The Fox is in the Henhouse Again, and We are not Watching!

We watched as the banks were bailed out after ripping off nearly $5 trillion dollars of America’s wealth.  We are on the hook for their loses.  They were too big to fail, we were told.  It would be a disaster for the world’s economy.  The same story was then foisted on our European brothers, and again with the same “chicken little” reasoning.

Well, here we are 3 years later and the economy is still in the dumpster and we have not done one thing to correct the major problem of banks being investment firms ponied up to the roulette table wildly playing with OUR money unchecked.  Now the drunken bankers are at it again.  I have written many articles concerning this crazy derivatives market that is the banker’s hedge for the downside of this slow motion crash of the world’s economy.

This WAS one market that the bankers were exposed and WE were not on the hook for bailouts.  Well, that was until last week.  No ONE is MSM National media is even reporting this.  If you aren’t mad as hell when you read this, you are certifiably in a COMA.

Source: Washington’s Blog

Bloomberg reports that Bank of America is dumping derivatives onto a subsidiary which is insured by the government – i.e. taxpayers.

Yves Smith notes:

If you have any doubt that Bank of America is going down, this development should settle it …. Both [professor of economics and law, and former head S&L prosecutor] Bill Black (who I interviewed just now) and I see this as a desperate move by Bank of America’s management, a de facto admission that they know the bank is in serious trouble.

The short form via Bloomberg:

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation…

Bank of America’s holding company — the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch securities unit — held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June, according to data compiled by the OCC. About $53 trillion, or 71 percent, were within Bank of America NA, according to the data, which represent the notional values of the trades.

That compares with JPMorgan’s deposit-taking entity, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, which contained 99 percent of the New York-based firm’s $79 trillion of notional derivatives, the OCC data show.

Now you would expect this move to be driven by adverse selection, that it, that BofA would move its WORST derivatives, that is, the ones that were riskiest or otherwise had high collateral posting requirements, to the sub. Bill Black confirmed that even though the details were sketchy, this is precisely what took place.

And remember, as we have indicated, there are some “derivatives” that should be eliminated, period. We’ve written repeatedly about credit default swaps, which have virtually no legitimate economic uses (no one was complaining about the illiquidity of corporate bonds prior to the introduction of CDS; this was not a perceived need among investors). They are an inherently defective product, since there is no way to margin adequately for “jump to default” risk and have the product be viable economically. CDS are systematically underpriced insurance, with insurers guaranteed to go bust periodically, as AIG and the monolines demonstrated. [Background.]

The reason that commentators like Chris Whalen were relatively sanguine about Bank of America likely becoming insolvent as a result of eventual mortgage and other litigation losses is that it would be a holding company bankruptcy. The operating units, most importantly, the banks, would not be affected and could be spun out to a new entity or sold. Shareholders would be wiped out and holding company creditors (most important, bondholders) would take a hit by having their debt haircut and partly converted to equity.

This changes the picture completely. This move reflects either criminal incompetence or abject corruption by the Fed. Even though I’ve expressed my doubts as to whether Dodd Frank resolutions will work, dumping derivatives into depositaries pretty much guarantees a Dodd Frank resolution will fail. Remember the effect of the 2005 bankruptcy law revisions: derivatives counterparties are first in line, they get to grab assets first and leave everyone else to scramble for crumbs. [Background.] So this move amounts to a direct transfer from derivatives counterparties of Merrill to the taxpayer, via the FDIC, which would have to make depositors whole after derivatives counterparties grabbed collateral. It’s well nigh impossible to have an orderly wind down in this scenario. You have a derivatives counterparty land grab and an abrupt insolvency. Lehman failed over a weekend after JP Morgan grabbed collateral.

But it’s even worse than that. During the savings & loan crisis, the FDIC did not have enough in deposit insurance receipts to pay for the Resolution Trust Corporation wind-down vehicle. It had to get more funding from Congress. This move paves the way for another TARP-style shakedown of taxpayers, this time to save depositors. No Congressman would dare vote against that. This move is Machiavellian, and just plain evil.

The FDIC is understandably ripshit. Again from Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disagree over the transfers, which are being requested by counterparties, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have to pay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting, said the people. The bank doesn’t believe regulatory approval is needed, said people with knowledge of its position.

Well OF COURSE BofA is gonna try to take the position this is kosher, but the FDIC can and must reject this brazen move. But this is a bit of a fait accompli,and I have NO doubt BofA and the craven, corrupt Fed will argue that moving the derivatives back will upset the markets. Well too bad, maybe it’s time banks learn they can no longer run roughshod over regulators. And if BofA is at that much risk that it can’t survive undoing this brazen move, that would seem to be prima facie evidence that a Dodd Frank resolution is in order.

Bill Black said that the Bloomberg editors toned down his remarks considerably. He said, “Any competent regulator would respond: “No, Hell NO!” It’s time that the public also say no, and loudly, to this new scheme to loot taxpayers and save a criminally destructive bank.

Professor Black provided a “bottom line” summary in a separate email:

1.The bank holding company (BAC) is moving troubled assets held by an entity not insured by the public (Merrill Lynch)  to the Bank of America, which is insured by the public
2. The banking rules are designed to prevent that because they are designed to protect the FDIC insurance fund (which the Treasury guarantees)
3. Any marginally competent regulator would say “No, Hell NO!”
4. The Fed, reportedly, is saying “Sure, no worries” by allowing the sale of an affiliate’s troubled assets to B of A
5. This is a really good “natural experiment” that allows us to test whether the Fed is protects the public or the uninsured and systemically dangerous institutions (the bank holding companies (BHCs))
6. We are all shocked, shocked [sarcasm] that Bernanke responded to the experiment by choosing to protect the BHC at the expense of the public.

Karl Denninger writes:

So let’s see what we have here.

Bank customer initiates a swap position with Bank.  In doing so they intentionally accept the credit risk of the institution they trade with.

Later they get antsy about perhaps not getting paid.  Bank then shifts that risk to a place where people who deposited their money and had no part of this transaction wind up backstopping it.

This effectively makes the depositor the “guarantor” of the swap ex-post-facto.

That the regulators are allowing this is an outrage.

If you’re a Bank of America customer and continue to be one you deserve whatever you get down the line, whether it comes in the form of higher fees and costs assessed upon you or something worse.

Stand Up to the Coup

Bank of America has repeatedly become insolvent due to fraud and risky bets, and repeatedly been bailed out by the government and American people. The government and banks are engineering an age of permanent bailouts for this insolvent, criminal bank (and the other too big to fails).  Remember, this is the same bank that is refusing to let people close their accounts.

This is yet another joint effort by Washington and Wall Street to screw the American people, and to trample on the rule of law.

The American people will be stuck in nightmare of a never-ending depression (yes, we are currently in a depression) and fascism (or socialism, if you prefer that term) unless we stand up to the overly-powerful Fed and the too big to fail banks.

This story from Bloomberg just hit the wires this week. Bank of America is shifting derivatives in its Merrill investment banking unit to its depository arm, which has access to the Fed discount window and is protected by the FDIC.

This means that the investment bank’s European derivatives exposure is now backstopped by U.S. taxpayers. Bank of America didn’t get regulatory approval to do this, they just did it at the request of frightened counterparties. Now the Fed and the FDIC are fighting as to whether this was sound. The Fed wants to “give relief” to the bank holding company, which is under heavy pressure.

This is a direct transfer of risk to the taxpayer done by the bank without approval by regulators and without public input. You will also read below that JP Morgan is apparently doing the same thing with $79 trillion of notional derivatives guaranteed by the FDIC and Federal Reserve.

What this means for you is that when Europe finally implodes and banks fail, U.S. taxpayers will hold the bag for trillions in CDS insurance contracts sold by Bank of America and JP Morgan. Even worse, the total exposure is unknown because Wall Street successfully lobbied during Dodd-Frank passage so that no central exchange would exist keeping track of net derivative exposure.

First folks, we are talking over $150 Trillion of exposure.  That is 10 times our GDP!  Would you give me 100% of your income for the next ten years because I need it to make up my gambling loses!  What would you say to me?  You know, the OWS call for a BANK TRANSFER DAY in early November is getting to be a really significant idea.  If the banks refuse to act in a responsible manner and the FED is refusing to discipline its children, then we have to just take their “toys” (our money) away from the bankers.  It is time for “time out” for our out of control children.  Check out your local credit unions, they are real functioning banking organizations owned and controlled by their depositors and members.  Congress will never vote our interest, so we have to vote with our bucks.

The Month of Shocktober

We have posted several Warning/Situation Updates and we will continue to do so as information dictates.  The solar surface has been relatively quiet, although a still large un-numbered solar sunspot is just beginning to rotate into view and the earth facing sun surface has #1305 and #1313 still earth facing and could still be the sources of a large CME.

In addition, the Canary Islands El Heirro volcano still bears watching.  Swarms of earthquakes are continuing sporadically and have increased in intensity and the depth of the quakes is more shallow,  both of those facts RAISES concern.  Below is the latest press release from Spanish officials.

“October 8, 2011 – CANARY ISLANDS – An intensified sustained earthquake swarm is now taking place at the Canary Islands and it appears the magma is now on the move again bubbling closer to the surface and incinerating more rock in the process. Over the last 24 hours, we’ve seen the depths of the tremors rising up to within 11 km from a depth average of about 14.5 to 15 km. The number of seismic volcanic tremors has also doubled at El Hierro since Wednesday. On Wednesday, October 5, there were 79 recorded seismic events. On Thursday, there were 160 and on Friday, October 7th, there were 177.”

Our concern over this situation is the potential for a large land mass sliding into the ocean creating a mega-tsunami directed at the East Coast of the US and South America.  The focus of this concern is that IF a tsunami were to occur, the East Coast of the Americas would have only 8-9 hours to take any preventive measures.  IF the tsunami were to occur at say midnight EDT, then most of the residents in the danger zone would be asleep, not have any communication devices on during the valuable time they would need to get to safety.

If you live in the areas of potential danger, and until this situation stabilizes, you should think about getting the information you would need in a timely fashion.  This concern is amplified by the fact that the USGS service is not even REPORTING anything on this situation.  We are recommending taking these actions:

1).  You can monitor that activity at The European-Mediterranean Seismological Center . Do so at least twice a day.

2).  As with an emergency plan, make sure you have a way to communicate with each other 24 hours a day.  So as some of you sleep, others are awake and monitoring the situation.  We can’t emphasize enough that in this particular situation, every minute will be precious.

3).  Be sure about your evacuation plan.  Again, those with the information first will be the ones who will most likely be successful in escaping and will not be the ones stuck in grid-lock.  I think you could imagine that the roads will become impassable very quickly when every coastal citizen is trying to go west and to high ground.

However, as we monitor natural dangers, we also monitor financial and political situations as well. Given the current situation in the EU concerning Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal, and the lack of action and political grid-lock in Germany, France, and to a lesser degree the UK, the collapse of the EU could occur within the next two weeks.  Based on information provided us privately, it is no longer a question of IF, only WHEN, and those in the know say it could be this week coming up (October 10-17^th).

Some would say, OK, why would this be any different than the 2008 financial event in the US?  Well, consider that the EU CANNOT “bail-out” countries like we bailed out banks.  In addition, the bastard child in the room is the world’s derivatives market.  If the EU goes down, investors would only be holding all those credit swaps, etc. which would all be exercised at once.  This is the monster.  It is a $500 Trillion monster!  To put this insanity into perspective, that is almost 10 tens the world’s GDP as estimated by the World Bank for 2010, which was just a little north of $63 Trillion!

This, simply stated, ends the world economy as we know it, and it would all unravel within a matter of 7-10 days.  Markets and banks close immediately, riots ensue within 48 hours and chaos is real for EVERYONE.  We are now elevating our watch of this situation.  Anything that would even trigger rumors at this point could tip the bus over the cliff.  While we have been writing about this since we began, we now see real events beginning to form that toxic situation that could trigger this financial tsunami and soon.

One of the major concerns are the threats being issued by the so-called “Anonymous”, the group believed responsible for kicking off the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement.  They have specifically threatened to “attack” the global electronic banking system during this period.  If the markets were forced to close because of such attack, it could be the “gunshot” that panics the herd into a stampede to “preserve” what is left in value in the market.  

We know that these situations all together seem a bit overwhelming.  It makes us step back and want to just go fishing.  However, the reality is we will survive all of this and more!  We simply want everyone to be awake and alert.  It is the LERTS that will survive and we want everyone to survive.  Too many of us have already paid the ultimate sacrifice as a result of the events unfolding.  Each loss is a loss to each and every one of us. Whether it was a soldier or civilian killed in the various wars, or the death of a protestor in Yemen, or the retired “investor” who took their own life because they lost everything, they ARE US.  Knowledge gives us the ability to remain calm, confident, and most importantly the ability to endure and continue.

What Goes Up….! Where is the Down?

A lot of people lament the lack of upward mobility in the U.S. right now and I share those sentiments. However, equally important is downward mobility. What makes the concept of America unique is not merely the concept that the poor can become rich but that the rich can become poor. It is this second part that is the most dangerous to social cohesion when it disappears. Unfortunately, the system that we have today of an unholy alliance between Wall Street, Washington D.C. and the multi-national corporations (including the military industrial complex of course) stands there holding onto all the levers of power to serve as gatekeepers of their own empires.

Consider this when we think about how the game is “rigged” right now.  From Matthew Cardinale of the
Inter Press Service on  28 Aug 2011.

Atlanta, Georga: The first-ever audit of the U.S. Federal Reserve has revealed 16 trillion dollars in secret bank bailouts and has raised more questions about the quasi-private agency’s opaque operations.   “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else,” U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, said in a statement.   The majority of loans were issues by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY).

“From late 2007 through mid-2010, Reserve Banks provided more than a trillion dollars… in emergency loans to the financial sector to address strains in credit markets and to avert failures of individual institutions believed to be a threat to the stability of the financial system,” the audit report states.  “The scale and nature of this assistance amounted to an unprecedented expansion of the Federal Reserve System’s traditional role as lender-of-last-resort to depository institutions,” according to the report.   The report notes that all the short-term, emergency loans were repaid, or are expected to be repaid.

The emergency loans included eight broad-based programs, and also provided assistance for certain individual financial institutions. The Fed provided loans to JP Morgan Chase bank to acquire Bear Stearns, a failed investment firm; provided loans to keep American International Group (AIG), a multinational insurance corporation, afloat; extended lending commitments to Bank of America and Citigroup; and purchased risky mortgage-backed securities to get them off private banks’ books.

Overall, the greatest borrowing was done by a small number of institutions. Over the three years, Citigroup borrowed a total of 2.5 trillion dollars, Morgan Stanley borrowed two trillion; Merryll Lynch, which was acquired by Bank of America, borrowed 1.9 trillion; and Bank of America borrowed 1.3 trillion.  Banks based in counties other than the U.S. also received money from the Fed, including Barclays of the United Kingdom, the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (UK), Deutsche Bank (Germany), UBS (Switzerland), Credit Suisse Group (Switzerland), Bank of Scotland (UK), BNP Paribas (France), Dexia (Belgium), Dresdner Bank (Germany), and Societe General (France).

“No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the President,” Sanders wrote.   In recent days, Bloomberg News obtained 29,346 pages of documentation from the Federal Reserve about some of these secret loans, after months of fighting in court for access to the records under the Freedom of Information Act.  Some of the financial institutions secretly receiving loans were meanwhile claiming in their public reports to have ample cash reserves, Bloomberg noted.   The Federal Reserve has neither explained how they legally justified several of the emergency loans, nor how they decided to provide assistance to certain firms but not others.

“The main problem is the lack of Congressional oversight, and the way the Fed seemed to pick winners who would be protected at any cost,” Randall Wray, professor of economics at University of Missouri- Kansas City, told IPS.   ”If such lending is not illegal, it should be. Our nation really did go through a liquidity crisis – a run on the short-term liabilities of financial institutions. There is only one way to stop a run: lend reserves without limit to all qualifying institutions. The Fed bumbled around before it finally sort of did that,” Wray said.

“But then it turned to phase two, which was to try to resolve problems of insolvency by increasing Uncle Sam’s stake in the banksters’ fiasco. That never should have been done. You close down fraudsters, period. The Fed and FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Commission) should have gone into the biggest banks immediately, replaced all top management, and should have started to resolve them,” Wray said.

For many years conventional wisdom has said that the whole world is controlled by the monied elite, or more recently by the huge multi-national corporations that seem to sometime control the very air we breathe. Now, new research by a team based in ETH-Zurich, Switzerland, has shown that what we’ve suspected all along, is apparently true. The team has uploaded their results onto the preprint server arXiv.

Using data obtained (circa 2007) from the Orbis database (a global database containing financial information on public and private companies) the team, in what is being heralded as the first of its kind, analyzed data from over 43,000 corporations, looking at both upstream and downstream connections between them all and found that when graphed, the data represented a bowtie of sorts, with the knot, or core representing just 147 entities who control nearly 40 percent of all of monetary value of transnational corporations (TNCs).

When we look to the East and watch our Arab brothers struggle against tyranny, I don’t think we connect their struggle to us.  However, I assure you that the roots of that struggle was economic slavery, not unlike we, both in the US and the EU, are rapidly marching (or is it being herded?) toward at this very minute.

As we awaken to these facts, it is apparent that the PTB, who wish to continue their “project”, are having more and more of a difficult time unfolding “their solutions” to our problems.  You know “solutions’ like raiding retirement and pension funds, eliminating worker’s unions, ending any “social programs” of any kind.

Probably the most important news story of September 7^th won’t be reported by International MSM.  No, it won’t be Obama’s speech on Jobs, nor will it be the outcome of the first games in the NFL.  It will be this.

Seething discontent in Germany over Europe’s debt crisis has spread to all the key institutions.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel no longer has enough coalition votes in the Bundestag to secure backing for Europe’s revamped rescue machinery, threatening a constitutional crisis in Germany and a fresh eruption of the euro debt saga.

Mrs. Merkel has cancelled a high-profile trip to Russia on September 7, the crucial day when the package goes to the Bundestag and the country’s constitutional court rules on the legality of the EU’s bail-out machinery.   If the court rules that the €440bn rescue fund (EFSF) breaches Treaty law or undermines German fiscal sovereignty, it risks setting off an instant brushfire across monetary union.

The seething discontent in Germany over Europe’s debt crisis has spread to all the key institutions of the state. “Hysteria is sweeping Germany ” said Klaus Regling, the EFSF’s director.  German media reported that the latest tally of votes in the Bundestag shows that 23 members from Mrs Merkel’s own coalition plan to vote against the package, including twelve of the 44 members of Bavaria’s Social Christians (CSU). This may force the Chancellor to rely on opposition votes, risking a government collapse.

Christian Wulff, Germany’s president, stunned the country last week by accusing the European Central Bank of going “far beyond its mandate” with mass purchases of Spanish and Italian debt, and warning that the Europe’s headlong rush towards fiscal union strikes at the “very core” of democracy. “Decisions have to be made in parliament in a liberal democracy. That is where legitimacy lies,” he said.

A day earlier the Bundesbank had fired its own volley, condemning the ECB’s bond purchases and warning the EU is drifting towards debt union without “democratic legitimacy” or treaty backing.  Joahannes Singhammer, leader of the CSU’s Bundestag group, accused the ECB of acting “dangerously” by jumping the gun before parliaments had voted. The ECB is implicitly acting on behalf of the rescue fund until it is ratified.

Mrs. Merkel faces mutiny even within her own Christian Democrat (CDU) family. Wolfgang Bossbach, the spokesman for internal affairs, said he would oppose the package. “I can’t vote against my own conviction,” he said.   The Bundestag is expected to decide late next month on the package, which empowers the EFSF to buy bonds pre-emptively and recapitalize banks. While the bill is likely to pass, the furious debate leaves no doubt that Germany will resist moves to boost the EFSF’s firepower yet further. Most City banks say the fund needs €2 trillion to stop the crisis engulfing Spain and Italy.   Mrs. Merkel’s aides say she is facing “war on every front”. The next month will decide her future, Germany’s destiny, and the fate of monetary union.

I make all these points because we must think clearly and precisely now.  No politics, nor economic religion, just fix this now, and we can.  We start by taking some people DOWN.  Start to put some balance back into the equation.  I think the audit of the FED would be an excellent place to start that quest.

Secondly, we must be informed voters and place candidates that understand clearly the goals of restoring balance into our global economy through prudent but thorough regulatory changes.  That must, by its nature, start with the political process elements of our societies.   I cannot think of anything more important to you on a personal basis than this.

 

A Warning to Those Who Have Been Investing in Gold and Silver

I have written several articles on how tightly held the REAL trading in gold and silver really is, and how the small investors don’t have a chance to “move” in the market.  I am sure a lot of my readers have been investing in gold and silver, and why not look where the market is going.  But Caveat Emptor!

If you do not have PHYSICAL possession of the gold and silver you think you have invested in, you may have already been screwed big time.  If you google “gold and silver oversubscription” today, you will get over 66,000 “hits”.  Almost every gold and silver commodities vessels are grossly oversold.  What that means in very simple terms, the “certificate” you are holding that says you own “X” amount of gold or silver may NOT be redeemable in physical gold and silver if you demand it.

When we hit the hyperinflation panic point, and that is say oh RIGHT NOW!, then everyone will scramble to get their gold and silver that is NOT there.  If you have been paying to “STORE” your gold and silver with the brokerage firm, you are still in that boat.  You guys are the real smucks to these slick trading firms because not only did you pay in advance for your “bullion”, you also paid “storage fees” for stuff that doesn’t really exist!

If you think I am kidding, try and get physical delivery of your gold or silver and see what happens next.  I want you to consider what some of the biggest Hedge Fund Investors are quietly doing behind your backs and how the MSM is complicit in keeping everything on the “QT”.  The following move was made today by The University of Texas Investment Management Co., the second-largest U.S. academic endowment.

They took delivery of almost $1 billion in gold bullion and is storing the bars in a New York vault, according to the fund’s board.  The fund, whose $19.9 billion in assets ranked it only behind Harvard University’s endowment as of August, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, added about $500 million in gold investments to an existing stake last year, said Bruce Zimmerman, the endowment’s chief executive officer. The holdings are worth about $987 million, based on yesterday’s closing price of $1,486 an ounce for Comex futures.

The decision to turn the fund’s investment into gold bars was influenced by Kyle Bass, a Dallas hedge fund manager and member of the endowment’s board, Zimmerman said at its annual meeting on April 14. Bass made $500 million on the U.S. subprime-mortgage collapse.

“Central banks are printing more money than they ever have, so what’s the value of money in terms of purchases of goods and services,” Bass said yesterday in a telephone interview. “I look at gold as just another currency that they can’t print any more of.”

Also consider this: Belarus’ central bank has stopped selling gold to local retail customers for Belarussian roubles, it said on Friday, after demand for precious metals soared due to expectations of a currency devaluation.  The bank did not explain its decision.  Belarus is in talks with Russia on a $3 billion bailout package that Minsk hopes will help it avoid a painful devaluation of the rouble and offset the large current account deficit.

Belarussians bought 470 kilograms of gold from the central bank last month, up from 209 kilograms in January and February together, as they sought to protect their savings. Analysts say that Belarus will have to eventually devalue the rouble by about 20-30 percent even if it receives aid from Moscow. However, the central bank has said it would not make any such moves until late April.

What this means is we have reached the tipping point, I believe, that I have been warning everyone about for weeks now.  Because the central banks are trying to print their way out of the crisis we are in, currencies around the world are headed for huge devaluations and within, I think, a matter of days.  I am not talking about some small corrections in currency valuations, but more in the range of 20 or 30%!

So my good friends, I would advise( friendly advice, not investment advice, as I am not an investment professional) you to really pay attention and if you are exposed here, get your gold or silver in your own hands.  The value of these commodities could go up even higher, but if you don’t physically possess them you are a lamb ready for slaughter.  I also wouldn’t be surprised if governments globally don’t start trying to confiscate privately held gold and silver in the near future.  It has happened before and it can happen again.  As I said Caveat Emptor!

Finally A Step in the Right Direction

As a followup to my previous post calling out the fact that not one single bankster or Wall Street financial thug has been prosecuted for the giant fraud and ponzi schemes foisted on the world’s economy, it now appears that at least some in CONgress are beginning to fear the wrath of the people.  This is a start, but I suspect it will still be a long time before any of these crooks actually see jail time.  We all can help the process a bit by letting our Representatives and Senators that we demand justice.  They either do the right thing or we will do the right thing come next election.

This just released:

“They clearly misled their clients and they misled the Congress,”  Senator Levin added, announcing that he will recommend that his panel refer all of the Goldman executives who testified before the committee for criminal prosecution by the Justice Department and for sanctions by the SEC for violations of securities laws.

This is a fairly detailed and lengthy piece by Shahien Nasiripour.  It is worth reading in full at its source.  The only thing missing from Levin’s report is a perjury recommendation for Henry Paulson who lied before Congress repeatedly during various testimony given in 2007 and 2008 – see the right column of this website to watch his lies for yourself. Here’s the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/14/goldman-financial-crisis-prosecution_n_848994.html

Huff Po

WASHINGTON — Goldman Sachs executives deceived clients in order to profit off the brewing financial crisis and then misled Congress when asked to explain their actions, concluded a top lawmaker who led a two-year investigation into Wall Street’s role in the meltdown.

Carl Levin, chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, will recommend that Goldman executives who testified before his panel, including chairman and chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, be referred to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution, the Michigan Democrat announced Wednesday. Members of the subcommittee will now deliberate Levin’s proposal.

A Goldman spokesman said its executives were truthful in their testimony, adding that the firm disagreed with many of the panel’s conclusions.

Two and a half years after a historic crisis that has yielded not a single criminal conviction of anyone who played a leading role in causing it, the prosecution of such a high-profile Wall Street executive may satisfy the public’s desire to see culprits brought to justice. Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission settled a lawsuit it had brought against Goldman.

But the firm was just one target of a sweeping, 639-page report by the Senate panel into the causes of the crisis. Hardly a fluke occurrence, the meltdown was the product of a deeply corrupt financial system, one fueled by profit-hungry banks that deceived their clients, and overseen by lax regulators who were complicit in the firms’ chronic abuse of the most fundamental rules of the game, the report concludes.

The investigation found a “financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing,” Levin said.

More than any other government report produced in the wake of the crisis, this account names names, blaming specific people and institutions: Goldman Sachs, Washington Mutual, Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s, the Office of Thrift Supervision and others. It targets four types of institutions, all of which it says played key roles in causing the crisis: mortgage lenders that offered prospective homeowners booby-trapped loans; regulators that were paid by the institutions they were regulating and cooperated in widespread deception; rating agencies that gave seals of approval to products they knew to be especially risky, all in the pursuit of market share; and Wall Street banks that duped investors into buying securities that only the insiders knew were destined to go bad.

“They clearly misled their clients and they misled the Congress,” he added, announcing that he will recommend that his panel refer all of the Goldman executives who testified before the committee for possible criminal prosecution by the Justice Department and for sanctions by the SEC for violations of securities laws.

This is a very rare time when YOU can really make a difference in the world.  Everybody call, write, email your Representatives and Senators and demand that they not only support the committee on this effort, but that they also continue hound the Justice Department to fully, completely, and swiftly investigate and prosecute these crooks.  These crooks have all but destroyed our future with their greed.  WE WANT OUR MONEY BACK!!!!

Budgets Lies, Manipulation, and Other Criminal Distortions

As the US faces massive deficits and the wealthy continue to raid both the Federal and State coffers unchecked.  As the social “safety net” is ripped to shreds and the assault continues on the middle class globally.  The most defenseless and poor of the world are bearing the brunt of this unchecked greed, power, and hubris, the facts are most grossly distorted.

In the US, but in other countries as well, the mantra is the social programs will be the downfall of the fiscal equation and are the cause of the current financial crisis.  In the US, it is Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare will be the ruin of life as we know it.  That is the biggest lie of all!

Consider this from Sherwood Ross who heads a public relations firm “for good causes” and also runs the Anti-War News Service.  You can reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com if you would like more details.

“As long as the $1.2-trillion annual budget for the military-security complex is off limits (to cutting), nothing can be done about the US budget deficit except to renege on obligations to the elderly, confiscate private assets (which includes the physical gold and silver hoarding that is afoot)or print enough money to inflate away all debts,” Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Treasury Secretary under President Reagan warns.

In an article titled “Stealing from Social Security to Pay for Wars and Bailouts,” published in the April issue of the “Rock Creek Free Press” of Washington, D.C., Roberts says that Republicans are calling Social Security and Medicare “entitlements”—making them sound like welfare—when, in fact, workers over their lifetimes have contributed 15 percent of all their earnings to the payroll tax that funds these benefits and have every right to them.

And far from Social Security being in the red, between 1984 and 2009, Roberts writes, “the American people contributed $2-trillion…more to Social Security and Medicare in payroll taxes than was paid out in benefits” but “the government stole” that sum to fund wars and pork-barrel projects!

What’s more, under one realistic estimate, far from crashing into the red, “Social Security (OASDI) will have produced surplus revenues of $31.6-trillion by 2085, Roberts says.

Americans, apparently, are unaware of how the federal government’s illegal, foreign wars sap the economy and rob every household. The Iraq war cost alone is 20 percent of the size of last year’s entire U.S. economy. Instead of investing that sum at home, “which would have produced income and jobs growth and solvency for state and local governments, the US government wasted the equivalent of 20% of the economy in 2010 in blowing up infrastructure and people in foreign lands,” Roberts says.

“The US government spent a huge sum of money committing war crimes, while millions of Americans were thrown out of their jobs and foreclosed out of their homes,” he added. Viewed another way, the Pentagon continues to expand and put people to work to modernize its 700-800 bases abroad in order to dominate every corner of the globe while public works and public employment in America are going into the toilet.

“When short-term and long-term discouraged workers are added …the US has an unemployment rate of 22%,” Robert says. A country with that large a percentage out of work “has a shrunken tax base and feeble consumer purchasing power.”

The U.S. media, he claims, is only reporting one-third of the real cost of the wars, leaving out the sums needed for “lifelong care for the wounded and maimed, the cost of lifelong military pensions of those who fought in the wars, the replacement costs of the destroyed equipment, the opportunity cost of the resources wasted in war, and other costs.”

President Obama’s budget, if passed, doesn’t reduce the deficit over the next 10 years by enough to cover the projected deficit in the fiscal year 2012 budget alone, the financial authority writes. “Indeed, the deficits are likely to be substantially larger than forecast,” as the military-industrial complex “is more powerful than ever and shows no inclination to halt the wars for US hegemony,” Roberts says.

Add to this the fact that the FED is sitting on its largest excess reserve in history Federal Reserve Aggregate Reserves, over $1.4 Trillion dollars and corporate cash reserves are at historical levels, one really must start questioning what is really afoot here.

Understanding this reality exposes the PTB and their political hacks for what they really are up to in this effort to strip governments and make them appear inept.  Don’t buy it.

If you look at the so-called “budget crisis” in Wisconsin, New Jersey, etc, these so-called large deficits are equal to the tax breaks passed into law for corporations and the wealthy.  Just do the math. Just do the math.

There is no question the US government will have ongoing deficits of $1.3 to $2.2 trillion annually for some time to come. If this is the case there is no chance of the debt of government ever being paid. That means official devaluation and default, although it will be done jointly by many countries. The US debt limit will be raised. The Republicans are playing politics and remember the same group of thieves overwhelmingly controls both parties. It will also be interesting to see how, before the end of the year, the Treasury places more than $2 trillion in bonds. We bet the Fed buys about $1.7 trillion. This has to push up real interest rates by ½% to ¾% by the end of the year and the same should happen in 2012. Foreigners and even PIMCO does not want to purchase Treasury bonds, notes and bills. In order to entice such buyers, yields will have to move up a point now and a point later. As part of that sequence of actions by buyers quantitative easing would have to end, as well as stimulus, and budget deficits would have to be cut realistically, not by $33 billion paltry dollars. Incidentally GDP growth under those circumstances would be minus 3 to minus 6 percent. The Fed has little trouble holding up and manipulating the short end of the bond market, but the long end is another matter. It is not only QE2 and manipulation, but also the Fed’s continuing to purchase CDO’s and MBS, which are toxic waste from banks to get the debt off of banks’ books and to liquefy them. The purchase of US dollar denominated bonds, especially Treasuries, is coming to an end. We cannot expect the Fed to continue indefinitely to do what it is doing. It can only end in hyperinflation. We might add that JPMorgan Chase soon will forge a civil settlement concerning fraud relating to CDOs and MBS. Again no jail time; it is a national disgrace. Those people should have been prosecuted criminally. As you can see money buys everything. If QE3 is implemented, and we believe it will be, classical economics says the result, hyperinflation, is inevitable.

I would contend hyperinflation is already here, given the price of oil and food commodities.  These are the factors that is flaming the fire of global revolution, which will soon be in a town near you.  There is an ancient saying that states, “if a man cannot choose the manner of his living, he will choose the manner and time of his death.”

There is time, very little time, but still time to wake up as a people and demand fiscal responsibility and regulations; time to legislate a re-distribution of the wealth that has been illegally taken from the people.  The time has come to begin the criminal investigation of those banksters, politicians and lobbyists who have perpetrated this fraud and corruption on the people of the world.

Finally, Maybe Some Justice.

As we wrote in this blog over a year ago, it is certainly odd that not one banker, hedge fund manager (real hedge fund managers, not dear Bernie’s ponzi scheme), or one regulator, or member or employee of the Fed has been indicted for criminal behavior or been sued for neglect, unless you count the $550 million settlement by Goldman Sachs to avoid a criminal investigation.  At least we know the going price for “sticky” legal problems of that magnitude to get “resolved”.

I suggested then that the entire blue pinstriped suit bankster crowd all get projected against the RICO Act because I suspect they would test “positive.  What do you think?  Well, we might just get a chance to see that happen.  All I can say is finally someone with some guts. I am speaking of Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com.

Speaking on the Salt TV Network recently, President and CEO of Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) Patrick Byrne referred to his company as “bold” and revealed that, in November 2010, after four years of fighting, a judge forced Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) to turn over some documents that prompted Overstock to re-file its suit against Goldman as a RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations] action. The case went before a hearing and it has been approved.

“The laws that got written in the ’80s to allow the feds to go after organized crime – the lawyers can now look at what they did,” said Byrne. “There is nothing about RICO that says you have got to use a gun. This was a highly organized crime.”

Byrne went on to say that he feels Americans are living in an oligarchy. “There are two power centers in this country – Wall Street and Washington D.C., and Wall Street has really got Washington D.C. under its thumb,” said Byrne. “Five years ago, people thought I was a lunatic to say that, and now it is trivially obvious. That means that you can’t count on Washington. You cannot count on the regulators, you cannot count on the Senate Banking Committee, and you cannot count on the New York-based financial press. The only thing that is going to fix this is to get them in front of 12 Americans in a jury room. That is the only thing they cannot buy in America.”

The case will be heard before a jury on December 5, 2011. “It is going to be the OJ Simpson trial of the financial world,” said Byrne. “It will be heard in California, in San Francisco. It will be exciting. I have said publically that I will not settle. It would be treason for me to settle. It would be like asking a Jewish person, how much would you settle with Hitler for? There is really no number. It is not that complicated a case. I am hearing that it is only going to take a few weeks. It is very simple. There are emails and a bunch of data – it is just about presenting it all to a jury.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/03/16/benzinga930498.DTL#ixzz1H7hfkBzh

Goldman Sachs’s opportunistic moves do not always pan out. Take Litton Loan Servicing which Goldman bought in 2007 when it was trying to obtain as many sub-prime mortgages as it could in order to concoct those CDOs that it foisted on unsuspecting buyers before the financial meltdown in 2008. Goldman Sachs is now considering selling this company.

I do not wonder why they are selling it: Litton serviced $9.7 billion in mortgages and had a delinquency rate of 43% in 2009. Goldman Sachs halted 23,000 foreclosures in order “to sort out affidavits that were signed without a review of the documentation.”

Goldman Sachs’s actions surrounding Litton lie at the heart of the fraud that Goldman Sachs perpetrated, not only on the homeowners of the US but also on the pensions and savings funds that bought the highly rated CDOs that Goldman Sachs touted.

Goldman Sachs had to buy a less-than-sterling company in the hopes of keeping its CDOs rolling along and raking in the money but Litton proved to be a horror show for hundreds of the homeowners who were caught in its snare. Customers who were unfortunate enough to buy their mortgages through Litton have a great deal to complain about. See the hundreds of complaints against Litton listed here.

So there are both ends of the string, now it is up to the courts to unravel the knots to determine if indeed Goldman Sachs conspired to defraud investors.  [you are supposed to looked shocked here] This show will start in San Francisco on December 5^th.  I’ll bring the popcorn, you can get the sodas, cause this is going to be a really good show!  I have visions of little rats jumping ship!

The Insanity on the Currency Warfront

As I have chronicled the global financial meltdown, I have been amazed at the number of economists, traders, and politicians that seem to be in complete denial of the facts of the current crisis and at each step either they have reacted in exactly the opposite manner required to respond to the crisis, or they have failed to act at all for self-centered political reasons.  Some examples include banks sitting on huge cash reserves instead of stimulating the economy, the US CONgress adding $1.3 trillion in new debt with tax cuts, central banks everywhere printing money willy-nilly without regard to the consequences. But most of all, we, as citizens and the main participants in the economy merrily skipping down the road without a care in the world.  That is until you are homeless and hungry, then the feelings are anger and despair.

Then the other day, I had a conversation with an old friend who was a forensic psychologist for one of the US Government alphabet agencies.  He is retired now, but his job was a “profiler”.  He would investigate crimes and other “stuff” to help the agents understand the make-up of the criminal or spy and maybe predict “next” moves.  When I lamented about those around me who I love and respect being in complete denial as to the grave nature of the current economic situation, he explained that this is a very natural response to extreme crisis and distress.  It is called Normalcy Bias.

In short, when humans are faced with natural disasters or a man-made crisis that overwhelms them, they simply slip into complete denial.  Logic and intelligence functions stop.  He pointed out some startling examples.  Consider this.  In Germany in 1937 there were nearly 550,000 Jews.  Long established the Jewish German community was rift with businessmen, intelligentsia, professional people who were just beginning to enjoy a good life again after recovering from World War One.

As Hitler rose to power with his hate mongering and obsession with the Jewish community, it became very apparent that the Jewish community was facing more and more injustices.  Property seizures, business taxed at 100%, lose of civil rights, street beatings by the Brown Shirts, still they did not understand the danger they were in and believed being rational and calm would weather them through the storm.  Only about 100,000 Jews fled in time.  We know the tragic end to that story.

However, things are heating up on the currency warfront.  This week saw many assaults on the US Dollar.  Let me stop here and talk some basics.  Currently the US policy and the FED policy simply has been to print more money.  The US enjoys a unique position when it comes to currency because the US dollar is the world’s transactional currency.  For example, if Germany wishes to buy oil, it must first convert Euros to Dollars to purchase the oil.

However, keeping the dollar as the global transactional currency only lasts as long in the faith of the value of the dollar remains in the rest of the world.  The US actions of the last week, both at the FED and CONgress have gone a long way to weaken that faith.  What is happening is both countries and companies are choosing to use other methods to transact business.

So we are beginning to see news items like this. In spite of its infancy, interest in the offshore renminbi market is growing quickly. Caterpillar, the US-based maker of earth-moving equipment, launched a Rmb1bn ($150m) bond issue last month, making it the second multinational to tap the market, following an August issue by McDonald’s, the fast-food chain.

What makes these bond issues important is that the offshore renminbi market is much more than just a new avenue for debt financing – it is one of the core components in a plan to internationalize the Chinese currency. The process will be a slow one, with more baby steps than giant leaps, and it is by no means assured that the renminbi – also known as the yuan – will forge a decisive international role. But it is one that could have a huge long-term impact on trade, the global financial system and even international politics.

If the plan works, the renminbi could become the main currency for doing business in Asia, the world’s most economically dynamic region, and in the long run it could become a significant part of the reserves of the world’s central banks. Indeed, some Chinese officials have already called for the renminbi to be included in the International Monetary Fund’s basket The timing is also full of portents. The renminbi is starting to go global just as the future of the euro and the dollar is looking increasingly uncertain. Eventually the shift could have an impact on the ability of the US to borrow overseas in its own currency. In China, some have taken to calling their currency the hongbi, or “redback”, to rival America’s greenback – a moniker that gives a flavour of the geopolitical undercurrents.

“We may be on the verge of a financial revolution of truly epic proportions,” says Qu Hongbin, China economist at HSBC, one of the banks pushing the renminbi to its corporate clients. “The world economy is, slowly but surely, moving from greenbacks to redbacks.”of main currencies.

So even though the Fed has flooded the credit markets with cash, spreads haven’t budged because banks don’t know who is still solvent and who is not. This uncertainty, says Ms. Schwartz, is “the basic problem in the credit market. Lending freezes up when lenders are uncertain that would-be borrowers have the resources to repay them. So to assume that the whole problem is inadequate liquidity bypasses the real issue.”

Today, the banks have a problem on the asset side of their ledgers — “all these exotic securities that the market does not know how to value.” “Why are they ‘toxic’?” Ms. Schwartz asks. “They’re toxic because you cannot sell them, you don’t know what they’re worth, your balance sheet is not credible and the whole market freezes up. We don’t know whom to lend to because we don’t know who is sound. So if you could get rid of them, that would be an improvement.”

And economics professor and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wrote in 2008:

The underlying problem isn’t a liquidity problem. As I’ve noted elsewhere, the problem is that lenders and investors don’t trust they’ll get their money back because no one trusts that the numbers that purport to value securities are anything but wishful thinking. The trouble, in a nutshell, is that the financial entrepreneurship of recent years — the derivatives, credit default swaps, collateralized debt instruments, and so on — has undermined all notion of true value.

What everyone here is cryptically referring to is the credit derivatives and credit swap facilities which no one knows the value of when conducting a transaction.  Indeed only nine major banks control this $1 quadrillion market.  No I didn’t make a mistake, I said $1 quadrillion! We were just getting our heads around what a trillion really meant.  Here is the fundamental problem with this situation. $1 quadrillion represents about 20 times the Global GDP!  This is pure insanity.  There is no other way to describe what is going on right now.

Economists focus on the whole notion of incentives. People have an incentive sometimes to behave badly, because they can make more money if they can cheat. If our economic system is going to work then we have to make sure that what they gain when they cheat is offset by a system of penalties.

Wall Street insider and New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin writes:

“They will pick on minor misdemeanors by individual market participants,” said David Einhorn, the hedge fund manager who was among the Cassandras before the financial crisis. To Mr. Einhorn, the government is “not willing to take on significant misbehavior by sizable” firms. “But since there have been almost no big prosecutions, there’s very little evidence that it has stopped bad actors from behaving badly.”

Indeed, polls show that people no longer trust our economic “leaders”. See this and this. A psychologist wrote an essay published by the Wharton School of Business arguing that restoring trust is the key to recovery, and that trust cannot be restored until wrongdoers are held accountable.

Government regulators know this – or at least pay lip service to it – as well. For example, as the Director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division told Congress:

Recovery from the fallout of the financial crisis requires important efforts on various fronts, and vigorous enforcement is an essential component, as aggressive and even-handed enforcement will meet the public’s fair expectation that those whose violations of the law caused severe loss and hardship will be held accountable. And vigorous law enforcement efforts will help vindicate the principles that are fundamental to the fair and proper functioning of our markets: that no one should have an unjust advantage in our markets; that investors have a right to disclosure that complies with the federal securities laws; and that there is a level playing field for all investors.

If people don’t trust their government to enforce the law, government will become more and more impotent in addressing our economic problems. If government leaders take action, the market will not necessarily respond as expected. When government leaders make optimistic statements about the economy, people will no longer believe them.

Then also on the warfront, China and Russia announced they will trade in their own currencies.  In addition, the IMF recently released a report suggesting that given the weakness of the Euro and the Dollar, we should be moving toward a global central bank and a single global currency, which they are calling the Bancor. Several banks no longer are accepting deposits in dollars.

What does this really mean and why should you care about it.  I have one word for you, hyperinflation.  The world is currently pushing back on US policies and are demanding that either the US deal effectively with the deficit or devalue the dollar.  When the pressure gets strong enough, and I believe that could be as soon as the next three months, the US will acquiesce and devalue the dollar by as much as 40%.

This will happen suddenly and overnight!  You will wake up to $8 gas, $5 bread, a 4000 point dip in the Dow and events will rapidly cascade from there to riots in the streets of the US just as we have riots now in Ireland, Greece, Italy, France, and Britain.  The war is reaching fever pitch.  Pay close attention now because bunker time may not be far off.

Follow Up on the Silver Market Manipulations

On March 27^th and March 29^th I presented materials concerning evidence that was presented to the CFTC concerning whistle-blower and London trader Andrew Maguire and his various emails to Eliud Ramirez, a senior investigator for the CFTC‘s Enforcement Division.  These emails contained evidence that reported the illegal manipulation of the silver market by traders at JP Morgan Chase. Maguire told the CFTC how silver traders at JP Morgan Chase openly bragged about their exploits - including how they sent a signal to the market in advance so that other traders could make a profit during price suppression episodes. Traders would recognize these signals and would make money shorting precious metals alongside JP Morgan Chase.  Maguire explained to the CFTC how there would routinely be market manipulations at the time of option expires, during non-farm payroll data releases, during commodities exchange contract rollovers, as well as at other times if it was deemed necessary.

The video of the hearing in which this evidence was presented clearly demonstrates that the CFTC had no interest in pursuing this issue.  We were outraged when we learned a few days later Maguire and his wife were run down by an automobile shortly after Maguire’s return to London.  They are fine now. While it seems the CFTC is not going to pursue these allegations of racketeering, several investors are pursuing lawsuits to uncover the evidence.

According to  Bloomberg News, HSBC Holdings Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were accused in an investor’s lawsuit of placing “spoof” trading orders to manipulate silver futures and options prices in violation of U.S. antitrust law.

The investor, Peter Laskaris, alleges that starting in March 2008, the banks colluded to suppress silver futures so that call options, or the right to buy, would decline, and put options for the right to sell would increase, according to the complaint filed yesterday in federal court in Manhattan. The collusion was also intended to maintain prices at levels at which some options would expire as worthless, Laskaris claims.

The banks placed so-called spoof trading orders, or the “submission of a large order which is not executed but influences prices and is then withdrawn before it reasonably can be executed,” according to the complaint.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission began probing allegations of price manipulation in the silver futures market in September 2008. At a hearing in Washington on Oct. 27, CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said there have been “fraudulent efforts to persuade and deviously control” silver prices and that violators should be prosecuted.  Joseph Evangelisti, a spokesman for New York-based JPMorgan, declined to comment. Juanita Gutierrez, a spokeswoman for London-based HSBC, also declined to comment.

A separate, similar complaint filed yesterday on behalf of investor Brian Beatty, and naming the same banks as defendants, claims a whistleblower contacted the CFTC last year and reported the banks’ conspiracy to suppress prices of silver futures to profit from “enormous” short positions in silver futures.

The banks reduced their collusive trading and their holdings in the futures market after a government investigation of silver futures manipulation began in March, according to the complaint filed by Laskaris, which seeks class-action status. Since the banks cut back on their silver futures trading, prices have increased about 50 percent, the suit alleges.

“These price changes directly result, at least in one substantial part, from defendants’ reduction in their concentration and other reductions of their unlawful activities in the silver markets since the government investigation,” according to the Laskaris complaint.

What is truly sad here is that the CFTC has utterly failed to act, even when the evidence was overwhelming as to what banks were conducting the fraudulent trading practices, down to the specific employee names.  Even when Maguire even in one email predicted what was GOING to happen on the next trading cycle and exactly what he said happened.  Even when pressured, the banks pulled back and the price of silver found it true value by 50%!

Our economic reality is still tied to these banksters and their unabashed audacious belief they are in charge.  Real global financial reform is the ONLY action that is going to be effective.  Our political involvement should extend well beyond the mid-term elections in the US and the recent elections in the UK and the EU.

Every one of these governments is or will soon ask us all to suck up it one more time.  Our collective response should be sure, just as soon as you reign in the bankers and fix the causes of the whole damn thing in the first place.  I just think nothing less will have a chance of working within the next few years.

The Decrees of Fate are Many but the Decrees of Destiny are Few

Destiny can be likened to travelling to a distant city whether or not you wish to make the trip. The way the man gets to the city is his only choice and therefore whatever occurs as a result of his decision is where fate comes in.

When I contemplate all that I am currently observing in the world with wars, natural disasters, and economic hardships, I think about us.  I mean the collective “US”. WE, as mankind have a destiny.  We might not know the ultimate destiny, but we all sense we are moving toward something more.  We sense when we are not moving forward to that destiny, as we collectively sense now.  We have lost what we call  “our spirit” or the “spirit of mankind.”  More realistically we can say it is the collective aspirations of all men.  This universal inspiration sets us apart from all other creatures we are aware of in existence.

I wonder how we allowed ourselves to make the choices we have made or are making.  Would are ancient ancestors look with pride at how far we have progressed or will they be saddened that we are still at war, or that there are still far too many of us hungry, sick, or marred in poverty and victimized on a daily basis?

I also wonder that if our current situation is the decrees of fate that has resulted from the choices we have made, then why do we feel so powerless to change those choices?  Let’s be honest here.  On an individual basis, we all are sickened at how many of our finest young men and women are dying in distant wars we know little about and yet as individuals we do nothing more than lip service on occasion to change it. Why?

We all know that a very few have a vastly disproportionate amount of the collective wealth and they are amassing even more everyday and we know they are not using their wealth in any meaningful way for the betterment of all.  Yet we allow them the continued privilege that such wealth generates.  Why?

I understand the wisdom that a man realizes more readily the depth of his soul when confronted with disaster than while sitting in the lap of luxury, but where are WE right now?  For me it came down to some pretty basic stuff.  Do I really have a soul and do I really have a destiny?  For me, the answer to both questions is yes. While trials and tribulations are the tuition of a soul, we have choices, choices as individuals and collective choices.

I feel I am on fairly solid ground here.  This has nothing to do with religious dogma or belief systems.  I don’t pretend to have even the slightest clue to the “TRUTH”.  I think even most agnostics or atheists you would meet would agree that you cannot rule out the possibilities of some sort of eternal  or dimensional existence.

So why am I rambling about this now?  Is it too much coffee or not enough sleep?  No, it’s the stories of people having their retirement plans so impacted that they must continue to work well past 65, or 4500 children dying every minute of starvation or disease.  It is the agony and pain of women, children, and the elderly caught in the vise grips of war and conflict.  It is the deterioration of our systems of education and infrastructure.  It is 2 million families that will be thrown from their homes in just America this year.

Can WE not do better than this?  What is really stopping us from drinking from the Chalice of Fulfillment?  When will these unnecessary hardships and suffering actually become intolerable to us?  Please do not misunderstand what I am trying to say, I really don’t have any of the answers, only the questions.

I know it is easier for the soul in each of us to devolve rather than evolve, but it seems we are almost severed from that which we call the “spirit of man”.  That same spirit that created England and the Magna Carta.  The same spirit that sparked the French and American Revolution. The same spirit that allowed the world to survive two major global wars.

It seems to me that we should re-empower OURSELVES as individuals. We need to reconnect to our spirit of who we are and then collectively we need to clean this mess up pronto.  What say you?