NYPD loses face and first Occupy Wall Street trial

Katerina Azarova: This case could have been a slam dunk for the NYPD, had it not been for one thing: the video showing police claims of disorderly conduct during an OWS protest to be completely untrue.

Hundreds have been arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests, but photographer Alexander Arbuckle’s case was the first to go to trial – and after just two days, the Manhattan Criminal Court found him not guilty. Supporters of the OWS protest movement have already hailed the ruling as a major legal victory.

Arbuckle was arrested on New Year’s Day for allegedly blocking traffic during a protest march. He was charged with disorderly conduct, and his arresting officer testified under oath that he, along with the protesters, was standing in the street, despite frequent requests from the police to move to the sidewalk.

But things got a little embarrassing for the NYPD officer when the defense presented a video recording of the entire event, made by well-known journalist Tim Pool. Pool's footage clearly shows Arbuckle, along with all the other protesters, standing on the sidewalk. In fact, the only people blocking traffic were the police officers themselves

The Elite Are Digging Their Own Grave - Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts to discuss the impact of the Euro's instability on world markets amidst looming fears of Greece's departure. They'll also touch on why governments feel compelled to blame events like 9/11, the Euro decline, and other manufactured crises on scapegoats. Source

God Save The Queen! "Gaggle of virulent parasites." + David Hasselhoff Loves The TSA

I am getting all excited about celebrating the fact that we are ruled by an inbred Germanic hereditary ruling elite. It's the Queen's diamond jubilee! How will you celebrate? Asks PrisonPlanet

How Money Dies

Accidentally Released - and Incredibly Embarrassing - Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in 'Naked Short Selling'

Matt Taibbi: It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes God smiles on us. Last week, he smiled on investigative reporters everywhere, when the lawyers for Goldman, Sachs slipped on one whopper of a legal banana peel, inadvertently delivering some of the bank’s darker secrets into the hands of the public.

The lawyers for Goldman and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch have been involved in a legal battle for some time – primarily with the retail giant Overstock.com, but also with Rolling Stone, the Economist, Bloomberg, and the New York Times. The banks have been fighting us to keep sealed certain documents that surfaced in the discovery process of an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit filed by Overstock against the banks.

Last week, in response to an Overstock.com motion to unseal certain documents, the banks’ lawyers, apparently accidentally, filed an unredacted version of Overstock’s motion as an exhibit in their declaration of opposition to that motion. In doing so, they inadvertently entered into the public record a sort of greatest-hits selection of the very material they’ve been fighting for years to keep sealed.

I contacted Morgan Lewis, the firm that represents Goldman in this matter, earlier today, but they haven’t commented as of yet. I wonder if the poor lawyer who FUBARred this thing has already had his organs harvested; his panic is almost palpable in the air. It is both terrible and hilarious to contemplate. The bank has spent a fortune in legal fees trying to keep this material out of the public eye, and here one of their own lawyers goes and dumps it out on the street.

Why NOT Shrinking Credit In Recession = U R Screwed

by Karl Denninger:  Today's lesson that you should have derived from your elementary and middle-school math is served.... 
Let's recap first.
GDP = C + I + G + (x - i), where "C" is consumption, "I" is investment, "G" is government spending and (x - i) is net exports.
GDP must be bought with something, and that "something" must either be money or credit.  Since each "unit" of money or credit "turns over" in the economy some number of times in a year, and the unit of time in GDP is a year, we have:
GDP = ((M + C) * V), where "M" = money (earned output from personal production), "C" = credit (a promise to produce tomorrow) and "V" = Velocity (number of times the "M" or "C" turns over.)
Now let's look at "M", or "money."  We think of "money" as cash, but in fact "M" is a subset of something larger, otherwise known as "wealth", or "W".  Wealth is that which you've previously earned and retain.  "M" is that which you can immediately dispose of and is a subset of "W".
There are two forms of "C", or credit.  "C" either comes into existence because you sequester some of your "W", or it comes into existence without such a sequester.
When you take a loan backed by collateral you are making liquid current wealth.  In doing so you post as reserve something you hold as wealth.  This is not inflationary for that reason -- you withdraw from the market the potential use of that wealth during the time the loan is outstanding by posting it as security.
But when you have unsecured credit outstanding that is pure monetary inflation because you posted exactly nothing against it other than your word you will pay, and that has no wealth  value (it is "on the come" that you will earn wealth tomorrow.)
All this should be clear by now if you've been following these discussions for a while.
Now let's talk about what happens when GDP declines.

Noam Chomsky: Bush tortured, Obama kills

Noam Chomsky has slammed US drone strikes and said while the Bush administration kidnapped and tortured, present-day White House resorts to murder. "If Bush, the Bush administration, didn't like somebody, they'd kidnap them and send them to torture chambers," the renowned American scholar told Democracy Now on Monday. "If the Obama administration decides they don't like somebody, they murder them, so you don't have to have torture chambers all over," he said. Source

President Obama, The View, and the False Notion of Too Big To Fail

If there is one thing Barack Obama has proven throughout the first term of his presidency besides his expert use of grandiose, simplistic rhetoric, it is his ineptness at understanding economics.  Last year, the President hilariouslyblamed automatic teller machines and kiosks for unemployment.  Because politics is defined by reactionary and short term consideration, Obama doesn’t see the additional employment and capital surpluses that result by eliminating labor costs.

Such Luddite-esque thinking often provides all the more justification for government interference in the marketplace to try and equalize outcomes.  This view is paired with the perception that rather than society giving legitimacy to the state first, the state and its enforcers are destined to guide society.  Under the pretenses of promoting the public good, central planners see failure not as a necessary process of the market but an opportunity to usurp more authority.  Ludwig von Mises accurately recognized the inevitable goal of economic regulation decades ago:

Interventionism cannot be considered as an economic system destined to stay. It is a method for the transformation of capitalism into socialism by a series of successive steps.

Soros Quadruples His Investment In Gold

Everyone in the precious metals/mining stock sector is looking for anything to grab onto for optimism.  Nothwithstanding that this type of sentiment always demarcates a bottom, and notwithstanding the fact that the basic fundamentals underpinning the precious metals - like catastrophic Government deficit spending and disastrous Central Bank negative interest rate policies - get stronger by the day, here's an excellent harbinger of a potential bottom/upturn in the metals/miners:  Soros has quadrupled his exposure to gold via GLD:  LINK.

This sell-off in the miners has become silly.  One particular stock AUMN (which acquired ECU Silver) is now selling at a little over 20 cents per old ECU-equivalent share.  At one time in 2007, ECU was over $3.30/share.  This valuation implies that AUMN's silver in ground is valued at 30 cents/ounce.  That is retarded.  A couple years ago silver miners were selling for $1/oz in the ground.  The price of silver is higher now and margins have exploded.

I don't know when this sell-off in the sector will end and the next move up will commence, but I just got off the phone with a longtime friend in NYC who told me that he just spoke to a very plugged-in "insider" (i.e. politically connected) type who told my friend that a massive QE in Europe and in the U.S. is coming and that this is the flush in precious metals that you want to use to back up the dump truck and buy because there might not be another opportunity like this going forward.

Is JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon the "World's Funniest Financier?"

JP Morgan held its shareholder meeting today in the midst of whale-gate. The Wall Street Journal reported the DOJ and FBI have begun a criminal probe surrounding the banks $2 billion trading loss.

To be sure the lid has been blown off of Jamie Dimon's "tempest in a teapot" narrative. These were the words he used to originally dismiss concerns that the bank's whale positions were too large. But though the tempest is out - there are still plenty willing to downplay the significance. At the storm's eye is the issue that even though $2 billion dollars isn't going to derail JP Morgan, what if it's $20 billion, and what if there are more trades like this lurking beneath the surface?

Next Stop: Dow 100,000

Submitted by Tyler Durden:

We thought that Jeremy Siegel, Laszlo "the Ruler" Birinyi and Jim Altucher were optimistic with their stock market targets. Sadly, with their equal to or less than 20,000 Dow Jones predictions, the three merely come off as rank amateurs, especially when compared to the forecast of BNP's head of fixed income Philippe Gijesels, who sees the stock market at 100,000 at some point over the next 25 years. However, unlike the previous trio who bases its forecasts on misguided expectations of economic growth, Gijesels may actually end up being right, because his estimate is predicated on one simple thing: hyperinflation, or specifically 12.2% inflation each year, which for a country like America is tantamount to the dreaded H-word. The other premise used by Gijesels: too much debt which has to be inflated. And actually, he is spot on. The only problem is that when the Dow hits 100,000 due to money printing, which is his underlying thesis, one will needed scientific notation to express the price of any hard asset (and most certainly gold), because if America falls in a two-decade long Weimar republic phase, 
the Dow may well be 100,000 or 100 googol - the truth is it won't matter as the money this number translated to would be absolutely meaningless. Just ask the Weimar Germans, who may have had some tremendous monthly increases in their 401(k) statements, but all they really cared about is whether they had the latest and most fashionable wheelbarrow model. Source

'Fascist Israeli Nakba law denies common human empathy' + Video: Palestinians clash with IDF on Nakba day

For Palestinians, May 15 marks the date their ancestors were displaced during the creation of Israel. "When you recognise the suffering of the other side, you bridge the gap." "Have empathy for the suffering of the victim's victim."