bankers – Page 4 – The Burning Platform

Anat Admati: Seeing Through the Bankers’ New Clothes – The Bullet or the Bribe

Guest Post by Jesse

“Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity…few people have yet considered the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of cold war with its neighbors.”

George Orwell

The reign of the Banks was reintroduced on the back of, and is sustained by, a major campaign of corruption of the political processes and the public discourse. The decisive moment was the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and the further withdrawal of the watchers on the wall by both political parties who have gone along to get along.

The difference in the analogy offered in this talk is that the monied interests are not some semi-benign doddering old emperor who has fallen victim to the flattery of courtiers and the schemes of conmen. They are a monstrous construction of reckless pride and greed who will work their schemes until the exhaustion and collapse of their prey.

One is foolish to expect them to be ruled by self-control and appeals to reason, given the nature of their pathology. These are the very types that cause people to organize themselves for their protection. This is the highest responsibility of government: the promotion of justice, and the defense of all people, including the foolish and the weak, for the common good against thieves, conmen, bandit, foreign armies, and domestic predators.

“There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.”

Andrew Jackson, Veto of the Second Bank of the United States

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The Banks and their associated Corporations continue to extract usurious fees, misprice risk, rig markets, and engage in a variety of soft bribery and extortion. And it will not end well. I would like to be more optimistic, but it is discouraging to see how easily the financially powerful have co-opted some sincere reform movements into their willing tools, spouting utopian nonsense. The shepherds have been struck down, by the bullet and the bribe, and the sheep have been scattered.

The Anglo-American financial system is an accident waiting to happen. And you can be sure that they are expecting, once again, to dip their beaks deeply into the public pockets when they do.

h/t Bill Moyers

We are surely not the first generation to face this sort of trial, since it is in the very nature of this fallen world, and the burden of every generation to rise to their particular trials and temptations. If anything we may be notable for our weakness, our lack of faithfulness, our foolish pride, a perverted perspective unworthy of our many gifts, and the stubborn hardness of our hearts too often in the name of our just and loving Lord.

“…He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his.”

J. H. Newman

NIRP AFTER ZIRP

The 99.9% have all come to love the Bernanke/Yellen Zero Interest Rate Policy, affectionately known as ZIRP. This is the policy where you provide Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks with hundreds of billions in newly created fiat currency for free and allow them to invest it in risk free Treasuries, while paying senior citizens and other responsible savers 0% on their savings. This allows the oligarchs to further enrich themselves by gorging on free money, while widows are forced to choose between dinner and medicine. ZIRP was designed by bankers to benefit bankers – NO BANKER LEFT BEHIND.

ZIRP is slowly but surely impoverishing the majority of people in the country. It deters saving and investment. It deters job growth. It creates inflation in food, energy, housing, and the other necessities of daily life. Well get ready for NIRP – Negative Interest Rate Policy. The bankers will offer you the privilege of charging you for letting them keep your money. This is what happened today in Europe.

The mainstream media, the government bureaucrats, and the central bankers have all touted the huge success story of government actions in Europe. Interest rates have been manipulated to record low levels. Spain and Italy are supposedly as safe as the U.S. now. It’s all a cruel fucking joke. And the joke is on the people. These lying scumbags actually believe confiscating depositor’s funds through negative interest rates will spur an economic recovery in Europe. They have the balls to make statements like this with a straight face:

“It’s completely wrong to suggest we want to expropriate savers” – Mario Draghi

It seems he is following the advice of his predecessor:

“When it becomes serious, you have to lie.” – Jean Claude Juncker

The central bankers and politicians of the world have solved absolutely nothing. They have shifted bank debt onto the backs of the people and issued more debt to pay off the old debt. They will continue to use convoluted asinine “solutions” and “programs” to keep the Ponzi scheme going as long as possible to allow their oligarch masters to siphon off the remaining wealth of the people. In the final phase you will be Cyprused. They will seize your money if it is in their banks.

If you think NIRP is something that can only happen in Europe, think again. Read the words of your own esteemed Federal Reserve Goddess:

“Accommodative policy is appropriate, in my view, because the economy is operating well below its potential and inflation is undesirably low. If it were positive to take interest rates into negative territory I would be voting for that” – San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Janet Louis Yellen – February 2010

Remember who Janet really works for. The Wall Street banks are her bosses. Janet and her banker buddies are already taking advantage of the math challenged American Sheeple. Savings accounts are already paying .15% interest, while inflation in the real world is 5% or higher. The dollars you keep in a Wall Street bank today are worth 4.85% less every year. The goal of Janet and the Wall Street scumbags is to force you to spend your dollars before they waste away to nothing. They have failed so far, as retail sales collapse and the middle class runs out of money.

The banking cabal has made holding money market funds so distasteful, they force investors into the stock market. Based on this chart, that part of their plan has worked. Stock prices have reached new all-time heights and the ratio of money invested in equities to the amount invested in money market funds is now 20% to 30% higher than the peaks previously reached in 2000 and 2007. When you see the actions of bankers and their puppets, you better understand Lord Acton’s thoughts in the 1800’s:

“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.”– Lord Acton

The time for this fight is approaching rapidly. Get your money out of the banks before it is too late. You get a better return under your mattress.

NIRP Has Arrived: Europe Officially Enters The “Monetary Twilight Zone”

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/05/2014 07:57 -0400

Goodbye ZIRP, hello NIRP. Today’s decision by the ECB to officially lower the deposit facility rate to negative (as in you pay the bank to hold your deposits) is shocking, but not surprising: we previewed just this outcome precisely two years ago in “Europe’s “Monetary Twilight Zone” Neutron Bomb: NIRP”

Here is what we wrote in June 2012 about Europe’s unprecedented NIRP monetary experiment.

Just because ZIRP is so 2009 (and will be until the end of central planning as the Fed can not afford to hike rates ever again), the ECB is now contemplating something far more drastic: charging depositors for the privilege of holding money. Enter NIRP, aka Negative Interest Rate Policy.

Bloomberg reports that “European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is contemplating taking interest rates into a twilight zone shunned by the Federal Reserve. while cutting ECB rates may boost confidence, stimulate lending and foster growth, it could also involve reducing the bank’s deposit rate to zero or even lower. Once an obstacle for policy makers because it risks hurting the money markets they’re trying to revive, cutting the deposit rate from 0.25 percent is no longer a taboo, two euro-area central bank officials said on June 15… “The European recession is worsening, the ECB has to do more,” said Julian Callow, chief European economist at Barclays Capital in London, who forecasts rates will be cut at the ECB’s next policy meeting on July 5. “A negative deposit rate is something they need to consider but taking it to zero as a first step is more likely.” Should Draghi elect to cut the deposit rate to zero or lower, he’ll be entering territory few policy makers have dared to venture. Sweden’s Riksbank in July 2009 became the world’s first central bank to charge financial institutions for the money they deposited with it overnight.”

There is only one problem when comparing the Riksbank with the ECB: at €747 billion in deposits parked at the ECB as of yesterday, the ECB is currently paying out 0.25% on this balance, a move which may or may not be a reason for the depositor banks, primarily of North European extraction, to keep their money parked in Frankfurt. However, once this money has to pay to stay, it is certain that nearly $1 trillion in deposit cash, currently in electronic format, would flood the market. What happens next is unknown: the ECB hopes that this liquidity flood will be contained. The reality will be vastly different. One thing is certain: inflating the debt is the only way out for the status quo. The only question is what format it will take.

SMOKING GUN FROM THE FEDERAL RESERVE MURDER OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

“Although low inflation is generally good, inflation that is too low can pose risks to the economy – especially when the economy is struggling.” – Ben Bernanke

“The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.” – Alan Greenspan

There you have it – the wisdom of two Ivy League educated economists who are primarily liable for the death of the American middle class. They now receive $250,000 per speaking engagement from the crooked financial parties their monetary policies benefited; write books to try and whitewash their legacies of failure, fraud, and hubris; and bask in the glow of the corporate mainstream media propaganda storyline of them saving the world from financial Armageddon. Never have two men done so much damage to so many people, so quickly, and are not in a prison cell or swinging from a lamppost. Their crimes make Madoff look like a two bit marijuana dealer.

The self-proclaimed Great Depression “expert” Ben Bernanke peddles pabulum about inflation being too low and posing dire risk to the economy, but is blasé that swelling the Federal Reserve balance sheet debt from $900 billion in 2008 to $4.4 trillion today with his digital printing press poses any systematic risk to the country and its citizens. Either his years in academia have blinded him to the reality of his actions upon the lives of real people living in the real world, or his real constituents have not been the American people, but the Wall Street bankers that pulled his puppet strings over the last eight years.

Now that he has passed the Control-P button to Yellen, he is reaping the rewards of bailing out Wall Street and further enriching them with QEfinity. Ben earned a whopping $200,000 per year as Federal Reserve chairman. He now rakes in $250,000 per speech from the very financial interests who benefited from his traitorous monetary machinations. I don’t think he will be invited to speak at any little league banquets by formerly middle class parents whose standard of living has been declining since the 1980s. Is it a requirement that every Federal Reserve chairperson lie, obfuscate, misinform, hide the truth, and do the exact opposite of what they say they will do?

“It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve – nor would it be appropriate – to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions.” – Ben Bernanke – October 2007

Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen have always been worried about deflation, while even the government suppressed CPI calculation reveals that inflation has risen by 108% since the day Greenspan assumed office in August 1987. The dollar has lost 52% of its purchasing power in the last 27 years of Fed induced bubbles and busts. And these scholarly academic bozos have been worried about deflation the entire time. Since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971 and unleashed the two headed inflation loving gargoyle of debt issuing bankers and feckless self-serving politicians upon the American people, the dollar has lost 83% of its purchasing power (even using the bastardized BLS figures).

Any critical thinking person with their eyes open knows the official inflation figures have been systematically understated since the 1980’s by at least 3% per year. Should the average American be more worried about deflation or inflation, based upon what has occurred during the 100 years of the Federal Reserve controlling our currency?

I’m sure Greenspan is content and proud, as he succeeded through his own endeavors in rewarding, encouraging and propagating excessive risk taking by the Wall Street cabal during his 19 year reign of error. He exited stage left as the biggest bubble in history, created by his excessively low interest rate policy, blew up and destroyed the 401ks and home values of the middle class. This was the second bubble under his monetary guidance to burst. The third bubble created by these Keynesian acolytes of easy money will burst in the near future, further impoverishing what remains of the middle class and hopefully igniting a long overdue revolution.

Greenspan’s pathetic excuse for a career has benefitted those who owned him, while leaving a trail of casualties that circles the globe. His inflationary dogma, Wall Street enriching doctrine and Keynesian motivated schemes have drained the savings and confiscated the wealth of the middle class through persistent and devastating inflation. And it was done by a man who knew exactly what he was doing.

“Under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy’s stability and balanced growth… The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit… In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation” – Alan Greenspan – 1966

The abandonment of the gold standard in 1971 set in motion four decades of consumer debt accumulation on an epic scale, currency debauchment, and real wage stagnation. The consumer debt accumulation was a consequence of the American middle class being lured into debt by the Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks and their corporate media propaganda machine, as a fallacious response to stagnating real wages when their jobs were shipped to China by mega-corporations using wage arbitrage to boost quarterly profits, their stock prices, and executive bonuses.

The bottom four quintiles have made no progress over the last four decades on an inflation adjusted basis. The middle quintile, representing the middle class, has seen their real household income grow by less than 20% over the last 43 years. And this is using the understated CPI. In reality, even with two spouses working today versus one in 1971, real household income is lower today than it was in 1971.

The more recent data, during the Greenspan/Bernanke inflationary era, is even more disconcerting and destructive. Real median household income has grown at an annualized rate of less than 0.5% over the last thirty years. During the bubblicious years from 2000 through 2014, while Wall Street used control fraud and virtually free money provided by the Fed to siphon off hundreds of billions of ill-gotten profits from the economy, the average middle class family saw their income drop and their debt load soar. This is crony capitalism success at its finest.

The oligarchs count on the fact math challenged, iGadget distracted, Facebook focused, public school educated morons will never understand the impact of inflation on their daily lives. The pliant co-conspirators in the dying legacy media regurgitate nominal government reported income figures which show median household income growing by 30% over the last fourteen years. In reality, the real median household income has FALLEN by 7% since 2000 and 7.5% since its 2008 peak. Again, using a true inflation figure would yield declines exceeding 15%.

Greenspan and Bernanke’s monetary policies loaded the gun; Wall Street bankers cocked the trigger with their no doc negative amortization mortgages, $0 down – 0% interest – 7 year subprime auto loans, introducing the home equity line ATM, and $20,000 lines on dozens of credit cards; the media mouthpieces parroted the stocks for the long run and home prices never fall bullshit storyline, encouraging Americans to pull the trigger; government apparatchiks and bought off politicians and their deficit expanding fiscal policies, pointed the gun; and the American people pulled the trigger by believing this nonsense, blowing their brains all over the fine Corinthian leather interior of their leased BMWs sitting in the driveway in front of their underwater McMansions.

Median household income in the United States peaked in 1999. The internet boom, housing boom and now QE boom have done nothing beneficial for middle class Americans. They have been left with lower real income, less home equity, no savings, and no hope for a better tomorrow. Most states saw their median household income peak over a decade ago, with more than half the states experiencing double digit declines and ten states experiencing declines of 19% or higher. It’s clear who has benefitted from the fiscal policies of spendthrift politicians and the spineless inhabitants of the Mariner Eccles Building in the squalid swamplands of Washington D.C. – the pond scum inhabiting that town. The median household income in D.C. stands at an all-time high. Winning!!!!

A former inhabitant of Washington D.C. spoke the truth about inflation and the men who benefit from it in the 1870’s. He was later assassinated.

“Who so ever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.” – James Garfield

The Federal Reserve, a private bank representing the interests of its Wall Street owners, has been in existence for 100 years. It has managed to diminish the purchasing power of the dollar by 95%, while causing depressions, enabling never ending warfare, allowing politicians to expand the welfare state to immense unsustainable proportions, and enriched its true constituents on Wall Street beyond the comprehension of average Americans. In 2002 Ben Bernanke made his famous helicopter speech where he promised to drop dollars from helicopters to fight off the ever dangerous deflation. After the Fed created 2008 worldwide financial collapse he fired up his helicopters, but dropped trillions of dollars on only one street in America – Wall Street. He dropped turkeys on Main Street, and we all know from Les Nesman what happens when you drop turkeys from helicopters.

Les Nesman: Oh, they’re crashing to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! This is terrible! Everyone’s running around pushing each other. Oh my goodness! Oh, the humanity! People are running about. The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Folks, I don’t know how much longer… The crowd is running for their lives.

Arthur Carlson: As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

The intellectual turkeys running this treacherous institution create a new and larger crisis with each successively desperate gambit to keep their Ponzi scheme alive. Even though Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen are highly educated, they are incapable or unwilling to focus on the practical long-term implications of their short-term measures to keep this perverted financial scheme from imploding. Denigrating savings and capital investment, while urging debt financed spending on foreign produced trinkets and gadgets passes for economic wisdom in the waning days of our empire. Courageous and truthful leaders are nowhere to be found as the country circles the drain. Farewell middle class. It was nice knowing you.

“There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: “In the long run we are all dead.” And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom.” – Henry Hazlitt – Economics in One Lesson

WE’RE SURELY OUTSMARTING THE CHINESE

As the Federal Reserve, along with their Wall Street banker owners, in cooperation with Obama and his Treasury Dept., have been artificially suppressing the price of gold since 2011, someone has been taking advantage of the bargain prices. Do you think the brilliant Ivy League minds that caused two financial market crashes in the last 13 years have outsmarted those rubes in China? The fact that China ceased buying US Treasury bonds two years ago hasn’t worried the brain surgeons in the Eccles Building. They’ve got everything under control.

China wouldn’t be signing energy deals with Russia, buying up natural resources in Africa, making oil deals with Iran and buying up all the gold they can get their hands on because they are preparing for a dramatic change in the world currency regime. That’s silly. Those foolish Chinese don’t realize that gold is barbaric relic and that the fiat paper USD will always retain its value. Just because Janet prints $2.8 billion more of them per day doesn’t mean a thing. Faith in bankers will make everyone wealthy.

Those wily orientals don’t know what they are doing.

THE U.S. IS LIKE A SHIP WITH NO LIFEBOATS

Excellent article from Hugo Salinas Price about the debased dollar, gold and the suicidal bankers who will destroy the world.

The Dollar Cannot Be Devalued and Suicidal Bankers

Hugo Salinas Price

“If the U.S. inflates and devalues the dollar, gold will go much higher in price” Jim Rickards. (See here).

The last dollar devaluation took place under President Roosevelt in 1934, when from being worth 1/20.67th of an ounce of gold in 1933, the dollar was devalued to 1/35th of an ounce of gold.

The last opportunity for devaluing the dollar took place in August 1971, when the dollar was still pegged at 1/35th of an ounce of gold. Nixon took the advice of Milton Friedman and made the worst mistake in history; Nixon did not devalue the dollar as he should have done, but simply took the US off the gold standard, such as it was, and thence forth the US refused to redeem dollars held by Central Banks around the world at any price.

Since August 15, 1971, the dollar can no longer be devalued.

Since the dollar is the reserve currency of all Central Banks in the world, all other currencies – the euro included – are only derivatives of the dollar. The proof of this statement is that the value of each and every currency in the world is calculated in dollars,

The world’s currencies are devalued or revalued against the dollar in the world’s currency markets every day of the year.

There is a “Dollar Index” which shows a value of the dollar against a basket of other currencies. However, the currencies selected for the basket are arbitrarily selected and some relatively important currencies are not included in the basket. Besides this, the movement of the dollar in the “Dollar Index” cannot signify either devaluation or revaluation of the dollar, because the currencies in the Index are themselves undergoing either depreciation or appreciation in dollar terms, due to their own national circumstances.

The US cannot declare an official devaluation of the dollar because there is nothing against which it may devalue, or rather, it does not wish to recognize the existence of gold as money, against which it might devalue.

In order for the US to devalue the dollar effectively, it would first be absolutely necessary for the US government to establish gold as the referent for its value. The US government would have to declare that the value of the dollar is equivalent to a given amount of gold, and solemnly promise that that value will be upheld and made good by offering to buy any amount of gold tendered to it, and pay for it in dollars at a price slightly below the officially established price of gold in dollars, as well as offering to sell any amount of gold paid for in dollars, at a price slightly above the officially established price of gold in dollars.

Once an official value of the dollar in gold were established, it would then once again be possible for the US government to renege on its promise and devalue the dollar by establishing a new and lower value of the dollar in gold. In other words, the dollar must first of all be freely convertible into gold at an official rate, before any devaluation can take place.

As things now stand, it is impossible to devalue the dollar.

A rising price of gold does not devalue the dollar, because there is no official link between gold and the dollar. The world’s monetary and financial systems have no link to gold. Gold can be any price without causing any effect upon those systems. We have seen gold at $1900 dollars per ounce, and things were running just as they were when gold was $300 dollars per ounce.

However, the rising price of gold is a huge embarrassment to the US government not because it devalues the dollar (it does not do this) but because it provokes a loss of confidence in the dollar. When the dollar is seen as falling in value against gold, its fall causes investors to exchange dollars and other currencies for gold as a means of protecting wealth. The rising price of gold is a blot on the prestige of the US dollar and the prestige of the US itself.

The price of gold in dollars is therefore under strict government control. This fact, once derided as ridiculous, is increasingly accepted as truth by those interested in monetary matters around the world. The means for controlling the price of gold lies in the massive sales of “paper gold” which take place to suppress its price, as so many investigators have amply documented.

US monetary policy considers that the dollar is here to stay forever, and that gold is no longer – and never again will be – the world’s ultimate money.

The governments of several nations around the world do not share the same conviction with regard to the permanence of the dollar. China invented irredeemable paper money – which is what the whole world uses today – some one thousand years ago, and several dynasties of Chinese emperors learned to their cost that paper money always degenerates into simple trash.

The Chinese government knows that the dollar will not be around forever. China is purchasing enormous amounts of gold to add to their huge pile of US Bonds in the reserves of the Bank of China; the government of China is more enlightened than the government of the US, because it is encouraging the Chinese to purchase gold and silver.

The US government tells the world that it possesses some 8,000 tonnes of gold; the fact that it cannot deliver physical gold held for Germany’s account belies the assurances regarding the physical gold stock of the US.

The situation for the US – and for the world – is dangerous: the US is like a ship with no lifeboats, because it is presumed to be unsinkable.

The US and its allies are allowing the Chinese and Asia in general, to take possession of huge amounts of gold every year, while the US, the UK and Europe are drained of gold by shipments to the East.

The US evidently believes that the dollar is here to stay and that gold is just a passing fancy. This is classic hubris or arrogance.

When serious problems for the dollar surface – as they surely will – and the US has little or no gold to fall back on, the US with its back to the wall may become a very dangerous entity in the world. Would it be possible for those running the US to loose their heads and decide for a suicidal nuclear war in response to a desperate economic situation? Does the destruction of the whole world matter to men about to take their own lives? Do suicidal bankers worry about the fate of the world?

THE FOURTEEN YEAR RECESSION

“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

“A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men … [W]e have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world—no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.”– Woodrow Wilson

When you ponder the implications of allowing a small group of powerful wealthy unaccountable men to control the currency of a nation over the last one hundred years, you understand why our public education system sucks. You understand why the government created Common Core curriculum teaches children that 3 x 4 = 13, as long as you feel good about your answer. George Carlin was right. The owners of this country (bankers, billionaires, corporate titans, politicians) want more for themselves and less for everyone else. They want an educational system that creates ignorant, obedient, vacuous, obese dullards who question nothing, consume mass quantities of corporate processed fast food, gaze at iGadgets, are easily susceptible to media propaganda and compliant to government regulations and directives. They don’t want highly educated, critical thinking, civil minded, well informed, questioning citizens understanding how badly they have been screwed over the last century. I’m sorry to say, your owners are winning in a landslide.

The government controlled public education system has flourished beyond all expectations of your owners. We’ve become a nation of techno-narcissistic, math challenged, reality TV distracted, welfare entitled, materialistic, gluttonous, indebted consumers of Chinese slave labor produced crap. There are more Americans who know the name of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s bastard child (North West) than know the name of our Secretary of State (Ketchup Kerry). Americans can generate a text or tweet with blinding speed but couldn’t give you change from a dollar bill if their life depended upon it. They are whizzes at buying crap on Amazon or Ebay with a credit card, but have never balanced their checkbook or figured out the concept of deferred gratification and saving for the future. While the ignorant masses are worked into a frenzy by the media propaganda machine over gay marriage, diversity, abortion, climate change, and never ending wars on poverty, drugs and terror, our owners use their complete capture of the financial, regulatory, political, judicial and economic systems to pillage the remaining national wealth they haven’t already extracted.

The financial illiteracy of the uneducated lower classes and the willful ignorance of the supposedly highly educated classes has never been more evident than when examining the concept of Federal Reserve created currency debasement – also known as inflation. The insidious central banker created monetary inflation is the cause of all the ills in our warped, deformed, rigged financialized economic system. The outright manipulation and falsity of government reported economic data is designed to obscure the truth and keep the populace unaware of the deception being executed by the owners of this country. They have utilized deceit, falsification, propaganda and outright lies to mislead the public about the true picture of the disastrous financial condition in this country. Since most people are already trapped in the mental state of normalcy bias, it is easy for those in control to reinforce that normalcy bias by manipulating economic data to appear normal and using their media mouthpieces to perpetuate the false storyline of recovery and a return to normalcy.

This is how feckless politicians and government apparatchiks are able to add $2.8 billion per day to the national debt; a central bank owned by Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks has been able to create $3.3 trillion out of thin air and pump it into the veins of its owners; and government controlled agencies report a declining unemployment rate, no inflation and a growing economy, without creating an iota of dissent or skepticism from the public. Americans want to be lied to because it allows them to continue living lives of delusion, where spending more than you make, consuming rather than saving, and believing stock market speculation and home price appreciation will make them rich are viable life strategies. Even though 90% of the population owns virtually no stocks, they are convinced record stock market highs are somehow beneficial to their lives. They actually believe Bernanke/Yellen when they bloviate about the dangers of deflation. Who would want to pay less for gasoline, food, rent, or tuition?

Unless you are beholden to the oligarchs, that sense of stress, discomfort, feeling that all in not well, and disturbing everyday visual observations is part of the cognitive dissonance engulfing the nation. Anyone who opens their eyes and honestly assesses their own financial condition, along with the obvious deterioration of our suburban sprawl retail paradise infrastructure, is confronted with information that is inconsistent with what they hear from their bought off politician leaders, highly compensated Ivy League trained economists, and millionaire talking heads in the corporate legacy media. Most people resolve this inconsistency by ignoring the facts, rejecting the obvious and refusing to use their common sense. To acknowledge the truth would require confronting your own part in this Ponzi debt charade disguised as an economic system. It is easier to believe a big lie than think critically and face up to decades of irrational behavior and reckless conduct.

What’s In Your GDP

“The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is one of the broader measures of economic activity and is the most widely followed business indicator reported by the U.S. government. Upward growth biases built into GDP modeling since the early 1980s, however, have rendered this important series nearly worthless as an indicator of economic activity. The popularly followed number in each release is the seasonally adjusted, annualized quarterly growth rate of real (inflation-adjusted) GDP, where the current-dollar number is deflated by the BEA’s estimates of appropriate price changes. It is important to keep in mind that the lower the inflation rate used in the deflation process, the higher will be the resulting inflation-adjusted GDP growth.” – John Williams – Shadowstats

GDP is the economic statistic bankers, politicians and media pundits use to convince the masses the economy is growing and their lives are improving. Therefore, it is the statistic most likely to be manipulated, twisted and engineered in order to portray the storyline required by the oligarchs. Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth usually marks a recession. Those in power do not like to report recessions, so data “massaging” has been required over the last few decades to generate the required result. Prior to 1991 the government reported the broader GNP, which includes the GDP plus the balance of international flows of interest and dividend payments. Once we became a debtor nation, with massive interest payments to foreigners, reporting GNP became inconvenient. It is not reported because it is approximately $900 billion lower than GDP. The creativity of our keepers knows no bounds. In July of 2013 the government decided they had found a more “accurate” method for measuring GDP and simply retroactively increased GDP by $500 billion out of thin air. It’s amazing how every “more accurate” accounting adjustment improves the reported data. The economic growth didn’t change, but GDP was boosted by 3%. These adjustments pale in comparison to the decades long under-reporting of inflation baked into the GDP calculation.

As John Williams pointed out, GDP is adjusted for inflation. The higher inflation factored into the calculation, the lower reported GDP. The deflator used by the BEA in their GDP calculation is even lower than the already bastardized CPI. According to the BEA, there has only been 32% inflation since the year 2000. They have only found 1.4% inflation in the last year and only 7.1% in the last five years. You’d have to be a zombie from the Walking Dead or an Ivy League economist to believe those lies. Anyone living in the real world knows their cost of living has risen at a far greater rate. According to the government, and unquestioningly reported by the compliant co-conspirators in the the corporate media, GDP has grown from $10 trillion in 2000 to $17 trillion today. Even using the ridiculously low inflation BEA adjustment yields an increase from $12.4 trillion to only $15.9 trillion in real terms. That pitiful 28% growth over the last fourteen years is dramatically overstated, as revealed in the graph below. Using a true rate of inflation exposes the grand fraud being committed by those in power. The country has been in a never ending recession since 2000.

Your normalcy bias is telling you this is impossible. Your government tells you we have only experienced a recession from the third quarter of 2008 through the third quarter of 2009. So despite experiencing two stock market crashes, the greatest housing crash in history, and a worldwide financial system implosion the authorities insist we’ve had a growing economy 93% of the time over the last fourteen years. That mental anguish you are feeling is the cognitive dissonance of wanting to believe your government, but knowing they are lying. It is a known fact the government, in conspiracy with Greenspan, Congress and academia, have systematically reduced the reported CPI based upon hedonistic quality adjustments, geometric weighting alterations, substitution modifications, and the creation of incomprehensible owner’s equivalent rent calculations. Since the 1700s consumer inflation had been estimated by measuring price changes in a fixed-weight basket of goods, effectively measuring the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living. This began to change in the early 1980s with the Greenspan Commission to “save” Social Security and came to a head with the Boskin Commission in 1995.

Simply stated, the Greenspan/Boskin Commissions’ task was to reduce future Social Security payments to senior citizens by deceitfully reducing CPI and allowing politicians the easy way out. Politicians would lose votes if they ever had to directly address the unsustainability of Social Security. Therefore, they allowed academics to work their magic by understating the CPI and stealing $700 billion from retirees in the ten years ending in 2006. With 10,000 baby boomers per day turning 65 for the next eighteen years, understating CPI will rob them of trillions in payments. This is a cowardly dishonest method of extending the life of Social Security.

If CPI was calculated exactly as it was computed prior to 1983, it would have averaged between 5% and 10% over the last fourteen years. Even computing it based on the 1990 calculation prior to the Boskin Commission adjustments, would have produced annual inflation of 4% to 7%. A glance at an inflation chart from 1872 through today reveals the complete and utter failure of the Federal Reserve in achieving their stated mandate of price stability. They have managed to reduce the purchasing power of your dollar by 95% over the last 100 years. You may also notice the net deflation from 1872 until 1913, when the American economy was growing rapidly. It is almost as if the Federal Reserve’s true mandate has been to create inflation, finance wars, perpetuate the proliferation of debt, artificially create booms and busts, enrich their Wall Street owners, and impoverish the masses. Happy Birthday Federal Reserve!!!

When you connect the dots you realize the under-reporting of inflation benefits the corporate fascist surveillance state. If the government was reporting the true rate of inflation, mega-corporations would be forced to pay their workers higher wages, reducing profits, reducing corporate bonuses, and sticking a pin in their stock prices. The toady economists at the Federal Reserve would be unable to sustain their ludicrous ZIRP and absurd QEfinity stock market levitation policies. Reporting a true rate of inflation would force long-term interest rates higher. These higher rates, along with higher COLA increases to government entitlements, would blow a hole in the deficit and force our spineless politicians to address our unsustainable economic system. There would be no stock market or debt bubble. If the clueless dupes watching CNBC bimbos and shills on a daily basis were told the economy has been in fourteen year downturn, they might just wake up and demand accountability from their leaders and an overhaul of this corrupt system.

Mother Should I Trust the Government?

We know the BEA has deflated GDP by only 32% since 2000. We know the BLS reports the CPI has only risen by 37% since 2000. Should I trust the government or trust the facts and my own eyes? The data is available to see if the government figures pass the smell test. If you are reading this, you can remember your life in 2000. Americans know what it cost for food, energy, shelter, healthcare, transportation and entertainment in 2000, but they unquestioningly accept the falsified inflation figures produced by the propaganda machine known as our government. The chart below is a fairly comprehensive list of items most people might need to live in this world. A critical thinking individual might wonder how the government can proclaim inflation of 32% to 37% over the last fourteen years, when the true cost of living has grown by 50% to 100% for most daily living expenses. The huge increases in property taxes, sales taxes, government fees, tolls and income taxes aren’t even factored in the chart. It seems gold has smelled out the currency debasement and the lies of our leaders. This explains the concerted effort by the powers that be to suppress the price of gold by any means necessary.

Living Expense	Jan-00	Mar-14	% Increase
Gallon of gas	$1.27	$3.51	176.4%
Barrel of oil	$24.11	$100.00	314.8%
Fuel oil per gallon	$1.19	$4.07	242.0%
Electricity per Kwh	$0.084	$0.134	59.5%
Gas per therm	$0.712	$1.078	51.4%
Dozen eggs	$0.97	$2.00	106.2%
Coffee per lb	$3.40	$5.20	52.9%
Ground Beef per lb.	$1.90	$3.73	96.3%
Postage stamp	$0.33	$0.49	48.5%
Movie ticket	$5.25	$10.25	95.2%
New car	$20,300.00	$31,500.00	55.2%
Annual healthcare spending per capita	$4,550.00	$9,300.00	104.4%
Average private college tuition	$22,000.00	$37,000.00	68.2%
Avg home price (Case Shiller)	$161,000.00	$242,000.00	50.3%
Avg monthly rent (Case Shiller)	$635.00	$890.00	40.2%
Ounce of gold	$279.00	$1,334.00	378.1%

Mother, you should not trust the government. There is no doubt they have systematically under-reported inflation based on any impartial assessment of the facts. The reality that we remain stuck in a fourteen year recession is borne out by the continued decline in vehicle miles driven (at 1995 levels) due to declining commercial activity, the millions of shuttered small businesses, and the proliferation of Space Available signs in strip malls and office parks across the land. The fact there are only 8 million more people employed today than were employed in 2000, despite the working age population growing by 35 million, might be a clue that we remain in recession. If that isn’t enough proof for you, than maybe a glimpse at real median household income, retail sales and housing will put the final nail in the coffin of your cognitive dissonance.

The government and their media mouthpieces expect the ignorant masses to believe they have advanced their standard of living, with median household income growing from $40,800 to $52,500 since 2000. But, even using the badly flawed CPI to adjust these figures into real terms reveals real median household income to be 7.3% below the level of 2000. Using a true inflation figure would cause a CNBC talking head to have an epileptic seizure.

The picture is even bleaker when broken down into the age of households, with younger households suffering devastating real declines in household income since 2000. I guess all those retail clerk, cashier, waitress, waiter, food prep, and housekeeper jobs created over the last few years aren’t cutting the mustard. Maybe that explains the 30 million increase (175% increase) in food stamp recipients since 2000, encompassing 19% of all households in the U.S. Luckily the banking oligarchs were able to convince the pliable masses to increase their credit card, auto and student loan debt from $1.5 trillion to $3.1 trillion over the fourteen year descent into delusion.

When you get your head around this unprecedented decline in household income over the last fourteen years, along with the 50% to 100% rise in costs to live in the real world, as opposed to the theoretical world of the Federal Reserve and BLS, you will understand the long term decline in retail sales reflected in the following chart. When you adjust monthly retail sales for gasoline (an additional tax), inflation (understated), and population growth, you understand why retailers are closing thousands of stores and hurdling towards inevitable bankruptcy. Retail sales are 6.9% below the June 2005 peak and 4% below levels reached in 2000. And this is with millions of retail square feet added over this time frame. We know the dramatic surge from the 2009 lows was not prompted by an increase in household income. So how did the 11% proliferation of spending happen?

The up swell in retail spending began to accelerate in late 2010. Considering credit card debt outstanding is at exactly where it was in October 2010, it seems consumers playing with their own money turned off the spigot of speculation. It has been non-revolving debt that has skyrocketed from $1.63 trillion in February 2010 to $2.26 trillion today. This unprecedented 39% rise in four years has been engineered by the government, using your tax dollars and the tax dollars of unborn generations. The Federal government has complete control of the student loan market and with their 85% ownership of Ally Financial, the largest auto financing company, a dominant position in the auto loan market. The peddling of $400 billion of subprime student loan debt and $200 billion of subprime auto loan debt has created the illusion of a retail recovery. The student loan debt has been utilized by University of Phoenix MBA wannabes to buy iGadgets, the latest PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto and the latest glazed donut breakfast sandwich on the market. It’s nothing but another debt financed bubble that will end in tears for the American taxpayer, as hundreds of billions will be written off.

The fake retail recovery pales in comparison to the wolves of Wall Street produced housing recovery sham. They deserve an Academy Award for best fantasy production. The Federal Reserve fed Wall Street hedge fund purchase of millions of foreclosed shanties across the nation has produced media proclaimed home price increases of 10% to 30% in cities across the country. Withholding foreclosures from the market and creating artificial demand with free money provided by the Federal Reserve has temporarily added $4 trillion of housing net worth and reduced the number of underwater mortgages on the books of the Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks. The percentage of investor purchases and cash purchases is at all-time highs, while the percentage of first time buyers is at all-time lows. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can look at the long-term chart of mortgage applications and realize we are still in a recession. Applications are 35% below levels at the depths of the 2008/2009 recession. Applications are 65% below levels at the housing market peak in 2005. They are even 35% below 2000 levels. There is no real housing recovery, despite the propaganda peddled by the NAR, CNBC, and Wall Street. It’s a fraud.

It is the pinnacle of arrogance and hubris that a few Ivy League educated economists sitting in the Marriner Eccles Building in the swamps of Washington D.C., who have never worked a day in their lives at a real job, think they can create wealth and pull the levers of money creation to control the American and global financial systems. All they have done is perfect the art of bubble finance in order to enrich their owners at the expense of the rest of us. Their policies have induced unwarranted hope and speculation on a grand scale. Greenspan and Bernanke have provoked multiple bouts of extreme speculation in stocks and housing over the last 15 years, with the subsequent inevitable collapses. Fed encouraged gambling does not create wealth it just redistributes it from the peasants to the aristocracy. The Fed has again produced an epic bubble in stock and bond valuations which will result in another collapse. Normalcy bias keeps the majority from seeing the cliff straight ahead. Federal Reserve monetary policies have distorted financial markets, created extreme imbalances, encouraged excessive risk taking, and ruined the lives of working class people. Take a long hard look at the chart below and answer one question. Was QE designed to benefit Main Street or Wall Street?

The average American has experienced a fourteen year recession caused by the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve. Our leaders could have learned the lesson of two Fed induced collapses in the space of eight years and voluntarily abandoned the policies of reckless credit expansion, instead embracing policies encouraging saving, capital investment and balanced budgets. They have chosen the same cure as the disease, which will lead to crisis, catastrophe and collapse.

“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” – Ludwig von Mises

This Is Why It Is Moral To Wish Death Upon All Bankers

This was on Lew Rockwell this morning.

——————————————————

“The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing.”

—— William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England in 1694

“Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.”

—– Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), founder of the House of Rothschild.

“If my sons did not want wars, there would be none.”

—— Gutle Schnaper, wife of Mayer Amschel Rothschild and mother of his five sons

“The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.”

—– The Rothschild brothers of London writing to associates in New York, 1863

“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of a pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this world would be a happier and better world to live in. But if you wish to remain slaves of the Bankers and pay for the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.”

—– Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920s, the second richest man in Britain

“When you or I write a check, there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover the check; but when the Federal Reserve writes a check, there is no bank deposit on which that check is drawn. When the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money.”

—– From the Boston Federal Reserve Bank pamphlet, “Putting it Simply.”

“Neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities. Intrinsically, a ‘dollar’ bill is just a piece of paper. Deposits are merely book entries.”

—– “Modern Money Mechanics Workbook” – Federal Reserve of Chicago, 1975

“I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create money. And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hand the destiny of the people.”

—— Reginald McKenna, as Chairman of the Midland Bank, addressing stockholders in 1924

“I am just a banker doing God’s work.”

—– Lloyd Blankfein, CEO, Goldman Sachs, 2009

“Banks do not have an obligation to promote the public good.”

—– Alexander Dielius, CEO, Germany, Austrian, Eastern Europe Goldman Sachs, 2010

So there it is in their own words. The arrogance, elitism, and condescension of bankers towards the common citizen are starkly revealed. These brilliant criminals have created the Ponzi scheme of all Ponzi schemes and so far, protected it from any form of criminal prosecution. However, that might be about to change. Awareness of their criminality is growing throughout the world at a rapid pace but never doubt that this group will fight tenaciously and be willing to go to any extremes to protect their centuries’ old scam. We predict there will undoubtedly be more strange banker deaths ahead of us in the ensuing weeks, months, and years.

The next time you walk into your local bank, please ask yourself this question, “Do I really want to entrust my hard earned wages and savings to a centuries’ old criminal scheme?” If you don’t, please consider gold and silver for protection of your wealth.”

BERNANKE JUST GOT PAID MORE FOR ONE SPEECH THAN HIS ANNUAL SALARY AT THE FED

I despise Bernanke, Greenspan, Dimon, Blankfein, Geithner and every other lying scumbag banker on this earth. These blood sucking whores, with their Ivy League degrees and holier than thou attitudes, make me sick to my stomach. They are the reason the world is so fucked up. They have caused misery and poverty across the globe with their monetary policies and casino approach to banking. They deserve to die for their sins. Before this Fourth Turning is over, if there is any justice in this world, these men should pay with their lives.

Bernanke will lie, obfuscate, and blame others for the disaster HE CAUSED. And in this warped society, other rich motherfuckers will pay this traitorous piece of shit $250,000 for one worthless speech condoning his actions, while pretending to care about the common man.

Bernanke Finally Reveals, In One Word, Why The Financial System Crashed

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/04/2014 18:32 -0500

Now that Ben Bernanke is no longer the head of the Fed, he can finally tell the truth about what caused the financial crash. At least that’s what a packed auditorium of over 1000 people as part of the financial conference staged by National Bank of Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s largest bank, was hoping for earlier today when they paid an exorbitant amount of money to hear the former chairman talk.

Bernanke confirmed as much when he said he could now speak more freely about the crisis than he could while at the Fed – “I can say whatever I want.”

So what was the reason, according to the man who was easily the most powerful person in the world for nearly a decade?

Ready?

“Overconfidence.” (no, not “weather”)

Yup. That’s it.

The United States became “overconfident”, he said of the period before the September 2008 collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers. That triggered a crash from which parts of the world, including the U.S. economy, have not fully recovered.

“This is going to sound very obvious but the first thing we learned is that the U.S. is not invulnerable to financial crises,” Bernanke said.

Actually what is going to sound even more obvious, is that subprime was not contained.

But going back to Bernanke’s explanation, brought to us by Reuters, we wonder: did he perhaps get into the reason for the overconfidence? Maybe such as the Fed’s endless hubris in believing it knew what it was doing, when time after time and especially over the past 30 years, the US central bank has shown that all it now does is lead the nation from bubble to bubble, from crisis to crisis, and replaces one asset bubble, first the dot com, then the housing, with another, even bigger one, until we get to the biggest bubble of all time – the stock market as you see it currently, where the S&P 500 soars to all time highs and when news of an ICBM launch can barely cause a dent in a ridiculous upward ramp driven by, you guessed it, overconfidence.

Only this time it’s different, because the Fed really know what it is doing. Or maybe this time is no different than any other market mania unwinding before our eyes, with the careful nurturing of the the Fed and its chairmanwoman, be it Greenspan, Bernanke or Yellen.

But has Bernanke at least learned something? After all he is supposedly a very smart man from Princeton? Why yes:

He also said he found it hard to find the right way to communicate with investors when every word was closely scrutinised. “That was actually very hard for me to get adjusted to that situation where your words have such effect. I came from the academic background and I was used to making hypothetical examples and … I learned I can’t do that because the markets do not understand hypotheticals.”

He concluded that he should “try to simplify the message, but not simplify too much”.

Oh you mean something like this, uttered literally moments ago:

LACKER SAYS UNEMPLOYMENT THRESHOLD CLOSE TO OBSOLETE

Thank you Fed for admitting the whole premise behind the injection of over $1 trillion in the capital markets, the Fed’s “target” of 6.5% unemployment, was really a bizarro bullshit joke perpetrated on the common man, when in reality the threshold was 1900 on the S&P. Or 2000. Or 3000. Or pick some arbitrary nominal number, where people confuse paper assets inflation with real wealth.

But don’t worry, it’s the “overconfidence” that did us in…

And then, on to regrets – because Bernanke has a few:

“We could have done some things on the margin to mitigate somewhat the crisis.”

“Although we have been very aggressive, I think on the monetary policy front we could have been even more aggressive.”

You heard that, the $4.1 trillion balance sheet is nowhere near enough. The Fed could have blown up the final bubble even more! Because that’s what you are taught on Clown Keynesian school.

But wait, because the punchline beckons:

“My natural inclinations, even if it weren’t for the legal mandate, would be to try to help the average person,” Bernanke said today in his first public remarks since leaving the Fed in January, referring to the central bank’s mandate from Congress to ensure full employment and stable prices. “The complexity though arises because in order to help the average person, you have to do things — very distasteful things — like try to prevent some large financial companies from collapsing.”

“The result was there are still many people after the crisis who still feel that it was unfair that some companies got helped and small banks and small business and average families didn’t get direct help,” Bernanke said. “It’s a hard perception to break.”

So there it is: the system crashed because we were “overconfident” – nothing to do with system merely having gorged on the reactionary excess to the popping of the dot com bubble – but Bernanke is 100% certain he could have done more to help the average person, because the Fed’s balance sheet trickle down eventually works. And let’s not forget the “overconfidence” about containing inflation in 15 minutes or less. That one will be hilarious to watch unwind.

* * *

So how much does such profound brilliance cost?

Bernanke received at least $250,000 for his appearance.

Or, in other words, more than he was paid for one full year as Fed chairman.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a wrap.

DAVID STOCKMAN ON OUR CRONY CAPITALIST STATE

DYING TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS

Do you get the feeling things are beginning to unravel? Do you smell a whiff of panic in the air? Do you sense the ruling elite are starting to turn on each other. The psychopaths in the boardrooms wouldn’t murder to cover up their criminal misdeeds or would they? This Fourth Turning is starting to heat up.

A Rash of Deaths and a Missing Reporter – With Ties to Wall Street Investigations
By Pam Martens
February 3, 2014

In a span of four days last week, two current executives and one recently retired top ranking executive of major financial firms were found dead. Both media and police have been quick to label the deaths as likely suicides. Missing from the reports is the salient fact that all three of the financial firms the executives worked for are under investigation for potentially serious financial fraud.

The deaths began on Sunday, January 26. London police reported that William Broeksmit, a top executive at Deutsche Bank who had retired in 2013, had been found hanged in his home in the South Kensington section of London. The day after Broeksmit was pronounced dead, Eric Ben-Artzi, a former risk analyst turned whistleblower at Deutsche Bank, was scheduled to speak at Auburn University in Alabama on his allegations that Deutsche had hid $12 billion in losses during the financial crisis with the knowledge of senior executives. Two other whistleblowers have brought similar charges against Deutsche Bank.

Deutsche Bank is also under investigation by global regulators for potentially rigging the foreign exchange markets – an action similar to the charges it settled in 2013 over its traders’ involvement in the rigging of the interest rate benchmark, Libor.

Just two days after Broeksmit’s death, on Tuesday, January 28, a 39-year old American, Gabriel Magee, a Vice President at JPMorgan in London, plunged to his death from the roof of the 33-story European headquarters of JPMorgan in Canary Wharf. According to Magee’s LinkedIn profile, he was involved in “Technical architecture oversight for planning, development, and operation of systems for fixed income securities and interest rate derivatives…”

Read the entire story here.

ONLY ABOUT 10,000 TO GO

I guess these bankers had a conscience. It’s the psychopaths like Dimon, Corzine, Blankfein, and Schwarzman that have absolutely no conscience and will never kill themselves. They will need a little help.

Third Banker, Former Fed Member, “Found Dead” Inside A Week

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2014 10:16 -0500

If the stock market were already crashing then it would be simple to blame the dismally sad rash of dead bankers in the last week on that – certainly that was reflected in 1929. However, for the third time in the last week, a senior financial executive has died in what appears to be a suicide. As Bloomberg reports, following the deaths of a JPMorgan senior manager (Tuesday) and a Deutsche Bank executive (Sunday), Russell Investments’ Chief Economist (and former Fed economist) Mike Dueker was found dead at the side of a highway in Washington State. Police said the death appeared to be a suicide.

Via Bloomberg,

Mike Dueker, the chief economist at Russell Investments, was found dead at the side of a highway that leads to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state, according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. He was 50.

He may have jumped over a 4-foot (1.2-meter) fence before falling down a 40- to 50-foot embankment, Pierce County Detective Ed Troyer said yesterday. He said the death appeared to be a suicide.

Dueker was reported missing on Jan. 29, and a group of friends had been searching for him along with law enforcement. Troyer said Dueker was having problems at work, without elaborating.

Dueker was in good standing at Russell, said Jennifer Tice, a company spokeswoman. She declined to comment on Troyer’s statement about Dueker’s work issues.

But as Michael Snyder noted recently, if the stock market was already crashing, it would be easy to blame the suicides on that. The world certainly remembers what happened during the crash of 1929…

Historically, bankers have been stereotyped as the most likely to commit suicide. This has a lot to do with the famous 1929 stock market crash, which resulted in 1,616 banks failing and more than 20,000 businesses going bankrupt.

The number of bankers committing suicide directly after the crash is thought to have been only around 20, with another 100 people connected to the financial industry dying at their own hand within the year.

Dueker had also been a research economist at the St. Louis Fed:

He published dozens of research papers over the past two decades, many on monetary policy, according to the St. Louis Fed’s website, which ranks him among the top 5 percent of economists by number of works published. His most-cited work was a 1997 paper titled “Strengthening the case for the yield curve as a predictor of U.S. recessions,” published by the reserve bank while he was a researcher there.

So, with stocks a mere 4% off their highs, are so many high ranking and well respected bankers committing suicide?

JUMP YOU F$#KERS

Too bad it wasn’t Jamie Dimon. Only a few thousand more bankers to go and we’ll be getting somewhere.

Man Jumps To His Death From JPMorgan London Headquarters

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/28/2014 07:48 -0500

Early this morning, at JPM’s 33 story high London Headquarters located at 25 Bank Street in Canary Wharf, a 39 year-old man jumped to his death after falling onto a 9th floor roof. The police, who were called to the scene at 8:02 this morning, said they are not treating the death as suspicious and no arrests have been made, suggesting the death was indeed a suicide. London Ambulance Service and London Air Ambulance attended but they could not save the man.

Bloomberg quotes Jennifer Zuccarelli, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan in London who said that “We are reviewing a very sad incident at 25 Bank Street this morning.” The building and the surrounding area is “currently secure,” she said.

From Bloomberg:

The 11-year-old skyscraper is 33 stories high, according to building-data provider Emporis. It was formerly the European headquarters of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which filed for the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history in 2008.

The bank declined to identify the deceased person or say whether they worked for JPMorgan. The police are waiting for “formal identification,” they said in an e-mailed statement.

London24, which also notes that this is the second high profile banking death within just a few days after Deutsche bank announced its former executive William Broeksmit 58, was found dead in his home on Sunday,caught some tweets describing the incident:

Is this just the first of many banker suicides, if indeed this was a suicide?

Enjoy a little musical tribute to Jamie Dimon and his ilk.

ACCORDING TO PLAN

On one of the Bitcoin threads last week I pondered whether TPTB were purposely driving the price of bitcoin to unsustainable levels in order to crash it in an attempt to discredit it as an alternative currency. Make no mistake about it, the bankers and politicians DO NOT like bitcoin. Anything that reduces their power and/or control of the monetary system is considered a threat. They may act unconcerned, but in the smokey backrooms where the real decisions in this country are made, the bankers are worried. This bubble and crash smells like a planned publicized event to scare people away from bitcoin. The MSM will now do their part by scorning and ridiculing bitcoin as a joke. TPTB are becoming a bit predictable.

Bitcoin Crashes, Loses Half Of Its Value In Two Days

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/07/2013 09:27 -0500nShare1

It was inevitable that a few short days after Wall Street lovingly embraced Bitcoin as their own, with analysts from Bank of America, Citigroup and others, not to mention the clueless momentum-chasing, peanut gallery vocally flip-flopping on the “currency” after hating it at $200 only to love it at $1200 that Bitcoin… would promptly crash. And crash it did: overnight, following previously reported news that China’s Baidu would follow the PBOC in halting acceptance of Bitcoin payment, Bitcoin tumbled from a recent high of $1155 to an almost electronically destined “half-off” touching $576 hours ago, exactly 50% lower, on very heave volume, before a dead cat bounce levitated the currency back to the $800 range, where it may or may not stay much longer, especially if all those who jumped on the bandwagon at over $1000 on “get rich quick” hopes and dreams, only to see massive losses in their P&Ls decide they have had enough.

Which incidentally, like gold, is to be expected when one treats what is explicitly as a currency on its own merits in a world of dying fiat – with the appropriate much required patience – instead of as an asset, with delusions of grandure that some greater fool will pay more for it tomorrow than it is worth today. Sadly, in a world of HFT trading, patience is perhaps the most valuable commodity.

As for Bitcoin, while the bubble may or may not have burst, and is for now kept together with the help of the Winklevoss bros bid, all it would take is for another very vocal institutiona rejection be it in China or domestically, where its “honeypot” features are no longer of use to the Fed or other authorities, for the euphoria to disappear as quickly as it came…

Two day chart, showing the epic move from $1155 to $576 in hours:

And longer term chart showing the overnight action in its full glory:

GREED HAS POISONED MEN’S SOULS

HEADS WILL ROLL

It won’t be the free shit army leading the revolution. They are still getting their free shit and are satisfied living a life of ignorance and squalor. It is the educated middle class who have fallen into the lower class that are most angry. They believed in the American dream and it has proven to be an illusion. Their anger is palatable as they witness the continued looting by the Wall Street elite and the transfer of their wealth to the non-productive ignorant class through SNAP, SSDI, Section 8 housing and a myriad of other entitlement bribe programs.

The spark for any revolution would have to come from the youth of the country who have been enslaved in the chains of $1.2 trillion of student loan debt, no job prospects, and being handed a $200 trillion bill by their parents and grandparents. When will their frustration and anger boil over? There will be a revolution and I want to be there when Jamie Dimon, Bernanke and the other criminals lose their heads. Bring it on.

America’s new ‘economic guillotine’ is dead ahead Commentary: Wealth report on inequality calls to mind French Revolution

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch)

Credit Suisse’s new Global Wealth Report reminds us of the 1790s when inequality ignited the French Revolution and 40,000 met the guillotine. Today, Credit Suisse data reveal that just 1% own 46% of the world, while two-thirds of the world’s people have less than $10,000 wealth.

Credit Suisse predicts a world with 11 trillionaires in a couple generations, as the rich get richer and the gap widens.

Can this trend continue? Or will it trigger an “economic guillotine?” Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, author of “The Price of Inequality,” is not as optimistic as Credit Suisse: “America likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity.” But today the “numbers show that the American dream is a myth … the gap’s widening … the clear trend is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top, the hollowing out of the middle, and increasing poverty at the bottom.”

History is warning us: Inequality is a recipe for disaster, rebellions, revolutions and wars. Not in two generations. Much, much sooner, a reminder of the Pentagon’s famous 2003 prediction: “As the planet’s carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies will emerge … warfare will define human life on the planet by 2020.” Yes, much sooner than two generations.

Revolutions catch us off-guard, ignite suddenly, spreading like fire The French Revolution is a powerful history lesson, easily denied. Angry masses. Their treasury bankrupt. High interest on nation debt consumed half their tax revenues. Why? Earlier wars, a decedent aristocracy, an incompetent King Louis XVI. The anger so intense that during the 1792-93 Reign of Terror the king was guillotined, along with as many as 40,000 others, many of whom were innocent, as inequality ripped apart their nation.

Why? The aristocracy, intellectuals and the rich were oblivious of the needs of the masses, much like our leaders today. As Adbusters magazine put it: “Even in the seconds before their heads were about to roll away from their bodies underneath the blade of the guillotine, it still puzzled the opulent Paris elite how this could be happening.”

The truth is, they were in denial, not listening to the masses for years. Yes, revolutions catch whole nations by surprise: “Just months before the storming of the Bastille in 1789, everything was peachy. The social order ran smooth. The poor paid their dues. The middle class kept their mouths shut. The aristocracy partied … and the next day they were being dragged through the streets by their frilly collars like common thieves.”

Inequality is accelerating rapidly to revolutionary levels Are we near a new Bastille Day today? Barry Ritholtz’s the Big Picture recently posted “The Stunning Truth About Inequality In America,” a list of 14 reasons from “WashingtonsBlog,” warning us the inequality gap is accelerating rapidly, widening so fast that America may soon be at what you could call Bastille Day levels, an inequality gap so great it is the fuel and trigger that can ignite an angry people into revolution.

These 14 triggers are reinforced by the statistics in the Credit Suisse Wealth Report, Stiglitz’s challenge and the Pentagon prediction. Here’s a slightly edited version of the “Stunning Truth About Inequality,” a must-read for America’s 95 million of investors:

1. It’s worse than you imagine. Americans consistently underestimate the amount of inequality in our country. They would be shocked to learn the truth …

2. Worse than history’s worst. Twice as bad as in ancient Rome, worse than in tsarist Russia, worse than in America’s Gilded Age, worse than in modern Egypt, Tunisia or Yemen, worse than in many banana republics in Latin America. Yes, today’s inequality is even worse than experienced by slaves in 1774 colonial America.

3. America lagging other developed nations. Worse in America than any other developed nation.

4. Permanent inequality. Staggering inequality in America has become permanent.

5. America’s two economies. There are two economies: one for the rich, and the other for everyone else.

6. Top 1% rallys, while 99% in recession. The economy has only recovered for the richest 1% … the rest of the country is more or less stuck in a depression.

7. Rich keep getting richer. The Super Rich are raking in more than ever before.

8. Poor getting poorer. While more and more people are sliding into poverty.

9. Middle class now dead. One of every five households in the America is on food stamps. The middle class has more or less been destroyed.

10. Causes market crashes. Who’s who of prominent economists and investors say that inequality causes crashes and hurts the economy.

11. Great Depression. Extreme inequality helped cause the Great Depression, the current financial crisis … and the fall of the Roman Empire.

12. Bad political policies. Inequality isn’t happening for mysterious or uncontrollable reasons. Bad government policy is responsible for runaway inequality.

13. And leadership. Bush was horrible, but income inequality has increased even more under Obama than under Bush.

14. Conservatives. It’s a myth that conservatives accept runaway inequality. Conservatives are as concerned as liberals regarding the stunning collapse of upward mobility.

Even if the Super Rich do avoid the coming economic guillotine, what’s ahead? In “Wealth, War and Wisdom,” hedge fund manager Barton Biggs, former Morgan Stanley global strategist, warned of the “possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure,” a revolution of the disillusioned, angry masses. His solution? Buy a farm up in the mountains: “Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food … well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson.”