The deregulation of the financial system during the Clinton and George W. Bush regimes had the predictable result: financial concentration and reckless behavior. A handful of banks grew so large that financial authorities declared them “too big to fail.” Removed from market discipline, the banks became wards of the government requiring massive creation of new money by the Federal Reserve in order to support through the policy of Quantitative Easing the prices of financial instruments on the banks’ balance sheets and in order to finance at low interest rates trillion dollar federal budget deficits associated with the long recession caused by the financial crisis. Continue reading
Federal Reserve
Monthly Inflation 1872-2013: BLS vs. ShadowStats | TMO
Project censored top 10: The expanding police state tops the annual list of stories underreported by the mainstream media | Boulder Weekly
Project censored: The expanding police state tops the annual list of stories under-reported by the mainstream media, By Yael Chanoff – Thursday, October 11,2012
People who get their information exclusively from mainstream media sources may be surprised at the lack of enthusiasm on the left for President Barack Obama in this crucial election. But that’s probably because they weren’t exposed to the full online furor sparked by Obama’s continuation of his predecessor’s overreaching approach to national security, such as signing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the indefinite detention of those accused of supporting terrorism, even U.S. citizens.
We’ll never know how this year’s election would be different if the corporate media adequately covered the NDAA’s indefinite detention clause and many other recent attacks on civil liberties. What we can do is spread the word and support independent media sources that do cover these stories. That’s where Project Censored comes in. Continue reading
Monopoly Money and Federal Reserve Notes | Humble Libertarian
Someone at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing has a sick sense of humor… and the joke’s on you. It’s all monopoly money
The Rot Runs Deep 1: The Federal Reserve Is a Parasitic Wealth Transfer Machine | Charles Hugh Smith
August 27, 2012. Today I launch a series entitled “The Rot Runs Deep” that examines the moral and financial rot at the core of American finance, politics and culture. We have reached a unique junction of American history: the confluence of Big Lie propaganda, neofeudalism and the worship of false financial gods.
The Federal Reserve is a wealth transfer machine, skimming wealth from the productive many and transferring it to the parasitic few. The Big Lie propaganda machine of corporate media and the Central State has perfected Orwell’s nightmare vision of centralized media and a fascist centralized State which turn lies into self-serving “truth.”
Since the Federal Reserve is once again expected to “save” a crumbling, exploitative Status Quo, let’s use the Fed as an example. The propaganda machine would have us believe that the Federal Reserve, the privately owned central bank of the U.S., has “saved” the Status Quo from financial ruin on numerous occasions by “smoothing out” the business cycle (credit expands and contracts) and by “stimulating aggregate demand” by lowering interest rates and pumping money into the economy (quantitative easing). Continue reading
Dollars vs Money | The Grey Enigma added a page (see above)
Karl Denninger Interview: Financial Crisis 2012
America is Teetering on the Brink of Monetary Destruction | Libertarian News
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that in 2011, the Federal Reserve purchased a mind-blowing 61% of Treasury debt issuance… When the U.S. needs money to fund its ever-expanding foreign interests, social welfare programs, or its war against dried flowers, it can obtain that money through a few different means. The least effective and most politically dangerous way for it to obtain money is to threaten American citizens with imprisonment if they don’t fork over their dough. Historically, Americans have refused to hand over anything greater than 20% of GDP through taxes regardless of tax rates or the threats the state makes against their person.
Since the state has trouble getting Americans to hand over their money, it generally turns to the much easier second option to finance itself: printing money. In today’s economy, the state prints money by issuing treasury debt. Normally it sells this debt to foreign nations, since this exports the inflation created by the issuance of new debt. However, there are natural limits to the amount of debt foreign nations are willing to hold.
The U.S. has reached that limit and then some… via| Libertarian News.
Land Prices Are Rising Uniformly Across The Cornbelt
Farmland values in the Cornbelt are rising as fast as anytime in the past 35 years, but may be showing some indication of deceleration. Bankers throughout the five-state region in the Chicago Federal Reserve District report a 22% increase in the value of good farmland over the course of 2011. But in the seven-state Kansas City Fed District, the value of farmland rose 25% in the past year, reports FarmGateBlog…
Higher prices for grain have spurred the most significant demand for land since the 1970’s. Farm land, oil, grains…the price inflation is coming.
FBI warns of threat from anti-government extremists | Reuters
Clearly, this threat from heretics must be stopped before the sheeple go off reservation en masse. I.e.:
(Reuters) – Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday. These extremists, sometimes known as “sovereign citizens,” believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.
The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard. Routine encounters with police can turn violent “at the drop of a hat,” said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI’s counterterrorism division.
“We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement,” he said…” via Reuters.
Horrible Bosses, Pitchforks & Torches and Gerald Celente loses it at MF Global and Corzine| ZeroHedge & Alex Jones
MUST READ via Guest Post: Horrible Bosses, Pitchforks & Torches | ZeroHedge.
..Americans have been very tolerant. We’ve handed money over for Wall Street bonuses rewarding the psychopaths who blew up our economy and created 23.9% unemployment the real undistorted employment rate. We’ve watched silently as Bernanke lied to us about the banks being fixed—as if we’re too stupid to know that FASB is now just legalized Enron accounting. We’ve rolled our eyes and bitten our tongues when some of the psychopaths later professed to be, “Doing God’s work.” We’ve watched our kids get molested by perverts hired off adds on pizza boxes, had our wives breasts exposed during these idiotic searches and ourselves been exposed to radiation while in naked body scanners that could be used in the oncology departments of hospitals.
I seriously suspect that people have had enough and that it won’t be long before they break out the pitchforks and torches. Throughout history we’ve read about times when citizens were forced to resort to violence in order to restore law and order.Ironic—if you really think about it.
I seriously suspect we are about to witness this first hand—pitchforks and torches…
And, also see Gerald Celente [Trends Inst] interview here via Alex Jones and Infowars
The Collapse of Our Corrupt, Predatory, Pathological Financial System Is Necessary and Positive | Of Two Minds
via charles hugh smith-The Collapse of Our Corrupt, Predatory, Pathological Financial System Is Necessary and Positive, November 5, 2011.
We are being throttled by the Big Lie: we’re told that if the predatory financial system implodes, we’ll all be ruined. The opposite is true: the only way to save our economy is to let the corrupt, pathological and flawed financial system implode….
M2 Money Supply thru Sept 2011 | ShadowStats
Four Biggest Banks in America have Huge Leverage | USAWatchdog
Four Biggest Banks in America have Huge Leverage | Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog. By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com, October 3, 2011
” According to the latest report from the Comptroller of the Currency, just four U.S. banks have an eye popping $235 trillion of OTC derivative leverage. (Click here for the complete Comptroller of the Currency report.) As a nation, U.S. banks have a total OTC derivative exposure of $250 trillion. So, the fact that just four U.S. banks have this much leverage and risk is astounding! The banks are listed below in order of size and approximate OTC exposure:
1.) JP MORGAN CHASE BANK NA OH
$78.1 trillion OTC derivatives
2.) CITIBANK NATIONAL ASSN
$56.1 trillion OTC derivatives
3.) BANK OF AMERICA NA NC
$53.15 trillion OTC derivatives
4.) GOLDMAN SACHS BANK USA NY
$47.7 trillion OTC derivatives
Considering that the total assets of these four banks are a little more than $5 trillion, I see a frightening amount of risk with a total derivative exposure of $235 trillion! This is nearly 50 to 1 leverage. …”
The Federal Reserve Plans To Identify “Key Bloggers” And Monitor Billions Of Conversations About The Fed On Facebook, Twitter, Forums And Blogs | Collapse Blog
The Federal Reserve Plans To Identify “Key Bloggers” And Monitor Billions Of Conversations About The Fed On Facebook, Twitter, Forums And Blogs. September 25, 2011
The Federal Reserve wants to know what you are saying about it. In fact, the Federal Reserve has announced plans to identify “key bloggers” and to monitor “billions of conversations” about the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogs. This is yet another sign that the alternative media is having a dramatic impact. As first reported on Zero Hedge, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has issued a “Request for Proposal” to suppliers who may be interested in participating in the development of a “Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution”.
The Grey Enigma 