Screw the Banks and Investment Firms

[jkisha]

But they're the job-creators!

Now that is funny!

Too bad the republicans won't get the joke.

[can't sit still]

Dominique Strauss Khan is, in some ways, the ultimate banker. The IMF goes around the world fucking every country that it gets it's claws into. DSK was recently accused of rape. Reportedly, there was a DNA test. That would imply that he had unprotected sex. This from the Daily reckoning;
"Dominique Strauss-Kahn may have more to worry about than a possible prison sentence," The New York Post reports this morning. "The IMF chief's alleged sex-assault victim lives in a Bronx apartment rented exclusively for adults with HIV or AIDS, The Post has learned. The hotel maid, a West African immigrant, has occupied the fourth-floor High Bridge pad with her 15-year-old daughter since January - and before that, lived in another Bronx apartment set aside by Harlem Community AIDS United strictly for adults with the virus and their families."

[Ugly Dougly]

Dominique Strauss Khan is, in some ways, the ultimate banker. The IMF goes around the world fucking every country that it gets it's claws into. DSK was recently accused of rape. Reportedly, there was a DNA test. That would imply that he had unprotected sex. This from the Daily reckoning;
"Dominique Strauss-Kahn may have more to worry about than a possible prison sentence," The New York Post reports this morning. "The IMF chief's alleged sex-assault victim lives in a Bronx apartment rented exclusively for adults with HIV or AIDS, The Post has learned. The hotel maid, a West African immigrant, has occupied the fourth-floor High Bridge pad with her 15-year-old daughter since January - and before that, lived in another Bronx apartment set aside by Harlem Community AIDS United strictly for adults with the virus and their families."

He was assassinated. Come on, CSS, if you're going to be paranoid, go pro.

[can't sit still]

Whadayoumean "assassinated" ? I never said anything about anal sex???

[TomServo]

I'm not paying anyone, till I get MY fucking Bailout! Fuck my debts! I give them to you banks, auto corps., etc...I declare myself a soveriegn Nation.

[Ugly Dougly]

I never said anything about anal sex???

It was in your eyes.

[FIGJAM]

I never said anything about anal sex???

It was in your eyes.

Oh my, anal Jihad!!!

[can't sit still]

Now, I'm afraid to turn out the lights.

[can't sit still]

Well, the banks are shitting bricks. Greece is going to default. The ECB is in denial in a big way. They keep loaning money to the Greeks so that the Greeks can pay back their previous loans to the banks. The Greeks don't give a shit about the banks.
Interestingly enough, the big push is coming from America and Great Britain. Neither of them use the Euro. It looks like they are hammering Greece to collapse the Euro and preserve the Dollar and Pound.
"He urged Greece to 'double its effort' on structural reforms critics say have been stagnating and insisted that the austerity measures would be enough to bring the country back on its feet.:"
OK, sounds good. If the Greek GOV guts the economy to pay off the banks, Greece will get "back on it's feet". I know that the banks haven't figured it out. I suspect that the Greeks have it all figured out.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1MrZeTCHp

[can't sit still]

The new GOV [Brown] took over in California and announced [shockingly] that the true debt was twice as high as everyone believed. The new president took over in Greece and announced [shockingly] that the debt was twice as high as believed.
There will be elections Sunday in Spain. Reportedly, the debt in the autonomous regions has doubled since 2008. The new leaders are expected to announce huge new debts uncovered when they took office.
Spain is far too big to be bailed out.
The problem is that the banks just continued to loan money to GOV. They assumed that because GOV has taxing authority, the money would never run dry. They didn't concern themselves as to where GOV would get all this money. GOV can't very well squeeze this much money out of taxpayers while the economy is crashing. Rather than squeezing the money out in taxes, GOV plans to just withhold payments to citizens to raise the money.

The citizens payed the money in and expect to get it back as deferred earnings. The banks invest money [buying politicians] and expect the politicians to ensure the payoff. If the Spaniards manage to elect politicians who aren't beholden to bankers, the whole thing will come crashing down before too long.
If the bankers retain power, the economy will come crashing down. Unemployment is claimed to be 20 %. Youth unemployment is at 40 %. Spain can't afford to maintain the safety net AND pay off the bankers.
Someone is going to get the shaft. If the banks don't get their payoff, they will try to pass the losses to their bondholders and avoid losses to the bank itself. Time will tell.

[cowboyangel]

http://www.truthout.org/cheat-sheet-ban ... 1306604876


Read this and weep. The soul of America has been mortgaged to a class of people who care NOTHING for working families, the unemployed and the dispossessed. They are not Americans. They are human garbage sucking the life out of us and the earth's resources. They are the problem that begs for revolution of the nonviolent kind.

[jkisha]

http://www.truthout.org/cheat-sheet-bank-investigations-and-probes-have-petered-out/1306604876


Read this and weep. The soul of America has been mortgaged to a class of people who care NOTHING for working families, the unemployed and the dispossessed. They are not Americans. They are human garbage sucking the life out of us and the earth's resources. They are the problem that begs for revolution of the nonviolent kind.

Many of those investigations are being revisited, I believe.
I'm ready for a nonviolent revolution. How about like the Europeans do it. Everyone take to the streets with tons of tomatoes.

The problem is getting people riled up enough to stop bitching about it and get up off their couches and join a protest.

[can't sit still]

Cowboy, this is where we disagree. Read Adrian Salbuchi. Here's a quote;
"that’s when we all realized that we had all been totally robbed, and took to the streets to uselessly bang our pots and pans on the banks’ monumental iron-clad gates, conveniently shuttered the night before… All thanks to the inherently fraudulent Fractional Reserve Banking System. This is what happened in Argentina in 2001 and this is what is unfolding right now in the US. "
The article is a few years old but, nothing has changed.
http://www.asalbuchi.com.ar/2008/11/go- ... -now-fast/
I don't believe that non-violence will change much of anything.

The GOV,, owned by the banks has made sure that there is no deterrent or risk to the bankers. The banks have responded by making things much worse;
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ti ... 00730.html
I don't believe that ANY action at the ballot-box will bring bankers to justice. Your article draws more-or-less the same conclusion. If the democratic process can bring no justice, what is the next option? The PTB will just create chaos and starve us out [food AND fuel] It's a tried and proven tactic. So what could be effective? If GOV only pays lip-service to demonstrations, What's next? Some speculation;
http://westernrifleshooters.blogspot.co ... stles.html

This is an excellent article explaining the OS of Asia and the OS of America. They worked for a while but, debt saturation is causing the whole thing to unwind in reverse;
http://www.gordontlong.com/Articles/art-2011-05-vc.htm
Ellen Brown seems to have had a "brain fart" and now says that we can print as much as we want;
http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/ME28Dj03.html The article has some painful inaccuracies.

This article is one of the best that I've seen. It's heavy on theory of value. It does touch on an area that is normally neglected. Capital is ONLY invested to return profit. Profit is completely dependent on commerce. Commerce is only available if there is purchasing power. Western productivity has gone WAY up. Wages are stagnant.
Money flowed into financial markets because it couldn't flow into commerce,,, for lack of purchasing power.
Manufacturing outsourced to lower it's costs,,, presenting lower-cost goods to people who had reduced purchasing-power. This was a temporary fix because the outsourcing led to an even lower aggregate purchasing power in the West.
As long as the Asians work for survival wages, the jobs and purchasing power won't return to the West. The down-spiraling purchasing power of the West continues to diminish the exports from the Asians. This is what the Gordon long article is about.
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2 ... -gold.html

Capital will never flow to the West as long as the existence of the low-wage eastern labor markets precludes a profitable enterprise in the West. 46,000 factories moved to China in just 10 years. What plan, scheme or mechanism could make up for the lost jobs? The answer is obvious.... Obvious to Greenspan, at least.

Capital was just sitting in the West doing nothing. Nothing but profit could pry it out of the hands of investors. First, the bank savings interest rates had to be lowered below the inflation rate. This forced capital into investment to keep it from shrinking. Then, an investment bubble had to be blown that would bring capital out of hiding. It had to be a bubble in something that wouldn't be immediately off-shored. That would preclude the benefits from going to american workers.

The promise of profit drew the capital out of hiding so that american workers could build houses and the economy could chug on a bit longer. Imagine what the unemployment rate would have been without a housing boom.
Greenspan used the lure of profit [manufacturing otherwise non-existent demand for housing] to entice investors to expose their capital to a high-risk investment that they believed to be a very low-risk investment. When the risk differential became known, he bailed out. This was a subterfuge to get investor money working in the economy,,, to provide employment to workers who had been [and were going to be] displaced by the competition from Asia.
The perfection of containerized shipping suddenly threw all of our manufacturing sector into competition with Asian-labor markets. The housing bubble was specifically tailored to ameliorate the bad effects of our labor crash.
It is possible that the dearth of prosecutions is a result of the complicity of GOV and banks trying the soften the labor crash by robbing investors.

1/3rd of all income in America is from social-support payments. 44 million are in food stamps. About 50 million live below the poverty level. 52..5 % of Americans depend on a check from GOV. 1 % are in the prison system.
It's hard to say just what these numbers would be if there had NOT been a housing bubble. Stagnant wages would have been the same. Asian competition would have been the same. There would have been a LOT fewer people working in construction.
Imagine the U.S. without any housing bubble but, still losing millions of jobs to Asia.

The empire is collapsing,,, as they all do. Outside market forces have much to do with it.
http://www.nolanchart.com/article5927.html

[cowboyangel]

Violent revolution won't work Dan. Too much force to contend with and the consequences of adopting the very means we oppose. By nonviolent I mean a worker revolution.....work stoppages, general strikes, repeal of Taft-Hartley, road blockages, non life threatening sabotage.

[can't sit still]

Cowboy, I understand your point. There is also the point that non-violent protest is increasingly being met with violence. The cops have been "militarized",,,, NOT by accident. They shot that marine 71 times in his house, even when he wasn't armed. The extension of the patriot act has nothing to do with terrorists. We're rushing headlong into a police state. The economic collapse is assured. Will the situation be improved by instituting a police state or will it only be made worse?

History has proven that a repressive police-state only worsens the economy. One could argue that violent protest only solidifies GOVs determination to institute a police state. GOV is instituting the police state regardless.

[can't sit still]

This paper is filed in the "curious" file. It claims that DSK was nailed because he discovered that all the U.S. gold was gone. Read for amusement only. I haven't had time to look for corroboration. http://www.eutimes.net/2011/05/russia-s ... d-is-gone/
"According to this FSB secret report, Strauss-Kahn had become "increasingly concerned" earlier this month after the United States began "stalling" its pledged delivery to the IMF of 191.3 tons of gold agreed to under the Second Amendment of the Articles of Agreement signed by the Executive Board in April 1978 that were to be sold to fund what are called Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) as an alternative to what are called reserve currencies."

It's possible that U.S. GOV was stalling on the gold delivery to assist in crashing the SDR to prevent the dollar from being displaced. Dunno, here's a chuckle. http://versusplus.com/dominique.html

[can't sit still]

Who would think that Iceland would be such a pivotal country in the collapse of the West. The EU is twisting their arm very strongly. The bankers fear that a refusal by Iceland will cause contagion to Greece and Ireland.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=25057
The EU wants to, at the very least, screw the holders of junior debt and demand 100 % for holders of senior debt. In other words,,, screw the investors but, make sure that the bankers get ALL of it.
Spain is crashing and La Mancha can't pay employees or vendors after this month. Mish has a translation and a link to the Spanish original doc. Because of precedent , Spain will crash much faster than Greece. La Manch is considering selling the Telecom system. That money won't last long.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot. ... hocomments
What a mess.

[cowboyangel]

Private for profit banking is a crime.

[can't sit still]

This is an excellent paper showing that much of the debt owed in Europe is owed back-and-forth from one country to another. If it were mutually canceled, it would wipe out much of the indebtedness;
http://www.scribd.com/doc/56574244/Eurozone-Debt-Cancel
Why do I get the idea that all this debt was artificially manufactured to give the ECB and excuse to start taxing?

[can't sit still]

It looks like the Bank of Ireland is going to give a major haircut to it's bondholders;
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-3 ... -deal.html
So, now the other debtor countries can follow the example of Iceland OR Ireland.

[can't sit still]

It appears that B of A expects RE to get worse. "Bank of America presently has 12 full-time customer assistance centers. Twenty-eight more are scheduled to open in the next few months. Seven will be located in California."

Read more: BofA to give away houses | Bankrate.com http://www.bankrate.com/financing/mortg ... z1P4jk4nui

[can't sit still]

Capital got the upper hand over labor. Capital squeezed labor into lower wages. Capital discovered that these lower wages meant that labor couldn't continue to "grow" the financial pie. Capital offered tons of credit to labor to keep the Keynesian game going. Labor became debt-saturated. Because of a shortage of profit in productive enterprise [caused by labor's lack of wages], capital shifted money out of productive enterprise and INTO speculation.
There is a good article about this at the bottom of this page;
http://prudentbear.com/index.php/credit ... t_id=10541

Much of the money that was removed from productive enterprise was moved to bonds, derivatives and GOV paper. None of this is productive. All this money churned around looking for return. Since any return is based on a production / consumption cycle, there was no profit to be found AFTER a period of time. GOV promised a return on GOV paper,,, financed by taxes. As the tax base died off, GOV could no longer pay.
Greece has just been rated ccc. The lowest rating in history.

Banks always bought GOV debt because GOV had taxing authority. As we see in the PIIGS, GOV has taxing authority but not taxing ability.
The banks have suddenly discovered this fact and are running away as fast as possible;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011 ... uit-greece

Since the banks have had time to watch this "pathogenesis" in the case of Greece and Ireland and Iceland, they will have a clear idea of the outcome in other cases. Spain was the next likely candidate for collapse but, now, it appears that Italy may win the race;
http://www.economonitor.com/blog/2011/0 ... ly-likely/
This is the capital flight that everyone dreaded. There is talk in political circles of FORCING the banks to leave the capital in place and support the country. I don't believe that, that idea will fly.
Everyone knows that Greece will default. This will "activate" the derivatives and demand huge payouts from the counterparties to the interest rate swaps. This could very well start a cascade of default that would destroy many banks.
The U.S. has been trash-talking the Euro zone in the hopes that capital will flee to the dollar. The U.S. is also trash-talking China in the hopes that dollars won't flee to china;
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110613/bs_nm/us_roubini

We're in currency-wars but, a new front has opened. Everybody is trying to create capital-flight in other countries and hold on to the domestic capital.
It's all a big mess working to stop capital flight. If Bernanke institutes QE III, he will chase investors away from the dollar. If he doesn't start QE III, interest rates will rise and freeze up what little is left of the economy.
Of course, if Bernanke does not buy all the treasury bonds, the bond auctions will fail and GOV will collapse. This is a "textbook case" and the ending is a foregone conclusion. The details will be revealed in the next 18 months. In the meantime,,, Party !

[can't sit still]

The European Central Bank is on the "hot seat" now. They loaned tons of money and, like the FED, took in shitty paper. The ECB has a total of 5,3 billion Euros of capital. That's it.
Greece borrowed 90 billion Euros and now needs another 120 billion.
The ECB also holds 1.9 trillion in questionable paper dumped on it by 17 other central banks. I seriously doubt that the other CBs gave them the good stuff.
Greek paper is now being discounted at about 50%. This is a nominal value because they haven't yet defaulted.
Everyone knows that they WILL default. Greek tax revenue has already fallen 71.% so, they will never dig their way out of the hole.
So, The ECB has about 2.1 trillion in crappy paper AND 5.3 billion to cover any loss of value in this same shitty paper.
The ECB wants all of this paper to be payed at face value. The Irish have told the ECB,,, NO WAY ! http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-1 ... ntees.html
OK, consequently, the rating agencies are going to cut the ratings of the 3 BIGGEST French banks. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... TopStories MERDE !
The next big payment from Greece is due in August. This is the same time that America has to make some kind of arrangement on the debt ceiling.
The chief economic advisor to the White House [Goolsbee] just hightailed it out of DC.
One would almost suspect that he wants his name forgotten by all Americans before August.
D.C. has looted $ 1 trillion from the federal pension system on top of a $ 4 trillion previous heist. It is unlikely that GOV has a plan to replace these missing $ trillions. The current looting is expected to stop when the debt ceiling is raised. I suspect that GOV will waffle on any agreement to replace the pension money immediately. They will just claim that they can't sell a $ trillion in excess bonds overnight.

Federal workers are well aware of what happened to the missing $ trillions from SS. They might get very nervous if there is no defined plan to replace the missing $ trillions.
August will be a very interesting month besides what happens at BRC.

[Ugly Dougly]

The Truth About the Economy In Two Minutes:
http://front.moveon.org/scribbling-sharpie-illustrates-the-truth-about-our-economy/

[can't sit still]

Dougly, great vid.
This is an article talking about how American bankers have taken over the Swiss banking system. It is interesting in that the article points out that Switzerland has direct democracy and is outside the eurozone. Reportedly, the banking elites want to take down Switzerland because of these two factors.
http://noviden.info/article_239.html

[can't sit still]

This is an article stating that GOV can buy it's way OUT of the of the FED for just $ 1 billion;
http://www.dailypaul.com/128682/hey-the ... out-clause Murray Rothbard predicted all of this decades ago. Bernanke is doing ALL the wrong things and getting exactly the results predicted by Rothbard. He is doing it precisely to preserve the power of the banks. http://www.taipanpublishinggroup.com/tp ... 200&r=Milo

Fitch Ratings is talking about Greece and the U.S. in the same sentence when it talks about default; http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/06/2 ... 2220110621
Marc Faber is somewhat pessimistic; http://www.thedailycrux.com/content/796 ... _Stupidity

This file talks about the problems being structural rather than cyclical. http://www.johnmauldin.com/images/uploa ... 062011.pdf
Obviously, it's time to party.

[can't sit still]

This is supposedly an exchange between a banker and a lawyer in court. It is interesting.

Bank Loan – “That is how it works.â€

[cowboyangel]

The Mayor of Boston once punched the Governor of Massachusetts, Calvin Coolidge, in the mouth over the Boston police strike riots (A film version from Dennis LeHane coming soon ) Where is today's equivalent to punch this cry baby scum bag Bonner and ALL his rat fuck republican puke buckets in the mouth as well?



Why the Republican War on Workers Rights Undermines the American Economy
Saturday 25 June 2011
by: Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog | Op-Ed



Robert Reich's book,"Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future - Eccles's Insight" is the Truthout Progressive Pick of the Week.

The battle has resumed in Wisconsin. The state supreme court has allowed Governor Scott Walker to strip bargaining rights from state workers.

Meanwhile, legislators in New Hampshire and officials in Missouri are attacking private unions, seeking to make the states so-called “open shopâ€

[can't sit still]

Cowboy, that is a good article and has some good ideas. America is different than Germany in a few important ways.
America maintains about 800 foreign military bases, plays "cop" to the world and spends $ 1 trillion on defense-and-intelligence. We spent $ 441 billion on debt interest last year. Add in the cost of imported oil;
"The U.S uses about 20,680,000 barrels per day. The current cost for a barrel of oil is $73.61 (June 3rd 2010). Therefore the U.S spends about $1,522,254,800 a day. Basically you could say just over 1.5 Billion U.S dollars daily. On a yearly basis $1,522,254,800 * 365 = $555,623,002,000 over half a trillion!"

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_mone ... z1QKOCusgz

This is the quote for $ 74 oil.
Germany doesn't have the burden of "empire" that America has. While this burden doesn't affect the grossly unequal money distribution between the rich and the middle-class, it does affect the quantity of money in the country.
We play cop-of-the-Pacific and Japan doesn't have to have armed forces. They can invest the money into productive industry. Of course, we forced them to buy $ 800 billion in treasuries as 'protection money".

GOV has dumbed-down the schools because GOV doesn't want people who are capable of critical thinking; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDyDtYy2I0M
Our dumbed-down schools are NOT preparing students for the workforce of today.
Even Germany is complaining. They say that they need 400,000 more engineers.
There are a LOT of jobs here that go begging because we don't prepare students.
Then, there is the problem that Americans don't even think of buying "American" to save their jobs. Lots of problems.

[can't sit still]

This is an excellent vid From Ellen Brown and Max Keiser. The essence of the message is that; creating a state-bank is effectively throwing out the Federal Reserve. This is as important as any thing that has come along in decades. Since the FED would probably NOT like to be thrown out, the 8 states involved have copied the extant plan in North Dakota. Since that plan has had no legal challenges, it is too late to formulate a legal challenge to the 8 states emulating North Dakota. This effort should be given all the encouragement possible.
http://www.presstv.ir/Program/173807.html

Another good aspect is that the rest of the states should be able to institute legislative copies on short notice. This is the only thing that I've seen in years that appears to be positive for "main street".