excessive consumption, financed by excessively cheap real capital – (not just Bernanke & Greenspan but further back to the end of the gold standard, and in fact even before that as it was this misallocation of capital that forced us off the gold standard in the first place). If capital had been allocated productively, then by definition debt would fall as a percentage of GDP. Total debt may rise, but efficient allocation of capital would always mean the economy would grow faster than the debt as it means you are making a positive rather than negative real return on that capital.
Whichever way you look at it, capital has been massively misallocated for years.
Corporate profits… or massive debt-funded ponzi scheme?
How can that be when corporates report massive profits? The profits are based on paying their workers a salary that meant they could only buy the goods they made by borrowing; in other words, a massive unsustainable ponzi scheme that could only ever end up with default. Without the household debt accumulation, there would be no market to sell their products to, and without paying the workers sufficient, the debt would always have to default.
This required a massive increase in financial innovation to keep the illusion of corporate profitability alive – (household debt was a way of delaying putting the true costs through the corporate P&L account and recognising the costs). Financial sector innovation is itself another form of capital misallocation, taxing people away from real innovation – (to keep the illusion alive, an ever greater percentage of economic output had to be allocated to this illusion machine) – helping add to the resource constraint we are in today.
If financial innovation, which we have so much of is not needed, what is the right kind? And why is it so sorely missing.
Image via Wikipedia
As bad as the Greek financial crisis seems, the land of Pericles is only the second-most-indebted nation in the world. The government of Japan holds top honors: Its debt equals 234% of its GDP. The reason Japan hasn’t been in financial-crisis mode is that it owes most of that money to itself. By contrast, the U.S., seventh on our list, owes $4.4 trillion to foreigners. To China alone Uncle Sam owes a cool $1.1 trillion. Of course, when measured by total debt, the U.S. has the biggest IOU: $14.3 trillion.
By Brian Dumaine / Graphic by Nicolas Rapp
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/09/who-in-the-world-is-most-in-debt/
Image via Wikipedia
(AB note: The World Global Settlement Funds, referenced on this page, should not be confused with the SG World Trust. The World Global Settlement Funds have in excess of $47 trillion to disburse to 140 nations across the globe. This due and lawful disbursement has been blocked by the Washington DC private corporation for more than three decades. The SG World Trust is much bigger, and older, than The World Global Settlement Funds.)
On the evening of Thursday 28th July 2011, Barack Obama, the President of the United States, informed the World Court at The Hague that as long as he was President, he would not sign off on the World Global Settlement Funds. More background here (28.07.11).
Obama’s refusal to lawfully execute his responsibilities in this specific followed upon the wide circulation of a letter dated 7th July 2011, from Lindell Bonney to Dana Wilcox (full text here). The financial data set out in this letter showed that the US income taxes expected to be paid to the US Treasury from just four of the World Global Settlement Fund-related recipient-paymasters would amount to a sum in excess of $11 trillion. This would be sufficient to pay off most of the US national deficit and would pump-prime the US Dollar Refunding Program.
Situation updates from Al Clifton Hodges
On Friday 17th June 2011, the 44th President of the United States of America, Kenyan-born Barack Obama, had on his desk in the White House Oval Office primary legislation for a US Tax Provision relating to the Iraqi Dinar Revaluation cash-in within the US. The proposed legislation requested eleven per cent tax. The President refused to sign the document until he received more money in his personal off-shore accounts.
This executive refusal to sign further delayed the due and lawful disbursement of The World Global Settlement Funds ($47 trillion), the implementation of the US Dollar Refunding Project ($10 trillion), the long-agreed global debt jubilee (universal debt forgiveness), and the introduction of the new precious metals-backed international currencies.
The text linked above is a letter dated the 17th June 2011 from Pasadena Attorney Al Clifton Hodges to the Chinese government through the Chinese Ambassador to the United States,
The direct Chinese involvement in the internal finances of the US dates from 2009 when a $47 trillion Lien against the US Treasury and the US Federal Reserve Board was taken out by élite monetary interests in the UK and China. More here (18.06.11).—>
Image via Wikipedia
BY JIM WILLIE
The US Federal Reserve has no monetary options whatsoever. They have been backed into the corner since 2007. It was coerced to reduce interest rates as the subprime mortgage crisis morphed into an absolute bond crisis, as the Jackass loudly stated during that fateful summer. The US bank leaders claimed it was contained. It was not. The USFed was backed into the corner in 2009, unable to raise interest rates from near 0% (the Zero Interest Rate Policy disease) and put into effect its propaganda theme of an Exit Strategy. The US bank leaders knew the longest period of time for the Fed Funds rate to stick at 0% was nine months, ensuring a future disaster. They saw it. They claimed a move toward normalcy. It did not come. The Jackass called them liars with a message of deception to manage the USTreasury Bond and stock market. They did not hike rates, as their bluff was called. The USFed looked weak as a result. They began to shed thick layers of prestige. The USFed was backed into the corner in 2010, unwilling to use printed money to monetize USTBonds, giving birth to the second dreaded Quantitative Easing disease. They did anyway. So the ZIRP & QE twin scourges became part of the landscape of ruin. The USFed denied they would embark on QE. The Jackass called them liars with a message of deception. They did embark on QE, then QE Lite, then QE2, all replete with denials. The USFed has lost all its prestige, all its credibility, and all its respect for economic analysis. They are actually a central office for the Syndicate. They are the focal point of the failure of the central bank franchise model.
The unfolding drama on Capitol Hill with the USGovt changed the entire picture, thus putting a toxic icing atop a hemlock pie with arsenic candles giving off deadly gas. In private discussions, my full expectation was for no debt default, not even close, with the debt limit extended, the unfolding American Tragedy saga taking place on a global stage. My call was for a path of least resistance to be taken in consensus, but it would involve decision avoidance and political expedience, if not constitutional cowardice. The players in the USCongress, along with the leader himself, were exposed as pusillanimous, deceptive, polarized, destructive, wayfaring fools. They are as much fully equipped squires for both the banking industry and the military establishment. They avoided a debt disaster in default, but they did not avoid a debt rating downgrade. They have given the system license to debase the USDollar further, as Gold has responded in a breakout. The President is so clueless as to believe patent reform can make a difference. The bigger obstacles are poor education, minimal math & science requirements, tendency to play video games & text messages than studying (even inside school classrooms). Of course the debilitation is compounded by the US lacking a strong industrial base. So better patent protection would mean the US corporations could more effectively protect their offshore jobs, where the majority of jobs are located.
Worse, the players on the global debt debate stage exposed the USGovt as Greece times one hundred. The veil of ruin and arrogance has been lifted for all to see, the deep blemishes and skin cancer visible for all to see. The USGovt borrowing costs are near 0% for the same reason that the Greek borrowing costs are at 30%. BOTH NATION’S FINANCES ARE BROKEN. To cap it off, the tombstone on the US Republic will feature a Super Committee to recommend the most difficult of budget decisions. Such fanfare without proper label. The committee is a formalization of the Politburo process, a perverse interwoven political stranglehold fabric that takes the worst of the Weimar Republic and melds with the worst of the Fascist Business Model. Slowly forming is the Fascist Dictatorship that follows logically from nationalization of Fannie Mae and AIG, the home mortgage cesspool and the derivative black hole. The growth of czars will grow dangerously. Look in the near future for a wave of office shutdowns. The USGovt is required to pay its creditors. But it will act with negligence and shut down offices. See the Federal Aviation Agency, which must contend with 70,000 job cuts. It has lost its funding, while the USCongress went on its August vacation. An improvement would have come if the cut in budget came to the Transportation Security Admin (TSA) to alleviate the public from airport assaults that draws tears from old ladies, anger from defiant citizens, and consternation from most everybody. By the way, the planned date for the Super Committee to convene and make its recommendations is in the middle of the Presidential Primary season next summer. Expect a circus.
Image via Wikipedia
Chart 1
Federal Reserve Directors: A Study of Corporate and Banking Influence
Published 1976
Chart 1 reveals the linear connection between the Rothschilds and the Bank of England, and the London banking houses which ultimately control the Federal Reserve Banks through their stockholdings of bank stock and their subsidiary firms in New York. The two principal Rothschild representatives in New York, J. P. Morgan Co., and Kuhn,Loeb & Co. were the firms which set up the Jekyll Island Conference at which the Federal Reserve Act was drafted, who directed the subsequent successful campaign to have the plan enacted into law by Congress, and who purchased the controlling amounts of stock in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1914. These firms had their principal officers appointed to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Advisory Council in 1914. In 1914 a few families (blood or business related) owning controlling stock in existing banks (such as in New York City) caused those banks to purchase controlling shares in the Federal Reserve regional banks. Examination of the charts and text in the House Banking Committee Staff Report of August, 1976 and the current stockholders list of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks show this same family control.
Martin D. Weiss Ph.D. | Monday, June 27, 2011 at 7:30 am
Do you believe what government officials and experts are saying about the debt crisis?
If so, you’re taking your financial life into your hands.
Just consider how many times they’ve been wrong, issued deliberately misleading statements, or simply lied:
In 2007, they swore on a stack of Bibles that the debt crisis was limited to subprime mortgages.
But the crisis promptly spread to all kinds of mortgages, ripping through giant mortgage lenders like Countrywide, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.
In 2008, they admitted it had spread, but swore that it was strictly contained to the housing and mortgage sector.
But in a few short months, it had enveloped commercial paper, money markets, and nearly all of Wall Street. Nearly every one of America’s largest banks either failed or came within a hair of insolvency.
In late 2009, they rescued the bankrupt banks and mortgage lenders using the $700 billion in emergency capital approved under the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP). Then, they ran deliberately lenient “stress tests” on the biggest banks to “prove” to the public that the emergency had passed.
Image via Wikipedia
By Dean Henderson
Global Research, June 1, 2011
(Part one of a four-part series)
The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP and Chevron Texaco); in tandem with Deutsche Bank, BNP, Barclays and other European old money behemoths. But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch.
According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.[1]
So who then are the stockholders in these money center banks?
This information is guarded much more closely. My queries to bank regulatory agencies regarding stock ownership in the top 25 US bank holding companies were given Freedom of Information Act status, before being denied on “national security” grounds. This is rather ironic, since many of the bank’s stockholders reside in Europe.
One important repository for the wealth of the global oligarchy that owns these bank holding companies is US Trust Corporation – founded in 1853 and now owned by Bank of America. A recent US Trust Corporate Director and Honorary Trustee was Walter Rothschild. Other directors included Daniel Davison of JP Morgan Chase, Richard Tucker of Exxon Mobil, Daniel Roberts of Citigroup and Marshall Schwartz of Morgan Stanley. [2]
Image via Wikipedia
by Bob Chapman
June 18 2011: Pensions borrowed (plundered) from heavily, nobody wants QE3, debt used to wage war, Fed Chair Bernanke acts like an elitist, a short term debt limit to deal with, a Greek default could bring the Euro down, a disease of debt, IMF pessimistic.
As far as we can discern the US Treasury thus far has spent and borrowed about $100 billion from the federal pension accounts. Unless there is a vote on the cash debt extension prior to August 2nd, government will probably have borrowed some $250 billion to $300 billion. The Treasury is paying virtually no interest on this debt. Three-month Treasury bills are currently yielding zero percent. Our question is how will the funds be generated to fulfill the Treasury’s obligation to the pension fund? What happens if on August 2nd if legislation is not passed? Does this go on forever? We will keep you apprised on new developments.
The current situation regarding the state of recovery in the US has turned from precarious to dismal and as we predicted a year ago May we will have to be treated to QE3 something no one really wants, but as we said before it is inevitable. The Fed and their controllers, the member bank owners of the Fed, know the present approach doesn’t work and it is only a matter of time, as a result of their policies, when more stimulus will be needed, which in turn leads to more inflation.
Image via Wikipedia
Business Insider’s Courtney Comstock has a great summary of former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson’s evisceration of the giant banks’ arguments regarding capital requirements:
[Johnson's] argument in a nutshell: bankers from the big 6 are outright lying so that they can continue to take on risk and keep their profitable trading operations running.
The issue: BASEL III regulations (originated in Switzerland, written by all of the world’s Central Banks) require banks to have a capital requirement of 7% of equity, which is high enough as far as banks are concerned, but not high enough as far as U.S. regulators are concerned. U.S. regulators want to tack on an extra 3%. (Or maybe just 2% to 2.5%, according to a rumor on CNBC last week.)
Bankers do not want capital requirements to be too high for many reasons, a couple of which are laid out by a banker who emailed us here, and 4 others which Reuters detailed last week:
- “Holding capital hostage” will hurt the struggling economy because it will mean fewer loans at a time when lending is already depressed.
- Establishing huge capital buffers is an admission by regulators that last year’s Dodd-Frank financial overhaul does not accomplish its goal of reducing risk.
- If banks hold onto more capital and make fewer loans, borrowers will turn to the “shadow banking sector” – hedge funds, for example — which has little or no oversight.
- Tough standards in the United States would create a competitive disadvantage vis à vis other countries.
All of these are wrong, according to Simon Johnson, who blasted each of them using the following arguments:
- Capital requirements are a restriction on the liability side of the balance sheet — they have nothing to do with the asset side (in what you invest or to whom you lend).
- During the Dodd-Frank debates last year, [everyone] said it would be a bad idea for Congress to legislate capital requirements and should leave them to be set by regulators after Basel III… Now the banks want to say that this is not his job as authorized by Dodd-Frank. This argument will impress only lawmakers looking for any excuse to help the big banks.
- The “shadow banking sector” — hedge funds, for example — grew rapidly in large part because it was a popular way for very big banks to evade existing capital requirements before 2008, even though those standards were very low… It would be a disaster if this were to happen again.
- [Just because your friend says it's a good idea to jump off a bridge...] If China, India or any other country wants to produce electricity using a technology that severely damages local health, why would the United States want to do the same?
As I’ve repeatedly noted, the government’s policies discourage lending to Main Street and the little guy.
And Comstock goes on to note:
Making all of this more interesting is an op-ed written by a regional bank CEO a couple of days ago. Right now, regional banks are subject to the same regulations as the big 6, but they are totally different beasts.
Bob Wilmers, M&T Bank CEO, writes that the Big 6 should be subject to stricter regulations like higher capital requirements because they trade so much, and it’s risky, but smaller banks, like his, should not be subject to such high capital requirements because they actually use the free capital on their balance sheets to lend to entrepreneurs, etc.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25297
Related articles
« Older Entries
