The
London Telegraph’s Louise Armitstead uses the paper’s daily email
briefing to report as follows: America is braced for $85bn of automatic
budget cuts, starting today, as Congress adjourned for the weekend in
deadlock. President Barack 'Baby Bomber' Obama will now be forced to sign an order to
start cutting the deficit by 10%, and warned that the US economy will
be hurt. The International Mother Fuckers (IMF) spun that the uncertainty will
hit global growth.
BUT (and there’s always a but) Louise adds:
‘….the
strength of the US recovery has been underscored by results from
Freddie Mac: The bailed-out mortgage lender, has reported $11bn of
annual profits for 2012 – its biggest ever gain. Last year Freddie
posted losses of $5.3bn….’
Er, um….where to start?
Some questions to ask here:
1. Are a tiny growth pattern coupled with manipulated payroll data
alongside trillions of Dollars in QE worthy of being termed ‘a
recovery’?
2. Where is this recovery likely to result in overseas earnings that reduce the US deficit?
3. Is a biggest-ever Freddie Mac gain worth a nickel if fully a third of it followed a $5.3bn loss?
4. Will US taxpayers ever see a repayment of the monies they poured into Freddie Mac, plus the losses that then followed?
5. Where is the correlation between Freddie Mac health and the underscoring of American recovery?
Charles Hugh Smith: A wide-ranging conversation on capital controls, gold
and self-directed retirement accounts.
Recent news stories about Federal plans to "help" manage private retirement
accounts renewed my interest in the topic of capital controls. One example
of capital control is to limit the amount of money that can be transferred out of the
country. Another is limiting the amount of cash that can be withdrawn from accounts.
The article linked above suggested a third example, in which the government mandates
private capital must be invested in government bonds. The way this might work is this:
an agency of the Federal government might announce that to "protect" households'
$19 trillion in retirement funds from the vagaries of the market, 50% of all retirement
accounts must be invested in "safe" Treasury bonds.
Though presented as "helping" households, the real purpose of the power grab would be
to enable the Federal government to borrow the nation's retirement accounts at near-zero
rates of return.
As things fall apart, Central States pursue all sorts of politically expedient measures
to protect the State's power and the wealth of the political and financial Elites.
Precedent won't matter; survival of the State and its Elites will trump every other
consideration.
Morris: The fighters from America will now be more and more contractors.
Hagel will pacify the public and the remaining military (the one patriotic institution left)
AJ: Inventor and scientist Danny Hillis warns that the Internet has
"expanded it way beyond its limits," and is set for a "disaster,"
calling for a fascist 'Internet Plan B' that would operate in times of false flag
emergency for greater control over the sheeple. Hillis is the founder of Thinking Machines
Corporation, which developed the Connection Machine, a series of
supercomputers designed by Hillis while he was working at MIT.
By WilliamBanzai7: For some time now I have been asked by many of you if I would produce
signed print editions of some of my works. I have been reluctant to do
so unless I could produce something of a quality that would look
exceptional displayed on a wall as well as meeting the expectations of
collectors. By this I mean expectations in terms of coloring, print
resolution texture and paper stock.
As usual, I am learning that there is more to the exercise than meets the eye.
It is not as simple as printing images off a computer screen or walking
to a photo processing kiosk. What looks good on a computer will not
necessarily look good coming out of a printer, particularly of the
consumer variety.
It has taken a while, but I have finally found an excellent fine art
printer to collaborate with. He is not a simple photo printer. He is an
artist and understands how to maximize aesthetic impact for the
audience.
His clients are professional photographers and artists. He operates with
state of the art digital printing equipment made in Germany.
I won't go into the details, but there is a big difference when you are
working with someone who is primarily interested in optimizing quality
as opposed to simply moving product. This is not a simple "here print
this" exercise. We have a discussion, he gets the vibe, runs test strips
for me to preview and only after we are both happy will we print.
Fortuitously, he also gets what the content is about!
UK and Europe Banned Press TV: Britain's hypocritical decision to triple its nuclear budget while the
people suffer austerity will receive a public backlash. In the
background of this Britain, with its country suffering under drastic
austerity measures, has decided to triple its spending on its nuclear
arsenal - Trident to renew it during the next decade. This, observers
say, would cost Britain over one third of its total military budget. The
use of nuclear weapons in Britain is under the control of politicians
not the military and so the military in the UK see this expense as
nothing more than a political tool and play thing for UK politicians,
thus the move has attracted opposition from within the warmongering, Orwellian lock down threatening military industrial complex.
AZStarnet: PHOENIX - State senators voted Wednesday to make gold and silver legal tender in Arizona.
The proposal, SB 1439, stems from concerns of some that the paper money printed by the Federal Reserve Bank is losing value.
They
persuaded Sen. Chester Crandell, a Heber Republican, to give privately
minted gold and silver coins the same legal status to pay bills, at
least in Arizona.
A disdainful Sen. Steve Farley, a Tucson
Democrat, suggested if Arizona is going to have merchants weighing and
assaying gold and silver to determine its value, perhaps the state
should not stop there.
So Farley proposed an "Arizona-centric"
list of additions from the "Five Cs" for which the state is known -
copper, cattle, cotton, citrus and climate.
He said, for example, there is little difference between trading beef or oranges as commodities versus gold and silver.
"And what has more value than sunbeams?" he added, though he didn't describe how they could be counted.
Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss how slime molds outsmart our
central bankers and policymakers and the four troll banks and their
clients living under the bridge. They also discuss George Osborne's
slime mold serf experience program. In the second half of the show, Max
Keiser talks to renowned mathematician and monetary scientist,
Professor Antal Fekete, about the elimination of silver as money, an
event that saw value and liquidity wiped out and about the difference
between the two giants of Austrian School of Economics - Carl Menger and
Ludwig von Mises with the biggest being that Menger did not believe in
the quantity theory of money. Source
RT: French police searched the office of former Interior Minister Claude
Gueant on Wednesday, as part of the investigation into whether former
President Nicolas Sarkozy accepted 'a' campaign contribution from deposed
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
French police searched the office of former Interior Minister
Claude Gueant on Wednesday, as part of the investigation into
whether former President Nicolas Sarkozy accepted a campaign
contribution from Muammar Gaddafi, French Le Monde
reported.
It comes after Mediapart news agency last year accused Sarkozy
of accepting 50 million euros from the former Libyan leader, to
fund his 2007 campaign. The agency published a statement signed by
former Libyan Foreign secretary Moussa Koussa, which allegedly
proved the allegations were true.
Sarkozy accused the organization of slander, calling the claims
“grotesque.” He filed a libel claim with police shortly
thereafter.
But it’s not only French media which claims Sarkozy had generous
backing from the late Libyan leader.
Last month, French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine claimed
he had proof of the funding. He told a French judge that Sarkozy
received the money from 2006, stating that Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign
was “abundantly” funded by Gaddafi. He said the flow of money
continued after he became president.
AJ: Melissa welcomes Dr. Katherine Albrecht to discuss the imminent threats
to our digital and personal privacy and ways to overcome warrantless
government spying.
