By Stephen L. Bernard and Vincent Cignarella: Feijoada, the traditional black bean stew and
national dish of Brazil, will soon replace fish and chips as the cuisine
of choice among currency traders.
For these investors, a
surging pound--up 20% against the real in six months--has simply gone
too far, too fast given the economic comparisons between the countries.
The U.K. is in recession and just recently posted its largest trade
deficit on record in June. But Brazil's growth forecast remains strong
and the country posted a trade surplus in July equivalent to $2.9
billion, more than double the 20-year average. Source
Telling the truth has become a revolutionary act, so let us salute those who disclose the necessary facts.
26 Aug 2012
The Rot Runs Deep 1: The Federal Reserve Is a Parasitic Wealth Transfer Machine - Charles Hugh Smith
The Federal Reserve is a wealth transfer machine, skimming wealth from the productive many
and transferring it to the parasitic few.
Today I launch a series entitled "The Rot Runs Deep" that examines the moral and financial
rot at the core of American finance, politics and culture. We have reached a unique
junction of American history: the confluence of Big Lie propaganda, neofeudalism and
the worship of false financial gods.
The Big Lie propaganda machine of corporate media and the Central State has perfected
Orwell's nightmare vision of centralized media and a fascist centralized State
which turn lies into self-serving "truth."
Since the Federal Reserve is once again expected to "save" a crumbling, exploitative
Status Quo, let's use the Fed as an example. The propaganda machine would have us
believe that the Federal Reserve, the privately owned central bank of the U.S., has
"saved" the Status Quo from financial ruin on numerous occasions by "smoothing out" the
business cycle (credit expands and contracts) and by "stimulating aggregate demand"
by lowering interest rates and pumping money into the economy (quantitative easing).
We are constantly prompted to worship the Federal Reserve's supposedly god-like
powers to rescue a corrupt and venal Status Quo from the black hole of recession and collapse,
and this Big Lie masks its real nature:
The Fed is nothing but a parastic
wealth transfer machine, skimming wealth from the many and transferring it to the few.
In effect, the Fed is the "enforcer" of neofeudalism in America: the feudal Lords of
Finance control the for-sale political system and skim tribute from the 99.5% toiling
in the fields below their castles. The Fed enforces this parasitic transfer of wealth
by manipulating interest rates to enrich the banks and provides "free money" to the
Financial Lords which is then used to buy assets and lend at interest.
The mechanisms of the Fed's parasitic transfer of wealth are well-known. Here's one:
the Fed "loans" money to the Feudal Lords at 0% interest. the Lords then loan this free
money out to peasants, students and other debt-serfs at high rates of interest. The
interest "earned," courtesy of the parasitic Fed, is theirs to keep.
If they can't find enough debt-serfs who can pay more interest, they can always deposit the
free money back at the Fed and earn interest from the Fed itself.
Here's another: the Fed "loans" free money (0% interest) to the Financial Lords,
who then buy low-risk long-term U.S. Treasury bonds paying 3%. When the Lords spot
a better skimming opportunity, they sell the bonds to the Fed, who buys the bonds
from the Lords as part of its "Operation Twist."
Resistance Girl from South Lebanon Explains the Fighting + Scottish Govt Refuses Referendum on Gay Marriages - Morris
Morris: The Jabal (33 seconds in) are the Alawites in Tripoli. The whole Syrian conflict has been started to weaken Hezbollah. Everyone knows there will be another war in Israel. Her Twitter account is: http://twitter.com/Amani_Lebanon
Timothy Geithner, Guianas & Hague - Afshin Rattnasi
This week as ministers from more than 100 countries arrive in Tehran,
Afshin takes a look at the global scramble for resources as the old
hegemonic powers of Europe and United States die.
Coming up on the show, Russian President Vladimir Putin explains judo to UK Prime Minister David Cameron and the US President Barack Obama targets cows as the next terrorist threat.
Coming up on the show, Russian President Vladimir Putin explains judo to UK Prime Minister David Cameron and the US President Barack Obama targets cows as the next terrorist threat.
The Up-To-The-Minute Guide For Understanding Europe
From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: "To express in different
terms and especially different words: Paraphrase (2): to express in more
comprehensible terms: Explain, Interpret"
EUROSPEAK:
“I hail, I congratulate”—little or no meaning; words spoken by every
politician in Europe when someone does something, anything and has an
actual value of about zero. A reference to Roman times where Caesar
hailed the conquering heroes which is a species that has been extinct on
the Continent for some years now.
“I (we) will do everything to save the Euro”---we got ourselves into
this mess and we will try to do something/anything to get out of it;
rhetoric, hyperbole and more zero value talk. I am the head of the
European Central Bank and this sentence was found in Chapter 18,
paragraph three, “what to say to the Press when you have run out of
things to say.” Chapter 18, paragraph four, by the way, is “divine
right” and “the full support of God” so you may expect this shortly.
“End corruption, a more efficient tax system, sell government assets,
debt to GDP ratio by (pick a date/any date), stop government waste,
just asking for a delay, need more time, extension”---these are all
Greekspeak for “Give us more money” and no other meaning should be
appended to these phrases. These are all terms of the first sentence and
then since any/all might be granted the second sentence will be since
this or that has been granted that more money will be required to get
there (about $50 billion at the present time).
“The debt to GDP ratio (pick a country/any country) will be X by the
year (pick a year/any year)” has no bearing to anything in the real
world and is not a mathematically based conclusion. These statements are
manufactured by the IMF and created in the special secret room there
built by Walt Disney & Co.
An example of practical usage:
“Christine what number should we use this time?”
“I don’t know Angela what does Mario think?”
“To which Mario are you referring Christine?”
“Do you think it really matters Angela?”
“Where is the Ouija Board anyway?”
Apartheid Gulag: EU strengthening economic ties with Israel - Remember Palestine
In 2008 there was a freeze on the preferential treatment that the EU gives Israel in the wake of Cast Lead. But now it's business as usual.
How is it possible for EU to overlook its own policies on human rights in order to assist an apartheid state?
In this edition of the show Lauren Booth talks to the British politician and member of the House of Lord; Baroness Jenny Tonge about this conflict of interest. Press TV
The Problem is not Debt, it’s Interest
Anthony Migchels - Real Currencies
How do we know this?
Consider a mortgage. We borrow $200k,
and after 30 years we will have payed about $500k. So we pay $300
thousand dollars interest over the loan.
What would happen with our purchasing
power, if we only needed to repay the principal? It would mean we would
have 10.000 per year more purchasing power during the 30 years we repay
the mortgage.
Our credit would greatly improve, because our liabilities would be much smaller.
Interest is payed to those who have money, and payed by those who don’t, and therefore need to borrow.
Interest is therefore a wealth transfer
from poor to rich. Margrit Kennedy, a German monetarist, has quantified
this wealth transfer in Germany. Her conclusions: the 80% poorest
Germans pay 1 billion euros per day (365 billion per year) in interest to the richest 10%. The next richest 10% pay about as much interest as they receive.
Also, with in the 10% brackets the same
wealth transfer is happening: so the poorest 8% of the richest 10% pay
interest to the richest 1%.
It stands to reason that the situation
is more or less the same everywhere. This means, that the poorest 80%
Americans pay about 1,5 trillion dollars per year to the richest 10
percent.
This is the key driver centralizing wealth in the hands of the plutocracy.
WikiLeaks reveals impending death of fiat currency + Bitcoin discussed - “Adam vs. The Man”
The Bitcoin wiki: Bitcoin is an experimental new digital currency
that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin
uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority:
managing transactions and issuing money are carried out collectively by
the network. Bitcoin is also the name of the open source software which
enables the use of this currency.
The software is a community-driven open source project, released under the MIT license and originally created by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Bitcoin is one of the first implementations of a concept called crypto-currency
which was first described in 1998 by Wei Dai on the cypherpunks mailing
list. Building upon the notion that money is any object, or any sort
of record, accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of
debts in a given country or socio-economic context, Bitcoin is designed
around the idea of using cryptography to control the creation and
transfer of money, rather than relying on central authorities. Sourced from Bitcoin.org and Wikipedia.
Empire State Building shooting victim: police were ‘shooting randomly’
By Madison Ruppert: The tragic recent shooting in New York City
has taken another strange turn with one of the nine innocent bystanders
shot by officers of the New York Police Department alleging that the
police were actually “shooting randomly” into the busy street.
The incident appeared at first to be another in a line of recent shootings until it emerged that the police were actually directly responsible for the vast majority of the violence, injuring nine people.
Thankfully, the police did not mortally wound any of the innocent
bystanders, but they still unloaded a whopping 14 rounds between them
before killing Jeffrey Johnson, the former accessories designer who
murdered his former boss Steve Ercolino.
According to
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, “it appears that all
nine of the victims were struck either by fragments or by bullets fired
by police.”
After the shooting first occurred on Friday, August 24, 2012, it was
unclear if it was Johnson or the officers who were responsible for the
nine bystanders left bleeding on the sidewalk but based on the ballistic
and other evidence, it appears that Kelly is now quite certain who
fired the rounds.
Now one of the wounded pedestrians, named Robert Asika, has accused the police of “shooting randomly” into the street, which is a quite serious allegation indeed.
Asika was unlucky enough to be shot in the elbow by one of the police officers from a mere eight feet away while he was selling tickets for tour buses and the Empire State Building’s observation deck.
He started only a week ago after being unemployed
for more than a year and did not hesitate to criticize how the police
handled the incident, saying, “If you’re gonna aim try and aim
perfectly. If you wanna aim at the target, you got to know what you’re
doing because it’s the street. I could have been dead right now. I could
have been dead.”
OMG, Tax Evasion In Switzerland! By The Swiss! But At Least It’s “Officially Silenced To Death”
By Testosterone Pit: The arm-wrestling between the US, Switzerland, and Swiss banks over
funds that US citizens have stashed away in Swiss bank accounts has been
going on for years to the point where the Swiss are now actually
cracking down on US citizens, or at least aide them in circumnavigating
the reporting requirements. In Germany, a similar fight has broken out,
albeit with more consideration for the rich. Other governments,
desperate for moolah, are also going after their own with funds in
Switzerland. Turns out the Swiss themselves, long praised by their
politicians for their tax compliance, do what others do: evade
taxes—which is part of the human DNA. In Switzerland, however, it’s “officially silenced to death.”
Now Margret Kiener Nellen, Swiss National Council member, former
President of the Finance Commission, and member of the center-left
Social Democratic Party, has thrown down the gauntlet when she declared with some bravado, “The Federal Government, cantons, and municipalities are deprived annually of 18 billion.”
With bravado, because there aren’t any real numbers. And
that’s part of the problem. To arrive at a number at all, she had to do
her own calculations; neither the Federal Tax Administration (ESTV) nor
the Finance Directors of the cantons have current estimates, laments
Kiener Nellen. They purposefully don’t have them.
“The extent of tax fraud by the Swiss has no numbers,” declared ESTV
boss Urs Ursprung before a parliamentary commission when some
politicians wanted to find out. In June, however, Finance Minister
Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf fired him for his involvement in a scandal over the acquisition of a data system.
So Kiener Nellen did her own math, as inadequate as that might
appear. The basis was a 2006 study, “Tax Evasion in Switzerland,” by
economists Lars P. Feld und Bruno S. Frey, that concluded that 23.5% of
gross household income remained underground. She applied an annual tax
rate of 20%, a “conservative” estimate, to the household income of 2009
as published by the Federal Statistics Agency. Hence her 18 billion
Swiss francs.
Other countries aren’t that shy about studying the extent of tax evasion. In France,
it costs the state €50 billion annually, according to an inquiry by a
Senate commission. Another study estimated that €600 billion in French
assets were hidden in tax havens.
Does China have a hidden agenda on gold?
China is currently in some economic difficulty which could impact
internal stability and some feel that the global megapower is planning
to utilise gold to reboot and pick its way out of an economic meltdown.
By Lawrence Williams: One thing that is most apparent about China relative to virtually any
industry is that nothing is done without the approval, or instruction,
of government. When you have an enormous population of over 1.3 billion
- around 20% of the global population - the government's policies are
all aimed at maintaining order among its people, and for the past decade
or so this has revolved around massive internal growth. This has been
done, first by becoming the world's supplier of cheap goods, and second
the building of an internal demand economy to help support this massive
annual growth.
Nearly half the country's population has moved from the country's old
rural economy into a modern industrial one - but this is now seen as
faltering under massive bank debt, much of it in potentially bad loans
brought on by government-engendered cheap finance supporting the
country's internal manufacturing and infrastructural growth. Given the
Chinese state-owned company aims are not necessarily to make money, but
to provide employment, this may not be a sustainable economic model,
which could have some dire consequences for those companies,
particularly in the resource sector, which have been providing the raw
materials that help keep the Chinese factories maintaining uneconomic
production levels.
In the past we have seen Chinese companies begin to make inroads into
securing future supplies through investing in and taking over resource
companies around the globe, but while the emphasis has so far been in
respect of industrial metals to feed the manufacturing behemoth, we are
now seeing similar moves into the western gold mining sector - of which
the most recent example is China National Gold Corporation's interest in
taking over control of African Barrick Gold. And prior to that the
Zijin Mining takeover of Norton Goldfields among others. An earlier,
but perhaps less well flagged deal was China National Gold's offtake
deal with Coeur's Kensington Mine in Alaska whereby the mine's output is
processed in China, not in Alaska where the mine is located. It
would seem that these deals, or prospective deals, could be the tip of
the iceberg if some views on China's gold policy are correct.