9 Aug 2012
European big banks technically insolvent: Max Keiser, Sean O'Grady and Paul Craig Roberts
Nazi Gulag: Palestinian homes to be IDF playground
Semaphore of Fraud - Keiser Report with whistleblower Paul Moore
Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss a financial journalist so dangerous
the frontpage of the Financial Times dare not speak his name and the
semaphore of fraud and fraud flows that is high frequency trading and
silver manipulation. They also talk about blonde bimbo regulators and
the self-police force that never finds any evidence crimes they
themselves have committed. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser
talks to whistleblower Paul Moore, a former Head of Risk at HBOS, about
financial holocaust and the City of London's role in enabling banking
fraud. Source
Five years of financial crisis through the eyes of Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the Telegraph's international business editor, has followed the global financial crisis from the credit crunch to the eurozone debt crisis. Here is a selection of news and views from his stories, blogs and columns over the past five years. 9 August, 2007: Dow crashes 387 as contagion spreads after the European Central Bank provides emergency liquidity to the credit markets for the first time since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, acting to prevent contagion from the US sub-prime mortgage slump spreading through the German, French, and Dutch banking systems.
Anybody who has been on holiday has come back to face a different world.
It's the Wild West right now," said David Bloom, chief currency
strategist at HSBC. "Investors can't decide whether we're looking at a
fundamental crisis."
22 December, 2007: Crisis
may make 1929 look a 'walk in the park'
The kind of upheaval observed in the international money markets over the
past few months has never been witnessed in history," says Thomas
Jordan, a Swiss central bank governor. "The sub-prime mortgage crisis
hit a vital nerve of the international financial system."Ambrose: The risk for Britain – as property buckles – is a twin banking and fiscal squeeze. The UK budget deficit is already 3 per cent of GDP at the peak of the economic cycle, shockingly out of line with its peers.
Maastricht rules may force the Government to raise taxes or slash spending into a recession. This way lies crucifixion. The UK current account deficit was 5.7 per cent of GDP in the second quarter, the highest in half a century. Gordon Brown has disarmed us on every front.
precious metals and productive land: Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?
Simon Black, Oxford, England
Oxford is about an hour west of London by train, and if you’ve
never been, I highly recommend it. On a per-capita basis, it’s one of
the most cultured cities in the world, right up there with Vienna,
London, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Chicago, Budapest, and Austin.
Walking down Cornmarket Street on a beautiful summer day, it’s
common to pass opera singers and concert pianists plying their trade
for crowds of tourists (which have become increasingly Chinese over
the past few summers…)
Yesterday evening I attended an outstanding performance of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice;
if you’re unfamiliar with the play, the story is about a young Venetian
nobleman named Bassanio who needs 3,000 gold ducats to woo a beautiful
heiress. Having squandered his wealth, Bassanio approaches his friend
Antonio for a loan.
Antonio is cash poor but asset rich, so he arranges to borrow the
sum that his friend requires from a local Shylock. The Shylock agrees
on the condition that he collects a pound of Antonio’s flesh in the
event of default.
Needless to say, Antonio’s fortunes turn for the worst and he
defaults on the debt owed – 3,000 ducats. The play climaxes with a court
scene in which the Shylock seeks to enforce his bond and collect the
pound of flesh from Antonio. (“Why dost thou whet thy knife so
earnestly?”)
In the middle of the performance, I got curious about the sum.
How much is 3,000 ducats in today’s money? A quick check on my phone
gave me the answer.
A ducat’s weight is roughly 3.5 grams, or .11 troy ounces of
gold weight… so 3,000 ducats is roughly $530,000 at today’s gold price.
In the context of the play, this amount makes sense; in other
words, if one were to write an updated version of the play to
today’s standards, substituting half a million dollars for 3,000 ducats
would definitely fit the plot.
It’s an interesting example of how well gold has held its value;
the play is over 400 years old
Obama considering implementing cybersecurity measures via executive action, bypassing Congress
By Madison Ruppert: According to John Brennan, the chief counterterrorism adviser to the
White House, the Obama administration is currently considering stepping
around both the House and Senate in order to force cybersecurity
measures into place through his executive powers. (Right: John Brennan briefing Obama in the Oval Office in 2010 (Image credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Unfortunately, our so-called representatives are making it incredibly
easy for the Obama administration to continue to gobble up as much
power as possible, evidenced by their move to actually vote away even
more of their already dwindling power as you can see in the below video:
There have been many attempts to get cybersecurity legislation to pass, and it appears that there is a bit of a fight over if the power should be given to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or to the military and National Security Agency (NSA).
One of the ways that Obama could impose cybersecurity mandates is
through an executive order or perhaps even multiple orders, according to
Brennan.
Greece Prints Euros To Stay Afloat, The ECB Approves, The Bundesbank Nods, No One Wants To Get Blamed For Kicking Greece Out
A lot of politicians in Germany, but also in other countries, issue
zingers about a Greek exit from the Eurozone and the end of their
patience. Yet those with decision-making power play for time. They want
someone else to do the job. Suddenly Greece is out of money again.
It would default on everything, from bonds held by central banks to
internal obligations. On August 20. The day a €3.2 billion bond that had
landed on the balance sheet of the European Central Bank would mature.
Europe would be on vacation. It would be mayhem. And somebody would get
blamed.
The Troika got cold feet. Instead of sending the payment, it promised
to send its inspectors. It would drag its feet and write reports. It
would take till September—knowing that Greece wouldn’t make it past
August 20. Then it let the firebrand politicians stew in their own
juices.
It’s easy to blame the Troika, and it can take the heat. History
searches for the person who is responsible. But the Troika doesn’t have
one. It was designed that way: a combo of multi-layered, undemocratic
structures. And the Troika inspectors, though despised in Greece, are
career technocrats, not decision makers.
So Chancellor Angela Merkel became a substitute. Greek tabloids
treated her like a Nazi heir, with Hitler mustache and all. But she’s
not the decision maker in the Troika, though she is a
contributor. And she—though still unwilling to water down the bailout
memorandum—consistently stated that Greece should remain in the
Eurozone. She doesn’t want to be blamed.
The real fraud here is the whole damn EU/Eurozone/ECB scam
A voice for the damned: Excuse me, but since when does a nation
printing its own money constitutes fraud and some of you even deem it
immoral? Are so into this system that you cannot see any other way of
doing things? Even if this was done for centuries before the Fed and ECB
were created?
Yellow Brick Road: The Fed and A New Path to Debt Freedom
From Occupying Wall Street To "Dying For Work"?
Confused, you continue, only to drive by another billboard with what seem to be a man hanging off, this one saying "Hope you're happy Wall St."
a personal plea for help from Japan
I’m writing with a personal plea for help from Japan. A nuclear inspector recently said that if Fukushima's
Reactor Number 4 collapses, the spread of radiation would go way beyond
Japan's borders and be truly catastrophic. But if the global community steps in now -- we have a chance to stop it.
The reactor was damaged in last year's earthquake and tsunami, and now a pool of highly dangerous spent nuclear fuel is being held in it’s crumbling structure. Experts say if another strong tremor collapses, the pool would emit such high radiation that my family and the 35 million people in Tokyo would be forced to evacuate, and it would contaminate the skies across the Pacific and into Asia. The Japanese government is failing to address the danger, but if enough of us call for an emergency plan from the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), we can ensure the worst never happens.
The IAEA is meeting in Vienna in three weeks to discuss nuclear safety so we have to act now. Click below to sign the petition and tell friends to join the call for action -- when we reach 100,000, our voices will be delivered straight to the IAEA meeting:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_japans_nuclear_meltdown_global_new/?bImAqdb&v=17014
The reactor was damaged in last year's earthquake and tsunami, and now a pool of highly dangerous spent nuclear fuel is being held in it’s crumbling structure. Experts say if another strong tremor collapses, the pool would emit such high radiation that my family and the 35 million people in Tokyo would be forced to evacuate, and it would contaminate the skies across the Pacific and into Asia. The Japanese government is failing to address the danger, but if enough of us call for an emergency plan from the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), we can ensure the worst never happens.
The IAEA is meeting in Vienna in three weeks to discuss nuclear safety so we have to act now. Click below to sign the petition and tell friends to join the call for action -- when we reach 100,000, our voices will be delivered straight to the IAEA meeting:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_japans_nuclear_meltdown_global_new/?bImAqdb&v=17014
Piffling Fines for Pfizer charged with bribing overseas doctors
By
Ronald D. Orol: Federal Regulators on Tuesday charged pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. with allegedly bribing doctors and others employed by foreign
governments in order to win business. The Securities and Exchange
Commission alleges that Pfizer employees in eight countries including
Bulgaria, China, Croatia and the Czech Republic, made "improper
payments" to foreign officials to obtain regulatory approvals, sales,
and increased prescriptions for the company's products. According to the
SEC, Pfizer and Wyeth LLC, which Pfizer acquired in 2009, agreed to pay a piffling $45 million combined to settle their charges. In a parallel
action, the Justice Department said Pfizer was fined only $15 million to
resolve that agency's investigation. Source
Dark Pools and High-Frequency Drone Wars - Scott Patterson!
The US stock market fluctuated today, following a three day advance in
equities. A rally in Hewlett Packard shares tempered the Dallas Federal
Reserve President's remarks that an adequate stimulus is in place,
Bloomberg reports. But how much of the market's fluctuations are driven
by algorithms and high frequency trading? We ask Scott Patterson, author
of Dark Pools.
Now the act of printing fiat money via the ECB and selling that to the private banks which then sells it to the nations business is coming to an end. Countries and societies need to print their own money and return back to their real economies (even though you Friedman disciples dispute that societies don’t actually exist and state that the only real thing that really exists in reality is money, while nobody believes you).
To you europhiles everywhere, this story (Greece Prints Euros To Stay Afloat) is the absolute proof that the EU is crumbling down before your media blinded eyes. It is not happening because of the evil Greek mentality, but because of the way the EU and the Eurozone was built.