1/31/10

The Battle of the Titans: JP Morgan Versus Goldman Sachs Or Why the Market Was Down for 7 Days in a Row




Global Research, January 29, 2010
Web of Debt - 2010-01-28


We are witnessing an epic battle between two banking giants, JPMorgan Chase (Paul Volcker) and Goldman Sachs (Geithner/Summers/Rubin). Left strewn on the battleground could be your pension fund and 401K.

The late Libertarian economist Murray Rothbard wrote that U.S. politics since 1900, when William Jennings Bryan narrowly lost the presidency, has been a struggle between two competing banking giants, the Morgans and the Rockefellers. The parties would sometimes change hands, but the puppeteers pulling the strings were always one of these two big-money players. No popular third party candidate had a real chance at winning, because the bankers had the exclusive power to create the national money supply and therefore held the winning cards.

In 2000, the Rockefellers and the Morgans joined forces, when JPMorgan and Chase Manhattan merged to become JPMorgan Chase Co. Today the battling banking titans are JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, an investment bank that gained notoriety for its speculative practices in the 1920s. In 1928, it launched the Goldman Sachs Trading Corp., a closed-end fund similar to a Ponzi scheme. The fund failed in the stock market crash of 1929, marring the firm's reputation for years afterwards. Former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers all came from Goldman, and current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner rose through the ranks of government as a Summers/Rubin protégé. One commentator called the U.S. Treasury Goldman Sachs South. 

Goldmans superpower status comes from something more than just access to the money spigots of the banking system. It actually has the ability to manipulate markets. Formerly just an investment bank, in 2008 Goldman magically transformed into a bank holding company. That gave it access to the Federal Reserves lending window; but at the same time it remained an investment bank, aggressively speculating in the markets.  The upshot was that it can now borrow massive amounts of money at virtually 0% interest, and it can use this money not only to speculate for its own account but to bend markets to its will.

But Goldman Sachs has been caught in this blatant market manipulation so often that the JPMorgan faction of the banking empire has finally had enough. The voters too have evidently had enough, as demonstrated in the recent upset in Massachusetts that threw the late Senator Ted Kennedys Democratic seat to a Republican. That pivotal loss gave Paul Volcker, chairman of President Obamas newly formed Economic Recovery Advisory Board, an opportunity to step up to the plate with some proposals for serious banking reform. Unlike the string of Treasury Secretaries who came to the government through the revolving door of Goldman Sachs, former Federal Reserve Chairman Volcker came up through Chase Manhattan Bank, where he was vice president before joining the Treasury. On January 27, market commentator Bob Chapman wrote in his weekly investment newsletter The International Forecaster:

A split has occurred between the paper forces of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. Mr. Volcker represents Morgan interests. Both sides are Illuminists, but the Morgan side is tired of Goldmans greed and arrogance. . . . Not that JP Morgan Chase was blameless, they did their looting and damage to the system as well, but not in the high handed arrogant way the others did. The recall of Volcker is an attempt to reverse the damage as much as possible. That means the influence of Geithner, Summers, Rubin, et al will be put on the back shelf at least for now, as will be the Goldman influence. It will be slowly and subtly phased out. . . . Washington needs a new face on Wall Street, not that of a criminal syndicate.

Goldmans crimes, says Chapman, were that it got caught stealing. First in naked shorts, then front-running the market, both of which they are still doing, as the SEC looks the other way, and then selling MBS-CDOs to their best clients and simultaneously shorting them.

Volckers proposal would rein in these abuses, either by ending the risky proprietary trading (trading for their own accounts) engaged in by the too-big-to-fail banks, or by forcing them to downsize by selling off those portions of their businesses engaging in it. Until recently, President Obama has declined to support Volckers plan, but on January 21 he finally endorsed it.

The immediate reaction of the market was to drop and drop, day after day. At least, that appeared to be the reaction of the market. Financial analyst Max Keiser suggests a more sinister possibility. Goldman, which has the power to manipulate markets with its high-speed program trades, may be engaging in a Mexican standoff. The veiled threat is, Back off on the banking reforms, or stand by and watch us continue to crash your markets. The same manipulations were evident in the bank bailout forced on Congress by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in September 2008. 

In Keisers January 23 broadcast with co-host Stacy Herbert, he explains how Goldmans manipulations are done. Keiser is a fast talker, so this transcription is not verbatim, but it is close. He says:

High frequency trading accounts for 70% of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Ordinarily, a buyer and a seller show up on the floor, and a specialist determines the price of a trade that would satisfy buyer and seller, and thats the market price. If there are too many sellers and not enough buyers, the specialist lowers the price. High frequency trading as conducted by Goldman means that before the specialist buys and sells and makes that market, Goldman will electronically flood the specialist with thousands and thousands of trades to totally disrupt that process and essentially commandeer that process, for the benefit of siphoning off nickels and dimes for themselves. Not only are they siphoning cash from the New York Stock Exchange but they are also manipulating prices. What I see as a possibility is that next week, if the bankers on Wall Street decide they dont want to be reformed in any way, they simply set the high frequency trading algorithm to sell, creating a huge negative bias for the direction of stocks. And theyll basically crash the market, and it will be a standoff.  The market was down three days in a row, which it hasnt been since last summer. Its a game of chicken, till Obama says, Okay, maybe we need to rethink this.

But the President hasnt knuckled under yet. In his State of the Union address on January 27, he did not dwell long on the issue of bank reform, but he held to his position. He said:

We can't allow financial institutions, including those that take your deposits, to take risks that threaten the whole economy. The House has already passed financial reform with many of these changes. And the lobbyists are already trying to kill it. Well, we cannot let them win this fight. And if the bill that ends up on my desk does not meet the test of real reform, I will send it back.

What this real reform would look like was left to conjecture, but Bob Chapman fills in some blanks and suggests what might be needed for an effective overhaul:

The attempt will be to bring the financial system back to brass tacks. . . . That would include little or no MBS and CDOs, the regulation of derivatives and hedge funds and the end of massive market manipulation, both by Treasury, Fed and Wall Street players. Congress has to end the Presidents Working Group on Financial Markets, or at least limit its use to real emergencies. . . . The Glass-Steagall Act should be reintroduced into the system and lobbying and campaign contributions should end. . . . No more politics in lending and banks should be limited to a lending ratio of 10 to 1. . . . It is bad enough they have the leverage that they have. State banks such as North Dakotas are a better idea.

On January 28, the predictable reaction of the market was to fall for the seventh straight day. The battle of the Titans was on.


Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and the money trust. She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her eleven books includeForbidden MedicineNatures Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com,www.ellenbrown.com, and www.public-banking.com.

1/25/10

The Lost Decade: New Census Data Outlines Bush Era Setbacks in Poverty, Income, and Health Coverage


This first decade in the new millennium has been a trying one for Americans, and the nation is still coming to terms with the scale of problems President Obama inherited. After a historic economic boom under President Clinton, the country experienced a painful bust.
A new DLC report looks at recent Census data to assess the damage. With the final year of George W. Bush's presidency on the books, the numbers are clear: much like Japan during the 1990s, the last 10 years have been a "Lost Decade" for the United States. The analysis reveals that, after a decade in which incomes rose, poverty fell, and the rate of Americans lacking health coverage shrank, the country has suffered setbacks across all three social indicators.
The new report, "The Lost Decade: New Census Data Outlines Bush Era Setbacks in Poverty, Income, and Health Coverage," authored by DLC research associate Conor McKay, makes three principal findings:

  1. Income: Inflation adjusted incomes fell further under President Bush than under any president since reporting began. Under President Clinton, per capita incomes rose 25 percent.
  2. Poverty: The poverty rate jumped 17 percent under President Bush, with nearly 8 million more Americans in poverty today than were in 2000. In 2008, the country saw the largest single-year increase in the poverty rate in the last 25 years. The poverty rate fell 24 percent under President Clinton.
  3. Health Coverage: The number of uninsured Americans increased over 20 percent to an all-time high of 46.3 million, including a dramatic 157 percent increase in the population of uninsured Americans over the age of 65. The uninsured rate dropped under President Clinton.
The Obama administration is working hard to reverse these trends. The economic recovery package and other measures have pulled the economy back from the brink and helped to stem job losses -- and as the recovery develops, incomes will rise again and poverty will fall. As McKay's report reveals, after the past decade, America has a lot of catching up to do.
As always, I look forward to your comments and feedback.
Sincerely,
Bruce_Reed_signature
Bruce Reed
CEO

1/24/10

The United States of Corporate America: From Democracy to Plutocracy


The United States of Corporate America: From Democracy to Plutocracy


 
Global Research, January 22, 2010


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"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."Plato, ancient Greek philosopher
...“The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”Alex Carey, Australian social scientist
The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.” Noam Chomsky, M.I.T. Emeritus Professor of Linguistics
On Tuesday, January 19 (2010), the Obama administration got a kick in the pants from the Massachusetts voters when they filled former Senator Ted Kennedy's seat by electing a conservative Republican candidate. The essence of their message was: stop dithering and start governing; stop trying to satisfy the bankers and please the editors of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, and start caring for the ordinary people.
Two days later, President Barack Obama seemed to have understood the people's message when he announced a “Volcker rule” that will forbid large banks from owning hedge funds that make money by placing large bets against their own clients, using information that these same clients gave them. It was time. Such a policy should have been announced months ago, if not years ago.
On the same day, however, a nonelected body, the U.S. Supreme Court, threw a different challenge to the Obama administration. Indeed, on Thursday January 21 (2010), a Republican-appointed majority on the U.S. Supreme Court [http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/21/us/AP-US-Supreme-Court-Campaign-Finance.html?src=tptw] took it upon itself to profoundly change the U.S. Constitution and American democracy. Indeed, in what can be labeled a most reactionary decision, the Roberts U.S. Supreme Court, [http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/21/us/AP-US-Supreme-Court-Campaign-Finance.html?src=tptw] ruled that legal entities, such as corporations and labor unions, have the same purely personal rights to free speech as living individuals. Indeed, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution] says “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.
The only problem with such a wide interpretation of the U.S. Bills of Rights [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights] (N.B.: The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights) is that this runs contrary its letter and its spirit, since it clearly states later on that "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people, and reserves all powers not granted to the federal government to the citizenry or States.” The words “people” and “citizenry” clearly refer here to living human beings, not to legal or artificial entities such as business corporations, labor unions, financial organizations or political lobbies.
Such entities, for example, cannot vote in an election. Indeed, laws governing voting rights in the United States clearly establish that only “Adult citizens of the United States who are residents of one of the 50 states have the right to participate fully in the political system of the United States”. No mention is made of corporations or other legal entities.
However, with its January 19 (2010) decision, the majority on the Roberts U.S. Supreme Court is saying in effect that even if artificial entities cannot vote in an election, they can spend as much money as they like to influence the outcome of an election. Money is speech for them, and the more a legal entity has of it, the more it has a right to become powerful politically and control the political agenda.
In fact, what Chief Justice Roberts and his conservative Supreme Court majority have done is to overcome a century-old democratic tradition in the United States in granting a constitutional right to business corporations and to banks, (because they are really the ones with a lot of money), to use their enormous resources to not only participate in debates about public issues, but also, and above all, to de facto dictate the election of candidates of their choice to public office.
That's plutocracy, not democracy!
Plutocracy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy] is defined as a political system characterized by “the rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth.” Democracy, on the other hand, is defined as a political system where political power belongs to the people. This means “a political government either carried out directly by the people (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy). The terms "the power to the people" are derived from the words "people" and "power" in Greek.
This fundamental idea of democracy was well summarized by President Abraham Lincoln, in his 1863 Gettysburg Address, when he said that it is “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.” This is a definition that is based on the basic democratic principle of equality among human beings.
But now, the Roberts Court's decision must have made President Lincoln turn in his grave, because that decision, in effect, transfers political power from the living “people” to artificial corporate entities, with tons of money to spend. If Congress does not act quickly to reverse this decision, legal entities will be able to spend freely in the media to support or oppose political candidates for president and Congress, and this, as far as the last moment of a political campaign. This is quite something!
By a stroke of the pen, the Roberts Court has thus abolished the laws governing American electoral financing and removed limits to how much special money interests can spend to have the elected officials they want. The government they want will largely be “a government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations.” Truly amazing!
To reflect the new political philosophy of the five-member majority of the Roberts Court, the Preambule of the U.S. Constitution [http://www.answers.com/topic/preamble-to-the-constitution] that says “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union...” should, maybe, more appropriately be changed for “We, the business corporations of America...”
It is that much more ironic that the word “corporation” appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution or in the Bill of Rights. It is scarcely conceivable that the drafters of the Constitution had anything resembling corporate entities in mind when they drafted the Bill of Rights. But the Roberts Court majority does not seem to agree with Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Mason...etc. Because of their decision, the five conservative members of the U. S. Supreme Court of today have become the new Fathers of the U. S. Constitution.
For nearly a century, it has been assumed that the U.S. Bill of Rights protected persons, not corporations. Even if sometimes the courts have extended the rights of the14th Amendment banning the deprivation of property without due process or equal protection of the law to the property of corporations, it was never thought that the purely personal rights of the first Amendment of the Bill of Rights applied to corporate entities as well as to human beings. This is understandable. Business corporations are created through legislation that gives them potentially perpetual life and limited liability to enhance their efficiency as economic entities. While such characteristics can be beneficial in the economic sphere, they represent special dangers in the political sphere. That is the rationale for not extending constitutional rights to purely legal entities.
But now, the five-member majority of the Roberts Court have said that such legalized artificial entities have the same constitutionally protected rights to engage in political activities as living individuals.
This is clearly revolutionary or, more precisely, counter-revolutionary.

Rodrigue Tremblay [http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/author.htm] is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com

He is the author of the forthcoming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: 
http://www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/

You may reserve a copy of the book on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Code-Global-Ethics-Humanist-Principles/dp/1616141727/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257383472&sr=1-4

Rodrigue Tremblay is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research 

1/20/10

The dollar's share of world reserves has dropped.




THE NUMBERS: Dollars, as share of world's allocated foreign reserves:
2000: 71%
2005: 67%
2009: 61%
WHAT THEY MEAN:

The dollar is used to price gold at the London Bullion Market Association and cocoa futures at the New York Board of Trade. Vendors prefer it to the sucre and the kip as they settle bills for hot soup in La Paz and T-shirts in Vientiane. Accountants at the People's Bank of China in Beijing and the Central Bank of the Republic of China in Taipei use it as their main currency reserve. And foreign exchange traders use it in 86 percent of the world's $4 trillion in daily currency turnover. Having taken over the reserve-currency role from the pound in 1939, the dollar has held these mighty roles for a life-time.
The next life, though? The dollar's reserve role peaked at 84.5 percent of all reserves in 1973 (for aficionados, this was just before the "Nixon shock" and the return of fluctuating currency rates), retreated to about 65 percent in the gloomy 1970s and 1980s, and rebounded again above 70 percent by the year 2000. And since then it has dropped fast.
As of late 2009, world reserves were about $7.5 trillion, or about 10 percent of world GDP. Of the $4.34 trillion in "allocated" holdings -- i.e. the reserves held by 140 countries which make their divisions by currency public -- the biggest pool is China's $2.4 trillion, followed by Japan's $1.0 trillion, Russia's $440 billion and Taiwan's $350 billion. Dollars accounted for $2.73 trillion of this allocated total, euros $1.23 trillion, sterling $192 billion and yen $143 billion. ("Unallocated" reserve holdings are those in countries not choosing to report to the IMF. The IMF is chastely quiet about their identity, but countries in question appear from outside evidence to be mostly oil-producers; their currency holdings are probably similar to those of the reporting countries.)  With a declining dollar value and economic troubles in the United States, the dollar's share of allocated reserves fell to 67 percent in 2005 and 61 percent by late 2009. Holdings of UK pounds and euros are rising as the dollar retrenches; the shift presumably reflects a combination of lower dollar values with voluntary choices to invest in other currencies.
FURTHER READING: 
Explainer -- How much is $7.5 trillion in total reserves? Measured against four different yardsticks, $7.5 trillion is about --

  • Half of the United States' $14.4 trillion GDP; 
  • Ten times last year's roughly $700 billion in total stimulus program spending around the world; 
  • A bit more than a tenth of the world's $73 trillion GDP;
  • A bit less than a tenth of America's roughly $80 trillion in total wealth.
World asset wealth, or the combined value of all world stocks, real estate, bonds, oil reserves, cash, machinery, old-growth forests and so on -- is rather difficult to calculate, but the UN estimated this at $125 trillion for 2000, when total foreign reserves were only $2 trillion. Assuming reserves grew lots faster than wealth in the last decade, the world ratio of reserves to assets might be around 3 percent.
Some data -

    The U.S. Treasury Department (April 2009) reports on foreign currency practices:http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/tg90.htm
    IMF's COFER tracks reserve holdings and shares by currency, 1995-2009:http://www.imf.org/external/np/sta/cofer/eng/index.htm
    Meanwhile, electronic trading transmits about $4 trillion worldwide each day, probably a bit more than all the coins, bills and other forms of hard cash in circulation. The Bank for International Settlements, a central-banker conclave in Basel, studies currency circulation every three years. The last study dates to April 2007, and found about 86 percent of all currency trades involving dollars. The next should be out by the end of this year:http://www.bis.org/publ/rpfxf07t.htm
Two things that are traded in dollars:

Two busy dollar-collectors:
Governor Zhou of the People's Bank of China speculates, so to speak, on a new international reserve system: http://www.pbc.gov.cn/english/detail.asp?col=6500&id=178
His counterparts in Taipei stay closer to home affairs: http://www.cbc.gov.tw/mp2.html
And two businesses using dollars:

1/3/10

Forward With Caution After Exposing The Fed


Currencies to continue to fall against gold, dollar rally unsustainable, Fed audit a good move, credit crisis for America and England, small gains in some places, plunges elsewhere, 



The rally in the dollar and the problems for other currencies prove what we have been saying and that is all currencies will continue to fall vs. gold. The impetus for the dollar rally originates as usual with the government and is added to by the disarray in the economies worldwide, particularly in Europe. One of the things central banks have never learned is that financial engineering only works for a short duration, after that the problem worsens. Even the world’s strongest currencies, the Swiss, Canadian, Aussie and Norwegian, are only holding their own versus gold. The reason why is almost all central banks have done the same thing and that is create money and credit recklessly at the behest of the US government. The US and British financial systems are insolvent. The euro is under severe pressure, because of problems in Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Italy, and every other central bank is jockeying for position via competitive devaluation. The public may not notice it but the situation is really chaotic. As you can see, the US is never allowed a level playing field, but that is part of what comes with being the international reserve currency. Banks in Britain, Europe and the US continue to take losses, sometimes-severe losses. There is no intermediation going on with the dollar. Its rally is founded on manipulation. We suspect in the future we will have an interesting phenomenon and that is a fall in the dollar, pound and the euro, as gold moves higher as the only viable alternative. The world is going to be shocked when the euro collapses. It won’t happen overnight. It will take a year or two, but it has a good chance of happening. The US dollar cannot and will not for some time to come be a safe haven for wealth. That is because the dollar and the US economy have been deliberately destroyed.
The flight into gold that we have seen has not been sparked by anticipation of inflation, but by a flight caused by a lack of confidence and trust in central banks. If other major governments have monetary problems they cannot be buyers of US Treasuries. They will have to be sellers of dollars. That will drive the dollar lower, further reduce the demand for US funding, force the Fed to further monetize and create more inflation. That in turn drive the dollar lower, but more importantly it will give gold a life of its own. We have found that this is something the public ad professionals refuse to accept. There is going to be a devaluation of the dollar no matter what people think, or want to think in their world of denial and fantasy. Other letter writers who disagree have recently attacked us. They can disagree and that is fine, but we might remind them that we are the ones who have been correct in our predictions 98% of the time, not them.
We believe the current dollar rally is unsustainable. If you remember we recommended a short on the dollar at 89.5 on the USDX. It fell to 74. We have just seen a two-week rally from 74 to 78 on very low volume. We had said the rally when it began at 74 could go to 78 to 80. Several more days of trading over the holidays could take it deep within that zone. This is just another rally conjured up by our government led by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, which will be doomed to failure. The rally is aided by unsettled conditions in Dubai, Greece, Spain, etc., and the continued viability of the eurozone. In addition, the same groups of criminals have viciously attacked gold and silver in an attempt to take gold below $1,033 and silver below $17.00. That completes the circle of attack. The SEC and the CFTC simply look the other way aiding and abetting the criminals that run our government and markets from behind the scenes.
It is not surprising that 320 members of the House passed legislation to audit the Fed to find out where trillions of dollars have gone and what the Fed and the Treasury have done to manipulate markets. Just how much monetization is really going on? Has the Fed been buying more than half the Treasuries issued via stealth activity and how long will this continue? Will the Treasury default and officially devalue? Of course they will, it is only a question of time. What will the Fed do with bonds issued by agencies and toxic waste CDOs, and what did they pay for all this garbage? Have they been paying the banks, Wall Street and insurance companies 80% instead of 20% on the dollar, so that taxpayers can pay the bill and these entities, which are insolvent, can be kept functioning? Why is it we could forecast all these events and very few others could? It is because if they did they would be ostracized and they would lose their jobs. That is how systems like this always work. You cannot lay a normal yardstick to what we have seen and what will be an unprecedented future. When the dollar officially devalues in a year to a year and a half, the shock will shake America and the world to its very foundations.
An audit and investigation of the Fed is on the way and the American public is not going to like what they find. All the failures and criminal activity of the past 96 years will become reality. This coming year will see the Fed forced to monetize massive amounts of government paper, all of which will lead to massive inflation. Inflation will move up very quickly. The groundwork began last May and over the past two months we saw official inflation rise to 1.2% and then 2.4% as real inflation moved up over 8% again. Will we see something similar to what happened in Argentina, Zimbabwe or in the Weimer Republic We do not know. What we do know is it is not going to be good. All the telltale signs are being ignored and for such duplicity a high price will be paid. That is why we predict official devaluation and default. History is explicit; monetization cannot go on forever. Over the last two years the Fed has purchased trillions in what is essentially worthless paper from banks, Wall Street and insurance companies.
The rally in the dollar is transitory, because at the moment Europe’s problems seem greater than ours.
You have to ask yourself how does a stock market trade within 500 points for three months, when trading volume has fallen? There have been material withdrawals from mutual funds and 73% of trades are of the black box front running variety. The answer is the trading after hours, which has been dominated by your government’s plunge protection team. They cannot continue that indefinitely. There is lots of bad news coming in 2010.
The November medium home price rose 3.8% to $217,400, the highest level since May reflecting the $8,000 tax credit and growing inflation. Year-on-year prices fell 1.9%. The number of new homes on the market fell 235,000, the lowest since April 1971. There are now 7.9-months’ worth of homes for sale, up from 7.2% in October. What has to be added to that is discouraged sellers who have taken their homes off the market, and lenders that have been withholding inventory for sale - a bottoming market is years away.
Loan demand fell 5% last month. Mortgage applications fell 10.7%, the lowest level in two months. Refi loans fell 10.1% and mortgages fell 11.6%.
This as foreclosures topped one million. As a result home construction has fallen 83% from its peak. We projected 75% in June of 2005. The decline in building is probably bottoming, but with the inventory overhand it could be many years until we could see a recovery.
Durable goods orders rise of 0.2% were very disappointing. The experts expected a rise of 0.5%. Wrong as usual.
For the week ended 12/23 the commercial paper market rose $9.3 billion to $1.160 trillion, still a ghost of its former self.
Congress, the SEC and FINRA are investigating Goldman Sachs and others in the use of synthetic CDOs, collateralized debt obligations, that we have been hammering for since 2006. Not only were the laws of fair dealing violated, but they were shorting the deals they sold to clients, which they knew had to fall in value, because the ratings they arranged with the raters, S&P, Moody’s and Fitch, were phony from the outset. Yet if you notice there hasn’t been a lawsuit, civil investigation, or criminal charges. The exposure of this activity allowed the banks to profit from the housing collapse, which they deliberately created. Again, another fine and no criminals go to jail. They simply own Washington.
The 10-year T-note yield just rose from 3.20% over the past 18 business days to 3.80%. Look at a chart and it is ominous. The yield is on long-term trend lines that go back to June 2007. It looks like that line could be broken to the downside. The chart is very jagged giving it all the earmarks of manipulation. Our guess is that something happened three weeks ago that we don’t yet understand, but whatever it was foreigners are running away from US sovereign debt, just as we forecast they would. This means the fed could be taking down more than 60% of the auctions of US debt, which means more monetization and more inflation. If the Fed does not continue buying, by creating money out of thin air, support will be broken and yields could quickly move up to 5%, which would further destroy the retail housing market. Such a move would send gold to $1,550 to $1,650. Incidentally, over the past 50 years we have observed that as interest rates rise so does gold and silver, up to a certain point. In this case bank discount rates could move from zero to 5% and gold would rise. After that gold becomes the only vehicle that preserves assets.
America and England are facing a credit crisis again, as interest rates rise and the Fed feebly attempts to remove quantitative easing, and beginning by withdrawing funds from its various programs. Rating services tell us that if the Fed does not do so the US and UK credit ratings will be lowered. These funds put into the system by the Fed and the Treasury aggregate about $12.7 trillion. We might add the US and the UK are not the only countries enveloped in this situation. We have seen the US ten-year Treasury note yield move from 3.20% to 3.80%. This is the markets way of telling the Fed and the Treasury, that if you continue to do what you have been doing then you will have to pay more interest to do so. Those 10s could easily move to yield 5% in this coming year, putting the 30-year fixed rate mortgage over 6%. That in finality puts the last nail in the coffin of the residential housing market. At the same time since last May inflation has been building and now is at an official 2.4% and unofficially 8-1/4%. The Fed and other major nations are now attempting to hold up the dollar, it having rallied just recently from 74 to 78 on the USDX. Aligned against these nations are a group of commercial currency market makers, who are shorting the dollar in response to its phony rally. The pros will win and the governments will lose. That is a $4.3 trillion a day market of which $2.5 trillion trades in dollars. Not even Superman can control that massive amount of money. Due to the Treasury’s profligacy the Fed we suspect has already bought more than $600 billion in Treasuries; $300 billion that they admit too and $300 billion or more they refuse to tell you about. That is why we need an audit of the Fed.
The Fed, the Bank of England, and others will not be able to ease funds out of the system without allowing deflationary forces to take over. The result will be a downgrade, a run on the dollar and official devaluation and default within the next 1-1/2 years. There is no other way out, as other nations are forced to do the same thing, leaving the only safe haven of wealth preservation in gold and silver related assets. Nothing will compare. All world currencies will fall versus gold. In the meantime, the wages of easing and the inability to withdraw these funds, will lead to a period of inflation if not hyperinflation beginning with a real 14% plus in 2010. After that it is anyone’s guess where inflation will be headed.
The present administration is headed in the wrong direction on everything, particularly on spending. Their actions have resulted in short-term bills yielding from zero to .65%, hardly an incentive to own such debt, as the Fed must issue and or roll this debt daily. A bogus temporarily strong dollar supplies a lift and respite for treasury debt for which the only solution is higher rates that are already being anticipated. Some have seen our ideas on this issue as faulty, all we can say is we are the ones with the 98% track record.
An index of home prices in 20 U.S. cities rose in October for a fifth consecutive month, putting the housing market and economy farther down the path to recovery.
The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index increased 0.4 percent from the prior month on a seasonally adjusted basis, after a 0.2 percent rise in September, the group said today in New York. The gauge was down 7.3 percent from October 2008, the smallest year-over-year decline since October 2007. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News anticipated a 7.2 percent drop.
If Morgan Stanley is right, the best sale of U.S. Treasuries for 2010 may be the short sale.
Yields on benchmark 10-year notes will climb about 40 percent to 5.5 percent, the biggest annual increase since 1999, according to David Greenlaw, chief fixed-income economist at Morgan Stanley in New York. The surge will push interest rates on 30-year fixed mortgages to 7.5 percent to 8 percent, almost the highest in a decade, Greenlaw said.
Investors are demanding higher returns on government debt, boosting rates this month by the most since January, on concern President Barack Obama’s attempt to revive economic growth with record spending will keep the deficit at $1 trillion. Rising borrowing costs risk jeopardizing a recovery from a plunge in the residential mortgage market that led to the worst global recession in six decades.
“When you take these kinds of aggressive policy actions to prevent a depression, you have to clean up after yourself,” Greenlaw said in a telephone interview. “Market signals will ultimately spur some policy action but I’m not naive enough to think it will be a very pleasant environment.”
Yields on the 3.375 percent notes maturing in November 2019 climbed 4 basis points to 3.84 percent at 11 a.m. in London today, according to BGCantor Market Data. The price fell 10/32 to 96 5/32. They have risen 65 basis points this month, the most since April 2004, as government efforts to unfreeze global credit markets lessened the appeal of the securities as a haven.
Personal incomes rose in November at the fastest pace in six months while spending posted a second straight increase, raising hopes that that the recovery from the nation's deep recession might be gaining momentum. [It also should be noted that inflation rose 2.4% on an annualized basis as well, and these are official figures.]
The Commerce Department says personal incomes were up 0.4 percent in November, helped by a $16.1 billion increase in wages and salaries, reflecting the drop in unemployment that occurred last month.
The gain in incomes helped bolster spending, which rose 0.5 percent in November. Both the income and spending gains were slightly less than economists had expected.
Want to keep IRS auditors away? Keep your earnings under $200,000 and they won't bother you 99 percent of the time.
IRS enforcement numbers, released Tuesday, show that returns under that amount have a 1 percent chance of getting audited.
Returns showing income of $200,000 and above have a nearly 3 percent audit chance. The percentage jumps to more than 6 percent for returns showing earnings of $1 million or more.
New-home sales plunged to their lowest in seven months during November, a bigger-than-expected drop that might have been caused by uncertainty over a government tax incentive.
Sales of single-family homes decreased 11.3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 355,000, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.
The level was the lowest since 345,000 in April. The plunge wiped out much of the gain made in the new-home market since the January bottom.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires estimated a 1.2% drop to a 425,000 annual rate for November.
New-home sales, unlike sales of existing homes, are recorded with the signing of a sales contract and not the closing. A big tax credit for first time buyers was due to expire at the end of November and caused concern in the housing sector. It was extended in November by Congress to next spring.
Another reason for the big drop in new-home sales could be strong demand for used homes. Data this week showed existing-home sales are up more than 40% since the end of last year, with many purchases made for foreclosed property carrying a discounted price tag.
Wednesday's report said new-home sales in October rose 1.8% to 400,000, revised from an originally reported 6.2% increase to 430,000.
Year over year, sales were down 9% since November 2008.
The median price for a new home dropped in November - but not by much. It was down 1.9% to $217,400 from $221,600 in November 2008.
Inventories shrank. There were an estimated 235,000 homes for sale at the end of November. That represented a 7.9 months' supply at the current sales rate. An estimated 240,000 homes were for sale at the end of November, a 7.2 months' inventory.
Commerce's report Wednesday showed November new-home sales fell in three of four regions in the U.S.
US consumers are increasingly confident about the economy, according to the most recent Reuters/University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, which gave a score of 72.5 for the month of December, up from 67.4 in November. 

The preliminary mid-month index had registered a slightly higher score of 73.4, but the end-of-the-month result shows a continuing upward swing in consumer confidence since October.
US MBA Mortgage Applications declined by 10.7% on December 18 week.
U.S. overall consumer confidence improved last week to match its best level of the year, according to an ABC News poll released Tuesday.
The consumer comfort index rose three points to -42 in the week ended Dec. 20.
Still, according to the survey, just 7% of respondents expressed confidence in the economy, the same as last week. But 50% of those polled said their own finances were in good standing, up from 47% the prior week. In assessing the buying climate, 30% of respondents said it was good, up from 29% the week before.

1/2/10

PROTOCOLS FOR ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN AMERICA

NOTE: Elements within the U.S. Government have been threating web site
administrators all over the internet and forcing them to take down the
following article because it's exposes the Bush/Cheney cabal's
involvement in the coming economic collapse of 2008.

Everyone make copies of this article and send it everywhere so
everyone will be fully aware of how the economic collapse was
engineered to happen on purpose.
-----------------------
"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.  Everybody rolls with their
fingers crossed.  Everybody knows the war is over.  Everybody knows
the good guys lost.  Everybody knows the fight was fixed.  The poor
stay poor, the rich get rich.  That's how it goes,  Everybody knows" -
Leonard Cohen
PROTOCOLS FOR ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN AMERICA
by
Al Martin
And this is how the U.S. Treasury would handle an economic collapse.
It's called the 6900 series of protocols. It would start with
declaring a force majeure, which would immediately be interpreted by
the marketplaces as a de facto repudiation of debt. Then the SEC and
the various regulatory exchanges would anticipate the market's
decline, hour by hour -- when Japan's markets opened the next day,
what would happen when the European markets, and all the inter-
linkages of the global markets. On the second day, US Special Forces
would be dropped in by parachute in the cities where the twelve
Federal Reserve district banks are located.
The origin of these protocols comes from the Department of Defense.
This is contingency planning for a variety of post-collapse scenarios.
Those scenarios would include, obviously, military collapse, World War
III, in other words, and its aftermath. What we're talking about now
is aftermath -- how the aftermath would be handled.
One does not necessarily know how the events would transpire that
would cause the collapse, whether it's military collapse or economic
collapse. In World War III, it would become obvious -- when the
mushroom cloud started to appear over cities.
Economic collapse scenarios were always premised on the basis of a US
declaration of force majeure on debt service. It's a very extensive
scenario. The scenarios are all together, i.e., military, economic,
political and social complete destabilization leading to collapse.
Then they break down individual scenarios. In the economic collapse
scenario, the starting point would be the United States Treasury
declaring a force majeure on debt service, which is de facto
repudiation, and that's how it would be interpreted by the world's
capital marketplaces. Then the scenario goes on from there. The US
Treasury would obviously declare a force majeure sometime after the
European markets had settled down. In other words, they had gone out
on the day, which means 11:38 a.m. EDT, our time. They'd wait until
the European markets closed, and the US markets had been open for a
couple of hours. That's when they'd determine how to begin the process
of unwinding or controlling the collapse to the best extent possible,
mainly because they know that the greatest hedge pressure would be
people seeking to use other markets to hedge their long exposure in
the United States and that the US would be the biggest seller in all
the rest of the world's markets. Therefore you would want to declare
the force majeure when the rest of the world's markets closed. The
declaration of force majeure would be precipitated by the declaration
that the United States is no longer able to service its debt. That's
pretty simple. Who makes that decision? The Treasury Department. The
President does not make that decision. The Secretary of the Treasury
does. He has that authority.
You might ask -- wouldn't he have his arm twisted not to do that?
The answer is that if there isn't any money left to service the debt,
it doesn't make any difference what the current regime might want to
do.
The day of reckoning is now coming. What has happened in the interim,
from 2001 to present, is dynamic, global economic deterioration. The
economic deterioration visited upon the United States by Bushonomics
is not a localized event. It is, in fact, global. We have a planet now
that is sinking into a sea of red ink.
The United States is consuming 80% of the planet's savings rate to
finance its debt. The central banks of Germany, Japan and Saudi Arabia
are no longer the powerhouses they used to be. Their reserves have now
been substantially depleted. They can, therefore, no longer hide the
fact that they own a certain number, likely in the trillions of
dollars, of U.S. Treasury debt that isn't being serviced, because they
can't hide it through bookkeeping tricks anymore because their
reserves are so depleted.
Therefore somebody has covertly been putting demands on the Bush-
Cheney regime for payment. Why do you think 2900 metric tons of gold
is depleted from U.S. inventory since March of `01?
Why do you think that $2 billion in currency seized from Iraq last May
is now unaccounted for?
Someone is putting demands on the Bush-Cheney regime. Someone is
saying to the Bushonian Cabal that -- You've got to start servicing
this debt because we, foreign central banks, are in nations - European
and Asian - whose reserves are now nearly exhausted.
Who could be putting that kind of pressure on them?
It has to be coming from whoever is organizing this thing at the very
top, which I would tend to think has got to be most likely a cabal of
people that would involve Henry Kissinger, James Baker, George
Schultz, possibly William Simon. It would be somebody at the very top
that is familiar with how to do this. It would have to be someone
familiar with finances.
So would this be one faction of a cabal blackmailing or forcing
another faction? No, it's not really blackmailing. It's being done out
of desperation. The German, Japanese and Saudi central banks are
saying to the Bushonian cabal, You've got to start servicing this debt
because we don't have the reserves to cover you anymore. We can no
longer make it appear that the debt is being serviced because our own
reserves are so substantively depleted. Therefore you must begin to
cover this debt. If you don't, then, at some point, we will have to
publicly admit in order to save our own necks -- that we were the end
buyers of a lot of stealth debt, a lot of debt that your Treasury
issued illegally and has never serviced. That would then expose the
whole cabal.
The Kissinger-Baker faction are at the top of how this was done on the
economic side of the equation. They were not the original insiders so
much, but the managers of the conspiracy from the U.S. Treasury, to
wit, the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve role-play the part.
Take Henry Kissinger. It may not have occurred to anyone why in the
last 3 years Henry Kissinger has been back in Washington more than he
has in the last 30 years. And why are all these quiet meetings in
Washington with alleged senior Bush-Cheney regime officials, as
foreign news services endlessly put it. It's because Kissinger is the
point man. He's the one that is telling them the disposition of other
foreign central banks.
Kissinger would probably also be involved in transfer or hypothecation
of any assets from the cabal. In other words, they're being stolen
from the American people by the Bush-Cheney regime and the Bushonian
Cabal, and they are being used to hypothecate, transfer, service, or
otherwise carry this debt held by certain foreign central banks.
The process of unraveling has already begun because of ever-spiraling
Bushonian budget deficits. The Bush-Cheney regime, even in its overt
policies (now they're overt political, economic, social and military
policies) is generating $600-billion-plus deficit per year, which is
consuming 80% of the planet's net savings rate.
It doesn't have the slack. In other words, it can't refinance stealth
debt by issuing more stealth debt anymore. Nor can they bleed money
out of the system like they could in the 1980s by hiding it when the
overt policies of the Bush-Cheney regime are already producing a
budget deficit of 6% of Gross Domestic Product. There is no other
mechanism that they could use anymore to hide expansion of debt that
could be used to service said stealth debt, and they are, frankly,
running out of assets that they can steal from the American people.
So the proverbial day of reckoning is coming. The Bush-Cheney regime
(and I give them credit for this) are telling the American people
what's coming, knowing the American people are too stupid to
understand. They are telling the American people about the re-
institution of the Gold Confiscation Act and the sudden scrapping of
the Treasury's emergency post-collapse gold note scheme to maintain
domestic liquidity.
David Walker, US Comptroller General and chief of the GAO has said
that should the Bush-Cheney regime be re-ensconced into power and,
hence, the scourge of Bushonomics persist, that the United States
could no longer service its debt beyond 2009. They're not hiding it
from anybody anymore. They are telling you what's happening. Now, what
does that mean? The key is in what Walker is saying when he says the
debt can no longer be serviced. I've been asked this on the radio
shows. People have noticed what Walker said because he's out in the
news more often than he used to be. It's unusual for the Comptroller
General of the United States, which is a rather arcane position, to be
out in the news so much.
It simply means that when he says the United States will no longer be
able to sustain Bushonian budget deficits, he means that by 2009, if
Bush-Cheney have a second term in office, the United States will be
consuming 100% of the planet's savings rate to finance Bushonian
budget deficits.
Therefore, if the planet can no longer generate any more liquidity to
lend to the United States, one of three things have to happen: A)
There has to be a sudden and dramatic reduction in federal spending.
There are only two places that can come from. There would have to be
an immediate $100-billion cut in defense spending, which would end any
hopes the Republicans had of getting into office for years to come
because it would destroy any confidence the NFWCs (Naïve Flag Waving
Crowd) had in them. Or you would have to scrap the multi-trillion-
dollar Bushonian tax cuts for the Republican rich, something that's
equally unpalatable.
The other option, B, as Paul O'Neill mentioned, is a dramatic increase
in the rate of federal income taxation from the current nominal rate
of 28% to 65%, which is what the Treasury Department estimated would
be required post-2009 to provide the U.S. Treasury with sufficient
revenues to continue to service debt.
The third option, or C, becomes the declaration of a force majeure on
credit service of U.S. Treasury debt by the United States Treasury,
which is tantamount and would be accurately construed as de facto debt
repudiation by the United States of America.
There are other signs to look for. They're not going to happen now,
but if Bush-Cheney is re-elected, you'll begin to see more signs that
the end is coming. I know a lot of people may disagree, but you wait
and see. If Bush-Cheney has a second term, see if they do not
institute some currency expatriation control. See if that doesn't come
in the way Nixon tried it in May-June of 1971.
In the second term, there will be some sort of currency expatriation
control in the United States, but there will also be loopholes that
will allow the large money to escape. The restrictions will apply to
the 10- and 20-thousand-dollar people. It ain't going to apply to the
10- and 20-million-dollar people. It would be self-defeating to do
that.
When that day comes, in other words, when the U.S. Treasury declares a
force majeure on debt, it wouldn't be broad-cast on mainstream media.
There's no sense because the American people don't even understand
what it means. But the announcement would actually be put on the
Federal Reserve wire system, which would, of course, immediately be
picked up by all media outlets anyway.
The U.S. Treasury would declare a force majeure on debt after the
Asian and European markets closed, probably at 12:30 p.m. EDT. The
reason why that hour was always selected is because Asian and European
markets close. It's also the lunch hour for the markets. It's when
you're going to have the fewest people on the floor of the exchanges.
That would be the ideal time to make such an announcement.
A few seconds after that announcement was made, all United States
markets, both equities debt and commodities i.e., stock, bonds,
commodities, that have trading collars or permissible daily limits
would all be limit-offered with pools. Limit-offered means that there
are more sellers at the limit i.e., limit down, than there are buyers.
So-called 'pools' would immediately begin to form, probably a thousand
contracts every few minutes. 'Limit-offered with pools' - this is
trader language. Pools to sell 2,000 lots, 3,000 lots. That means, the
number of sellers over and above the available buyers at the limit-
offered price. That would begin to build.
By 1:00, the news would begin to sink in because it would take awhile
before panic selling would arise from the public. This news is being
released at lunch hour.
A lot of the American people initially would not even understand the
temerity of the news. You would see professional selling first, and as
that professional selling intensified over the afternoon, the SEC, the
CFTC, NASDAQ, and various market regulatory authorities would begin to
institute certain emergency market protocols. This would be the
installation of the so-called 'declaration of fast market conditions,'
for instance; the declaration of 'no more stop orders,' the
declaration of 'fill at any price,' etc. in a desperate bid to
maintain liquidity.
That first day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and related indices
on a percentage basis would lose about 20% of their value by the close
of business that day. The real impact would come overnight when the
American people found out what this was all about and when it was
explained to them.
At 7:30 a.m. EDT, the Tokyo markets would open, and no price would be
affixed for probably three or four hours into the session due to the
avalanche of selling. Once prices were established, the government of
Japan would close all of its financial markets. Europe would not even
open. All European governments would close all capital exchanges the
next day.
The United States would, in order to accommodate global electronic
trading, attempt to open the market on the second day, which they
would do, regardless of price, just to maintain some liquidity. At the
end of Day Two, the Dow Jones and related indices, would have lost two
thirds of their value, and prices would be set accordingly.
On Day Three, the New York Stock Exchange, the SEC and other related
agencies would recommend to the United States Treasury and the Federal
Reserve that all markets be closed. That would be on the morning of
Day Three. Eleven a.m., the Federal Reserve would then order all
domestic banks closed. All of the twelve Federal Reserve district
banks would (30 minutes later) have special U.S. forces parachuted in
and around them to secure whatever gold bullion reserves they had
left.
Day Three, 9:00 p.m., the President of the United States would declare
a state of martial law. All financial transactions would come to an
end. The Treasury would act to formally de-monetize the U.S. dollar
and declare it worthless.
This would be totally unprecedented. In the past, collapses have been
temporary and have been brought back up. But what we're talking about
now is the end.
These protocols that I'm referring to aren't even all that secret.
They were publicly available all through the Clinton era. These are
Treasury protocols that were instituted mostly in the late 1970s when
the Treasury and Federal Reserve began to feel that it was important
to have an emergency-collapse protocol in place.
What precipitated the timing of this was the inflationary spiral of
the late 1970s. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve were both
concerned that this inflationary spiral, which was occurring not only
domestically but globally, might lead to a global, uncontrollable
hyper-inflation that the Federal Reserve or major central banks could
not stop by traditional means, i.e., by raising interest rates and
contracting money supply.
There was also the recognition, of course, that global central reserve
bank bullion inventories had been so depleted over the previous 30
years that any re-institution of a species currency, even on a
temporary basis, and even within a regional or individual nation-state
basis, was no longer possible.
This is an analogy. In a military scenario, it's like the President of
the United States pushing the final red button -- the commit button.
The Treasury Secretary of the United States has a similar mechanism.
It's called the yellow button, the commit button. The Secretary of
Defense has the same system. This is what happens. Computer program
starts to institute these protocols. Imagine the complexity of trying
the manage all this. I think it's going to happen all simultaneously.
There are hundreds of different agencies involved, both domestically
and internationally. In order to maintain liquidity for as long as
possible, it has to be extremely well-coordinated, and there must be
existing collapse protocols that can be used.
The reason I was familiar with them was because I used to see the U.S.
Treasury 6900 Series Collapse Protocol, 6903, 6904 there'll be A, B,
and so on which keyed in to the Department of Defense to be
incorporated within the Department of Defense's own World War III
scenario and various types of military/ political/ social instability/
war/ pestilence, chaos, etc. scenarios.
All federal agencies had individual collapse protocols that ultimately
got coordinated through the Department of Defense. Obviously, the
Department of Defense would be the ultimate coordinator because it
would need to have special forces available, on a stand-by basis,
ready, that could quickly parachute into areas all over the country,
into the cities particularly, to secure federal properties and assets.
And that's literally how it would begin. By the end of the third day,
it would be all over -- a state of martial law. We're not talking
about war, now; this is just economic collapse.
There's no military implication here, no political, no social
implication or policy directive thereunto. This is strictly economic
collapse. By the end of Day Three, effectively, all banks in the world
will be shut down, all paper currencies will become valueless. Martial
law would be declared. There would be no continuing transactions, at
least for a period of time, of commodities. All providers of fuels and
foods would be shut down automatically.
They have this in great detail too. U.S. Department of Defense Special
117th Assault Unit would parachute in to seize control of the cattle
yards in Oklahoma City. This is how well it's planned. In other words,
economic collapse would automatically involve expansive military
action and control.
By the end of the third day, when you no longer have a domestic medium
of exchange, you have to have secured food and fuel stocks. You've got
to have troops that have secured distribution points where there is
food and fuel stocks, warehouses, tanks, etc. Otherwise people are
just going to go get them, and the people have to know that if they
try to go break into that store and steal that loaf of bread, they're
going to be shot.
Protocols for environmental disasters are called 'scaling-circle
scenarios.' 'Scaling circles' is a Department of Defense euphemism.
It's also used in FEMA, OEM and other emergency management services.
In environmental catastrophes, which are going to become national or
global, it's got to start someplace. It's going to start in one very
small, specific area. Therefore what happens is that the immediate
force containment is the greatest in the first circle, to try to
contain the spread of the disaster and keep it within that circle.
The environmental problem, to whatever extent it's possible, before it
spreads, will be neutralized or mitigated, in order to keep that
catastrophe within that circle, or, if it is likely that it is to
escape that circle, to attack whatever it is in such a fashion as to
mitigate its strength and its ability to contaminate or otherwise
affect other areas.
In the case of earthquakes, for instance, affecting the west coast,
beginning at Mt. Rainier and moving southward -- that's a different
type of scenario. That does not include as much Department of Defense
involvement. It includes separate protocols, wherein mostly FEMA and
OEM act as the senior coordinating agencies between municipal, county
and state disaster and containment, which is called Disaster and
Containment Units. Federal troops would only be brought in for the
purposes of maintaining control.
In a military or economic collapse situation, National Guard units
would provide any spare help they could in combating whatever the
problem is. Federal troops would be used in order to have the specific
authority simply to shoot anyone. There are plans for all sorts of
scenarios. The economic-disaster scenario is the one I always found
the most intriguing because it is the one that is least understood by
the American people.
Military control would be necessary when lines begin to form at the
banks, people trying to access their money. But that wasn't even
anticipated as a big problem. Lines would form at the banks, but it
was not even envisioned until sometime on Day Three because the
American people wouldn't get it. It would be announced that the stock
markets are down 2000 or 3000 points, and since we've always been
taught they'll come back, the people would still be buying stocks.
You could count on everybody remaining in ignorance all the way down
because the American people have never been taught Economics 101. The
American people wouldn't realize the full extent of it until the
markets were closed on the third day, or until the time when they went
down to cash a check and the bank was closed with soldiers out in
front. Then they would go down and see the gas station's closed. They
see the local supermarket has been shuttered, and there's federal
troops in front of it. Then they might begin to catch on. And remember
-- it's not just federal troops. In emergency-collapse protocols, even
before the declaration of a formal state of emergency or a state of
martial law, the local military authorities within any given county or
jurisdiction have the ability to essentially militarize anyone, that
is, any civilian. This would be more than just deputizing civilians.
It's federal. In other words, they would have the ability to
militarize and give military authority to a civilian force. This would
include not only police and the sheriffs and state police, but all
local law enforcement that exists below the state level would be
immediately militarized. They wouldn't take just anybody like they did
in Iraq. It would be like the military when they call for volunteers.
Then they'd have everybody and their brother-in-law volunteering,
waving around the American flag and so on.
You've got a lot of pickup-driving guys in this country with the gun
racks in the back and the Confederate flag flying. So you start waving
the American flag in front of their face and say, Hey, you're going to
get your chance you always wanted -- to fit your potbelly inside an
army uniform and carry a gun and shoot people. How appealing would
that be?
And besides, if you do this, then you're going to get to eat.
In other words, this is how it would unfold over three days, but, in
fact, very few Americans would know what to do about it or how to take
any precautions. They wouldn't have a clue because they don't
understand enough about economics to know what is happening. So that's
what it is -- Economic Armageddon. If the Bush-Cheney regime is re-
installed into power, that is effectively what Comptroller General
David Walker is saying.
In conclusion, since there is very little the people of the United
States can do to protect themselves. We're not going to make any
suggestions of how to protect yourselves because there's very little
you can do.
We could tell you to go out and buy gold coins and bury them in the
coffee can in the back yard and go to your nearest survivalist store,
but, frankly, that's useless. In the last analysis, it's a lot of
hype. There is very little the average US citizen could do.
The only thing that can prevent this, as the Comptroller alluded to
when he was asked by Barbara Walters, How do we prevent reaching the
problem by 2009? He said simply, "A change of regimes."
So how do you prevent it? Don't vote for Bush and Cheney -- and hope
that Bush does not use his emergency powers to cancel or postpone the
election by edict, powers which you, the flag-waving citizens, have
given him.
All flag-waving citizens, be warned. If you want to vote for Bush-
Cheney again, make sure you got plenty of Spam on hand.
Here's an interesting and humorous aside. A couple of days ago, Hormel
Foods, which makes Spam, announced that in the last six months there
have been record sales of Spam in the United States the survivalists'
food of choice. After all, they pride themselves on the fact, as the
spokesman for Hormel said, "It is the only food product you can buy
with an expiration that's 50 years."
When everything goes to hell, when all that man has created has turned
to dust again, the final legacy is going to be Spam. It will be the
last surviving item -- when the anthropologists of 20 thousand years
from now are digging sites and they see these enormous mountains of
unopened cans of Spam They'll have monuments to the past out of Spam.
So if Bush-Cheney has a second term in office, there will be some sort
of currency restriction, like Nixon did in 1971. On April 13, 2004,
Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary John Boine talked about potential
currency restrictions. He used the word that's going to fuel the
flames of the survivalist and gloom-and-doom collapse people.
It's very, very telling that the U.S. Treasury may institute a
restriction on the amount of U.S. dollars that can be converted into
gold.
Furthermore, he intimated (and I suspected that this was coming,
although this wouldn't actually become law until Bush-Cheney was in
office for second term one way or another) that the Bush-Cheney regime
determines that the Gold Confiscation Act gives to Treasury the power
for so-called forced disclosure of gold holdings.
I'm not quite sure of the language of the Gold Confiscation Act from
1933. It just says, "compelled", as in citizens are lawfully compelled
to redeem gold for script. I don't think there was any such provision,
which he was inferring that there is. That was FDR's "Raw Deal" of
1934, when people were coerced into giving up their gold. But nowhere
in this act does it specifically authorize the Treasury to mandate
citizens to report their gold holdings. So if this gets any press at
all, particularly within the circles of gold bugs and so on, watch
out.
Furthermore, on Washington Journal they were talking about how FEMA
has recommended to the Office of Homeland Security to have increased
restrictions regarding citizen hoarding of long-term food and fuel
supplies. That's pretty sinister too.
What they're talking about is the purchase of long-term so-called
stores of survival food. FEMA was talking about some sort of
restriction preventing people from accumulating food stores; putting
it simply, that's what it means. The second point was to increase
restrictions that already exist.
FEMA was recommending even tighter restrictions on citizens building
their own private property underground storage tanks for the purposes
of long-term storage of fuel. The real intent of this is is threefold:
a) to restrict citizens' ability to hoard food; b) restrict citizens'
ability to hoard long-term storage of fuel; c) the forced
identification of citizens to reveal food and fuel stocks they may be
hoarding.
And that, in my opinion, is the real essence. The Bush-Cheney regime
was scared of having the FEMA angle put into the equation because they
knew what it means and how people would interpret it.
They have tried to use environmental legislation to restrict people's
ability to build fuel storage facilities on their own property -- to
get around what the true intent of that was.
But the bigger picture is that if you start to limit citizens' ability
to hoard fuel and food and shake them up by potential forced
identification of gold holdings or forced redemption.
In other words, what you don't want is citizens who have the ability
to store a lot of food and fuel and to own gold because they would be
able to resist state control in the future.
You've got to have every citizen on a rationing card to control the
civilian population. You can't have citizens out there hoarding food
and fuel because then people can say to government,"I ain't taking a
rationing card, baby, with my national ID card. I don't have to. You
can't control me through food and fuel and ever-worthless paper
currency."
I used to make fun of these people. But now, things have come full
circle on this debate. The Bush-Cheney regime is making it
increasingly clear through their small changes in policy. Not a lot of
people monitor these decisions, but I do. And the pattern is becoming
increasingly clear.
In fact, I would believe that those of the survivalist mentality (the
food, fuel, the gold coins in the coffee can in the back yard) people
who think that way will be ultimately vindicated - if George Bush has
a second term in office.
People should quit making fun of them because they would be vindicated
- even though they were all burned out, twenty-dollared to death,
buying books and tapes, and discredited by mainstream media. It may
sound like a hollow victory, but it won't be a hollow victory for them
- them that's got the Spam...