Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth – Page 5

2011/12/202011/12/20

Mini-Me: WWIII, from Gold Circles, A Whiff of…? + RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Analysis, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Key Players, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Sometimes lunatics see stuff the rest of us miss. The trick is knowing when to listen and which pieces to pull out for closer examination. This is from Benjamin Fulford, reprinted in full at Spiritual Truth Blog, and circulating in Gold Warrior / Gold Lily / Black Eagle Trust circles. Phi Beta Iota comments and more links below the full piece.

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North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il was murdered Saturday as part of a major power struggle in East Asia, according to Asian secret society sources and Japanese military intelligence.

The murder of Kim was followed by a series of arrests of senior police officials in Japan linked to North Korea as well as the ouster of six CIA agents, the Japanese sources say.

The death has left Yasuhiro Nakasone, the top North Korean and Rothschild agent in Japan, without a power base, Japanese underworld sources say. In North Korea, meanwhile, there is now a succession battle taking place between the Rothschild faction, who want to place their trained stooge Kim Jong Un in power and set up a Rothschild central bank versus a military clique that wants independence from Rothschild control, Rothschild and Japanese underworld sources say. The action is Asia is linked to a worldwide takedown of the satanic cabal that has been trying to create a global dictatorship.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: WWIII, from Gold Circles, A Whiff of…? + RECAP”

2011/12/18

Chuck Spinney: German Economic Imperialism Killing Europe?

01 Brazil, 02 China, 03 Economy, 03 India, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Transnational Crime, Analysis, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, White Papers

Will Germany Kill the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg?

Since the middle of the 19th Century, the central questions in European politics have been been have been the closely connected questions of nationalism and the rise of German power. As my good friend and eminent historian Gabriel Kolko shows in the brilliant essay attached below, the post war solutions of NATO and the European Union, together with the exigencies of the Cold War, put these questions on hold, but their fundamentals remained, sleeping beneath the surface, and today, the conflicting questions of nationalism and German power are again coming to the fore to create ominous problems for Europe and the world.

There can be no question that, until 2007 or so, the European Union — particularly the opening of borders, the free flow of labour and capital, the disappearance of tariffs, and diminution of non-tariff trade restrictions, etc. combined to make life better for the mass of average Europeans. Standards of living rose steeply and social services improved in parallel. This was particularly evident in the poorer EU countries on the southern rim. I saw and experienced this astounding improvement in the quality of life on a very personal level, living on a sailboat in southern Europe since the summer of 2005. I will never forget the comment made to me by an Italian psychologist in Calabria in 2006, which is the heart of the provincial south of Italy, “It is a great time to be a European.” To be sure, he was an educated member of the upper middle class, and not representative of the average Calabrian, but it struck me that this Calabrian saw himself as a European. It was not very long ago, that such a person would only loosely consider himself to be an Italian, not to mention a European.

2011/12/17

Josh Kilbourn: 50 Economic Numbers About USA – Frightening!

03 Economy, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

50 Economic Numbers About The US That Are “Almost Too Crazy To Believe”

Tyler Durden on 12/16/2011

The Economic Collapse Blog does a terrific job of periodically putting together a compilation of the scariest data points about the US economy. Today is one such day, and the list of 50 economic numbers presented is indeed, as the author puts it, “almost too crazy to believe“… Almost. As noted: “At this time of the year, a lot of families get together, and in most homes the conversation usually gets around to politics at some point. Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help you share the reality of the U.S. economic crisis with your family and friends. If we all work together, hopefully we can get millions of people to wake up and realize that “business as usual” will result in a national economic apocalypse.” Or, far more likely, 99% of the population can continue watching Dancing with the Stars, as what little wealth remains is terminally transferred to those who are paying attention right below everyone's eyes.

From the Ecopnomic Collapse Blog:

The following are 50 economic numbers from 2011 that are almost too crazy to believe….

#1 A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

49 remaining items below the line.

Continue reading “Josh Kilbourn: 50 Economic Numbers About USA – Frightening!”

2011/12/122011/12/12

DefDog: Washington’s Integrity Part N to the Nth

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

More of the lack of integrity and the bilking of the middle class…..

Mr. Corzine Goes to Washington, With No Pull

William D. Cohan

Bloomberg.com, 11 December 2011

When it comes to shining a light on the cozy relationships between Wall Street and Washington, and how the rich and powerful get access to things the rest of us don’t, there can never be too many juicy examples.

Last month, thanks to Bloomberg Markets magazine, we were treated to the excellent story about how former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson met with a bunch of bankers and hedge fund managers in New York during the summer of 2008 and shared with them some of his early thinking on the futures of the mortgage behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Then, last week, Jon Corzine, the former chief executive officer of the defunct MF Global Inc. with a gold-plated resume — he was also a senior partner of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and a U.S. senator and governor of New Jersey — testified before the House Agriculture Committee about his often-successful campaign to thwart the efforts of Washington regulators to enact rules that he and MF Global didn’t like.

Read full story.

Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both

Journal: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAP

2011/12/112011/12/11

Lynn Wheeler: Why Financial Systems Demand False Complexity and Ignorance…Corruption is Merely a Bonus

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Financial Cryptography

Where the crypto rubber meets the Road of Finance…

December 11, 2011

Why (my, all) financial systems fail — information complexity

I spent over a decade building the snappiest financial system around. In that time I pursued one goal of efficiency: reduction of complexity. This wasn't only goodness in an angelic sense, it was a pragmatic goal to reduce my own costs in building systems.

The result was pretty spectacular: we were settling trades in seconds and doing so with every leg firmly fastened to the ground. That is, the whole thing was running with direct concrete ties to assets.

But, the big players weren't interested. Indeed they were more than uninterested, they were highly interested in making sure this would never ever happen. Time after time, the message was delivered: Never. Other companies received the same message, so after a few years, I started to take it seriously.

At the time I hypothesised that the reason for this was insider fraud, or at least profits capture. The complexities were endemic and there were very few people who could see the whole picture. So, I theorised that those who could understand the complexities were cashing in on their advantage; from the inside. And some very few who cashed in were also driving the information agenda, as their success made them both wealthy and influential: more complexity.

Of course such a hypothesis is unlikely to find proof. By its very nature, how do you prove such a tendency towards chaos? Here comes an alternate perspective from ZeroHedge, citing two papers (1, 2):

And the punchline: “Liquidity requires symmetric information, which is easiest to achieve when everyone is ignorant. This determines the design of many securities, including the design of debt and securitization.” Reread the last statement as it explains perhaps better than anything, the true functioning of modern capital markets and why they are terminally broken: in order to preserve the system, the banking cartel need to make everything of virtually infinite complexity so that no one has a clear understanding of what is going on!

Read full posting.

Phi Beta Iota: In brief, finance is fraud. As William Greider documents in his book, The Soul of Capitalism, financial instruments (incomprehensible to their own vendors) appreciated seventeen times while real assets appreciated five times. Twelve is the fraud-complexity-corruption delta.

2011/12/112011/12/11

Mini-Me: European-US Banking–Tangled Web — Tell Me Again, Why Shouldn’t We Default and Let the Banks Fry? + Financial Terrorism RECAP

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

The question has to be asked: “Why shouldn't we default and let the banks fry?”

What possible benefit it there to the people of a nation whose previous leaders “sold out” the entire country on the basis of lies from the banks, notably Goldman Sachs?

Why not default and focus on full employment and resilience at home? Why rescue German banks?

If a new financial system is emerging, anchored by the BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa], why not focus on being attractive that that new ethical financial system instead of giving up what is left in the way of seed corn to the old predatory unethical system?

Banks Sit in a Tangled Web

Many European Lenders Have Sold Sovereign-Default Protection to One Another

EXTRACT:

Of the total protection that European banks have written on government bonds in Europe's five most-stressed countries, nearly one-third originated from German banks.

2011/12/112011/12/11

John Robb: Collapse of the Western Financial “System”

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Here's a scenario from William Buiter (the chief economist at Citi) on what could happen if the EU collapses:

Disorderly sovereign defaults and eurozone exits by all five periphery states would drag down not just the European banking system but also the north Atlantic financial system and the internationally exposed parts of the rest of the global banking system. The resulting financial crisis would trigger a global depression that would last for years, with GDP likely falling by more than 10 per cent and unemployment in the West reaching 20 per cent or more. Emerging markets would be dragged down too.

I have a couple of additions to William's scenario:

We are seeing crisis and depression scenarios like this with regularity now. They are all presented as being on the cusp of occurring. It should be very clear to everyone by now, that something fundamental is wrong with the global system and the crisis de jour is just its symptom. Nobody “in charge” seems to be able to diagnose the real problems with our system.
The solutions being proposed are either a) more confidence (through bailouts) and b) more confidence (through more deficit spending). In other words: the problem is merely psychological and all you and I need to do is take some anti-depressants to eradicate any lingering pessimism (why worry, let's party!). In short: there aren't any real solutions being offered.
None of the bad actors that profit from the behavior that led us into this crisis, either in government or in the financial sector, are held to account. The moral hazard here is so vast, it can (and likely will) swallow the current economic system.

WIM: What does it Mean?

It's very simple. It is almost a certainty that a global economic depression is on its way and there is absolutely nothing you or I can do to stop it (a ballot box solution now would be as effective as replacing the Captain of the Titanic after the ship hit the iceberg). So, what can you and I do? We can take control of our environment. Our objective is to build or buy access to a community that has the resilience to not only help us survive a global depression, but thrive during it. A resilient community that:

Negates the impact of inevitable supply disruptions, rationing, and price spikes.
Protects you from the political violence that will erupt (mobs and police states).
Has a functional local economy that has the potential to network with other functional local economies.