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It’s Silly: The Trillion Dollar Coin and the Monetary System

January 12, 2013 in Editorial, Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics

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Toby Iverson  –  tshirttoby.blogspot.com

While celebrating Christmas with the family I had a conversation with my 8 year old nephew.  He knows that I’ll explain anything to him in a comprehensible way. (Well, almost anything.) We were talking about money and I told him how you used to be able to trade your dollar bill in for silver but can’t anymore.

“So what can you trade it in for?” he asked

“You can’t. It’s not backed by anything now.”

“Then what makes it worth a dollar?”

After a brief pause looking around at the rest of my family who was now listening in.”Faith.”

“Faith?”

“Yes. Because we believe it is worth something makes it valuable.”

After a moment of contemplation my nephew says. “Well that’s silly.”

We all laughed as I agreed. “It is silly.”

The whole trillion dollar coin idea is silly.  But it is no more silly than the rest of our financial system.  It will probably never happen and should be understood in that context.  But if you leave out the silliness and likelihood of it happening, it is not a bad idea. Read the rest of this entry →

Financial Crisis at Hand

June 12, 2012 in ANON NeWs, Editorial, Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics, Update, World News

By Paul Craig Roberts   —   intrepidreport.com

Ever since the beginning of the financial crisis and quantitative easing, the question has been before us: How can the Federal Reserve maintain zero interest rates for banks and negative real interest rates for savers and bond holders when the US government is adding $1.5 trillion to the national debt every year via its budget deficits? Not long ago the Fed announced that it was going to continue this policy for another 2 or 3 years. Indeed, the Fed is locked into the policy. Without the artificially low interest rates, the debt service on the national debt would be so large that it would raise questions about the US Treasury’s credit rating and the viability of the dollar, and the trillions of dollars in Interest Rate Swaps and other derivatives would come unglued.

In other words, financial deregulation leading to Wall Street’s gambles, the US government’s decision to bail out the banks and to keep them afloat, and the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy have put the economic future of the US and its currency in an untenable and dangerous position. It will not be possible to continue to flood the bond markets with $1.5 trillion in new issues each year when the interest rate on the bonds is less than the rate of inflation. Everyone who purchases a Treasury bond is purchasing a depreciating asset. Moreover, the capital risk of investing in Treasuries is very high. The low interest rate means that the price paid for the bond is very high. A rise in interest rates, which must come sooner or later, will collapse the price of the bonds and inflict capital losses on bondholders, both domestic and foreign.

The question is: when is sooner or later? The purpose of this article is to examine that question. Read the rest of this entry →

Home Owners Across Nation Sue All Bank Servicers and Their Offshore Havens

May 8, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics, Update

occupywallst.org

Home Owners Across the Nation Sue All Bank Servicers and Their Offshore Havens;

Spire Law Officially Announces Filing of Landmark Lawsuit Largest International Money Laundering Network in History Formed During Obama Administration;

U.S. Banks’ Theft of Home Owners’ Money Laundered Through Cayman Islands, Isle of Man and Numerous Offshore-Based Affiliates NEW YORK, NY, Apr 23, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — In a lawsuit alleged to involve the largest money laundering network in United States history, Spire Law Group, LLP — on behalf of home owners across the Country — has filed a mass tort action in the Supreme Court of New York, County of Kings.

Home owners across the country have sued every major bank servicer and their subsidiaries — formed in countries known as havens for money laundering such as the Cayman Islands, the Isle of Man, Luxembourg and Malaysia — alleging that while the Obama Administration was publicly encouraging loan modifications for home owners, it was privately ratifying the formation of these shell companies in violation of the United States Patriot Act, and State and Federal law.

The case further alleges that through these obscure foreign companies, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo Bank, Citibank, Citigroup, One West Bank, and numerous other federally chartered banks stole hundreds of millions of dollars of home owners’ money during the last decade and then laundered it through offshore companies. Read the rest of this entry →

ICELAND FORGIVES ENTIRE POPULATION OF MORTGAGE DEBT!: And So Can We! “TDP Calls For Nation-Wide Mortgage Debt Forgiveness!”

May 5, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics, Video Perspective, World News

truedemocracyparty.net

The government of Iceland has forgiven the mortgage debt for much of its population. This nation chose a very different way of stopping the crisis from the rest of European countries. It decided to hear the requests of the population and to put politicians and bankers on the bench of the accused three years after their financial excesses would sank one of the most prosperous economies in 2008.

Iceland Forgives Mortgage Debt for the Population. Putting Bankers and Politicians on “Bench of Accused”
This is awesome. It shows when the people DO STAND UP they have more power and win against the corrupt bankers and politicians of a country. Iceland is forgiving and erasing the mortgage debt of the population. Read the rest of this entry →

Police quietly expanding warrantless cell phone tracking

April 13, 2012 in ANON NeWs, Headline, Occupy, Politics

gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com

The New York Times this weekend had a feature on the dramatic growth in cell-phone tracking by law enforcement based on thousands of pages of documents obtained by the ACLU from local police departments, reporting that:

While cell tracking by local police departments has received some limited public attention in the last few years, the A.C.L.U. documents show that the practice is in much wider use — with far looser safeguards — than officials have previously acknowledged.

The issue has taken on new legal urgency in light of a Supreme Court ruling in January finding that a Global Positioning System tracking device placed on a drug suspect’s car violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches. While the ruling did not directly involve cellphones — many of which also include GPS locators — it raised questions about the standards for cellphone tracking, lawyers say. Read the rest of this entry →

Push to End Too-Big-To-Fail Goes Mainstream

April 3, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics, Update

Matt Taibbi – rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog

Wall Street is buzzing about the annual report just put out by the Dallas Federal Reserve. In the paper, Harvey Rosenblum, the head of the Dallas Fed’s research department, bluntly calls for the breakup of Too-Big-To-Fail banks like Bank of America, Chase, and Citigroup.

The government’s bottomless sponsorship of these TBTF institutions, Rosenblum writes, has created a “residue of distrust for government, the banking system, the Fed and capitalism itself.”

The report (PDF), entitled, “Choosing the Road to Prosperity: Why We Must End Too-Big-To-Fail Now,” is written in a surprisingly readable style and is illustrated with reader-friendly cartoons and pictographs. It uses rhetoric that, for the Fed, is extremely candid and colorful, going beyond an arcane analysis of monetary policy to focus on the cultural damage of Too-Big-To-Fail.

“These psychological side-effects of Too-Big-To-Fail can’t be measured, but they’re too important to ignore,” Rosenbaum writes. “People disillusioned with capitalism aren’t as eager to engage in productive activities. They’re likely to approach economic decisions with suspicion and cynicism, shying away from the risk-taking that drives entrepreneurial capitalism.” Read the rest of this entry →

The Real Jubilee : A Movement For Financial Justice

March 7, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics, World News

theoccupiedtimes.co.uk

This year the Queen is celebrating her 60th ‘jubilee’ but the original meaning of jubilee had a lot more to do with righting injustice than an extra bank holiday and Brian May on the roof of Buckingham Palace, says Tim Jones of www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk

The word ‘jubilee’ comes from the Jewish scriptures, and describing an ancient event occurring every fifty years. In the jubilee year everyone, remarkably, took a whole year off from working the land – not just one day – living simply off surpluses from previous years. All debts were to be cancelled. All slaves were to be released. All land was to be returned to the original sharing between the Hebrew tribes.

Jubilees were instituted in order to restore a sense of equilibrium into the economy. People working on the land got in debt when harvests failed. To feed their families they borrowed from their neighbours – supposedly without being charged interest, though many found ways to get round this law. As debts accumulated and families became unable to pay, they had to sell off their land to their creditors. Rent was charged on the sold land, so as creditors got richer, the debtors got poorer – and their debts were only likely to increase. As David Graeber sets out in his book Debt: The first 5,000 years, farmers often became stuck in debt and even had to sell their children into debt slavery. Read the rest of this entry →

The Problem Isn’t Growth — The Problem Is Inequality

March 6, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Politics

by Salvatore Babones  –  inequality.org

Commentators still talk about the Great Recession as if we’re still in it.  But according to semi-official statistics from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) the recession ended in June 2009.

In fact, the “official” recession lasted only 19 months.  Over that period, US economic output declined by around 5%.  But the economy has been growing for 32 months now, and has now surpassed its 2008 peak.

In the realonomy where most Americans live it sure doesn’t feel that way.

Why not?  Because while the economy has taken off, the realonomy has been left behind.  Jobs and wages are still below 2008 levels.  Economic growth is feeding into corporate profits and CEO pay, not into ordinary people’s paychecks.

It’s also not going into government budgets — and government is where the money is needed most.  You may feel like you’re struggling, but America’s state and local governments are struggling too.

The obvious solution is for state and local governments to tax the windfall profits and pay that are right now going to the richest people and corporations in America. Read the rest of this entry →

Who is 1 Percent?

March 5, 2012 in Editorial, Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics

Posted by -   occupyoakland.org

Who is the “1 Percent”?

The new meme cheerfully propagated by the mainstream media (MSM) is the 1-percent-versus-the-99-percent conflict, which fits perfectly into its strategy for maintaining strict political divisions of Left versus Right. This bipartisan strategy is absolutely critical for advancing the agenda of the “1 percent,” which, simply stated, is to own and/or control the world’s natural and economic resources, including land and mineral rights, water sources, food and energy production, transportation, money supply, and most important of all labor.

Glaringly absent from this current meme is a proper definition by the MSM of exactly who composes the 1 percent. This, too, is absolutely essential, because if the 1 percent is actually identified, broad-based consensus is achievable and solutions can begin. Instead, the 1 percent is left to the imaginations of the 99 percent, allowing for a wide variety of culprits responsible for society’s woes, and no possible consensus – hence no solutions, either.

If you pay attention, you’ll find that solutions are never proffered in any of the MSM’s endless dialogue permeating the broadcasts, and rarely in print. The very last thing the 1 percent wants are viable solutions emerging to upset the status quo.

So who is the 1 percent?

The 1 percent can accurately be described as a discrete, highly exclusive group of individuals, cherry-picked from the top echelons of global corporations, including banks and financial institutions; the most influential politicians and bureaucrats, at home and abroad; private- and public-sector union bosses; not-for-profits’ executive leadership, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), associations, foundations, and churches; and prominent stewards of the most prestigious academia.

Think of the 1 percent as a triad that requires a three-legged collaboration for any one leg to succeed. Leg one comprises global banksters and captains from strategic mega-industries, including finance, food, pharmaceutical/health, energy/utilities, transportation, communications, and military. Also included in this leg are leaders from the largest private unions, foundations, associations, and academia. Leg two comprises the most influential politicians and bureaucrats who control legislative process, implementation, and enforcement. In other words, Congress, executives from government’s largest agencies, and the courts, including judges and attorneys with specific competencies. Bosses from the public-sector unions, NGOs, and publicly financed foundations and associations, as well as academia, are included here. What should also be noted here is the ever-growing influence of foreign governance, specifically the United Nations, World Trade Organization, World Conservation Commission, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, for starters, most of which have treaties/compacts/memorandums of understanding with the United States that not only oblige U.S. taxpayers but constrain our own use of our resources.

Leg three is the highly consolidated, thereby compromised, mainstream media. Read the rest of this entry →

On Regaining a Spirit of Defiance

March 2, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Politics, Update, World News

“I’m worried now but I won’t be worried long”

by Phil Rockstroh — dissidentvoice.org

Yo, who let these bankers and globalists turn my ice black with pollution and oil subsidies, WTF DUDES?

The course of action taken by the present-day U.S. political class in addressing the era’s rising tide of economic hardship and ecological peril has proven as helpful as tossing an anvil to a drowning man.

The following two axiomatic headlines reveal much about the dovetailing mindsets manifested by members of both the drowning class and the moral compass-bereft captains of the ship of state:

“Nike Foamposite Galaxy Shoe Spurs Frenzy At Malls” (Associated Press, February 25, 2012)

“Mitt Romney: Wife Ann Drives ‘A Couple Of Cadillacs’” (The Washington Post, February 24, 2012)

Inadvertently, Mr. Romney’s declaration, stated in his own blandly deranged way, captures the As Above/So Below nature of consumer-state psychology. By means of incessant, womb to tomb, commercial propaganda, the corporate class has promoted the idea that an individual’s identity is based solely on the sum total of his worldly possessions. Read the rest of this entry →

Barack Obama Waives Rule Allowing Indefinite Military Detention Of Americans

March 2, 2012 in Headline, Occupy, Politics, Update

WASHINGTON — The White House released rules Tuesday evening waiving the most controversial piece of the new military detention law, and exempting U.S. citizens, as well as other broad categories of suspected terrorists.

Indefinite military detention of Americans and others was granted in the defense authorization bill President Barack Obama signed just before Christmas, sparking a storm of anger from civil libertarians on the left and right.

The new rules — which deal with Section 1022 of the law — are aimed at soothing many of their gravest concerns, an administration official said. Those concerns are led by the possibility that a law that grants the president authority to jail Americans without trial in Guantanamo Bay based on secret evidence could easily be abused. Read the rest of this entry →

The American Century Is Over—Good Riddance

February 26, 2012 in Editorial, Finance, Headline, Politics, World News

By Andrew J. Bacevich

As someone who teaches both history and international relations, I have one foot in each camp. I’m interested in what has already happened. And I’m interested in what will happen next. In my teaching and my writing, I try to locate connecting tissue that links past to present. Among the devices I’ve employed to do that is the concept of an “American Century.”

That evocative phrase entered the American lexicon back in February 1941, the title of an essay appearing in Life magazine under the byline of the publishing mogul Henry Luce. In advancing the case for U.S. entry into World War II, the essay made quite a splash, as Luce intended. Yet the rush of events soon transformed “American Century” into much more than a bit of journalistic ephemera. It became a summons, an aspiration, a claim, a calling, and ultimately the shorthand identifier attached to an entire era. By the time World War II ended in 1945, the United States had indeed ascended—as Luce had forecast and perhaps as fate had intended all along—to a position of global primacy. Here was the American Century made manifest. Read the rest of this entry →

Letting It Come Down

February 25, 2012 in ANON NeWs, Editorial, Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics, World News

by Brian Littlefair

People talk about collapse like it’s a bad thing. The Department of Homeland Security flags the word collapse itself for surveillance. But collapse makes the world go round. Anyone trained as a technocrat can tell you it’s a simple matter of oscillation, damping and convergence — a spiderweb pattern on a phase diagram, neutral as can be. For anthropologists, it’s a process called cycling. They can make it happen in the simplest of toy worlds, with a tessellation automaton with stochastic conflicts.  In fact, that’s the fun of the old board game Risk.

Catastrophe is just a kind of change, a quick transition to a new equilibrium — and didn’t America recently vote for change? The discontinuity that marks collapse is simply the point at which prevailing fallacies are reduced to absurdity by life. Yeats saw war and British dominion reduced to absurdity, and wrote The Second Coming to make sense of it. It strikes me as a very cheerful poem: the unborn sphinx, a precious little bundle of joy.

Collapse is the obverse of renewal. Gibbon’s magnum opus, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is equally the story of the rise of Europe in all its centripetal glory. Read the rest of this entry →

Delusions of the Corporate State

February 24, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics, World News

by: Evaggelos Vallianatos

August 2011 marks 50 years since I left Greece for the United States.

In 1961, in Greece, I was a high school graduate with dreams of becoming a doctor. My beloved physician grandmother Demetra had shown me the way. Now, 50 years later, in the United States, I am not a doctor of medicine, but a doctor of philosophy caught in a time warp.

My American college education was a Renaissance for me, a moment of discovery and self-confidence. In a metaphysical sense, I became Greek in America. However, the moment I left the university looking for a job, I felt I had entered an alien realm. I developed a blurred vision.

The world now is more complicated and dangerous than the world of 1961. Communism is almost gone, but capitalism in America has evolved into a toxic system of poisoning and devouring the earth for profit while, for the Wall Street oligarchy, it is a method of enrichment. In 2008, this oligarchy precipitated one of its periodic national, financial meltdowns in order to reverse progress toward equality and democracy. The Wall Street bankers wrecked the lives of millions of Americans. And yet, the government did not punish the Wall Street bankers. In fact, the government itself is under their sinister influences. Read the rest of this entry →

Citigroup Faces Multibillion Dollar Smith Barney Write-down

February 23, 2012 in Finance, Headline

Citigroup faces a potential multibillion dollar write-down on its minority equity stake in Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, an asset management business.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the venture between Citigroup and Morgan Stanley began in 2009, when the sides combined Citigroup’s Smith Barney with Morgan Stanley’s wealth-management unit.

Morgan Stanley has the right to start buying Citigroup out this spring and is expected to take full ownership in 2014.

However, due to different sets of accounting and valuation methodologies, Citigroup may incur a $2.5 billion write-down in the sale, leaving Citigroup with an after-tax earnings hit of as much as $1.8 billion. Read the rest of this entry →

Romney uses similar financial strategy of “Drug-traffickers, mobsters, smugglers and swindlers”

February 13, 2012 in Editorial, Headline, Politics

by  Logan Churchwell

Go ahead, read the headline again. Mine is almost as bizarre as the original Associated Press piece, titled “How is Romney like 007? Both have money offshore.” Giving us yet another example of the AP’s “New Distinctiveness” in reporting, readers are offered a six-step tutorial on how to hide your money from the Feds. Clearly the intent of this article is to imply that that’s what GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney has done, but the AP doesn’t actually accuse Gov. Romney of any untoward financial activity, right? Read the lead sentence closely (emphasis added):

“Movie super spies James Bond and Jason Bourne use them. So does real-life U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who ‘says‘ he pays his taxes, and untold numbers of Americans who don’t.”

Read the rest of this entry →

Wall Street on Track for Record Political Spending in Attempt to Defeat Obama

February 13, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics

by: Josh Israel

With Wall Street profits and bonuses falling and big banks cutting jobs right and left, it seems that the financial services sector would be scaling back its free-spending ways.

But, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis, they likely to set records in 2012 on political spending — the bulk of which is aimed at defeating President Barack Obama and electing Republicans opposed to the Dodd-Frank financial regulations enacted to address the sector’s 2008 meltdown.

It seems Wall Street has had its feelings hurt by the Obama administration’s increasingly vocal support for policies that benefit the other 99 percent, and as a result, the financial industry is giving heavily to Republicans and, in particular, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R). Politico reports:

Despite a large overall fundraising advantage, Obama has raised just $5.1 million from the finance, insurance and real estate sectors so far this cycle compared with $12.4 million for Mitt Romney’s campaign, according to Sheila Krumholz, executive director of [the Center for Responsive Politics]. [...]

Read the rest of this entry →