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THE ECONOMY & YOU # (Daily Updated Videos & Articles)

 
RoXY  (OP)

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05/22/2012 10:09 AM
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Re: THE ECONOMY & YOU # (Daily Updated Videos & Articles)
The Criminalization of the US Banking System.
by Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
May 21, 2012

Bankers and Forgiveness
When homeowners have fallen behind in their mortgage payments, whether because of a job loss or because the interest rates just shot up, the bankers have responded coldly. Led by their economic interests, they set their robo-signers working overtime on foreclosures, forcing millions of people out of their homes. Back during the height of this current economic crisis, when Congress considered passing legislation that would have allowed judges to lower home loans in order to prevent these foreclosures, the banks lobbied furiously and killed the legislation.

But when the bankers themselves commit their own transgressions — not innocent and unavoidable transgressions like not paying back a loan because you lost your job thanks to the bankers’ recession — but actually breaking the law, the government not only forgives them, it virtually becomes an accomplice in their crimes.

Robo-signing, for example, is a crime. It occurred when bank employees signed thousands of documents, claiming they were accurate, without bothering to verify their claim. Yet no one went to jail.

In a recent New York Times article, Jesse Eisinger pointed out that the JPMorgan scandal has raised an array of questions: “What did Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, and Doug Braunstein, the chief financial officer, know, and when did they know it? Were the bank’s first-quarter earnings accurate? Were top JPMorgan officials misleading when they discussed the chief investment office’s investments? … The first question on everyone’s mind should be whether any existing laws were broken.” (May 17, 2012).

However, Eisinger was quick to point out in relation to the last question: “That it hasn’t been asked shows how little true accountability there has been since the financial crisis. No top-tier banker has gone to prison for the many bank failures, the deceptive sales practices or the misrepresentations of the books.”

The laws for the 1 percent are treated by the government as if they were humble requests — nothing to be seriously enforced if the 1 percent decline to accept. The laws for the 99 percent are brutally enforced, not to mention the prevalent police brutality that occurs without any legal justification.

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]

RoXY  (OP)

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05/23/2012 06:13 AM
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Re: THE ECONOMY & YOU # (Daily Updated Videos & Articles)
Farage: Break up the euro and restore human dignity


RoXY  (OP)

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05/23/2012 06:51 AM
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Re: THE ECONOMY & YOU # (Daily Updated Videos & Articles)
Did Facebook Feed Inside Information to the Big Boys While Leaving the Individual Investor In the Dark?
by Washington’s Blog
May 22, 2012
Washington's Blog

Reader McFid – who has been a breach of fiduciary duty expert since 2003 – sent me the following article:

Today, The Daily Beast reports that certain underwriters may have lowered their revenue projections prior to the IPO AND may have informed some investors; but not all investors. I was jammed up last week and could not get the fact out of my mind that while on the road show that there would be private one-on-ones for certain investors. The general road shows surface questions, many questions over and over; there is no doubt that these questions (I wasn’t there) were laser focused on revenues; whether new models compared to pre-IPO or ARPU (average revenue per user). The private one-on-ones cast extreme scrutiny on revenue numbers and assumptions – past present and future. NO DOUBT: When underwriters, no doubt listening, perhaps bristling and responding to potential investor’s questions, probes and scrutiny – likely, as is often the case when more than two people look at the same set of numbers, raised some hard-to-dispose-of aka troubling issues causing them (apparently) to adjust projections DOWN; but they decided not to disseminate that to ALL investors. What are the future prospects? Some may ask with approximately 800 million users how many more would sign up in the future? And given the anti-climactic IPO fallout how many will remain active, revenue paying users?

Facebook’s tagline ironically is, I believe, to promote a more open, transparent and connected world. Really? There can’t be a more prominent example … of information assymetry; unequal, untimely and incomplete information – perhaps knowing, willful and intentional and approaching recission of all those IPO allocations – si?


Reuters reports: Morgan Stanley selectively disclosed the change in Facebook estimates.

Business Insider confirms that this might be a big story: The analysts cut their estimates because a Facebook executive told them to, a source tells us.

The information about the estimate cut was then verbally conveyed to sophisticated institutional investors who were considering buying Facebook stock, but not to smaller investors.

The estimate cut appears to have influenced the investment decisions of at least some institutional investors, dampening their appetite for Facebook stock, and crucially affecting the price at which they were willing to buy Facebook stock.

As I described earlier, at best, this “selective disclosure” is grossly unfair to individual investors who bought Facebook stock on the IPO (or at any time since).

At worst, it’s a violation of securities laws.

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]
RoXY  (OP)

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05/24/2012 10:54 AM
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How Facebook could destroy the U.S. economy - Too-big-to-fail mentality replays the dot-com bubble
Paul B. Farrell
May 22, 2012

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Facebook just joined a “troubled club,” warns the Economist. Now it’s just another “endangered public company.”

Yes, endangered. The number of public companies has declined 37% since 1997. The number of IPOs has dropped from 311 annually before 2000 to 99 in the past decade. Meanwhile, the smart CEOs and the Super Rich are “going private,” to avoid government red tape restricting capitalism.

Over at BusinessWeek they’re warning investors that the growing number of “cutesy mascots” is a dangerous reminder “of the dot-com boom’s irrational exuberance.” They’re also red flagging new reports that “more Chinese investors are betting on U.S. start-ups.” And feeding the flames.

What’s going on? Facebook’s in trouble, that’s what. Now in the crosshairs of public scrutiny, everybody’s taking potshots. And the warnings are just beginning:

Everything from Facebook (US:FB) being “too big to fail or succeed” to a Chicago attorney warning that the stock could “crater” if Facebook can’t grow revenues 41% annually for five years to “sustain its value” to a warning that Facebook’s one of the “black swans” that could eventually bring down the global economy.

Let’s begin, shining the bright light of behavioral science and psychology on what’s going on:

CONTINUE: [link to articles.marketwatch.com]
RoXY  (OP)

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05/24/2012 12:32 PM
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The Days of Decline - Images from an Economic Collapse in Progress (Video)
John Galt
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Activist Post

The following video contains disturbing images compiled from the streets of Greece as protests, riots, and police response have converged amid austerity brought about by international banksters.

This is a familiar scenario the world over as divide-and-conquer techniques pit police against the very people it is in their best interest to protect ... while the engineers of the collapse sit back and watch from afar. These images have continued to multiply throughout other collapsed economies, past and present, where the First World quickly can become the Third.

The conflagration that could take place in America amid a lethally armed population defies the imagination, which is clearly why the police state is oiling its machinery to take on the outraged and weaponized. We would do well to keep the following images from Greece as an up-to-date reminder of what violence produces.

CONTINUE TO VIDEO: [link to www.activistpost.com]

RoXY  (OP)

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05/24/2012 10:46 PM
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The Stock Market is Falling like a Stone
by Mike Whitney
May 24, 2012

As you might have noticed, the stock market is falling like a stone. As of 9 AM PST, the Dow Jones has dropped 172 points while all the other indices are down sharply. German 2-year debt (bund) has dipped below 0% this morning at auction, signalling an acceleration in the bank run taking place in southern Europe. Depositors in Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal, etc would rather take a loss on their investment, then risk not their money back at all. The European Central Bank (ECB) does not guarantee deposits, so people are withdrawing their money en masse and getting out of Dodge pronto. What we're seeing is a real-time panic.

The ostensible trigger for the panic is known, but you won't read about it in the financial media where the news is dumbed down to the point of incoherence. What's really going on is that the German central bank (The Bundesbank) has indicated that it's ready to pull the plug on Greece which means that future bailouts will probably not be forthcoming. That's bad. It means that Greece will run out of money some time in June; their banking system will implode, and the "birthplace of democracy" will be reduced to 3rd world status overnight. Here's a blurb from the Bundesbank's communique: "Current developments in Greece are extremely worrying. Greece is threatening not to implement the reform and consolidation measures that were agreed in return for the large-scale aid programmes.

This jeopardises the continued provision of assistance. Greece would have to bear the consequences of such a scenario. The challenges this would create for the euro area and Germany would be considerable, but manageable given prudent crisis management. By contrast, a significant dilution of existing agreements would damage confidence in all euro-area agreements and treaties and strongly weaken incentives for national reform and consolidation measures. In such circumstances the institutional status quo comprising liability, control and individual responsibility of member states would be fundamentally called into question.

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]
RoXY  (OP)

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05/24/2012 10:49 PM
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NEW ECONOMIC VISIONS, SUSTAINABLE BANKING: Cooperative Banking in the Aquarian Age
by Ellen Brown
May 24, 2012
WebofDebt.com

According to both the Mayan and Hindu calendars, 2012 (or something very close) marks the transition from an age of darkness, violence and greed to one of enlightenment, justice, and peace. It’s hard to see that change just yet in the events relayed in the major media, but a shift does seem to be happening behind the scenes; and this is particularly true in the once-boring world of banking.

In the dark age of Kali Yuga, money rules; and it is through banks that the moneyed interests have gotten their power. Banking in an age of greed is fraught with usury, fraud, and gaming the system for private ends. But there is another way to do banking, the neighborly approach of George Bailey in the classic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Rather than feeding off the community, banking can feed the community and local economy.

Today the massive too-big-to-fail banks are hardly doing George Bailey-style loans at all. They are not interested in community lending. They are doing their own proprietary trading — trading for their own accounts — which generally means speculating against local interests. They engage in high-frequency program trading that creams profits off the top of stock market trades; speculation in commodities that drives up commodity prices; leveraged buyouts with borrowed money that can result in mass layoffs and factory closures; and investment in foreign companies that compete against our local companies.

We can’t do much to stop them. They've got the power, especially at the federal level. But we can quietly set up an alternative model, and that's what is happening on various local fronts.

Most visible are the “Move Your Money” and “Occupy Wall Street” movements. According to the website of the Move Your Money campaign, an estimated ten million accounts have left the largest banks since 2010. Credit unions have enjoyed a surge in business as a result. The Credit Union National Association reported that in 2012, for the first time ever, credit union assets rose above $1 trillion. Credit unions are non-profit, community-minded organizations with fewer fees and less fine print than the big risk-taking banks; and their patrons are not just customers but owners, sharing partnership in a cooperative business.

Move “Our” Money: The Public Bank Movement

The Move Your Money campaign has been wildly successful in mobilizing people and raising awareness of the issues, but it has not made much of a dent in the reserves of Wall Street banks, which already had $1.6 trillion sitting in reserve accounts as a result of the Fed’s second round of quantitative easing in 2010. What might make a louder statement would be for local governments to divest their funds from Wall Street, and some local governments are now doing this. Local governments collectively have well over a trillion dollars deposited in Wall Street banks.

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]
RoXY  (OP)

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05/24/2012 10:52 PM
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STOCK MARKETS TUMBLE: Europe’s leaders at loggerheads at EU summit as markets tumble
by Stefan Steinberg
May 24, 2012

European leaders in Brussels failed to agree on any concrete measures to deal with the continent’s rapidly worsening economic crisis.

Following last night’s six-hour summit, leaders of the major economies were unable to paper over sharpening disagreements on economic policy, particularly the proposal backed by France’s new Socialist Party President Francois Hollande and reportedly the majority of those present for the issuance of euro bonds, pooling state-backed European debt, and the closely related question of propping up the continent’s crisis ridden banks.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel categorically rejected the proposal, reflecting the opposition of German capital to subsidizing the weaker economies of the eurozone.

“There were differences in the exchange about euro bonds,” Merkel told reporters after the summit. In the summit discussion, she reportedly dismissed Hollande’s arguments, saying that euro bonds would “not make any contribution to stimulating growth.”

Hollande declared, “We haven’t come together to confront each other … but we have to say what we think—what are the right instruments, the right methods, the right steps, the right initiatives to raise growth.”

The summit broke up late at night, however, without agreement on any methods, steps or initiatives to confront the deepening crisis.

The one area of agreement was a call for Greece to remain within the eurozone on the basis of any new government upholding the commitment to implement drastic austerity measures.

“We want Greece to stay in the euro, but we insist that Greece sticks to commitments that it has agreed to,” Merkel told reporters.

“France and Europe want Greece to stay in the eurozone,” declared Hollande. “We want you to respect your commitments but we want to take steps to show you that we want to restore hope.”

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]
RoXY  (OP)

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05/25/2012 04:03 PM
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EU Won’t let Greece Out of its Talons

Keelan Balderson, Contributor
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Activist Post

The EU bureaucrats have declared that Greece should remain within the Eurozone in order to respect its commitments to the corrupt financial system that has decimated the country and the rest of the world.

Herman Van Rompuy, the unelected President of the European Council following a recent summit in Brussels, suggested that Greece no longer has the right to self-determination and is beholden to the superstate dream.

“On behalf of euro area leaders…we want Greece to remain in the euro area while respecting its commitments,” he stated. “We are fully aware of the significant efforts already made by the Greek citizens,” who have been forced in to poverty as they take on the burden of the fraudulent debt, but they must continue with the “vital reforms” imposed on to them by the likes of the IMF he concluded [1].

Greece’s Prime Minister Panagiotis Pikrammenos, who is openly described as nothing more than a caretakerfor the EU elite pledged his support and even thanked the superstate for bailing them out and further indebting Europe to the banksters [2].

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

RoXY  (OP)

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05/26/2012 08:35 AM
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Can Obama Stop Casino Capitalism?

by Shamus Cooke
May 26, 2012

The recent JPMorgan scandal where billions of dollars were lost in risky bets has re-ignited the move to properly regulate the U.S. banking system.

Among those asking for new regulations is Robert Reich, former labor secretary to Bill Clinton. Recently Reich made a plea of sorts to President Obama, whom he wishes would take the commonsense approach to bank regulation by re-installing the depression-era regulation, the Glass-Steagall Act.

Reich's first sentence places him among those who naively hope that Obama would listen to reason and act boldly, instead of merely putting forth populist catch phrases while obsequiously serving corporations: "I wish President Obama would draw the obvious connection between Bain Capital and JPMorgan Chase."

This quote alone proves that Obama's vilifying of Mitt Romney's former business venture is hypocritical, since Obama has been simultaneously protecting and praising JPMorgan. Obama's populist-style attacks on Mitt Romney are cynical election campaigning.

Reich's article also points out Obama's incredible lack of action against the banks that happened during the post financial crisis, assuring that such a crisis will emerge yet again, as the recent JPMorgan scandal has foreshadowed: "As a practical matter, the Volcker Rule [Obama's still incomplete regulation attempt] is hopeless. It was intended to be Glass-Steagall lite — a more nuanced version of the original Depression-era law that separated commercial from investment banking. But JPMorgan has proven that any nuance — any exception — will be stretched beyond recognition by the big banks."

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]
RoXY  (OP)

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05/27/2012 03:07 PM
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GLOBAL RECESSION: Mounting signs of deepening global economic slump
by Andre Damon
May 27, 2012

New economic figures point to a renewed downturn of the world economy amid a growing debt crisis in Europe and the threatened breakup of the euro zone.

The economy of the 17-member euro zone contracted sharply in May, according to the currency bloc’s purchasing managers’ index, which fell at its fastest rate since June 2009. Market, the issuer of the survey, said the figures indicate the euro zone economy will likely shrink by about 0.5 per cent in the current quarter.

The euro zone purchasing manager’s index fell to 45.9 in May, down from 46.7 in April. Germany’s index dropped to 49.6, down from 50.5, and that of France fell from 45.9 to 44.7. Figures below 50 indicate a contraction.

The euro zone’s gross domestic product remained flat in the first quarter of the year, avoiding a negative figure due only to the relatively stronger performance of the German economy, which expanded by 0.5 percent.

In May, however, even Germany’s economy likely shrank. Business confidence there fell last month to 106.9 from 109.9 in April, according to the Ifo institute, the second-biggest monthly drop since late 2008.

In Britain, the Office for National Statistics downwardly revised its official estimate for economic growth in the first quarter of 2012 to a contraction of 0.3 per cent. Last month it put the decline at 0.2 percent. The agency attributed the steeper contraction to a worse than previously estimated slump in construction.

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]
Anonymous Coward
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05/27/2012 04:02 PM
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Re: THE ECONOMY & YOU # (Daily Updated Videos & Articles)
An "Entitlement???"

What am I missing here?
Remember, not only did you contribute to Social Security but your employer did too. It totaled 15% of your income before taxes. If you averaged only 30K over your working life, that's close to $220,500. If you calculate the future value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% (less than what the govt. pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working, you'd have $892,919.98. If you took out only 3% per year, you receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years, and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit! If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month. The folks in Washington have pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever had.

Entitlement my !!!!, I paid cash for my social security insurance!!!! Just because they borrowed the money, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!! Congressional benefits, also known as free health care, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days, now that's welfare - out of my pockets!


and they have the nerve to call my retirement entitlements !.....scroll down..............

Emergency Rooms for their general health care -At just one hospital the cost to tax payers totaled over 25 million a year!!!

Someone please tell me what is wrong with all the people that run this country!!

We're "broke" & can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, Homeless etc.,??

In the last months we have provided aid to Haiti , Chile , and Turkey . And now Pakistan home of bin Laden. Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!!

Our retired seniors living on a 'fixed income' receive no aid nor do they get any breaks while our government and religious organizations pour Hundreds of Billions of $$$$$$'s and Tons of Food to Foreign Countries!

They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives and now when its time for us to collect, the government is running out of money. Why did the government borrow from it in the first place?

We have hundreds of adoptable children who are shoved aside to make room for the adoption of foreign orphans.

AMERICA: a country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed hungry, elderly going without 'needed' meds, and mentally ill without treatment -etc,etc.

YET......................
They have a 'Benefit' for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations, ships and planes lining up with food, water, tents clothes, bedding, doctors and medical supplies.

Imagine if the *GOVERNMENT* gave 'US' the same support they give to other countries.

SAD?

YEAH, OK, SO WHEN DO WE GET ANGRY ENOUGH to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?????

99% of people won't have the guts to copy and forward this
 Quoting: Anonymous Coward 1488453

clappa
RoXY  (OP)

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05/29/2012 06:16 AM
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Re: THE ECONOMY & YOU # (Daily Updated Videos & Articles)
The Mechanics of Fractional Reserve Banking (1/6)
Ryan Smyth, Contributor
Monday, May 28, 2012
Activist Post

The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
— Lord Acton

I published Frackin’ Reserve!, a fractional reserve banking simulator (desktop version here, web version here), with the promise to follow-up with another article explaining it. After hitting 5,000 words, I realized that I needed to do a series.

Part 1 explains the basic mechanics of fractional reserve banking in very simple terms with examples. Part 2 answers "What is Money?" for the purposes of the discussion.

Part 3 illustrates how and why fractional reserve banking is fraudulent. Part 4 shows how the system can fall apart, and two attacks that the banksters can use to steal wealth from people. Part 5 examines usury and compound interest as forms of invisible slavery. Part 6 is a quick summary with links to other resources.

Each part builds on the previous, so it is strongly recommended to read through in order. Even if you have a solid understanding of fractional reserve banking, there are a few new twists that I add to the traditional understanding of it that could be missed.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

RoXY  (OP)

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05/29/2012 06:36 AM
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Re: THE ECONOMY & YOU # (Daily Updated Videos & Articles)
How the IMF Screwed Jamaica - Life and Debt


RoXY  (OP)

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05/30/2012 06:57 AM
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Frackin’ Reserve – What is Money? (2/6)
Ryan Smyth, Contributor
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Activist Post

We have a system called, "money", which is based on money that has never, does not, and will never exist… We have become so divorced from the world that we live in, that most people never ask the simple question, "What is money?"
— David dIcke

For the purpose of discussing fractional reserve banking, the following is roughly how we need to answer the question, "what is money?" There are plenty of perspectives for a more general answer, but for fractional reserve, we need to choose an appropriate way to view money. The reasons for this view will become clear in parts 3, 4 and 5.

Money vs. Wealth
Money is an artificial thing. It doesn’t exist in reality. You can’t go out and find "money" anywhere in the physical, non-artificial world. That is to say, money doesn’t grow on trees. It comes out of the mind and is a purely artificial concept. Its only legitimate purpose is to facilitate trade and commerce, or in the words of Aristotle, "Money was intended to be used in exchange."

Wealth on the other hand differs in that you can find "wealth" in the natural world. Wealth is something that you can touch. It has existence on its own with no reliance on the existence of humanity or any "ideas".

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]
RoXY  (OP)

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05/30/2012 07:25 AM
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25 Signs That The 'Smart Money' Has Completely Written Off Southern Europe
Michael Snyder, Contributor
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Activist Post

When it comes to the financial world, it is important to listen to what the "smart money" is saying, but it is much more important to watch what the "smart money" is actually doing.

The ultra-wealthy and those that run the biggest financial institutions on the planet are far more "connected" to what is really going on in financial circles behind the scenes than you and I could ever hope to be. But if we watch their behavior we can get clues as to what they think is about to happen.

As is the case with so many other things, if you want to figure out what is really going on in Europe, just follow the money. And right now, money is rapidly flowing out of southern Europe and into northern Europe. In fact, some large corporations are now pulling the money that they make in Greece during the day out of the country every single night.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the upper crust of the financial world considers a Greek exit from the euro to be "inevitable" and that it also considers much of the rest of southern Europe to be a lost cause. Unfortunately, a financial collapse across southern Europe is also likely to trigger another devastating global recession.

Even though all the warning signs were there, very few people actually expected to see the kind of financial crisis that we saw back in 2008.

But it happened.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

RoXY  (OP)

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05/30/2012 07:51 AM
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Reform of the US Monetary System: Message of 12 Year Old Victoria Grant - Out of the Mouths of Babes: Twelve-Year-Old Money Reformer Tops a Million Views
by Ellen Brown
May 30, 2012
Web of Debt - 2012-05-29

The youtube video of 12 year old Victoria Grant speaking at the Public Banking in America conference last month has gone viral, topping a million views on various websites.

Monetary reform—the contention that governments, not banks, should create and lend a nation’s money—has rarely even made the news, so this is a first. Either the times they are a-changin’, or Victoria managed to frame the message in a way that was so simple and clear that even a child could understand it.

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]


RoXY  (OP)

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05/30/2012 02:55 PM
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Re: THE ECONOMY & YOU # (Daily Updated Videos & Articles)
Frackin’ Reserve – How Fractional Reserve Banking Creates Money and Why it is Fraudulent (3/6)
Ryan Smyth, Contributor
Wednesday, May 30, 2012

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
— Frederic Bastiat

In Part 1 we looked at the mechanics of fractional reserve banking and the mathematics behind it. We also saw how absurd it could be when trying to divide by zero. Then in Part 2 we looked at one perspective of "what is money?" and defined it in terms of its relationship to wealth.

It is now time to turn our attention to discovering "how" fractional reserve banking creates money. Once we understand the "how", we can answer the question, "Why is fractional reserve banking fraudulent?"

If you recall the basic fractional reserve banking cycle, it went like this:

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]
RoXY  (OP)

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05/31/2012 09:34 AM
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The Rise of Syriza: Greece's Coalition of the Radical Left
by Michalis Spourdalakis
May 30, 2012

The rise of Syriza, Greece's Coalition of the Radical Left, in the May elections and in polls since has changed the political landscape of Europe. Michalis Spourdalakis, professor of political science at Athens University, talked to Alex Doherty (of New Left Project) about Syriza, the reasons for their success and what the prospects are now for the radical left in Greece and beyond.

Alex Doherty (AD): Some mainstream commentators have claimed that the rise in support for Syriza is part of a generalised protest vote against the political mainstream rather than an enthusiastic embrace of their political and economic programme. What do you make of that diagnosis?

Michalis Spourdalakis (MS): Indeed a good part of the electoral gain of Syriza was the result of social anger arising from the austerity programs and the Stability Pact. The protest vote was the determinant factor in the elections. However, given the large number of options open to the electorate with the creation of a number of new political formations and parties, one can reasonably assume that the vote for Syriza was not simply a protest vote.

Syriza, a political coalition of the radical left, which was established in 2004, has had a long presence in the social and political struggles of the country. It is in fact a political formation composed of eleven different political parties and groups, in which the Synaspismos (Coalition) of the Left and the Ecology and Social Movements (SYN), accounts for approximately 85 per cent. Its political orientation, strategy and practice is socio-centric. Syriza has been actively involved in the labour movement, both at the level of the conformist Confederations and at the grassroots level of the radical new unions of precarious labour, in the civil and social rights movements, as well as in the European and World Social Forums.

So, given the political profile of Syriza, it would be rather unfair to say that the people who supported it did so simply as a result of anger or mere discontent as it is conditioned by the the current conjuncture. At the same time, on the key axis of current Greek society and politics, i.e., the Memorandum signed with the IMF and EU, one has to stress that Syriza stands clearly in opposition, and not on the grounds of nationalism, as some other opposition parties claim. On the contrary Syriza's rationale and discourse is based on an analysis that the crisis is not simply the result of the shortcomings of the Greek political economy, but rather a by-product of the global capitalist crisis as articulated and expressed by the EU and the Eurozone.

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05/31/2012 12:49 PM
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US Military Spending: Where are the Jobs? - Military spending creates 11,200 jobs for each billion dollars spent
by Greg Guma
May 31, 2012

In recent Vermont debate about the impacts of bedding F-35A fighter jets at the Burlington International Airport the arguments in support often come down to balancing noise and other impacts against economic necessities and benefits. Whatever the outcome it has raised renewed questions about the economic impacts of military spending. A new study finds that money spent on clean energy, health care, and education would create many more jobs than if the same money is spent on defense.

Dire warnings that thousands of Vermont jobs are at risk due to looming defense cuts and related changes in Air Force priorities may turn out to be overstated, or at least premature.

In March, a report commissioned by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) predicted that Vermont would lose upwards of 2,100 jobs if automatic defense cuts were triggered by the failure of Congress to reach a budget deal. Vermont Air National Guard jobs were reportedly also on the line. Under the Pentagon’s initial budget the Air Guard could see a loss of 9,900 jobs nationally over the next five years, including 3,900 active duty personnel and 900 members of the Air Force reserve.

Two months later such outcomes look less likely. Research meanwhile indicates that funding for clean energy, health care, and education would create substantially more jobs.

The AIA study, conducted for the aerospace industry in 2011 by Dr. Stephen Fuller of George Mason University, projects that more than a million jobs could be lost nationwide if sequestration leads to a projected $600 billion cut in the defense budget. The Pentagon and other analysts forecast more conservatively that $1 trillion in cuts over a decade would add one percentage point to the unemployment rate.

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GLOBAL FINANCIAL MELTDOWN: Convergence of 4 Explosive Factors: Banks, Stock Exchanges, Pension Funds, Debts Sovereign debt & deadly private debt - $30 trillion of phantom assets...
May 31, 2012
Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin (GEAB) no. 65 - 2012-05-16


Whilst waiting for Euroland to equip itself, by the end of 2012, with a medium to long term common political, economic and social project, especially following the election of the new French president François Hollande, anticipated many months ago by LEAP/E2020, players will remain prisoners of the short-term reflexes related to the sudden Greek political tremors, the uncertainties over Euroland governance and to the risks in public debts.

At the same time, in the United States, the disappearance of the illusion of a recovery (1) combined with the renewal of concerns over the American financial sector’s state of health (of which J P Morgan has just illustrated the fragility) and the big comeback of the country’s debt problem is leading economic and financial players to contemplate an increasingly worrying future (2).

In the United Kingdom, the country’s return to recession is combining with the failure to control deficits and the rise of working-class anger in the face of an austerity which has however only just begun (3).

In Japan, economic sluggishness and the weakening of exports in a context of world recession (4) have brought the spectrum of the country’s excessive debt back to the surface.

In this context, according to LEAP/E2020, the second half of 2012 will be the preferred moment for the convergence of four explosive factors for the Western economies: banks, stock exchanges, pensions and debts.

For economic, financial or political players as for simple households, this convergence will cause major risks to weigh on the state of their finances as well as on their aptitude to face the challenges to come.

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]
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06/01/2012 05:56 AM
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Frackin’ Reserve – Run on the Banks? Or Run on the People? (4/6)
Ryan Smyth, Contributor
Thursday, May 31, 2012

Thus, our national circulating medium is now at the mercy of loan transactions of banks, which lend, not money, but promises to supply money they do not possess.
— Irving Fisher

In the last part we saw how float time was fraudulently used in fractional reserve banking by banksters the same way that check kiters have used float time, and we also looked at how float time builds a temporal pyramid structure analogous to a traditional pyramid scheme. Part 4 examines how a run on the bank works, and how banks "run on the people" to cause recessions and depressions.

Remember back to the pyramid in float time and the mainspring metaphor. In the mainspring metaphor, fractional reserve banking gains energy through iterations the same way that a mainspring gains energy when wound. Conversely, the unwinding of a mainspring releases that energy, and the same holds for fractional reserve banking; when fractional reserve works in "reverse", it loses energy. That can be visualized on our temporal pyramid:

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]
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06/02/2012 10:56 AM
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Frackin’ Reserve – Compound Interest as Invisible Slavery (5/6)
Ryan Smyth, Contributor
Friday, June 1, 2012
Activist Post

But if you want to continue to be slaves of the banks and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.
— Josiah Stamp

In Part 1 we looked at the mechanics of fractional reserve banking. In Part 2, we looked at money vs. wealth. Part 3 looked at how and why fractional reserve banking is fraudulent, and illustrated how it is structured like a pyramid scheme. Part 4 looked at 2 basic ways in which the system falls apart, either through a run on the banks, or the banks forcing depressions on the people and then stealing their wealth. Here in Part 5, we look at compound interest and how it is an invisible form of slavery.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]
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06/02/2012 02:17 PM
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RISING UNEMPLOYMENT: US jobs report points to renewed global crisis
by Andre Damon
June 2, 2012

The disastrous jobs report released Friday by the US Labor Department is further evidence of a deepening global crisis that threatens to unravel into a full-blown financial collapse.

The American economy added only 69,000 jobs in May, far below expectations about half the amount needed to keep up with population growth. The official unemployment rate rose from 8.1 to 8.2 percent.

The report revised downwards the number of jobs created in March and April, bringing the latter down from 115,000 to 77,000. While, on average, the US economy created 226,000 jobs per month in the first quarter, it averaged just 73,000 in April and May.

It was the worst payroll figure since May of last year, and the first time the unemployment rate increased since June. The report follows similarly gloomy economic data from both Europe and Asia, and comes amid an intensification of the euro crisis, now centered on the solvency of the Spanish banking system.

On Friday, Eurostat, the European Union's statistics office, said that unemployment in the Eurozone reached 11 percent for the first time in records going back to 1995. At the same time, China’s purchasing managers’ index fell to 50.4 in May, down dramatically from 53.3 in April.

Adding to the gloom, Brazil announced that its economy barely expanded in the first quarter, growing only 0.2 percent, significantly less than expected.

The slew of bad economic news sent markets down in Europe and the US by between 2 and 3 percent. The US Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 2.2 percent, wiping out all the gains the index had made since the start of the year.

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]
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06/03/2012 08:21 AM
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Federal cuts to strip 70,000 more US workers of jobless benefits in June
by David Brown and Barry Grey
June 3, 2012

Next month, another 70,000 US workers will be cut off of unemployment benefits weeks earlier than would have been the case had President Obama and Congress not reduced the duration of extended jobless pay. The early loss of benefits in June will come on top of early cutoffs for more than 200,000 workers two weeks ago as a result of the anti-working class bill brokered by the White House in February.

That bill, which extended a payroll tax cut, included provisions reducing the maximum duration of jobless benefits over the course of this year from 99 weeks to 73 weeks in states with official jobless rates above 9 percent. In most other states, the maximum will be slashed from 93 to 63 weeks. It also incorporated provisions making it harder to obtain benefits, including allowing states to carry out the demeaning practice of drug-testing laid-off workers applying for relief.

The June cutoffs will bring the number of people stripped of benefits thus far due to the bipartisan assault on jobless pay to nearly half a million. This is in addition to the millions of workers who exhausted their benefits prior to the enactment of the February bill. A report issued earlier this year by the Government Accountability Office estimated that 5.5 million workers who lost their jobs between 2007 and 2009 had exhausted their benefits by the end of 2011.

Thirty-three states have thus far cut back on federally-funded extended benefits, and all fifty will do so by September. This is in addition to a growing number of states that have cut the traditional 26 weeks of regular state-provided benefits.

Michigan, Missouri, and South Carolina have all reduced the length of basic benefits to 20 weeks. In Michigan 12,000 of 200,000 long-term unemployed workers will lose their benefits in June.

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]
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06/03/2012 08:26 AM
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Frackin’ Reserve – Summary and Additional Resources (6/6)
Ryan Smyth, Contributor
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Activist Post

This series of articles on fractional reserve banking started with an introduction to the mechanics of fractional reserve banking. The important points were:

- The simple nature of the mathematics and the factors involved
- The iterative nature of the process as a continuing cycle
- The process has mathematical limits, except in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden
- The limits are drastically affected by the reserve requirement

We then looked at one perspective on the difference between money and wealth, and defined money as an instrument to facilitate trade and commerce.

Part 3 accelerated by explaining the exact mechanism by which fractional reserve banking works, and exposed it for the fraud that it is. It illustrated that by taking advantage of float time, in the same way as check kiting, fractional reserve banking is a temporal pyramid scheme.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Last Edited by RoXY on 06/03/2012 08:26 AM
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06/03/2012 08:28 AM
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The Bad Jobs Report Is Just A Very Small Taste Of The Economic Nightmare That Is Coming
Michael Snyder, Contributor
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Activist Post

Another month, another bad jobs report. For the month of May, the U.S. economy only added 69,000 jobs and the unemployment rate rose to 8.2%.

Many are calling this a total "disaster" and are worried that the U.S. economy could be headed back into another recession. Economists had been expecting 150,000 payroll jobs would be added, so the 69,000 number really shocked a lot of people.

The truth is that the economy needs to add approximately 125,000 new jobs every single month just to keep the unemployment rate steady. So yes, this bad jobs report is not welcome news at all - especially for the Obama administration. When Barack Obama first took office the unemployment rate was sitting at 7.6 percent and now it is sitting at 8.2 percent. Some "recovery", eh?

But the reality is that this jobs report was really not that "devastating" even though the stock market had its worst day of the year. Unemployment in America is still about at the same level as it was back at the beginning of 2012. The tough stretch that we are going through right now is only a very small taste of the economic nightmare that is on the horizon. If you think that things are a "disaster" right now, just wait until you see what is coming.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]
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06/03/2012 10:21 AM
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Voters say yes to euro austerity rules
Dublin
June 3, 2012

IRELAND has backed the European Union's Fiscal Pact in the region's only referendum on a controversial treaty that locks the euro's austerity rules into national law.

Supporters of the ''yes'' movement, backed by the full weight of the government, trade unions and big business, won a clear victory with more than 60 per cent of the vote.

Read more: [link to www.smh.com.au]
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Former Hedge Funder Presents A Terrifying Vision Of THE END GAME (Slide Show)

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06/03/2012 05:22 PM
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EUROPE'S ECONOMIC CRISIS: Unraveling the "Welfare Safety Net" - Europe Moves Closer to Banktatorship
by Mike Whitney
June 3, 2012

Yields on 10-year Treasuries plunged to a record-low 1.56 percent on Thursday morning as panicky investors stormed out of European financial assets into German and U.S. government bonds. Deteriorating credit conditions, a flurry of ratings downgrades, and bank runs in Spain and Greece have triggered a flight-to-safety which has pushed the benchmark 10-year below its previous all-time low of 1.67 percent. Falling yields indicate that investors have lost confidence in the ability of EU policymakers to resolve the ongoing debt crisis, particularly as it relates to growing troubles in Greece and Spain.

The present crisis, which is largely the result of excessive credit expansion and poor risk management by EU banks, is being used by the European Commission and the ECB to establish a euro-wide ”banking union” and to impose savage cuts to social programs, health care, and pensions. The response by EU policymakers is a social counterrevolution designed to transform the 17-member monetary union into a permanent ”austerity zone” ruled by corporate elites and big finance. Here’s more from Reuters: “The eurozone must boost growth and cut debt to regain investor confidence but it should also move towards a banking union, consider eurobonds and the direct recapitalisation of banks from its permanent bailout fund, the European Commission said on Wednesday as it laid out year-long recommendations.”

“A closer integration among the euro area countries in supervisory structures and practices, in cross-border crisis management and burden sharing, towards a “banking union”, would be an important complement to the current structure” of Europe’s economic and monetary union, the Commission said.

“In the same vein, to sever the link between banks and the sovereigns, direct recapitalisation by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) might be envisaged,” the document said.” (“EU calls for eurozone banking union, direct bank recapitalisations”, IFR, Reuters)

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]





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