









Posted on 18th January 2013 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues
Federal Reserve, leaking info to banks, Tim Geithner, Turbo Tax
Do you really think the Federal Reserve is looking out for your best interests?
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/18/2013 16:05 -0500
On August 17, 2007, the Fed’s Board of Governors announced a key change to primary credit lending terms, whereby the discount rate was cut by 50 bp — to 5.75% from 6.25% — and the term of loans was extended from overnight to up to thirty days. This reduced the spread of the primary credit rate over the fed funds rate from 100 basis points to 50 basis points. News of the emergency measure was supposed to be kept secret from market participants as it was substantially market moving. It wasn’t. And just when we thought our opinion of the outgoing Treasury Secretary and former NY Fed head Tim Geithner, whose TurboTax incompetence is now legendary, couldn’t get lower, it got lower. Much lower.
From the August 16, 2007 transcript (page 13 of 37) of the conference call preceding this announcement.
MR. LACKER. If I could just follow up on that, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Yes, go ahead.
MR. LACKER. Vice Chairman Geithner, did you say that [the banks] are unaware of what we’re considering or what we might be doing with the discount rate?
VICE CHAIRMAN GEITHNER. Yes.
MR. LACKER. Vice Chairman Geithner, I spoke with Ken Lewis, President and CEO of Bank of America, this afternoon, and he said that he appreciated what Tim Geithner was arranging by way of changes in the discount facility. So my information is different from that.
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead, Vice Chairman Geithner.
VICE CHAIRMAN GEITHNER. Well, I cannot speak for Ken Lewis, but I think they have sought to see whether they could understand a little more clearly the scope of their rights and our current policy with respect to the window. The only thing I’ve done is to try to help them understand—and I’m sure that’s been true across the System—what the scope of that is because these people generally don’t use the window and they don’t really understand in some sense what it’s about.
At least we now know who the bankers’ mole on the FOMC was before, as gratitude for his services, he was promoted to Treasury Secretary of the US. Because if he leaked one, he leaked them all.
h/t Manal
Posted on 3rd January 2013 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues
resigning, Tim Geithner, Turbo Tax
The heartbreaking announcement and a pictorial tribute to Turbo Tax Timmy.










Posted on 3rd December 2012 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues
a few good men, Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitler, Aldous Huxley, Bangladesh, Ben Bernanke, BLS, China, CNBC, CPI, Edward Bernays, entitlements, Federal Reserve, fiscal cliff, Fox News, GDP, George Carlin, Harald Bell Wright, Inflation, Keynesianism, Krugman, Kyle Bass, Lady Gaga, Lindsey Lohan, median household income, Mein Kampf, Middle class, MSNBC, Obama, People of Wal-Mart, Propaganda, real wages, Rogoff & Reinhart, Savings rate, Tim Geithner, truth, Wall street bankers, war, war on terror
“Eyes blinded by the fog of things
cannot see truth.
Ears deafened by the din of things
cannot hear truth.
Brains bewildered by the whirl of things
cannot think truth.
Hearts deadened by the weight of things
cannot feel truth.
Throats choked by the dust of things
cannot speak truth.”
― Harald Bell Wright – The Uncrowned King

I consider myself a seeker of truth. It isn’t easy finding it in todays’ world. In an alternate version of the famous scene from A Few Good Men, I picture myself telling Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner that I want the truth and his angry truthful response:
“Son, we live in a world that has Wall Street banks, and those banks have to be guarded by puppet politicians in Washington D.C. with lobbyist written laws and Madison Avenue PR maggots with media propaganda. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Representative Paul? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the average middle class American family, and you curse the ruling oligarchs. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That the death of the American middle class, while tragic, probably saved the bonuses of thousands of Wall Street bankers. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, increases the wealth of these same bankers who destroyed the worldwide economic system in 2008. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about in the food bank line, you want me on Wall Street, you need me on Wall Street. We use words like derivative, fiscal stimulus, quantitative easing. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent syphoning off the wealth of the nation. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very debt that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up 1000 shares of Apple, and hope our high frequency trading supercomputers can ramp the market for a while longer. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.”
I find myself more amazed than ever at the ability of those in power to lie, misinform and obfuscate the truth, while millions of Americans willfully choose to be ignorant of the truth and yearn to be misled. It’s a match made in heaven. Acknowledging the truth of our society’s descent from a country of hard working, self-reliant, charitable, civic minded citizens into the abyss of entitled, dependent, greedy, materialistic consumers is unacceptable to the slave owners and the slaves. We can’t handle the truth because that would require critical thought, hard choices, sacrifice, and dealing with the reality of an unsustainable economic and societal model. It’s much easier to believe the big lies that allow us to sleep at night. The concept of lying to the masses and using propaganda techniques to manipulate and form public opinion really took hold in the 1920s and have been perfected by the powerful ruling elite that control the reins of finance, government and mass media.
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
Adolf Hitler understood the power of the big lie over the ignorant masses who want to believe:
“All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true within itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.” – Adolf Hitler – Mein Kampf
We are all liars. We lie to friends, family and co-workers. We convince ourselves they are only small lies and just protect others from being hurt. We would rather be lied to than face the blunt truth about our deficiencies, shortcomings and failures. Willfully believing mistruths allows a person to become dependent upon those promulgating the mistruths. It relieves them of their responsibility to act upon the knowledge that something is wrong and must be fixed. It is a cowardly path to ultimate servitude and destruction. The German people chose this path in the 1930s and the American people have chosen a similar and ultimately destructive path today. The United States Office of Strategic Services prepared a psychological profile report during the war describing Adolf Hitler’s method for controlling the minds of the German masses:
“His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”
America’s corruptible politicians, greedy corporate chieftains, criminal banking overlords, and despicable media manipulators all learned the sordid lessons of mass propaganda from the masters. Our willingness to lie and be lied to set us up to be manipulated by those who understood the mass psychology of a nation. Goebbels and Hitler were heavily influenced by the father of propaganda – Edward Bernays. He and his disciples are professional poisoners of the public mind, exploiters of public foolishness and ignorance, and never allow truth to interfere with a good story. What master manipulators realized is that it is easier to change the attitude of millions than the attitude of one man. By analyzing and understanding the process and motives of how the group mind works, the invisible government has been able to manipulate and regulate the masses according to their will without the masses knowing they are being managed. Bernays described this elitist view of the world in 1928:
“Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.” – Edward Bernays – Propaganda
The super-rich elite believe they are more intelligent, more capable of managing the affairs of state, masters of the financial world, and chosen to decide what is best for the masses. In reality, they are egocentric, psychotic, power hungry, myopic, self-serving ravenous vultures, feasting upon the carcass of a once great nation. Truth is inconsequential and irritating to their plans for world domination and control. Therefore, no truth will be forthcoming from any organization or person that is associated with the existing political, economic, financial or social order. Every bit of information that is permitted into the public realm has been vetted, manipulated and spun for public consumption. The public does not like bad news. They do not like hard facts. They do not like to think or do math. They want to be spoon fed mindless sound bites and happy talk. The oligarchs need to keep the masses sedated and subservient while they continue to plunder and pillage, so all data is massaged to provide a happy ending.
This is where I deviate from the ideologue one-trick ponies that refuse to see both sides of the issue. The ruling oligarchs are wealthy, influential, psychotic, amoral, and few. The masses are relatively poor, easily influenced, willfully ignorant, and many. The ruling oligarchs are most certainly evil, but the masses are not the hard working, stoic, downtrodden portrayed by liberal ideologues. One just needs to walk down the street in one of our urban enclaves, saunter through a suburban mall, or click on People of Wal-Mart to witness the tattooed, pierced, butt crack showing, slovenly, obese, and ignorant, attached to their electronic iGadgets, to understand how far our society has deteriorated. Every individual born into this world has the capability to become educated, think critically, not follow the herd, live beneath their means, and not be influenced by propaganda. Aldous Huxley understood in 1931 that those in power could use material goods to invoke passivity and egotism among the populace. He feared that truth would be obscured by an avalanche of irrelevance (500 Reality TV shows), cultural trivialities (Lady Gaga, Lindsey Lohan), distractions (Professional sports), and pharmaceutical enhanced escape (Prozac). He saw the possibility that we would grow to love our servitude as the pleasures of life provided by our controllers overwhelmed any desire to think or question authority.
“There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.” ― Aldous Huxley
By 1962 when Huxley wrote his last book, he was certain that his worst dystopian nightmares had been unleashed. His description of Western society fifty years ago could have been written today and accurately reflected our current economic paradigm. War, debt and consumption still make our world go round, but the end is nigh.
“Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence – those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you’d collapse. And while you people are over-consuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster.” – Aldous Huxley – Island
The pillars are crumbling. The $1.4 trillion wasted on two worthless wars of choice in the Middle East, the trillions wasted and liberties sacrificed for the never ending unwinnable War on Terror, the Keynesian spending frenzy that has driven the National Debt from $9 trillion to $16.3 trillion in the last five years, the looting of the American taxpayer by Wall Street and their co-conspirators at the Federal Reserve and in Congress, and the belief that ramping up the debt driven consumption that drives 71% of our GDP is our path to prosperity is absolutely freaking nuts. The pillars will not be abolished willingly. The ruling class depends upon their continued existence and expansion. There is the rub. The math doesn’t work. We’ve reached the point where continued expansion of debt and money printing no longer works. With a national debt to GDP ratio of 102% and a total credit market debt to GDP ratio of 350%, we have passed the Rogoff & Reinhart point of no return. This time is not different. A country cannot run trillion dollar deficits indefinitely and expect to not suffer the consequences. This is why those in power are increasingly resorting to propaganda, data manipulation, and outright lies to convince the masses of their omnipotence and brilliance in managing the fiscal affairs of the state.

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
Through decades of mass media messaging the masses have been conditioned to believe whatever those in power want them to believe. To our invisible government rulers we are nothing but rats to be manipulated through food pellets and shock therapy. Pleasure and fear of pain are the drivers of our warped society. The ruling oligarchs truly think they know what is best for the masses and believe any means is worthwhile as long as the ends support their agenda. This is blatantly obvious to anyone with their eyes open and their brain functioning. Sadly, the government run educational system produces mostly drones that are barely able to tie their own shoes, spell Cat, or make change from a one dollar bill. Only 20% of all high school seniors score high enough on the SAT test to get a B minus in college and most of these kids come from private and parochial schools. This is exactly what those in power prefer. They want non-critical thinking, mindless consumers, who don’t understand the criminal nature of Federal Reserve created inflation or their enslavement in the chains of debt at the hands of their Wall Street slave owners. They certainly don’t want the masses to understand that real median household net worth is lower today than it was in 1969. Luckily for the oligarchs, 95% of the public couldn’t define the terms: real, median or net worth. Math is hard.

The average person is inundated on a 24/7 basis with pabulum from liberal network media talking heads, CNBC Wall Street shills regurgitating whatever their sponsors desire, Fox News blonde bimbos and neo-con war mongers programmed to spew Rupert Murdoch talking points, MSNBC tingling leg faux journalists, NYT intellectually corrupt Nobel prize winners, NAR nitwits repeating “best time to buy” on a daily basis for the last 12 years, and government agencies whose sole purpose is to manipulate data in a way that supports the agenda of those in power. The intellectually lazy and willfully ignorant masses are no match for those who control the message and the media. How else can you explain their ability to convince millions of drones to line up for hours in front of a store and stampede like crazed hyenas to grab a $5 crockpot, the Chinese produced gadget of the moment or a designer top made by slave labor in safety conscious Bangladesh factories? How else can you explain a population willing to be molested by government TSA dregs in the name of security from phantom terrorists, the passive acceptance of military exercises in US cities, unquestioning submissiveness as Presidential Executive Orders allow the government dictatorial powers based on their judgment, the monitoring of internet and voice correspondence of all citizens, and believing that FBI agents luring clueless teenage Muslim dupes into fake terrorist plots, providing the fake explosives, and then announcing with great fanfare how they saved us from another 9/11?
But, the prize for boldest, most outrageous, blatant use of propaganda and misinformation to cover-up their criminal looting of America goes to Ben Bernanke, his cronies at the Federal Reserve, and the Wall Street banks that own and control our Central Bank. Having the gall to portray themselves as the stabilizer of our economic system over the last 100 years is a putrid joke on the dying and broke middle class. Their mandate has been stable prices, full employment, and avoiding financial crisis. It is a tribute to Bernays and the rest of the public relations swine that the average American actually believes inflation is a good thing and it is under control despite the FACT that 96.2% of their purchasing power has disappeared since 1900, with the most rapid decline occurring since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971.
The average American actually believes Ben Bernanke saved us from a Great Depression when in actuality he saved the owners of the Federal Reserve from accepting the losses they generated through the greatest financial fraud in history. His “solutions” have zombified our economic system, just as the Japanese Central Bank did 20 years ago. He has destroyed the concept of saving, while rewarding the indebted and profligate with his QE to Infinity money printing policies. And the ignorant masses have been convinced by the corporate media and their corrupt government lackeys that Ben did this for them. Kyle Bass knows otherwise. He knows how the Fed and their backers have preyed upon the masses through their understanding of human psychology:
“Humans are optimistic by nature. People’s lives are driven by hopes and dreams which are all second derivatives of their innate optimism. Humans also suffer from optimistic biases driven by the first inalienable right of human nature which is self-preservation. It is this reflex mechanism in our cognitive pathways that makes difficult situations hard to reflect and opine on. These biases are extended to economic choices and events. The primary difficulty with this train of thought is the bias that most investors have for the baseline facts: they tend to believe that the central bankers, politicians, and other governmental agencies are omnipotent due to their success in averting a financial meltdown in 2009.
Central banks have become the great enablers of fiscal profligacy. The overarching belief is that there will always be someone or something there to act as the safety net. The safety nets worked so well recently that investors now trust they will be underneath them ad-infinitum. Markets and economists alike now believe that quantitative easing (“QE”) will always “work” by flooding the market with relatively costless capital. Unlimited QE and the zero lower bound (“ZLB”) are likely to bankrupt pension funds whose expected returns happen to be a good 600 basis points (or more) higher than the 10?year “risk-free” rate. The ZLB has many unintended consequences that are impossible to ignore.
Our belief is that markets will eventually take these matters out of the hands of the central bankers. These events will happen with such rapidity that policy makers won’t be able to react fast enough. The fallacy of the belief that countries that print their own currency are immune to sovereign crisis will be disproven in the coming months and years. Trillions of dollars of debts will be restructured and millions of financially prudent savers will lose large percentages of their real purchasing power at exactly the wrong time in their lives. Again, the world will not end, but the social fabric of the profligate nations will be stretched and in some cases torn. Sadly, looking back through economic history, all too often war is the manifestation of simple economic entropy played to its logical conclusion. We believe that war is an inevitable consequence of the current global economic situation.” – Kyle Bass
“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.” They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited
No sane person could honestly say that what has happened to our society over the last forty years, and particularly in the last five years, is normal. But somehow those in power have convinced the masses that $1.2 trillion deficits, 0% interest rates, declining real wages, the highest average gas prices in history, pre-emptive wars, policing the world and buying rubber dog shit produced in China with a credit card is normal and beneficial to our economy. It seems that I and a few million other people in this country are the abnormal ones. We choose not to be led to slaughter by our masters. The seekers of truth have turned to the alternative media and are able to connect with like-minded critical thinking individuals on websites like Zero Hedge, Jesse’s Americain Café, Of Two Minds, Mish, Financial Sense, among many other truth seeking blogs. This is dangerous to the powers that be and they are using their political clout and extreme wealth to try and lock down and control free speech on the internet. If this is accomplished all hope at disseminating truth will be lost.
Abraham Lincoln once said that he believed in the people and that if you told them the truth and gave them the cold hard facts they would meet any crisis. That may have been true in 1860, but not today. The cold hard facts are available for all to see:
As the pitiful excuses for statesmen in Washington D.C. pander and posture about the dreaded fiscal cliff which was purposely created by the oligarchs as a show for the masses, none of the true issues above are being addressed. The dramatic compromise that will ultimately be reached between the equally corrupt parties will be hailed by the corporate media and Wall Street shysters and an HFT supercomputer engineered stock market rally will ensue. The cowardice of these politicians is revolting. As Huxley knew in 1958, politicians and propagandists prefer nonsense and storylines to truth, knowledge and honesty.
“Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world’s most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited
We want to be lied to because the truth is too painful. Hope and denial with a dash of delusion is the recipe the mindless masses prefer. The average person doesn’t want to understand the chart below. They want to believe the U.S. will dominate economically and lead the world for decades to come. We are still the bright shining beacon of democracy on the mountaintop. Even though the facts unequivocally reveal a declining empire, the masses desperately grasp at straws in the wind. The United States share of world GDP will be vastly lower in 2021, as the hubris of declining empires never allows them to take the necessary steps to reverse the decline (Rome, Great Britain).
It is fitting that during this magical Christmas season of fantasy, delusion, debt fueled material over-consumption and fairy tales, we look at the biggest fairy tale of all – the great jobs recovery. I know from the two thousand Obama campaign commercials I was forced to watch in the last few months and 500 robo-calls at dinner every night that we’ve added 4 million jobs due to Obama’s wise economic policies. The magical journey from a 10.3% unemployment rate to a 7.9% rate is a humdinger. I stumbled across a myriad of charts on those truth-telling websites that I had previously mentioned.
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.” ― Aldous Huxley
The first chart that grabbed my attention shows the historical relationship between the U3 unemployment rate reported to the masses versus the U6 truer picture of unemployment, along with the percentage of people unemployed for longer than 15 weeks. A funny thing happened shortly after the election of Barack Obama. From 1994 through 2008 the gap between the U3 and U6 rates consistently ranged between 3% and 4%. Suddenly, the gap surged to 7% and currently sits at almost 8%. The figure reported to the masses of 7.9% is so much easier to digest than the 15% to 17% that captures the truer level of unemployment. If the gap between these two figures had remained at the levels of the previous 14 years, the unemployment that should be reported to the masses would be 11%. That is unacceptable to those in power, so the data is massaged and the propaganda machine spins the storyline necessary to confuse and mislead the masses.

The next two charts from Mike Shedlock again reveal truths the existing social order doesn’t want you to know. Even though the working age population has grown by 10 million people since 2008, the BLS expects critical thinking people to believe the labor force has only grown by 1.3 million people. You see, the unemployment rate is calculated using the labor force. If your economic policies don’t create jobs, just adjust the labor force dramatically lower based on nothing. In desperate economic times, people do not voluntarily leave the workforce. Only a non-thinking drone would believe that 8.7 million Americans voluntarily left the workforce since 2008, when only 4 million left the workforce from 2003 through 2007. It is not a coincidence that student loan debt, which was taken over by the Obama administration in 2009 rose by $300 billion. Those in power have doled out these billions with no concern for credit risk or academic credentials in order to reduce the number of people in the labor force. Unemployed union Twinkie workers seeking a new career in lesbian studies can get a $20,000 loan from the American taxpayer to sit in their basement along with the 500,000 other University of Phoenix enrollees. The future $300 billion taxpayer bailout was worth it to keep the unemployment rate low enough to insure Obama’s re-election.

The Obama PR machine never fails to expound upon the fact that the economy added 4.9 million jobs since January 2009. In the same timeframe, uncovered employment rose by 6.6 million. Inquiring minds might want to know what an “uncovered” job entails. Selling your accumulated Chinese crap on Ebay is an uncovered job. Calling yourself a consultant while sleeping until noon is an uncovered job. Day trading Facebook and Apple stock is an uncovered job. Trash picking is an uncovered job. The truth is that real jobs are 1.7 million lower than they were at the depths of the recession, while bullshit jobs paying virtually nothing and offering no benefits have surged by 6.6 million. These facts don’t make a great campaign commercial. The number of employed Americans is at the same level as mid-2005, even though the working age population has grown by 18 million. Since 2008 there are 3 million less full-time jobs and 3 more part-time jobs. This trend is accelerating as small businesses react rationally to the oncoming Obamacare train, resulting in aggregate work hours declining and wage growth stagnating.

Zero Hedge reveals more truth about our glorious jobs recovery with the following two charts. They obliterate the false narrative spun by liberal ideologues that the reason for the increase of those not in the labor force is due to Baby Boomers retiring. The truth is that while those in the 55-69 age brackets have gained nearly 4 million jobs under President Obama, everyone else has lost just over 2.5 million jobs. Is this a positive development or a sign of extreme desperation among older Americans who have seen their interest income vaporized by Ben Bernanke and there food, energy, and healthcare expenses skyrocket?

Those in their prime earning years of 25 to 54 still have a net cumulative loss of 2.2 million jobs since 2009. Recent college graduates, with their billions of student loan debt, have nabbed 400,000 TGI Fridays jobs, singing happy birthday to 3 year olds, with their newly minted college degrees. This is the “normal” healthy jobs market sold to the American public by the propagandists and politicians.
The final jobs chart that portrays the truth of what has been a decades’ long spiral downward paints a picture of a country that once created wealth through producing goods from the 1940s through 1970. Since 1970 we’ve degenerated into a debt creating country that consumes foreign produced goods and makes entitlement promises it can never keep. Selling houses to each other, peddling crap on Ebay, and eating out three times a week has shockingly failed to propel our economy. The jobs picture has deteriorated rapidly since 2008 and is not improving, despite the best propaganda money can buy. There is absolutely no chance of any substantive improvement over the next four years based on the policies in place and refusal to acknowledge the economic realities that we face.

The accumulation of material possessions through the use of consumer debt, peddled by bankers and reinforced through relentless corporate marketing propaganda has left the country’s citizens weary, miserable, greedy, indebted and sick. Our obsession with technology has merely provided another means of distracting ourselves from confronting the dire challenges that must be addressed. We can ignore the facts but that doesn’t mean they do not exist. The abnormality that grips this nation is breathtaking to behold, as the status quo cheer on and encourage consumers to buy more things with money they don’t have in order to support an economic recovery that is dependent upon zero interest rates for Wall Street banks, QE to infinity, and the delusional desire for a miraculous return to the good old days when getting something for nothing was possible. We can no longer deny reality. If we want to add 30 million people to Medicaid, it must be paid for. If we want to wage never ending wars and police the world, it must be paid for. If we want a Federal government to spend $3.8 trillion per year, it must be paid for. Nothing is free in this world, but more than 50% of Americans seem to believe that to be true.
“Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.” – Philip Elliot Slater
We are seen by those in control as nothing more than common house flies caught in their web of lies. Your owners don’t care about you. They only care about their own wealth and power. They want to control and manipulate you. They want to keep you enslaved in debt and running on the treadmill of consumption. They want passive, non-critical thinking drones to do the menial service jobs that remain in this country, while they use their control of our financial, political, tax, and legal systems to ransack and pillage the wealth of the dwindling middle class. The truth is the continuation of our current economic system is mathematically impossible. Your owners know this. This is why the use of propaganda, misinformation, fake data, and false storylines has taken on astronomical proportions. The time for passivity and accepting the deceitfulness of our leaders is coming to an end. While you’re waiting in line this Christmas season at Wal-Mart to purchase a fabulously priced shirt that only required the deaths of 112 Bangladesh slave laborers, try to figure out how we got here. Your owners think they have you by the balls.
“They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want—they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interest. You know something, they don’t want people that are smart enough to sit around their kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. Because the owners of this country know the truth, it’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.” – George Carlin
How many Americans are awake enough to handle the truth?
All I want for Christmas is the truth.
Posted on 29th September 2012 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues
Bernanke, Clint Eastwood, Congress, CPI, Federal Reserve, financial crisis, Fistful of Dollars, GDP, George Bush, Greenspan, Hank Paulson, Inflation, Jekyyl Island, middle class wages, National Debt, Obama, Ron Paul, TARP, Tim Geithner, US Dollar, Wall Street
It is not easy to destroy the greatest empire in the history of mankind. The 20th Century was the American Century, but as with all empires, the combination of hubris, monetary debasement, imperial overreach and delusional overconfidence have set in motion the inevitable downfall of the American Empire. The policies, decisions, beliefs, and institutions implemented over decades have led the country to the threshold of financial disaster. Based on my observations, a catastrophic combination of demographics, fiat currency debasement, titanic levels of debt, smothering taxation, power in the hands of the few and Wall Street greed have led us to peak Empire. It will be downhill from here as we experience collapse, revolution and ultimately, retribution for the guilty and presumed guilty. I have already addressed the Baby Boomer generation’s contribution to our current plight, to the delight and accolades of Boomers across the land in For a Few Dollars More – Part One. The Boomers were a victim of their size and the timing of their arrival on the scene of empire collapse. Their delusions of debt based wealth and me first attitude could not have been satiated without the creation of the Federal Reserve and the institution of the personal income tax in 1913.
“When a man’s got money in his pocket he begins to appreciate peace.” – Joe – Fistful of Dollars

“Every town has a boss.” – Joe – Fistful of Dollars
In the Old West of the 1800’s, before the creation of the Federal Reserve, money in your pocket meant gold or silver. If Joe were to repeat that line today, he would change it slightly:
“When a man thinks he’s got money in his pocket he begins to appreciate the good things in life like McMansions, BMWs, government provided retirement, government provided healthcare, and delusions of ever increasing wealth.”
Man made inflation is a glorious invention for the men who invented it. For the people who deal with it every day, not so much. Joe knew that every town had a boss. If you didn’t know who the boss was in the United States of America before 2008, you know now. Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States is the boss of this town.
Without Federal Reserve intervention in the financial markets since September 2008, the biggest banks in the world would have entered bankruptcy liquidation. The U.S. economy would have experienced a 10% to 20% fall in GDP. The unemployment rate would have soared above 15%. The stock market would have fallen 70%. Wealthy bondholders and stockholders would have seen their wealth cut in half. Incumbent politicians would have all been thrown out of office. The richest Americans, constituting the ruling class, would have borne the brunt of the pain.
In a true capitalist system, organizations and people who assumed too much risk and made poor decisions would have failed. But the United States does not have a capitalist system. We have a corporate fascist economic system where a small cartel of bankers, military weapons suppliers, and mega-corporations set the agenda for the country through their complete capture of politicians and the mainstream corporate media. At the height of the crisis in 2008, President George Bush revealed whose side he chose:
“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system, to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse. I feel a sense of obligation to my successor to make sure there is not a, you know, a huge economic crisis. Look, we’re in a crisis now. I mean, this is — we’re in a huge recession, but I don’t want to make it even worse.”
George Bush was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was not trying to save the free-market system, because we didn’t have a free market system. He was saving his fellow billionaires under the cover of saving the average American. Bush knew as much about saving our economic system as he knew about when to declare mission accomplished in Iraq. He turned the task of saving the free market system over to his multi-billionaire Goldman Sachs Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson and the real boss of Washington DC, Ben Bernanke. These noble American patriots proceeded to save the top 1% richest Americans on the backs of the American middle class. They did it under the guise of keeping the country out of a Depression. Those who committed the crimes and destroyed the worldwide financial system not only didn’t get punished, they were enriched by the actions of Paulson and Bernanke. This entire sordid chapter in the history of the American empire from 2008 until the imminent collapse, sometime before 2015, will leave future historians dumbfounded at the utter insanity and foolishness of the decisions that were made during the death throes of the empire. Not only did George Bush not save the free-market system, but he drove a stake thru its heart.
To boil the entire 2008 financial collapse down to one word, it would be: DEBT.
Three decades of ever increasing levels of consumer, corporate, and government debt eventually led to an unprecedented implosion. It was as predictable in 2008, to those who understand the fiat monetary system, as it was to Ludwig von Mises decades ago:
“There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”
The 2008 crash and the 1929 crash were manmade disasters. Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke created the atmosphere and conditions that led to the risk taking by bankers, home buyers and consumers. Monetary expansion, excessively low interest rates, the Greenspan/Bernanke Put, disinterest in regulation, and pandering to politicians allowed the party to get out of control. Taking away the punch bowl never crossed their mind. The Federal Reserve is controlled by the major Wall Street banks. These banks were partnerships until the 1980s, with partners personally liable for the actions of their banks. Excessive risk taking meant possible personal bankruptcy. Once they became corporations, excessive risk meant excessive compensation for the executives, with the downside being borne by the shareholders.
But that wasn’t enough. The executives were large shareholders, so they convinced the Federal Reserve to bail their corporations out whenever they made bad bets. It was a sweet deal if you were a banker. Knowing their lackeys at the Fed had their back, the goliath Wall Street banks used their power and wealth to convince the SEC to waive the 12 to 1 leverage rules so they could leverage their balance sheets 40 to 1. This meant that a 5% loss in their capital and they would be insolvent. The Harvard MBA CEO titans of the financial world created the housing bubble through their creation of fraud inducing mortgage products, a bewildering array of derivative products that even their MBA geniuses didn’t understand, and betting against the derivatives they were selling to their clients. When this toxic brew of fraud and debt exploded in their faces, the value of the assets on their books plunged by 30% to 40% in 2008 and 2009. The 10 biggest financial institutions in the country were effectively bankrupt. An orderly bankruptcy liquidation that wiped out the bondholders, stockholders and top executives was the solution to excessive risk taking and failure.
This was an unacceptable solution to the billionaire class that owns half the financial wealth in the country. The President was a multi-millionaire. The Treasury Secretary was a billionaire. There were 250 millionaires in Congress. The top executives of the banks that own and control the Federal Reserve are multi-millionaires. The owners and talking head pundits of the mainstream media are all in the billionaire/millionaire class. The cover story used to bilk $700 billion from middle class taxpayers into the coffers of Wall Street mega-banks was that if we didn’t hand over the loot, the financial system would collapse and a Great Depression would ensue. Every program, policy, and rule change that has been rolled out since September 2008 by the Federal Reserve, Treasury, and Congress has benefitted billionaires, bankers, and politically connected corporations. The Federal Reserve has printed over $2 trillion out of thin air to save the billionaires that have been pillaging the middle class for decades.

The Federal Reserve bought $1.25 trillion of toxic mortgages from Wall Street, allowed these banks to borrow at 0%, threatened the FASB into suspending mark to market accounting so banks could fake the value of their loans, instructed banks to rollover commercial real estate loans as if they weren’t really worth 40% less than the value on their books, and rolled out $600 billion of QE2 in order to create a stock market rally, benefitting their billionaire constituents. The $800 billion stimulus program was shoveled to the corporate friends (contributors) of Congressmen across the land. Cash for Clunkers benefitted government owned car companies. The home buyer tax credit and changing loss carry back rules benefitted mega home builders. Every one of these deeds enriched bankers and billionaires while further impoverishing the working middle class. Real middle class wages continue to fall, unemployment remains near record levels, real inflation in food and energy is running above 10%, senior citizens haven’t gotten a Social Security increase in two years, savers are getting .25% on their savings, home prices continue to fall, and future generations will be stuck with the bill for the billionaire bailout.

The standard of living for the average American continues to fall. Real household income is lower than it was in 1999. The only reason it increased in the 1980s and 1990s was the huge influx of women into the workforce. Two earners were needed to try and maintain a constant standard of living. Real average weekly earnings are lower today than they were in 1970, even using the government bastardized CPI calculation that has been so massaged since 1982 that it has only resulted in a happy ending for government bureaucrats at the BLS. Calculating the CPI exactly as it was calculated in 1980 reveals the truth of what the Federal Reserve has wrought on working class America, a drastic decrease in their standard of living. The insidiousness of Federal Reserve created inflation has sucked the life out of the middle class and enriched the cocktail party class.

The stealth transfer of wealth from the working middle class to the richest in our society was done through convincing the middle class that buying things with debt made you richer. This delusion was sold by the billionaire owned corporate mainstream media and peddled by billionaire bankers to the masses through credit cards, “creative” mortgage products, easy access to home “equity”, auto leases, and easy financing products. Only in a society where a fiat currency could be printed by a central bank with no requirement that it be pegged to an anchor such as gold, could such a staggering amount of debt be accumulated.
The bill that has been rung up is in the form of a national debt that has increased by $4.6 trillion since September 2008, a 48% increase in two and a half years. Over this same time frame real GDP has increased by $200 billion, a 1.6% increase in two and a half years. Over this same period, the Federal Reserve has tripled their balance sheet by adding $2 trillion of debt. Think about this for one second. The leaders of the great American empire have burdened future generations with $6.6 trillion of new debt and increased the Gross Domestic Product by $200 billion. Is this a good return on investment? Did the 30 million unemployed and underemployed Americans benefit? Did the 45 million people on food stamps benefit? Did the 11 million households who are underwater in their mortgage benefit? Did the 3 million people who lost their homes in foreclosure since 2008 benefit? Are Americans paying twice as much for groceries and gasoline benefitting? Did the Tunisians, Egyptians, and other poor people around the world benefit?
The answer to all these questions is NO. The only beneficiaries have been bankers, billionaires, mega-corporations and the politicians who were bought off by these greedy traitors to the Republic. Anyone with an ounce of sense knows the country got into this mess due to the issuance of mountains of debt that was un-payable based upon any reasonable assessment of future cash flows to service the debt. Consumers could never have increased their wages enough to pay off the credit card, mortgage, home equity, student loan, and auto debt they accumulated since 1980. The government could never collect the amount of taxes needed to pay for the $100 trillion of entitlement promises they have made over the last four decades. By 2008 we had reached peak debt delusion.
The only questions that remained were how would the debt be defaulted on and who would bear the brunt of the default. The Federal Reserve Chairman and the U.S. Treasury Secretary rolled out a master plan that revolved around convincing the masses they were being saved, while actually enriching their masters on Wall Street. Their PR machine and captured mouthpieces throughout the mainstream media and in Congress spun the fear mongering message of Depression if the mega-banks were not handed trillions of taxpayer funds.
The proof of what did not happen is borne out in the chart below, showing the total credit market debt in the U.S.at $52.6 trillion, $200 billion higher than it was in 2008. If those who had collected billions in fraudulent profits while using unprecedented levels of debt were rightfully required to take responsibility for the catastrophe they caused, the debt levels would have dropped dramatically. The losses would have been borne by those responsible. The economy would have taken a body blow, all Americans would have been hurt, and many billionaires would have become millionaires or even paupers. The debt would have been written off and lessons would have been learned. The remaining banks (there are 8,000 others besides the 10 who control 50% of the deposits) would have followed traditional risk mitigation methods and the economy would have recovered.

But, as you can see, debt was not written off. No bankers were harmed during the making of this fake recovery. No criminal bankers were prosecuted. No government drones took responsibility for their failure. While the masses were distracted by stimulus packages, mortgage moratoriums, Obamacare and reality TV, the debt was shifted from the criminally negligent banks to you. The proof is right on the Federal Reserve website for all to see:
Over $6 trillion of toxic debt was shifted from the insolvent financial industries to the middle class taxpayers under the guise of “Saving the System”. Bad debt does not become good by shifting it to taxpayers. The story line about Americans embracing austerity is false. Household debt rose from $8 trillion in 2000 to $13.8 trillion in 2008, a 72% increase, and has declined by 3% due to write-offs, not austerity.

By extending the debt, shifting it to the taxpayer and pretending it is payable, the Federal Reserve and your government have chosen, to use its weapon of choice since inception in 1913 – INFLATION, to default on the debt. It is not a new tactic, it is their only tactic.

The Federal Reserve has slowly and methodically destroyed the American middle class through relentlessly printing more money and purposefully creating inflation, since its reprehensible creation in 1913. For the last three decades only one voice in the wilderness of Washington DC has fought this banking cabal.
“Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, middle and working-class Americans have been victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy. In addition, most Americans have suffered a steadily eroding purchasing power because of the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies. This represents a real, if hidden, tax imposed on the American people.
From the Great Depression, to the stagflation of the seventies, to the burst of the dotcom bubble last year, every economic downturn suffered by the country over the last 80 years can be traced to Federal Reserve policy. The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial “boom” followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts. In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to stand up for working Americans by putting an end to the manipulation of the money supply which erodes Americans’ standard of living, enlarges big government, and enriches well-connected elites, by cosponsoring my legislation to abolish the Federal Reserve.” – Ron Paul – Sept 10, 2002
His colleagues in Congress did not stand up to the Federal Reserve in 2002. Instead, they cheered them on as Greenspan’s ultra loose monetary policy led to the greatest housing bubble in history and a financial collapse unparalleled in human history. As the collapse was hurdling down the track in 2006, Representative Paul once again rose in protest against an organization that is rapidly destroying the American dream.
“The coming dollar crisis is not likely to be “fixed” by politicians who are unwilling to make hard choices, admit mistakes, and spend less money. Demographic trends will place even greater demands on Congress to maintain benefits for millions of older Americans who are dependent on the federal government.
Faced with uncomfortable financial realities, Congress will seek to avoid the day of reckoning by the most expedient means available – and the Federal Reserve undoubtedly will accommodate Washington by printing more dollars to pay the bills. The Fed is the enabler for the spending addicts in Congress, who would rather spend new fiat money than face the political consequences of raising taxes or borrowing more abroad.
The irony is that many of the Fed’s biggest cheerleaders are the same supposed capitalists who denounced centralized economic planning when practiced by the former Soviet Union. Large banks and Wall Street firms love the Fed’s easy money policy, because they profit at the front end from the resulting loan boom and artificially high equity prices. It’s the little guy who loses when the inflated dollars finally trickle down to him and erode his buying power. Someday Americans will understand that Federal Reserve bankers have no magic ability – and certainly no legal or moral right – to decide how much money should exist and what the cost of borrowing money should be.” – Ron Paul – July 11, 2006
The dollar crisis is upon us. Congress and President Obama are avoiding the day of reckoning. The Federal Reserve is enabling profligate spending by politicians, while at the same time enriching their masters on Wall Street. Everything being done in Washington DC seems to be the exact opposite of what should be done. I think the fable of the scorpion and the frog describes our situation best. The scorpion asks a frog to carry him across a river. The frog is afraid of being stung, but the scorpion argues that if it stung, the frog would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog agrees and the scorpion stings the frog during the crossing, dooming them both. When asked why, the scorpion points out that this is its nature. The Federal Reserve is printing money, creating inflation, enriching billionaire bankers, and dooming the country to certain collapse because that is its nature.
My intentions have been foiled again. I realize that my attempt to put our current economic predicament into perspective will now need to be a five part series. . For a Few Dollars More addressed the Baby Boomer impact on America’s decline. A Fistful of Dollars examined how the Federal Reserve’s actions over the last few decades have impoverished the middle class and has placed the country at the brink of collapse, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly will address the nefarious creation of a central bank and the implementation of a personal income tax in the dreadful year 1913. Outlaw Josey Wales will scrutinize the looting of America by a small group of powerful, connected, super rich men lurking in the shadows, but pulling the strings on our puppet politicians. Lastly, Unforgiven will detail the impending collapse of our economic system and the retribution that will be handed out to the guilty.
I can’t wait to see how it ends.
Posted on 7th May 2012 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues
1913, 1970, Alan Greenspan, banks, BEA, Ben Bernanke, BLS, borrowing, Congress, Consumer debt, CPI, debt, disposable personal income, Federal Reserve, fraud, government transfers, Henry Ford, Inflation, interest income, Louis McFadden, Martin Feldstein, Obama, Paul Krugman, Personal Income, Retirement, saving, Savings rate, SSDI, theft, Tim Geithner, Unemployment, Wall Street
The BEA reported the latest figures for personal income, personal consumption expenditures and the savings rate last week. The government mouthpieces in the mainstream media obediently reported that personal income and expenditures reached an all-time high in March. The chart below shows the ever increasing level of expenditures by consumers since this supposed economic recovery began in the 4th quarter of 2009. All good Keynesian economists know that consumer spending is always good for America, no matter how it is achieved. We must be in a recovery if income and spending are reaching new highs, right? That is the fraudulent storyline being propagandized to the non-questioning lapdog public. A false storyline and data that has been massaged harder than a Secret Service agent by a Columbian hooker will not lead to a happy ending. Some critical thinking, a calculator, and some common sense reveal the depth of the fraud and expose the theft being committed by the avaricious governing elite at the expense of the prudent working middle class.

Digging into the data on the BEA website to arrive at my own conclusions, not those spoon fed to a willfully ignorant public by CNBC and the rest of the fawning Wall Street worshipping corporate media, is quite revealing. It divulges the extent to which Ben Bernanke and the politicians in Washington DC have gone to paint the U.S. economy with the appearance of recovery while wrecking the lives of senior citizens and judicious savers. Only a banker would bask in the glory of absconding with hundreds of billions from senior citizen savers and handing it over to criminal bankers. Only a government bureaucrat would classify trillions in entitlement transfers siphoned from the paychecks of the 58.4% of working age Americans with a job or borrowed from foreigner countries as personal income to the non-producing recipients. How can taking money from one person or borrowing it from future generations and dispensing it to another person be considered personal income? Only in the Delusional States of America.
If you really want to understand what has happened in this country over the last forty years, you need to analyze the data across the decades. This uncovers the trends over time that has led us to this sorry state of affairs. The chart below details the major components of personal income over time as a percentage of total personal income. It tells the story of a nation in decline and on an unsustainable path that will ultimately result in a monetary collapse.
|
1970 |
1980 |
1990 |
2000 |
Apr-08 |
2010 |
Mar-12 |
|
| Total Personal Income |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
| Wages & Salaries |
66.1% |
60.2% |
56.7% |
56.2% |
52.7% |
51.9% |
51.8% |
| Interest Income |
8.3% |
12.1% |
15.5% |
11.6% |
11.2% |
8.2% |
7.4% |
| Dividend Income |
2.9% |
2.9% |
3.5% |
4.5% |
6.5% |
5.8% |
6.2% |
| Government transfers |
8.5% |
11.3% |
11.7% |
12.2% |
14.3% |
17.9% |
17.3% |
It is always fascinating to compare data from 1970, prior to Nixon closing the gold window and allowing bankers and politicians to print and spend to their hearts delight, to present day. The chart above paints a picture of a nation of workers and savers descending into a nation of parasites and spenders. Any rational person knows that income comes from one of two methods: working or investing. A country can only grow by working, saving, investing and living within its means. Money taken from workers and investors and transferred to the non-working and spenders is NOT INCOME. It is just redistribution from producers to non-producers. The key takeaways from the chart are:


Now for the bad news. The Baby Boom generation has just begun to retire en masse. Government transfers will automatically accelerate over the next decade as Social Security and Medicare transfer payments balloon. Government transfer payments have already increased by 3,250% since 1970, while wages and salaries have increased by 1,250%. The non-existent inflation touted by Ben Bernanke accounts for 590% of this increase. We have passed a point of no return. As the number of Americans receiving a government EBT into their bank account grows by the day and the number of working Americans remains stagnant, the chances of a politician showing the courage to address our un-payable entitlement liabilities is near zero. Americans choose to deal with problems in a reactive manner rather than a proactive manner. Until the next inescapable crisis, the fraud and looting will continue until morale improves.
| Billions of $ |
1970 |
1980 |
1990 |
2000 |
Apr-08 |
2010 |
Mar-12 |
| Total Personal Income |
$835 |
$2,257 |
$4,852 |
$8,548 |
$12,457 |
$12,361 |
$13,328 |
| Wages & Salaries |
$552 |
$1,358 |
$2,750 |
$4,800 |
$6,565 |
$6,413 |
$6,905 |
| Interest Income |
$69 |
$272 |
$753 |
$989 |
$1,397 |
$1,012 |
$984 |
| Dividend Income |
$24 |
$65 |
$169 |
$381 |
$810 |
$723 |
$821 |
| Government transfers |
$71 |
$256 |
$570 |
$1,041 |
$1,786 |
$2,217 |
$2,312 |
“Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its powers, but the truth is the FED has usurped the government. It controls everything here (in Congress) and controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will… When the FED was passed, the people of the United States did not perceive that a world system was being set up here… A super-state controlled by international bankers, and international industrialists acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure!” – Rep. Louis T. McFadden

The largest fraud and theft being committed in this country is being perpetrated by the Central Bank of the United States; its Wall Street owners; and the politicians beholden to these evil men. The fraud and theft is being committed through the insidious use of inflation and manipulation of interest rates. The biggest shame of our government run public education system is their inability or unwillingness to teach even the most basic of financial concepts to our children. It’s almost as if they don’t want the average person to understand the truth about inflation and how it has slowly and silently destroyed their livelihood while enriching the few who create it. Converting the chart above into inflation adjusted figures reveals a different picture than the one sold to the general public on a daily basis. Even using the government manipulated CPI figures from the BLS, the ravages of inflation are easy to recognize.
| Billions of Real $ |
1970 |
1980 |
1990 |
2000 |
Apr-08 |
2010 |
Mar-12 |
| Total Personal Income |
$4,937 |
$6,261 |
$8,569 |
$11,374 |
$13,304 |
$13,007 |
$13,328 |
| Wages & Salaries |
$3,264 |
$3,767 |
$4,856 |
$6,387 |
$7,011 |
$6,748 |
$6,905 |
| Interest Income |
$408 |
$754 |
$1,330 |
$1,316 |
$1,492 |
$1,065 |
$984 |
| Dividend Income |
$142 |
$180 |
$298 |
$507 |
$865 |
$761 |
$821 |
| Government transfers |
$420 |
$710 |
$1,007 |
$1,385 |
$1,907 |
$2,333 |
$2,312 |
| CPI |
38.8 |
82.7 |
129.9 |
172.4 |
214.8 |
218 |
229.4 |
Total wages and salaries have risen by only 112% on an inflation adjusted basis over the last 42 years. This is with U.S. population growth from 203 million in 1970 to 313 million people today, a 54% increase. On a real per capita basis, wages and salaries rose from $16,079 in 1970 to $22,060 today, a mere 37% increase in 42 years. That is horrific and some perspective will reveal how bad it really is:
In most cases, the cost of things we need to live have risen at twice the rate of our income. This data is bad enough on its own, but it is actually far worse. The governing elite, led by Alan Greenspan, realized that accurately reporting inflation would reveal their scheme, so they have been committing fraud since the early 1980s by systematically under-reporting CPI as revealed by John Williams at www.shadowstats.com:
The truth is that real inflation has been running 5% higher than government reported propaganda over the last twenty years. This explains why families were forced to have both parents enter the workforce just to make ends meet, with the expected negative societal consequences clear to anyone with two eyes. The Federal Reserve created inflation also explains why Americans have increased their debt from $124 billion in 1970 to $2.522 trillion today, a 2000% increase. Wages and salaries only rose 1,250% over this same time frame. Living above your means for decades has implications.
The country, its leaders, its banks and the American people should have come to their senses after the 2008-2009 melt-down. Politicians should have used the crisis to address our oncoming long-term fiscal train wreck, the recklessly guilty Wall Street banks should have been liquidated and their shareholders and bondholders wiped out, the bad debt rampant throughout the financial system should have been purged, and American consumers should have reduced their debt induced consumption while saving for an uncertain cloudy future. These actions would have been painful and would have induced a violent agonizing recession. It would be over now. We would be in the midst of a solid economic recovery built upon reality. Iceland told bankers to screw themselves in 2008. They accepted the consequences of their actions and experienced a brutal two year recession.
The debt was purged, banks forced to accept their losses, and the citizens learned a hard lesson. Amazingly, their economy is now growing strongly. This is the lesson. Wall Street is not Main Street. Saving Wall Street banks and wealthy investors did not save the economy. Stealing savings from little old ladies and funneling it to psychopathic bankers is not the way to save our economic system. It’s the way to save bankers who made world destroying bets while committing fraud on an epic scale, and lost.
Despite the assertion by the good doctor Krugman that there are very few Americans living on a fixed income being impacted by Bernanke’s zero interest rate policy, there are actually 40 million people over the age of 65 in this country that might disagree. There are another 60 million people between the ages of 50 and 64 years old rapidly approaching retirement age. We know 36 million people are receiving SS retirement benefits today. We know that 49 million people are already living below the poverty line, with 16% of those over 65 years old living in poverty. Do 0% interest rates benefit these people? Those over 50 years old are most risk averse, and they should be. Despite the propaganda touted by Wall Street shills and their CNBC mouthpieces, the fact is that the S&P 500 on an inflation adjusted basis is at the same level it was in 1996. Stock investors have gotten a 0% return for the last 16 years. The market is currently priced to deliver inflation adjusted returns of 2% over the next ten years, with the high likelihood of a large drop within the next year.
Ben Bernanke’s plan, fully supported by Tim Geithner, Barack Obama and virtually all corrupt politicians in Washington DC, is to force senior citizens and prudent savers into the stock market by manipulating interest rates and offering them no return on their savings. A fixed income senior citizen living off their meager $15,000 per year of Social Security and the $100,000 they’ve saved over their lifetimes was able to earn a risk free 5% in a money market fund in 2007, generating $5,000 or 25% of their annual living income. Today Ben is allowing them to earn $150 per year. From the BEA info in the chart above you can see that Ben’s ZIRP has stolen $400 billion of interest income from senior citizens and prudent savers and dropped it from helicopters on Wall Street. This might explain why old geezers are pouring back into the workforce at a record pace. Maybe Dr. Krugman has an alternative theory.
Another doctor, with a penchant for telling the truth, described in no uncertain terms the depth of the fraud and theft being perpetrated on the American people (aka Muppets) by Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve, their masters on Wall Street, and the puppets in Washington DC:
“We are not doing very well. The economy is just coming along at a snail’s pace. The first quarter numbers that we just got last week were not very good at all. The GDP number was 2.2%. That was a disappointment, but you know, it was all automobiles. 1.6 out of the 2.2 was motor vehicle production. So, people were catching up after not being able to buy them the year before. So, this is a very weak economy… I think the real danger is that this is a bubble in the stock market created by low long-term interest rates that the Fed has engineered. The danger is, like all bubbles, it bursts at some point. Remember, Ben Bernanke told us in the summer of 2010 that he was going to do QE2 and then ultimately they did Operation Twist. The purpose of that was to make long-term bonds less attractive so that investors would buy into the stock market. That would raise wealth and higher wealth would lead to more consumption. It helped in the fourth quarter of 2010 and maybe that is what is helping to drive consumption during the first quarter of this year. But the danger is you get a market that is not with the reality of what is happening in the economy, which is, as I said a moment ago, is really not very good at all.” – Martin Feldstein
The entire bogus recovery is again being driven by subprime auto loans being doled out by Ally Financial (85% owned by the U.S. government) and the other criminal Wall Street banks. The Federal Reserve and our government leaders will continue to steer the country on the same course of encouraging rampant speculation, deterring savings and investment, rewarding outrageous criminal behavior, purposefully generating inflation, and lying to the average American. It will work until we reach a tipping point. Dr. Krugman thinks another $4 trillion of debt and a debt to GDP ratio of 130% should get our economy back on track. When this charade is revealed to be the greatest fraud and theft in the history of mankind, Ben and Paul better have a backup plan, because there are going to be a few angry men looking for them.

Henry Ford knew what would happen if the people ever became educated about the true nature of the Federal Reserve:
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
He only earns his freedom and existence who daily conquers them anew.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe