| | | Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 | Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change.
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:05 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
that any of the things connected with either the government or the Federal Reserve would serve as a good example of Stupidity Writ Large (SWL), but perhaps the best one was when Bloomberg.com reported that "GMAC LLC, bolstered by a US$6 billion federal bailout, resumed lending to General Motors Corp. customers with lower credit scores as the US widened its effort to keep the automaker in business."
For one thing, "Deficits DO matter" and another is that "Fiat money in the hands of the Federal Reserve is suicidal because inflation in the money supply will lead to inflation in prices as this new money goes into the bidding for resources and assets, and it is the exponential nature of inflation in prices over the long-term that culminates in rioting in the streets because food and fuel are so highly priced, and that is what kills ya!" |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:07 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
But this new spending is, of course, entirely predictable, as this is what has always been done by all other bankrupt, brain-dead corrupt governments on this planet in the past 4,500 years that have racked up so much debt that they collapsed.
In case you are wondering, I am not just another paranoid lunatic holed up in some filthy cubbyhole somewhere with his guns and gold, eternally pessimistic and cannot see a silver lining, but can only see the dark cloud with lightning bolts shooting out of the bottom of it, boom, boom, boom, lightning striking all around you, boom, boom, boom, and you run, run, run for your car, and you are bending over while you are running so that you are shorter than the kids, and they are asking, "Why are you running like that, daddy?" and I act like I can't hear them.
The reason is that there is, indeed, a palpable optimism, which is that gold will rise in price as the buying power of the dollar falls from all of this insane over-issuance of dollars! I'm optimistic!
And you don't have to be around the field of investing very long before you recognize the crucial importance of buying something now, at a low price, that will rise in price in the future. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:24 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
Obama's so called plan for the economy is another massive disaster in the making. It will throw kerosene on the bond fire already burning red hot. Stimulus package, Mitch? The U.S. Treasury is OVERDRAWN nearly $11 TRILLION dollars and you want to write more hot checks? That's the new bipartianship? In the words of a brilliant man who puts Obama's limited intelligence to shame:
"Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, an investment firm specializing in overseas investments, wrote in a research note the stimulus debate has not done enough to focus on the cost to taxpayers that will come from the programs. "The truth is that the only way out of this mess is less government, more savings, and increased production," Schiff wrote. "Obama's plan is a recipe for economic ruin."
Peter Schiff, like Congressman Ron Paul, Dr. Edwin Vieira and so many others, predicted years ago there would be a financial collapse as the perfect storm was building. I recommend you watch this video interview with Schiff because he tells you straight and without all the frills that the results of the global elites economic plan to be implemented by impostor president-elect Barack Hussein Obama will be devastating.
Now, Republicans like what they're hearing? Only a fool or someone completely ignorant of what's right in front of their face in 20' neon lights could "like" what they're hearing from impostor elect Obama and his Clinton retreads. Reach across the isle and work together? That's a grand idea. Walk to the edge of the cliff, boy and girls. Hold hands and jump in a bipartianship fashion.
Merrill Lynch says the rich are flocking to gold as the financial collapse picks up speed. No one said the rich were dumb, but Mark Twain hit it right on the money when he said, "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself." Tragically, it's no laughing matter. Millions of Americans are being driven into poverty. The American dream is being stomped into the ground by Congress after Congress regardless of which party holds "power." |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:26 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
In Fraud We Trust
Rob Kirby
Jan 12, 2009
Amazing, isn't it, how times have changed? Just [Wed.] this morning, President elect Barack Obama stood before microphones and television cameras and told the world that his administration was set to inherit an annual deficit of 1.2 TRILLION dollars. He went on to add that the fiscal 2009 amount did not even include "his" stimulus plan, rumored to be as much as an additional TRILLION dollars, reportedly geared toward infrastructure spending, would be required to "jump start" the U.S. economy.
If that wasn't a big enough belly full - Mr. President elect stated that "Trillion Dollar Deficits" - for years to come - would be the norm.
Also on the 7th of Jan. 2009, the venerable FT reported the "failure" of a sovereign German bond auction:
German bond sale's fate signals trouble ahead
By David Oakley in London
Published: January 7 2009 13:30 | Last updated: January 7 2009 20:45
A German sovereign bond auction failed on Wednesday as investors shunned one of the most liquid and safe assets in the world in a warning for governments seeking to raise record amounts of debt to stimulate slowing economies.
The fate of the first eurozone bond auction of 2009 signals trouble ahead as governments around the world hope to issue an estimated $3,000bn in debt this year, three times more than in 2008.
So, can anyone tell me how Mr. President Elect, Obama, is going to raise some 2 TRILLION over the next year?
In a recent Bloomberg interview, former FOMC member and Fed St. Louis chief, William Poole, answered that question by suggesting that the Fed - itself in a state of internal conflict - will resort to outright PRINTING of money.
And that's just the back-drop on the debt front. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:28 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
Clearly, by introduction of this legislation, we can deduce that America's crippling balance of trade deficit was being blamed squarely on China and the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury - Paulson - was instructed to put a stop to it.
China had clearly demonstrated that they were unwilling to make the necessary [large] and desired currency adjustment[s] to the yuan to level the balance of trade playing field so other measures needed to be taken.
Understand folks; from an American perspective, overwhelming Chinese export-led-growth was proving to be TOXIC to the maintenance of Global U.S. Dollar hegemony. From an American nationalist centric perspective - something [or perhaps anything?] had to be done to slow Chinese export led growth.
Has the Price of Oil Been Used as a Weapon?
Folks also need to understand that Russia's economic resurgence in recent years has been virtually ALL energy led. With that in mind, everyone should remember that Russia's current dispute with the Ukraine regarding Natural Gas involves the price the Ukraine pays Russia for its Nat. Gas. As reported in BusinessWeek: |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:31 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
On the other hand, it is the United States of America that has a well documented history of interfering with the free market prices of strategic commodities to suit their own imperialistic agenda:
1. The United States engineered the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1980s by "rigging" the price of both crude oil and gold - strategic goods which the former Soviet Union "had to sell" to the West to feed their people:
"...Remember the 2nd prong in bankrupting the Soviets, reducing their Foreign Exchange income? The first step on that was to determine where the Soviets income mostly came from. It turned out to be Oil and Gold. Then Browne said that this is where the CIA came in, they in a very sophisticated manner went around the world and manipulated markets to drive down the price of both Oil and Gold. Remember where Oil and Gold were when Reagan took over? They were in the neighborhood of $30 a barrel and $500 an ounce. Both fell dramatically under Reagan. As Browne made this and other points I would look across the patio and look at Mrs. Casey and Al Haig and both would be nodding in agreement with Browne's points..."
2. The London Gold Pool during the 1960s:
The Pool came unstuck when the French, under Charles de Gaulle, reneged and began to send the Dollars earned by exporting to the U.S. back and demanding Gold rather than Treasury debt paper in return. Under the terms of the Bretton Woods Agreement signed in 1944, France was legally entitled to do this. The drain on U.S. Gold became acute, and the London Gold Pool folded in April 1968. But the demand for U.S. Gold did not abate.
By the end of the 1960s, the U.S. faced the stark choice of eliminating their trade deficits or revaluing the Dollar downwards against Gold to reflect the actual situation. President Nixon decided to do neither. Instead, he repudiated the international obligation of the U.S. to redeem its Dollar in Gold just as President Roosevelt had repudiated the domestic obligation in 1933. On August 15, 1971, Mr Nixon closed the "Gold Window". The last link between Gold and the Dollar was gone. The result was inevitable. In February 1973, the world's currencies "floated". By the end of 1974, Gold had soared from $35 to $195 an ounce.
The United States of America continues their self-serving, fraudulent and surreptitious interventions in the global energy and precious metals markets today. It's economic warfare. Maintenance of global U.S. Dollar hegemony requires this:
Was the price of oil purposely raised, buying "paper barrels" on NYMEX, along with an accompanying Fed Reserve orchestrated credit contraction to impair China's global customers and hence their export growth? Empirically and factually, once this occurred, the price of crude oil then dropped precipitously [or was cut ruthlessly, perhaps?] - robbing posturing American un-friendly states [Russia, Venezuela and Iran] of required income when push came to shove? |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:33 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
Impending Whip-saw In Commodities
With commodities prices having fallen from their perches [actually, they were pushed] in recent months, a great deal of future and current output capacity of the extractive industries has been shuttered. One must wonder how well these industries will be able to respond to the upcoming deluge of dollars to be spent on infrastructure - which by nature is extremely demand intensive of the very things whose supplies are being curtailed?
Anticipate shortages and dramatically higher prices of key base-industrial-commodities going forward - likely to materialize in the second half of 2009.
Physical Metal - Fraud's Achilles Heel
Some central banks (those of China, Russia, Iran and Venezuela) are actually buying physical gold to bolster their reserves. Perhaps you will take notice that countries that have a penchant for gold coincidentally are not viewed as America's best friends. Ever wonder why?
Fondness for gold makes the dollar look bad. If you are America and are in the business of printing dollars to buy whatever you want, folks buying gold are raining on your parade, and if they do too much buying of gold, dollars can become worthless and not welcome in exchange for goods and services. (I would suggest that this is happening right now.)
JPMorgan Chase is the Federal Reserve in drag. It is Morgan Chase's job to make sure that gold remains viewed as an unworthy means of wealth preservation, so that the biggest Ponzi scheme in the world stays viable - the U.S. government bond market.
Plunges of $200 in the gold market require FUEL.
JPMorgan Chase's swelling of its gold derivatives book by $15 billion in three months [Q3 / 08] was undoubtedly the fuel. The implication here is that the Morgan Chase gold trader in the Comex pit "fireballed" the price of gold by selling dizzying amounts of paper gold [futures] over the period in question.
An incredible feat, in a world that is supposedly starved for capital, this institution somehow saw fit to take $15 billion in notional risk to short the living bleep out of gold.
Unless you live in a vacuum, you can only conclude that the Morgan Chase gold trader was INSTRUCTED to beat gold with a stick.
The instructors were Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke.
But in the end, just as physical shortages of staple goods - in the face of limitless money creation - will push prices higher; it will be the same where gold is concerned. This process is now underway with the fraudulent futures [paper] price of gold already decoupled from the cost of buying physical ounces. Continued fraudulent interventions only ensure that this sordid perversion ends sooner rather than later.
Rob Kirby |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:35 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
Looking forward, we feel strongly that the extreme money growth currently being administered by policymakers is the ultimate leading indicator of nominal US output/demand, which in turn is the key determinant for US equity prices and consumer sentiment. As is widely publicized, the problem with US money growth presently is that banks are not distributing it in the form of credit, which could then be used as collateral for increasing consumption and capital goods spending. So, even though we’re confident that nominal stock prices will be higher down the road, we haven’t a clue when this chain of events may gain traction. (We anticipate that banks, as publicly held profit-seeking entities, will most likely begin acquiring assets recently made cheap – and lending on them in a concentrated fashion - before beginning to extend credit to the broader public in a meaningful way. Wouldn’t you?) |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:36 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
The foundation for the Stock Market Crash of 1929 was laid in 1907 when investment banker John Pierpont Morgan passed a rumor to the New York Times that the Knickerbocker Bank in New York was insolvent, starting a run not only on the Knickerbocker Bank but on other banks as well, first in New York and then across the country. In Life Magazine's April 25, 1949 issue, Life writer Frederick Allen wrote that Morgan financial interests took advantage of "...unsettled conditions that existed in the fall of 1907 to precipitate the [Bank] Panic [of 1907], guiding it shrewdly as it progressed..." in order, Allen supposed, to kill rival banks and consolidate their holdings under the banner of J.P. Morgan & Company. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:38 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
The chroniclers of the deed failed to grasp Morgan's motive for the Bank Panic of 1907, but at least he properly identified the culprit who instigated it. But, in 1907, nobody would have believed that one of America's most important bankers could, or would, deliberately precipitate a banking crisis that would cost millions of working class depositors billions of dollars. Or that its purpose was to remove the United States and the industrial nations of Europe from the gold standard in order to create a global fiat monetary system controlled by the whims of the world's bankers, industrialists and merchant princes.
Morgan's manipulation in 1907 resulted in Congress enacting three resolutions to amend the Constitution of the United States. The proposed 16th Amendment would allow the federal government to legislate a national tax on incomes. The proposed 17th Amendment would remove control of the US Senate from the States. The proposed 18th Amendment, which was soundly defeated in the US Senate, would have removed the US monetary system from the gold standard.
Prior to the ratification of the 17th Amendment on April 8, 1913, the State legislatures elected their US Senators and controlled how they voted on Capitol Hill. Removing that power from the States was needed to successfully create a permanent central bank in the United States since the US Senate defeated every attempt to legislate a new central bank since President Andrew Jackson killed an attempt to recharter the Second Bank of the United States in 1835. Jackson denounced central banks as an engine of corruption. Defying the money powers under the control of Second Bank president Nicholas Biddle, President Jackson promised to veto any banking bill enacted by Congress, telling the media that "...if Congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given to them to use by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations." Jackson successfully killed Biddle's central bank.
In return for Jackson's killing the Second Bank, Biddle hired an unemployed house painter to assassinate him. On Jan. 30, 1835 while Jackson was attending a congressional funeral in the Capitol Building, Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot him with two pistols. Both misfired. At his trial, Lawrence confessed that he was hired by Biddle to kill Jackson. The jury chose to believe that Lawrence was deranged. He died in an insane asylum in Washington, DC in 1861. From 1836 to 1913 the United States did not have a central bank.
[Read "The Coming Battle" published in 1899 how recessions were created through the 1800s] |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:41 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
The return of the Trilateral undead
It's not accidental that so many of the original members of the Trilateral Commission, all of whom are now well into their 80's, have returned to dance in the limelight once again.
TC Members like Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paul Volker and Brent Scowcroft, for instance.
On January 5, 2009, Henry Kissinger was interviewed by CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. His voice still raspy and spoken with a thick accent, he responded to a question about President-elect Obama's first actions as President:
"he can give new impetus to American foreign policy ... I think that his task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period, when really a 'new world order' can be created. It's a great opportunity. It isn't such a crisis."
While the rest of the country slips into depression and financial collapse, to Kissinger "it isn't such a crisis."
And, of course it isn't -- for him.
Kissinger has been patiently waiting since at least 1973 for his New World Order egg to hatch. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:42 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 to create a "New International Economic Order." George H.W. Bush, also a Trilateral, later spoke of inaugurating a "New World Order." Hence, in Trilateral literature, the two terms have been synonymous ever since. (see The Trilateral Commission: Usurping Sovereignty)
Kissinger earlier praised Obama's picks for economic recovery, and why not?
Obama picked Trilateral Commission wonder boy Timothy Geithner to be Secretary of the Treasury. The rest of the team are protégés of Robert Rubin, also a Trilateral and former Treasury Secretary under Clinton.
Obama's top foreign policy advisor has been Zbigniew Brzezinski, the co-founder of the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller.
In 1974, Brzezinski stated,
"We need to change the international system for a global system in which new, active and creative forces recently developed - should be integrated. This system needs to include Japan. Brazil, the oil producing countries, and even the USSR, to the extent which the Soviet Union is willing to participate in a global system... the reality of our times is that a modern society such as the U.S. needs a central coordinating and renovating organ which cannot be made up of six hundred people..”
For the uninitiated, "six hundred people" refers to Congress: Replace it with a Socialist/Communist central coordinating organ.
The call in Europe
Sarkozy (France), Merkel (Germany) and Blair (Great Britain) are all calling for a New World Order.
On January 7, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that "In the 21st century, there it is no longer a single nation who can say what we should do or what we should think."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the world "cannot continue as it is."
Both Tony Blair and the current British PM Gordon Brown have repeatedly called for a New World Order for many years, but their cries are intensified. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:44 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
James Montier, from Société Générale, has examined US bonds back to 1798. Yields have never been this low before, except under war controls in the 1940s when the price was set by dictate.
That episode is not a happy precedent. The Fed drove the 10-year bond down to 2.25pc, much as it is doing today with mortgage bonds. It helped America win World War Two, but ended in tears for bond holders in 1946 when inflation jumped to 18pc.
Mr Montier said yields have averaged 4.5pc over two centuries, with a real return of around 2pc. By that benchmark, the market is now banking on a decade of deflation.
Investors have drawn a false parallel with Japan's Lost Decade, when bond yields kept falling, forgetting that Tokyo waited seven years before resorting to the printing press. Mr Bernanke has no such inhibitions. He has hit the nuclear button in advance.
"Today's yields are woefully short of the estimated fair value under normal conditions. There maybe a (short-term) speculative case for buying bonds. However, I am an investor, not a speculator," he said
Of course, we may already be so deep into debt deflation that bonds will rally regardless. Fresh data suggest that Japan's economy contracted at a 12pc annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2008; the US, Germany, and France shrank at a 6pc rate, and Britain shrank at 5pc.
If sustained, these figures are worse than 1930, though not as bad as the killer year of 1931. The UK contraction from peak to trough in the Slump was 5pc. Gordon Brown will be lucky to get off so lightly. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:46 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
The bond bubble is an accident waiting to happen
The bond vigilantes slumber. As the greatest sovereign bond bubble of all time rolls into 2009, investors are clinging to an implausible assumption that China and Japan will provide enough capital to keep the happy game going for ever.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 12:22PM GMT 12 Jan 2009
Comments 63 | Comment on this article
They are betting too that debt deflation will overwhelm the effects of near-zero interest rates across the G10 and nullify a £2,000bn fiscal blast in the US, China, Japan, Britain, and Europe.
Above all, they are betting that the Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke will fail to print enough banknotes to inflate the US money supply, despite his avowed intent to do so.
Yields on 10-year US Treasuries have fallen to 2.4pc – a level that was unseen even in the Great Depression. This is "return-free risk", said bond guru Jim Grant.
It is much the same story across the world. Yields are 1.3pc in Japan, 3.02pc in Germany, 3.13pc in Britain, 3.26pc in Chile, 3.47pc in France, and 5.56pc in Brazil.
"Get out of Treasuries. They are very, very expensive," said Mohamed El-Erian, the investment chief at the Pimco, the world's top bond fund, in a Barron's article last week.
It is lazy to think that China, Japan, the petro-powers and the surplus states of emerging Asia will continue to amass foreign reserves, recycling their treasure into the US and European bond markets.
These countries are themselves bleeding as exports collapse. Most face capital flight. The whole process that fed the bond boom from 2003 to 2008 is now going into reverse.
Woe betide any investor who misjudges the consequences of this strategic shift.
Russia has lost 27pc of its $600bn reserves since August. The oil and metals crash has left the oligarchs prostrate. China's reserves fell $15bn in October. Beijing has begun to fret about an exodus of hot money – disguised as foreign investment in plant. The exchange regulator is muttering about "abnormal" capital flows out of the country.
China's $1,900bn stash of foreign bonds is a by-product of holding down the yuan to boost exports.
This mercantilist ploy is no longer necessary, since the currency is weakening. Beijing needs the money at home in any case to prop up the Chinese economy – now in trouble. Even Japan has slipped into trade deficit.
Clearly, the US and European governments cannot rely on Asia to plug the $3,500bn hole in their budgets this year.
Asians are just as likely to be net sellers of their bonds. Which implies that central banks may have to "monetize" our deficits. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 585795
1/13/2009 7:48 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
DICK CHENEY: "NO ONE SAW ECONOMIC CRISIS COMING"
Jan 8, 2009
[link to cbs5.com]
 |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:48 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
It seems too trite to say, but it is incumbent on all of us to understand where we’re placing our bets and what the downside is. The further removed investors of any stripe get from personally understanding the merits and risks of their investments, the less they should be surprised by losses and the less society should care about replacing those losses.
If that sounds unusually harsh, maybe it’s because our society has come to think that investing is saving. Of course, it is not. By saving we hope to have tomorrow the same magnitude of purchasing power we have today. Investing, on the other hand, is deploying a long-term time horizon to speculate on the direction of asset prices. We deserve losses – at least in the short-term - when we pay too much for our assets, and we deserve gains – at least in the long-term – when we buy our assets cheap. Otherwise, capitalism can’t work.
There is no denying the subjectivity and natural dynamism of markets and investing, and this is being proved to us presently. The more rigid one’s investment plan, the more likely it will produce negative surprises, which in turn will trigger unfortunate responses that compound those problems.
A good case in point is liquidity. When markets turn against us, the natural impulse of most investors is to flee. The focus turns to asset or fund liquidity, and, in the case of private funds, many investors tend to blame their fund managers for not providing immediate redemptions. We suspect that in the future there will be a natural tendency for investors and funds looking to attract investors to emphasize liberal redemption provisions – like those of mutual funds.
What a mistake that would be. Investors in the position to invest in private investment funds shouldn’t care that their outsourced investments are necessarily liquid. They should care more that their investment funds can maintain a matched book of assets and liabilities. Investors still do not seem to understand (or care) that market liquidity is a dynamic – not static – function, regardless of asset class. (We have no doubt that the most recent flight to liquidity - gimme Treasuries! - will eventually be another lesson for investors along these lines.) |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:56 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
Banks make their money by making a spread on the money they lend. With symbiotic assists from politicians - always looking for money to fund their legislative projects and campaigns, and from central bankers – continually brow-beaten by politicians, by commercial businesses relying on easy consumer credit for revenue growth, and by vocal private sector economists (usually working for Wall Street banks) providing constant chatter about how central banks should avoid (natural) economic contractions, banks are able to continually grow their balance sheets and, usually, their profitability.
This arrangement has been especially effective (and insidious to private sector wealth gatherers) since 1971, from whence all global money became un-tethered to gold and there became no limit on the amount of it that Treasury ministries could print and central banks could distribute. The US, the world’s largest economy that also prints and distributes the world’s reserve currency, has inflated its money stock so much that the purchasing power of each dollar has depreciated over 45% since then1 (and over 90% since 1913, when the Fed was established). This is why prices rise.
As you know, money is not necessarily a store of wealth. US dollars, and most of the world’s currencies whose values are judged in relative terms and are currently being inflated also by their central banks, have become merely means of exchange and units of accounts. They no longer have substantial store-of-wealth properties, and this has been borne out in the rational behavior of domestic holders of them. Americans, for example, no longer save their dollars.
Instead, Americans and individuals in many other lands with home currencies most closely tied to the US dollar generally use their money as collateral to borrow even more money with which to consume and invest. Money has become debt – literally (i.e. they are Federal Reserve Notes), and in practice (i.e. US debt overwhelms nominal US GDP and Income to such an extent that it must be repaid with money that does not yet exist.)
1 Shadow Government Statistics; CPI-U Alternate Series
Therefore, when economic adversity falls upon the global economy, Treasury ministries and central banks are compelled to create even more money so that the nominal levels of GDP, wages and assets can be prevented from declining, and so the real (inflation-adjusted) cost of the stuff that was bought with that money is reduced (the burden of outstanding debt is diminished relative to future wages and income). Yet this is not a sustainable global monetary regime, which further implies that the current global “economic business model” is unsustainable. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 7:59 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
The last point we’d like to make is that Treasury and the Fed can manufacture rising nominal US and global GDP simply by making money. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 8:00 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592300
1/13/2009 7:40 PM
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COMPLETE COLLAPSE IN SHIPPING: CONTAINER SHIPPING RATES HIT "ZERO" - WTF?
Quote
Shipping rates hit zero as trade sinks
Freight rates for containers shipped from Asia to Europe have fallen to zero for the first time since records began, underscoring the dramatic collapse in trade since the world economy buckled in October.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor
Last Updated: 5:42PM GMT 13 Jan 2009
The cost of shipping goods from Asia to Europe has tumbled
"They have already hit zero," said Charles de Trenck, a broker at Transport Trackers in Hong Kong. "We have seen trade activity fall off a cliff. Asia-Europe is an unmit*igated disaster."
Shipping journal Lloyd's List said brokers in Singapore are now waiving fees for containers travelling from South China, charging only for the minimal "bunker" costs. Container fees from North Asia have dropped $200, taking them below operating cost.
Industry sources said they have never seen rates fall so low. "This is a whole new ball game," said one trader.
The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) which measures freight rates for bulk commodities such as iron ore and grains crashed several months ago, falling 96pc. The BDI - though a useful early-warning index - is highly volatile and exaggerates apparent ups and downs in trade. However, the latest phase of the shipping crisis is different. It has spread to core trade of finished industrial goods, the lifeblood of the world economy.
Trade data from Asia's export tigers has been disastrous over recent weeks, reflecting the collapse in US, UK and European markets.
Korea's exports fell 30pc in January compared to a year earlier. Exports have slumped 42pc in Taiwan and 27pc in Japan, according to the most recent monthly data. Even China has now started to see an outright contraction in shipments, led by steel, electronics and textiles.
A report by ING yesterday said shipping activity at US ports has suddenly dived. Outbound traffic from Long Beach and Los Angeles, America's two top ports, has fallen by 18pc year-on-year, a far more serious decline than anything seen in recent recessions.
"This is no regular cycle slowdown, but a complete collapse in foreign demand," said Lindsay Coburn, ING's trade consultant.
Idle ships are now stretched in rows outside Singapore's harbour, creating an eerie silhouette like a vast naval fleet at anchor. Shipping experts note the number of vessels moving around seem unusually high in the water, indicating low cargoes.
It became difficult for the shippers to obtain routine letters of credit at the height of financial crisis over the autumn, causing goods to pile up at ports even though there was a willing buyer at the other end. Analysts say this problem has been resolved, but the shipping industry has since been swamped by the global trade contraction.
The World Bank caused shockwaves with a warning last month that global trade may decline this year for the first time since the Second World War. This appears increasingly certain with each new batch of data.
Mr de Trenck predicts Asian trade to the US will fall 7pc this year. To Europe he estimates a drop of 9pc - possibly 12pc. Trade flows grow 8pc in an average year.
He said it was "illogical" for shippers to offer zero rates, but they do whatever they can to survive in a highly cyclical market.
Offering slots for free is akin to an airline giving away spare seats for nothing in the hope of making something from meals and fees. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 8:07 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
THE BEAR'S LAIR
A triumph of wishful thinking
By Martin Hutchinson
The US budget deficit for the year to September 2009 will be US$1.19 trillion, 8.3% of gross domestic product (GDP), the largest in history, according to the Congressional Budget Office. To this monster president-elect Barack Obama wishes to add a two-year stimulus of $800 billion or so. Broad money supply is rising by 20% per annum and the federal funds target rate is at 0-0.25%.
For the government to run simultaneously monetary and fiscal policies that are breathtaking in their expansionism and expect to escape unscathed is a triumph of wishful thinking. The sources
and probable results of that wishful thinking bear examination.
The elements in the wishful thinking mix are clear. The Federal Reserve expanded broad money two-thirds faster than the growth rate in nominal GDP from 1995 to 2007, then when the bubble burst, accelerated money supply growth still further. Since September 2008, growth rates of both the M2 and Money to Zero Maturity (MZM) measures of money supply have been close to 20% annually, while the monetary base has all but doubled. (MZM is considered a reasonable proxy for watching the movement of M3, the broadest measure of the money supply.)
After fiscal discipline under president Bill Clinton and House speaker Newt Gingrich that appears even more admirable in retrospect than it did at the time, the advent of the porky Dennis Hastert as speaker of the House of Representatives and the determinedly un-ideological George W Bush as president caused almost all control on public spending to disappear. Even before the current downturn, the budget deficit was running at the near-record level of over $400 billion annually. The first faint murmurings of downturn a year ago brought an immediate bipartisan consumer tax rebate, which achieved startlingly little other than to push the budget deficit into new high ground.
Meanwhile, most state and local governments increased spending by more than 10% annually as politicians rejoiced that the housing bubble and tax receipts therefrom had inflated their ability to satisfy pork-seekers and interest groups. Budget deficits at the level of 2006-07 were easy to finance, and within past parameters, but it was always clear to non-wishful-thinkers that some day, a recession would arrive and cause chaos.
Policymaker wishful thinking was intensified by the credit crisis. Since they had not expected a general decline in house prices (and had not known about the mortgage financiers' own wishful-thinking abandonment of reasonable underwriting practices in "liar loans" and the like), the scale of the problem surprised them. The disappearance of the major investment banks, caused mainly by further wishful thinking about the level of leverage they could manage in a downturn, caused policymakers to panic. The money markets seized up as bank capital bases were destroyed, bringing nightmare visions of an economy without credit availability. A second great depression appeared to loom.
Policymakers believed they had learned the lessons of Great Depression of the 1930s, which were that protectionism and tight money had caused it while fiscal stimulus had ended it. They thus frantically loosened both monetary and fiscal policy to avoid Great Depression II. (Regrettably, no comparable effort was made to fight protectionism, for example by abolishing US and European Union agriculture subsidies and pushing for a Doha Round global trade agreement.) Such loose monetary and fiscal policies have never been tried before - for example, the Bank of England's short-term rate of 1.5% is its lowest since its founding in 1694. Thus any difficulties such policies may cause were blissfully assumed to be minor.
The psychological roots of policymaker wishful thinking are many-fold. The long bull market dimmed memories of recessions - those of 1990-91 and 2001-02 were both atypically mild. The Clinton administration's success in solving the 1980s' deficit problem suggested that it hadn't been that important or difficult to solve. Rapid monetary expansion without inflation suggested that the old monetary cautions of the 1980s were excessive - after all, until 2006 the great maestro Alan Greenspan was still there as chairman of the Federal Reserve to give expansion his blessing.
Cheap money and rapidly rising asset prices suggested that old verities about saving for old age were wrong; there was little concern about the perennial US near-zero savings rate. Indeed, free-market economics in general became somewhat reputationally tarnished, as globalization's side-effects produced declining living standards for the US middle class while infinitely enriching Wall Street. Finally, there was a general disdain for Bush and admiration for then presidential candidate Barack Obama; as 2008 wore on, the belief grew that inspirational new leadership could solve all problems.
The wishful thinking consensus ignored some truths and misinterpreted others. Fiscal stimulus did not solve the Great Depression; it prolonged it |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 8:12 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
DE BORCHGRAVE: Running on empty
Arnaud de Borchgrave
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
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ASSOCIATED PRESS House Budget Committee Chairman John M. Spratt Jr. (right) and Senate Budget Committee Chairman explain Wednesday the projected fiscal 2009 deficit of $1.2 trillion.
COMMENTARY:
When IOUSA made its documentary film debut last August, it soon earned the sobriquet "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour." Its unrelenting gloom toted up a $9 trillion federal debt, a $738.6 billion trade deficit, and the news that each U.S. citizen now owes $30,000.
But all the stats are already hopelessly out of date as evidenced by CNN's two-hour Saturday update of IOUSA, repeated on Sunday, starring Dave Walker, president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, and former U.S. comptroller general under three presidents; Pete Peterson, chairman of the Blackstone Group, chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, ex-chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers; former senator and democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley; and Alice Rivlin, former Office of Management and Budget director.
The all-star cast was supplemented by cameos by Warren Buffett, two former Federal Reserve chairmen, Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, and two former Treasury secretaries, Paul O'Neill and Robert Rubin. On the short list for an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary, IOUSA revisited by CNN's Ali Velshi and Christine Romans, co-anchors of "Your SSSSS," piled on with stats that put the U.S. among the world's failing nations as it plunges into another Great Depression.
Global forces can now override most anything that monetary and fiscal policy can do, said Alan Greenspan, "and central banks have increasingly lost their capacity to influence the longer end of the market."
Fiscal irresponsibility is now a calamitous cycle that poses a bigger threat than al Qaeda and its plans to attack the United States with a weapon of mass destruction. David Walker, the Paul Revere of a total economic and financial collapse on the present course, says the United States has a fiscal cancer "that is growing within us." And "if not treated, it will be catastrophic for our country." Cliches about growing our way out of it now ring hollow. But other cliches have America running on empty and about to go over the cliff.
The National Debt Clock in New York ran out of digits as it raced past $10 trillion to $10.7 trillion and still rising. IOUSA explains the first perceived crisis with national debt took place after the Revolutionary War, and that revolutionary governments took action under George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Budget deficits and national debt remained under control through many years, even during the Civil War, World War I and World War II. And there really wasn't a problem, says the documentary, until the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan's huge tax cuts, and then early this decade, with George W. Bush's huge tax cuts - coupled with the Iraq war whose estimated cost is $1 trillion. President Clinton finished his eight years with a surplus and an economy that had expanded 50 percent in real terms, and a GNP of $10 trillion, one-quarter of the entire world economic output. Mr. Clinton also left office with a jobless rate of 4 percent, a 40-year low, while the economy grew 15 million jobs.
Today, counting all those who have dropped off unemployment rolls for part-time work or no work, there are 21 million Americans either jobless or underemployed, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Average work weeks are also being cut back. Some employers now shorten work weeks as a way to keep some on the payroll. And as the baby boomer generation begins to retire, IOUSA asks if there will even be any Social Security benefits left to collect. Overextended entitlement programs and debts to foreign countries are becoming impossible to honor. Unfunded entitlements are calculated at $53 trillion, or $175,000 per person. America has to mend its spendthrift ways, the documentary says, or face an economic disaster of epic proportions. [link to www.washingtontimes.com]
The documentary follows former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker as he crisscrosses the country explaining America's death-wish fiscal policies to average citizens. "We've become a culture that wants it all now, but doesn't want to pay for it." So we borrow $3 billion a day from other countries, chiefly China, to keep up the world's highest standard of living, based on conspicuous consumption. The United States has mortgaged its future to foreigners with promises to its own people it can't possibly keep. China, with $1.3 trillion in U.S. paper, could decide its strategic interest is no longer compatible with America's - and quit as America's banker.
How do we get Americans to save more? Overspending still dominates the lives of U.S. citizens. The Chinese save 35 percent of what they earn; Americans less than 1 percent, the lowest of any developed country. Singapore, Chile and Australia, for example, have mandatory savings - outside of government control. IOUSA says there should be stronger incentives to save because without savings America has no future.
Americans are now shocked to see their 401(k) retirement savings accounts losing their allure as many employers say they can no longer afford matching funds. The government, for its part, is taking in more than it can pay out. Isn't that how Ponzi schemes work?
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 8:28 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
POLITICAL ECONOMY
Walker's World: Depression looms
disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only
by Martin Walker
Vienna (UPI) Jan 11, 2009
This time last year, many economists were still debating whether the United States was entering or already experiencing a recession. That debate is over. The question now is whether we are entering a depression and how great or modest it will be.
There is no formal definition for a depression. Like pornography, we know it when we see it. But some economists suggest that a 10 percent drop in GDP would qualify. We are not there yet, but the momentum is ugly, because this is now a global problem.
In Britain, national income fell by 1.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 and industrial production fell by 2.7 percent in the three months to November. Germany reported industrial output fell by 3.1 percent in November compared with October, the third consecutive monthly fall. France reported a 2.4 percent drop in the month.
They were the lucky ones. Elsewhere in Europe, countries are already in depression territory. In Spain, production at factories and mines was 15.1 percent lower than a year before. Sweden reported an 11.9 percent year-on-year fall in industrial production. Worse still, orders dropped by 26.2 percent.
In the United States, 524,000 payroll jobs were lost in December, having lost 2.6 million jobs in the year. The conventional unemployment rate has risen to 7.2 percent, but includes workers who are now off the rolls and forced part-time work, and the true jobless rate is already in double digits, with the economy contracting at about 5 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter.
The prospects for the coming year are grim. The retail, construction and financial sectors are all in deep trouble that is probably getting deeper. This is mainly because the United States is going through a fundamental (and too long delayed) shift away from consumption and toward saving.
Between 1950 and 1983, personal consumption stayed within a range of 61 percent to 63 percent of GDP. In the past 25 years, it has risen to 71 percent of GDP and savings have shrunk to zero. We are now heading back to a sustainable level of consuming around 65 percent of GDP, and over the next two to three years this will shift about $1 trillion a year out of the retail economy and into debt reduction and savings.
This is probably necessary, but it will be painful for shops and restaurants, hotels and airlines, property developers and car manufacturers, the newspaper industry and advertising, to name but the most obvious victims.
Does this mean we are heading into a depression? Professor Peter Morici of the University of Maryland, formerly the chief economist for the U.S. trade representative and one of the best forecasters in the business, has an interesting definition of the difference between recession and depression.
Recessions, he maintains, are self-correcting, "like stock market corrections that eventually rebound without government intervention. Federal Reserve interest rate cuts and stimulus tax rebates and spending have shortened the lives and eased the impact of post-World War II recessions, but those policies did not end them. The economy self-corrected."
By contrast, he argues, "A depression is not self-correcting. Roosevelt administration stimulus packages -- huge deficit spending -- eased the pain but failed to end the Great Depression. Similarly, President-elect Obama's massive stimulus package, alone, won't fix the U.S. economy."
Morici identifies three structural problems of the current crisis that are not self-correcting and will require robust government intervention. The first is bad management practices at the large money center banks. The second is the huge foreign trade deficit, and the third is part of the second: the dependence on imported energy. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 8:32 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
an. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned that a fiscal stimulus won’t be enough to spur an economic recovery and that the government may need to buy or guarantee banks’ tainted assets to revive growth.
“Fiscal actions are unlikely to promote a lasting recovery unless they are accompanied by strong measures to further stabilize and strengthen the financial system,” Bernanke said in a speech today at the London School of Economics. “More capital injections and guarantees may become necessary to ensure stability and the normalization of credit markets.”
Bernanke’s remarks indicate he may be seeking to influence deliberations among lawmakers and President-elect Barack Obama’s economic aides on how to deploy the next $350 billion of the financial-rescue fund approved in October. While some Democrats have focused on offering aid to troubled homeowners, the Fed chief’s comments show he’s more concerned about a continued choking off of credit to companies |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 592402
1/13/2009 8:34 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
The Fed will “unwind” its emergency lending programs “when credit markets and the economy have begun to recover,” Bernanke said. Policy makers can then return to the “traditional means of making monetary policy,” setting a target for the federal funds rate. |
| FHL(C)
User ID: 468982
1/13/2009 11:20 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
The return of the Trilateral undead
It's not accidental that so many of the original members of the Trilateral Commission, all of whom are now well into their 80's, have returned to dance in the limelight once again.
TC Members like Henry Kissinger,
Kissinger has been patiently waiting since at least 1973 for his New World Order egg to hatch. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 592402
Henry and batch of others was on the news here in China yesterday, being feted and greeted by the Government here.
It makes me think that there is a multi prong approach going on here, to get the Chinese government to keep supporting the excess and failed FED debacle for the sake of the US government(western TPTB), and at the same time to encourage/steer toward the cut up of how he wants the new world order to be(carrots and maybe sticks ).
Frankly if i were the Chinese government the only carrots i might accept, and it would have to be immediate, would be full access to all the military/industrial technologies, and if its sticks especially ones with moral overtones, well for those who know how on the ground business works here in terms of cultural tradition and face, well that's just what would happen.
What I am saying is, because Henry is viewed with some degree of affection by a segment of society here(like a benevolent uncle who you respect but don't necessarily obey), it looks like some end game tweeking is being done because events are not quite as in control as western TPTB wanted, so the begging bowl is out now disguised as cooperation no doubt. IMO
[link to freewordofgod.yuku.com] |
| FHL(C)
User ID: 468982
1/13/2009 11:23 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
FU&FW
[link to www.telegraph.co.uk]
Germany takes hot seat as Europe falls into the abyss
We face extreme danger. Unless there is immediate intervention on every front by all the major powers acting in concert, we risk a disintegration of global finance within days. Nobody will be spared, unless they own gold bars.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 8:37PM BST 06 Oct 2008
Comments 527 | Comment on this article
European Central bank Governor Trichet
Star-crossed bankers: The European Central Bank played a shockingly destructive role Photo: REUTERS
Investors will learn today whether the Paulson bail-out - fattened to $850bn (£480bn) by Congress - can begin to halt the death spiral in the credit system. So far, the response looks terrible.
Germany is now in the hot seat. The collapse of a rescue deal for Hypo Real Estate on Saturday threatens a €400bn (£311bn) bankruptcy that nearly matches the Lehman Brothers debacle for sheer scale.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has been forced to pull her head out of the sand, guaranteeing all German savings, a day after she rebuked Ireland for doing much the same thing. Reality intrudes.
During the past week, we have tipped over the edge, into the middle of the abyss. Systemic collapse is in full train. The Netherlands has just rushed through a second, more sweeping nationalisation of Fortis. Ireland and Greece have had to rescue all their banks. Iceland is facing an Argentine denouement.
The US commercial paper market is closed. It shrank $95bn last week, and has lost $208bn in three weeks. The interbank lending market has seized up. There are almost no bids. It is a ghost market. Healthy companies cannot roll over debt. Some will have to sack staff today to stave off default.
As the unflappable Warren Buffett puts it, the credit freeze is “sucking blood” out of the economy. “In my adult lifetime, I don’t think I’ve ever seen people as fearful,” he said.
We are fast approaching the point of no return. The only way out of this calamitous descent is “shock and awe” on a global scale, and even that may not be enough.
Drastic rate cuts would be a good start. Central bankers still paralysed by a misplaced fear of inflation – whether in Europe, Britain, or the US – have become a public menace and should be held to severe account by our democracies. The imminent and massive danger is now self-feeding debt deflation.
The lesson of the 1930s is that any country trying to reflate in isolation will be punished.
[link to freewordofgod.yuku.com] |
| .
User ID: 593767
1/15/2009 6:48 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
By Rebecca Christie
Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. budget deficit soared to a record in the first quarter of the 2009 fiscal year, surpassing the shortfall for all of last year as the government used taxpayer money to shore up the financial system by purchasing stakes in banks.
The deficit swelled to $485.2 billion in the first three months of the fiscal year that started Oct. 1, the Treasury said today in Washington. For all of 2008, the shortfall was $454.8 billion. The monthly budget picture also worsened, as the excess of spending over revenue widened to $83.6 billion in December, compared with a $48.3 billion surplus a year earlier.
President-elect Barack Obama will take over Jan. 20 facing the biggest budget deficit as a percentage of U.S. gross domestic product other than during the Civil War and the two World Wars, his nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget said today.
“We are inheriting a daunting fiscal position,” Peter Orszag, nominated by Obama to be the White House budget director, told the Senate Budget Committee. The budget shortfall in the 12-month period to Sept. 30 will likely exceed $1 trillion “even without steps to mitigate the economic downturn,” he said.
Government revenue fell 14 percent to $237.8 billion last month, while spending soared 41 percent to $321.4 billion compared with a year earlier. |
| .
User ID: 593767
1/15/2009 6:51 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
The inability or refusal to initiate investigations of corrupt corporate entities that engaged in questionable practices (if not outright illegal) thanks to the intricate network of political favoritism and cronyism has made America into a laughing stock, where no one in their right mind would risk any of their own capital because you do not have an honest accounting from the companies or government on how it will be spent.
The talking heads wonder why the bear market rallies have no conviction or impetus to move past these problems of 2008 and into a new bull market phase. This is not rocket science. Until we start to see some convictions of the people responsible for this mess, until the big fish get fried, until the government renounces the policy of statist interventionism, there is no reason for anyone to invest in our commodity, bond or equity markets. The risk of some crony at an exchange, the board room or our central bank seizing the controlling interests or allowing the entity to fail is too high and thus this allegedly large wad of money on the sidelines will continue to dart in and out of the markets like a zit faced 40 year old day trader working from his parent’s basement.
Maybe, just maybe, if we actually enforce the laws and use the regulations as they existed before this mess started we could instill a little bit more confidence in our system and our society. In the mean time, remember this important rule:
If something of yours is broken, just throw a TARP over it to make it look brand new.
I figure if that rule is good enough for Goldman Sachs, it is good enough for me. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 593767
1/15/2009 6:57 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
I care little for what each said. I care about what each did. The political process in America is now so compromised by power brokers that "the will of the people" is but a convenient slogan, used by those in power to achieve their selfish ends; and until the American people wake up to how they are kept in ignorance in order to be used by those in power, the downward spiral of America will only continue to accelerate with the fate of the world in the balance.
Just as the quality of restaurants reflect the tastes of their patrons, so too does politics today reflect the awareness and demands of the electorate. Up until now, the American electorate has only asked that their fears and concerns be voiced. When that is done to their satisfaction, they care little about the subsequent actions of those they voted for.
If restaurant fare were to be compared to the US political process, the menu, while quite tempting and accordingly high-priced would actually be composed of slop, doled out to those who demand little and settle for far less - the American electorate. Once elected, politicians work for the lobbyists who provide them with more funds to again solicit the votes needed to for re-election.
We did not come to this junction by accident nor will we arrive at another by the current route. The destruction of America's economy happened in plain view of Americans and yet the political process failed to prevent what all could see was happening.
The present process serves those in power. This is not to say that all politicians are compromised. It is to say that all politicians must work within a compromised system, a system that encourages politicians to lie to an electorate that will punish them at the polls for telling the truth.
La vérité est morte. Bientôt, ce seront également les mensonges.
The truth is dead. Soon, so too, will be the lies.
We are in the midst of a systemic breakdown, a breakdown not confined to the economy, politics or other now failing systems, e.g. healthcare, education, etc. Such breakdowns always occur at the end of eras, when one epoch gives way to another. Such are the times in which we live.
[link to www.321gold.com] |
| .
User ID: 593767
1/15/2009 7:03 PM | | Re: Watch, Its happening ,the global economic change. | Quote |
madness, Rome is burning
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Democratic-led U.S. Congress took steps on Thursday to give President-elect Barack Obama the weapons he wants to fight a worsening economic recession by advancing legislation to provide nearly $1.2 trillion in emergency spending.
The House of Representatives and Senate worked on two separate but related tracks in an attempt to speed the money along and with an eye toward Obama's inauguration on Tuesday as the 44th U.S. president.
House Democrats unveiled an $825 billion bill that would couple tax cuts and spending projects to try to jolt the economy out of a yearlong recession that appeared to be deepening.
Obama called the proposal "a significant downpayment on our most urgent challenges" and praised the House for moving ahead quickly, but Republicans criticized the high cost.
The Democratic bill could see changes between now and mid-February when the House and Senate hope to present it to Obama. It is unclear whether the overall price tag will rise. |
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