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

Robert Newman's History of Oil
All in one piece - if you have not seen it, this is a treat - the most painless chiropractor for your socio-political backbone known to the Western World.

Visit Robert Newman's excellent website at [link to www.robnewman.com]

It’s the Interest, Stupid! Why Bankers Rule the World
By Ellen Brown
February 15, 2013

In the 2012 edition of Occupy Money released last week, Professor Margrit Kennedy writes that a stunning 35% to 40% of everything we buy goes to interest. This interest goes to bankers, financiers, and bondholders, who take a 35% to 40% cut of our GDP. That helps explain how wealth is systematically transferred from Main Street to Wall Street. The rich get progressively richer at the expense of the poor, not just because of “Wall Street greed” but because of the inexorable mathematics of our private banking system.

This hidden tribute to the banks will come as a surprise to most people, who think that if they pay their credit card bills on time and don’t take out loans, they aren’t paying interest. This, says Dr. Kennedy, is not true. Tradesmen, suppliers, wholesalers and retailers all along the chain of production rely on credit to pay their bills. They must pay for labor and materials before they have a product to sell and before the end buyer pays for the product 90 days later. Each supplier in the chain adds interest to its production costs, which are passed on to the ultimate consumer. Dr. Kennedy cites interest charges ranging from 12% for garbage collection, to 38% for drinking water to, 77% for rent in public housing in her native Germany.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

Retail Apocalypse: Why Are Major Retail Chains All Over America Collapsing?
Michael Snyder
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Activist Post

If the economy is improving, then why are many of the largest retail chains in America closing hundreds of stores? When I was growing up, Sears, J.C. Penney, Best Buy and RadioShack were all considered to be unstoppable retail powerhouses. But now it is being projected that all of them will close hundreds of stores before the end of 2013. Even Wal-Mart is running into problems. A recent internal Wal-Mart memo that was leaked to Bloomberg described February sales as a "total disaster". So why is this happening? Why are major retail chains all over America collapsing? Is the "retail apocalypse" upon us?

Well, the truth is that this is just another sign that the U.S. economy is falling apart right in front of our eyes. Incomes are declining, taxes are going up, government dependence is at an all-time high, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the percentage of the U.S. labor force that is employed has been steadily falling since 2006. The top 10% of all income earners in the U.S. are still doing very well, but most U.S. consumers are either flat broke or are drowning in debt. The large disposable incomes that the big retail chains have depended upon in the past simply are not there anymore. So retail chains all over the United States are now closing up unprofitable stores. This is especially true in low-income areas.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Global Systemic Economic Crisis: Bank Failures, Currency Wars
By Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin (GEAB)
February 21, 2013

Just as the Euro crisis pushed Europe to modernize and adapt its economic and financial governance to the challenges of the 21st century, the terrible US dollar crisis will oblige the world to transform the whole of world governance structures, beginning of course with the international monetary system to calm the storm which is on the point of striking currencies.

According to our anticipations, this reorganization which will only start to become a reality with the September G20 unfortunately risks taking place in a hurry since our team envisages the first major fears over the Dollar during the March-June 2013 period.

A phrase by Antonio Gramsci (1) splendidly describes the long, dangerous transition period that we are currently living through: “The old world is dying away, and the new world struggles to come forth: now is the time of monsters”. This period will finally come to an end but the monsters are still restless.

With no surprise, one of the powerful factors which will accelerate the United States’ loss of influence in the world relates to oil. In fact we are witnessing the last days of the petrodollar, the key element of US domination. This is why we have decided to deal with the world oil problem at length in this GEAB. We are also publishing the GEAB Dollar-Index and Euro-Index to follow currency developments more reliably in the current monetary storm. Finally, as usual, we finish with the GlobalEurometre.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

The Big Dogs On Wall Street Are Starting To Get Very Nervous
Michael Snyder
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Activist Post

Why are some of the biggest names in the corporate world unloading stock like there is no tomorrow, and why are some of the most prominent investors on Wall Street loudly warning about the possibility of a market crash? Should we be alarmed that the big dogs on Wall Street are starting to get very nervous?

In a previous article, I got very excited about a report that indicated that corporate insiders were selling nine times more of their own shares than they were buying. Well, according to a brand new Bloomberg article, insider sales of stock have outnumbered insider purchases of stock by a ratio of twelve to one over the past three months. That is highly unusual. And right now some of the most respected investors in the financial world are ringing the alarm bells.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

The U.S.-EU Free Trade Deal: Foundation for a New Global Economic Order
By Dana Gabriel
February 27, 2013

The U.S. and EU have agreed to launch negotiations on what would be the world’s largest free trade deal. Such an agreement would be the basis for the creation of an economic NATO and would include trade in goods, services and investment, as well as cover intellectual property rights. There are concerns that the U.S. could use these talks to push the EU to loosen its restrictions on genetically modified crops and foods. In addition, the deal might serve as a backdoor means to implement ACTA which was rejected by the European Parliament last year.

A US-EU Transatlantic trade agreement is seen as a way of countering China’s growing power and is the foundation for a new global economic order.

See more at: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

This is the next stage in the full implementation of free trade worldwide. The stage beyond that will be the absorption of Asia and then finally, the rest of the planet. Regionalist issues tend to drive these expansions by stages as perceptions of what constitutes homogenous regions change.

Last Edited by Marxist on 02/28/2013 12:10 AM

US Treasury Bonds - The Biggest Bubble In History - About to Pop
Jeff Berwick
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Activist Post

The US Treasury Bond market is the longest unbroken bull market known to the financial world. For more than 30 years it has trended higher in nominal US dollar terms.

Of course, it has been helped greatly by price fixed and market fixed, Ben Bernanke, who has now bought up more Treasuries, by far, than any other identifiable group, but didn't pay for them out of production; he just did it with the pressing of a button, using a pretty fat finger!

See more at: [link to www.activistpost.com]

The Missing US Economic Recovery
By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
March 04, 2013
paulcraigroberts.org

Officially, since June 2009 the US economy has been undergoing an economic recovery from the December 2007 recession. But where is this recovery? I cannot find it, and neither can millions of unemployed Americans.

The recovery exists only in the official measure of real GDP, which is deflated by an understated measure of inflation, and in the U.3 measure of the unemployment rate, which is declining because it does not count discouraged job seekers who have given up looking for a job.

No other data series indicates an economic recovery. Neither real retail sales nor housing starts, consumer confidence, payroll employment, or average weekly earnings indicate economic recovery.

Neither does the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. The Fed’s expansive monetary policy of bond purchases to maintain negative real interest rates continues 3.5 years into the recovery. Of course, the reason for the Fed’s negative interest rates is not to boost the economy but to boost asset values on the books of “banks too big to fail.”

The low interest rates raise the prices of the mortgage-backed derivatives and other debt-related assets on the banks’ balance sheets at the expense of interest income for retirees on their savings accounts, money market funds, and Treasury bonds.

Despite recovery’s absence and the lack of job opportunities for Americans, Republicans in Congress are sponsoring bills to enlarge the number of foreigners that corporations can bring in on work visas. The large corporations claim that they cannot find enough skilled Americans. This is one of the most transparent of the constant stream of lies that we are told.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

The Stock Market Bonanza
By Barry Grey
March 06, 2013

Tuesday, four days after President Barack Obama signed the budget sequestration order unleashing brutal cuts in social programs, there was general jubilation in the media as the Dow Jones Industrial Average crashed through its previous high, dating from 2007.

The intervening period has been an unmitigated disaster for the vast bulk of humanity, including the broad mass of working people in the United States. The signs of social decay and suffering are everywhere. Unemployment remains at near-Depression levels. Poverty, hunger and homelessness continue to rise. Those workers with a job are working harder and longer than ever for lower wages and fewer benefits. The buying power of the wages of newly hired autoworkers is at or below the levels that prevailed in the 1930s.

Thousands of schools have been closed, hundreds of thousands of teachers laid off, and the public education system gutted to make way for for-profit charter schools.

Detroit, once a thriving metropolis and center of the world auto industry, has been turned into an impoverished and desolate city whose inhabitants face Third World conditions. It is about to be placed under a bankers’ dictatorship and very likely thrown into bankruptcy.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

Corporatism: A System Of Control Designed By The Monopoly Men Of The Global Elite
Michael Snyder
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Activist Post

The Dow is at a record high and so are corporate profits - so why does it feel like most of the country is deeply suffering right now? Real household income is the lowest that it has been in a decade, poverty is absolutely soaring, 47 million Americans are on food stamps and the middle class is being systematically destroyed. How can big corporations be doing so well while most American families are having such a hard time? Isn't their wealth supposed to "trickle down" to the rest of us?

Unfortunately, that is not how the real world works. Today, most big corporations are trying to minimize the number of "expensive" American workers on their payrolls as much as they can. If the big corporation that is employing you can figure out a way to replace you with a worker in China or with a robot, it will probably do it. Corporations are in existence to maximize wealth for their shareholders, and most of the time the largest corporations are dominated by the monopoly men of the global elite.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

The International Monetary System & The Future Of Money
A MIND BLOWING lecture by Shiekh (not Sheikh) Imran Hosein on the how & why of the inevitable collapse of the dollar and the paper money system.

If you - like me, are not into (organized) religion, you should skip the first 10 minutes and start the video at 10:30.

I PROMISE YOU, IT WILL PLEASANTLY ENLIGHTEN & BRIGHTEN YOU!

(And of course, when you're not completely satisfied - but you will be, a refund of your valuable time is guaranteed under the GLP No Nonsense Act of 1876)


[link to www.youtube.com]

Systemic Economic Collapse: A Brief History of Market Manipulation


[link to www.youtube.com]



How the Markets Are Manipulated
by James Corbett
GRTV.ca
March 6, 2013

In the age of quantitative easing and overt government intervention in the economy, it’s impossible to trust any of the economic statistics that we are being shown as indicators of the supposed health of our economy. Whether it is GDP numbers, manufacturing data, inflation statistics or housing figures, all of the macroeconomic data that drives the financial news agenda are manipulated to suit the propagandistic purposes of the government and the central bankers.

A striking case in point presented itself late last year when Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve announced they were tying the latest round of quantitative easing not to a set period of time or set amount of funds, but to an unemployment rate target. The move puzzled many analysts at the time, as the unemployment rate has never been within the mandate of the Federal Reserve. In fact, the privately owned central bank doesn’t even possess a direct mechanism for influencing the number.

CONTINUE: [link to www.corbettreport.com]

A Financial Dictator for Detroit
By Joseph Kishore - Global Research,
March 15, 2013

With the appointment of an emergency manager on Thursday, Detroit became the largest city in US history to be taken over by the state government. The new manager, bankruptcy lawyer Kevin Orr, will have vast powers and one essential task: to carry out a brutal assault on the jobs and living conditions of the working class.

What is taking place in Detroit has national and international significance. The Financial Times of London cited one person involved in the discussions on the imposition of a financial manager as saying, “This will be the best case study of what it means to restructure a city.” In an editorial, the newspaper called for “radical — and unpopular — action” to address Detroit’s financial woes, a position shared by virtually every mass circulation newspaper in the US.

The “restructuring” of Detroit is a euphemism for a slash and burn policy of destroying city jobs, cutting wages and pensions, gutting social services from sanitation and firefighting to health care and education, and handing over city assets to private bankers and speculators. The very social forces responsible for the city’s present state are utilizing the crisis of their own making to step up their plundering of public resources and further redistribute the wealth from the bottom to the top.

Exhibiting the ruthlessness that is a hallmark of American capitalism, the ruling class, in the pursuit of its program of social counterrevolution, is dispensing with the trappings of democracy and imposing a bankers’ dictatorship over the city.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

Ireland’s Home Mortgage Crisis: No Debt Relief - The Destruction of Savings and Pensions
By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin
March 15, 2013

We are living in a society where the combination of fractional-reserve banking (lending out multiples of deposits) helped along by quantitative easing (printing almost unlimited quantities of money) based on fiat currencies (money without intrinsic value) has created exponential growth for the world’s financial elites. This led to unprecedented bubbles in the property market as banks made it easy for people to borrow more money than they would have been allowed in the past when a conservative banker guideline for a home buyer was to have a two to two and a half times mortgage-to-salary ratio.

In contrast to these methods for almost unlimited sources of (false) wealth conjured up by financial elites, workers (borrowers) have only one source – wages – which are going into decline due to government cutbacks and increased taxes. Yet despite this obvious anomaly, whereby the banks get bailouts with even more money, borrowers are expected to pay back, and in full, under threat of repossession, every single cent of the flawed money lent to them to pay exorbitant house prices inflated by excessive lending in the first place.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

The European Union Wants more Austerity
By Peter Schwarz
March 14, 2013

The summit attended by 27 leaders of the European Union in Brussels tonight resembles a besieged fortress. Several of the participants are on their way out of office because the massive opposition to the austerity measures of the European Union has stripped away their electoral base.

Italy will be represented by Mario Monti, who officially resigned in December and suffered a severe defeat in the recent Italian election. The prime ministers of Romania, Bulgaria and Slovenia have been ejected from office by mass protests; as in the case of Monti they are only leading caretaker governments.

The governments of Portugal, Spain and Greece confront mass protests and strikes on almost a daily basis. In addition, the Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy has been undermined by a corruption scandal. The popularity of French President François Hollande has slumped since his election in May from 55 to 30 percent — a historic record.

Under these conditions, the EU Commission, in close cooperation with the German government, is trying hard to pledge the assembled leaders to continue their devastating austerity policies. Otherwise they fear the collapse of the single currency and the European Union itself.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

Gold Rises, Dollar Rises, Stocks Fall: The Cyprus Disaster Begins
by Gary North
March 18, 2013

Gold rose on the news from Europe. Stock markets plunged around the world. So did the price of oil.

Over the weekend, Euro-zone bureaucrats at a closed meeting came up with a plan. The committee demanded that the government of Cyprus impose a tax of 6.7% on all bank accounts under $130,000, and close to 10% on all accounts over $130,000. If the government refuses, the Euro-zone will not provide a $13 billion bailout for the banks of Cyprus.

The story is all over the European press, for good reason. The Eurocrats had always said that bank accounts would be sacrosanct. This announcement says, “We lied.” But they also assured depositors that this will never happen again. “Trust us.”

Read more: [link to teapartyeconomist.com]

After The Banksters Steal Money From Bank Accounts In Cyprus They Will Start Doing It EVERYWHERE
Michael Snyder
Monday, March 18, 2013
Activist Post

Cyprus is a beta test. The banksters are trying to commit bank robbery in broad daylight, and they are eager to see if the rest of the world will let them get away with it. Cyprus was probably chosen because it is very small (therefore nobody will care too much about it) and because there is a lot of foreign (i.e. Russian) money parked there. The IMF and the EU could have easily bailed out Cyprus without any trouble whatsoever, but they purposely decided not to do that. Instead, they decided that this would be a great time to test the idea of a "wealth tax".

The government of Cyprus was given two options by the IMF and the EU - either they could confiscate money from private bank accounts or they could leave the eurozone. Apparently this was presented as a "take it or leave it" proposition, and many are using the world "blackmail" to describe what has happened. Sadly, this decision is going to set a very ominous precedent for the future and it is going to have ripple effects far beyond Cyprus.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

The Big Short War
By William D. Cohan
April 2013

Hedge-fund titan Bill Ackman has vowed to bring down Herbalife, the 33-year-old nutritional-supplement company, which he views as a pyramid scheme. With his massive shorting of Herbalife stock, the price plummeted, prompting two fellow billionaires — Ackman’s former friend Dan Loeb and activist investor Carl Icahn — to take the opposing bet on Herbalife. As the public brawl rivets Wall Street, William D. Cohan learns why, this time, it’s personal.

Ackman has called Herbalife a “fraud,” “a pyramid scheme,” and a “modern-day version of a Ponzi scheme” that should be put out of business by federal regulators. He says he is certain Herbalife’s stock, which in mid-February traded around $40 per share, will go to zero, and he has bet more than a billion dollars of his own and his investors’ money on just that outcome. (Ackman declines to discuss the specifics of his trade.) “This is the highest conviction I’ve ever had about any investment I’ve ever made,” he announced on Bloomberg TV.

(snip)
An interviewer on CNN reminded him that Herbalife had been around since 1980 and had withstood many previous challenges to its business plan. How long was he willing to “sit on this bet”? Ackman replied, “We’re not sitting. We’re shouting from the rooftops. They’ve never had someone like me prepared to say the truth about the company. I’m going to the end of the earth. If the government comes out and determines this is a completely legal business, then I will lobby Congress for them to change the law. I had a moral obligation. If you knew that Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, and you didn’t tell anyone about it, and it went on for 33 years ... ”

CONTINUE: [link to www.vanityfair.com]

Housing Bubble II: But This Time It’s Different
Monday, March 18, 2013

We have seen it for several years now: foreclosure sales — there were 5 million since the peak of the housing bubble — have become the hunting grounds for investors with two goals: hanging on to these homes until the Fed’s flood of money drives up their value; and defraying the expenses of ownership by renting them out. And funds have a third goal: collecting management fees. Thousands of smaller investors have piled into the game. And so have the giants.

Blackstone Group LP, the world’s largest private equity firm, plowed over $3.5 billion into the housing market, according to Bloomberg, to gobble up 20,000 vacant and foreclosed single-family homes. It just fattened up a credit line to $2.1 billion to do more of the same. Colony Capital LLC, which already owns 7,000, is putting $2.2 billion to work.

Last year, institutional investors made up 19% of all sales in Las Vegas, 21% in Charlotte, 23% in Phoenix, and 30% in Miami. It had an impact. In the latest Case-Shiller report — a three-month moving average for October, November, and December — home values soared 9.9% in Atlanta, a bigger jump than even during the peak of the housing bubble. Las Vegas popped 12.9%, and Phoenix 23%. It’s getting hotter. In February, compared to prior year, asking prices jumped 14% in Atlanta, 18% in Las Vegas, and 25% Phoenix. Seen from another point of view: in January, the median price of a single-family home in Phoenix skyrocketed 35%.

CONTINUE: [link to www.testosteronepit.com]

How the Cyprus bailout plan will work

It is a slow day in a little Cyprus Village. The sun is beating down and the streets are deserted.

Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit. On this particular day, a rich German tourist is driving through the village, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.

The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.

CONTINUE: [link to www.findingcyprus.com]

Not sure if this will stay on YT very long, so watch it while you can!
The film won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.


[link to www.youtube.com]

“Solution” to the Economic Crisis? The Military Industrial Complex Stimulus Package
By Danny Schechter
March 20, 2013

Is there a panic on the Potomac? The Congress has turned into a wailing wall just to hear all the moans about threatened cuts in what is patriotically known as our Defense budget.

Never mind that many of the cuts were ordered from above because the people at the top know how much they have to slash given all the waste, planned obsolescence and other waste they can afford to trim before they cut the bone or some hostile force can bring us to our knees.

The people who experience the reality up close and personal know that the public is being defrauded on almost every level.

Listen to Sgt. 1st Class Robert Zlotow from Fort Riley, Kan. who had the guts to send this letter to Army Times.

“I nearly spit out my dinner when I read your headline “Fighting through austerity” (March 4).

Even with these “evil” and “scary” cuts factored in, the defense budget will still rise every year in the foreseeable future. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the projected defense budget will still go from $593 billion in fiscal year 2014 to $702 billion in 2023, even if this sequester is allowed to stand.

When I hear politicians and the top brass say that training will have to be cut back and units will go without supplies, and all these other dire consequences, it begs a very simple question:

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

Uncertain Financial Markets: The Global Systemic Economic Crisis 2013 - The Huge Statistical Fog makes it necessary to change from instruments to visual navigation - Traps, benchmarks and templates
By Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin (GEAB)
March 20, 2013

In the Up & Down trends published in the GEAB January issue, our team wrote the following in the Down section “Economic indicators”:

Between short-term economic indicators which describe only what occurred in the week, others which are manipulated by governments to reflect the message they want to give, and finally others which no longer have any relevance in today’s world, economic reality is at the very least very badly portrayed, even disguised, by these figures followed however by businesses, banks, and even countries. As an example, only currency exchange rate variations make it no longer possible to say if it’s Brazil or the United Kingdom which is the sixth largest world power. This statistical fog prevents dependable navigation which is paramount in these times of crisis.

Whether it be the fruit of intentional manipulation by the players in their efforts to survive or the result of the extreme volatility of the bases for calculation (such as currency values and the US dollar in particular), this trend is, in fact, confirmed.

Reliable and relevant indicators on the world economic, political and social situation are, however, essential in order to get through the crisis without mishap. But those used by governments or businesses are, at best, useless in the current period of major world restructuring and, at worst, harmful. This is why in this GEAB issue our team has decided to detail which indicators reflect the true situation and those which are window-dressing. This work also makes it possible to highlight that it’s not always the indicators themselves which are skewed, but the way in which they are interpreted or the reasons studied which make them change.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

Financial Market Actors: The Fiction of “Regulation” of Global Banking
By Eric Toussaint
March 25, 2013

“Markets have become too huge, complex, and fast-moving to be subject to twentieth-century supervision and regulation. No wonder this globalized financial behemoth stretches beyond the full comprehension of even the most sophisticated market participants. Financial regulators are required to oversee a system far more complex than what existed when the regulations still governing financial markets were originally written. ” |1|

This remark by Alan Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve bank from 1987 to 2006, has been repeated by all the leaders of the highly industrialized countries. They have imagined that the banks and other financial corporations would discipline themselves whilst satisfying their own egotistical interests. Alan Greenspan adds: “Today, oversight of these transactions is essentially by means of individual-market-participant counter-party surveillance. Each lender, to protect its shareholders, keeps a tab on its customers’ investment positions. Regulators can still pretend to provide oversight, but their capabilities are much diminished and declining.” |2|

The supposed will of banks, and other financial market actors, to self-discipline themselves is a smokescreen allowing them to do whatever they like. Alan Greenspan, all the leaders of the industrialized countries, an army of experts and financial pundits are all unashamed liars who think they can treat the citizens like idiots, repeating ’ad nausea’ the old song of self-regulated markets. “Since markets have become too complex for effective human intervention, the most promising anti-crisis policies are those that maintain maximum market flexibility—freedom of action for key market participants such as hedge funds, private equity funds, and investment banks” |3|

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

Financial services will eventually dominate a global capitalism and essentially peel away the state, becoming the industry from which future kleptocrats are drawn. If you look at the Cyprus crisis, you will observe that this sector marches on relentlessly driving changes in global culture with its effects on how we consume.