Our Money Is A Joke

TruthNeverTold: Beppe Grillo is a comedian, blogger turn politician who is causing a lot of distress in the fake facade of the monetary system in Europe. After watching this video, you know why. Source

It's getting worse: Brits near the bottom of living standards table

Plunge in pay puts bankster paradise Britain 

24th out of 27 in EU

By Vincent Moss: Skint Brits have suffered one of Europe’s worst drops in living standards. The value of UK wages has plunged by 3 per cent since Chancellor George Osborne embarked on huge spending cuts in 2010.

The drop is revealed in new research, which puts Britain in 24th place out of all 27 EU nations in a study of rising and falling pay packets. The figures, which take into account inflation, show we are the fourth hardest-hit nation in Europe. Only Greece, Cyprus and the Netherlands have had bigger drops in pay.
Food prices in the UK soared by 5 per cent in the past year while millions of workers endure a pay freeze. Meat is likely to get even more expensive as the industry cleans up after the horse-meat scandal. The price of petrol has soared and heating bills have also rocketed.
The fall in UK pay is in stark contrast to Bulgaria and Romania which top the league, compiled by independent Commons experts.
Bulgarians enjoyed a 12 per cent rise in wages in real terms over the two years to autumn 2012. Romanians were 6 per cent better off.
Despite the crisis over the euro, countries such as France and ­Germany have done better than us.

Occupy movement resurgent & Italy in crisis - Afshin Rattansi

zionist Banned Press TV: US President 'Baby Bomber' Obama continues to defend assassinations of US citizens. Our reporter goes to Italy to speak to Silvio Berlusconi about Italian politics and economy. We talk to a member of Occupy Movement, George Barda, about the continuing western capitalist crisis. These and much more are all reviewed in this edition of Double Standards with Afshin Rattansi. Source

Sterling: You can fool some of the people....

By Buttonwood: SUSPICION of British economic policy is mounting. Recent posts (here and here, for example) have highlighted my view that things are in a mess; the economy is flat and the government is missing its deficit target, even with the help of dubious accounting; inflation is above target and set to remain so, yet the Bank of England seems likely to ease further; sterling is the weakest major currency this year and the previous depreciation did little to help the trade deficit. Reading Dominic Sandbrook's account of 1970s Britain, Seasons in the Sun, is a reminder of the similarities and differences from that benighted era; back then there was a wage-price spiral which is not visible now. Of course, that era had strong trade unions that tried to protect their members' standard of living; this time round, imported inflation eats into real wages. The effect is less dramatic but it is still significant.
Other commentators are reaching similar conclusions. Erik Nielsen of Unicredit writes today that

with the risk of sounding like a broken record, a weaker currency makes you poorer. In 1967, when the UK devalued the pound (by 14% against the dollar), Prime Minister Wilson famously assured his countrymen that “it does not mean that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse or in your bank, has been devalued.” I suggest that the day of such attempted money illusion has long gone, and why policymakers still tell their people that depreciation is a good thing beats me. If they think they can still fool the population, the London Sunday Times today includes an article titled “The smart way to holiday with a weak pound”, which starts as follows: “The plunging pound is sending holiday costs spiraling …”.

‘These People Need a Lot of Things, but They Don’t Need a Coke.’ - The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

By Michael Moss: On the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis pulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and discharged 11 men who controlled America’s largest food companies. Nestlé was in attendance, as were Kraft and Nabisco, General Mills and Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars. Rivals any other day, the C.E.O.’s and company presidents had come together for a rare, private meeting. On the agenda was one item: the emerging obesity epidemic and how to deal with it. While the atmosphere was cordial, the men assembled were hardly friends. Their stature was defined by their skill in fighting one another for what they called “stomach share” — the amount of digestive space that any one company’s brand can grab from the competition. 

 

James Behnke, a 55-year-old executive at Pillsbury, greeted the men as they arrived. He was anxious but also hopeful about the plan that he and a few other food-company executives had devised to engage the C.E.O.’s on America’s growing weight problem. “We were very concerned, and rightfully so, that obesity was becoming a major issue,” Behnke recalled. “People were starting to talk about sugar taxes, and there was a lot of pressure on food companies.” Getting the company chiefs in the same room to talk about anything, much less a sensitive issue like this, was a tricky business, so Behnke and his fellow organizers had scripted the meeting carefully, honing the message to its barest essentials. “C.E.O.’s in the food industry are typically not technical guys, and they’re uncomfortable going to meetings where technical people talk in technical terms about technical things,” Behnke said. “They don’t want to be embarrassed. They don’t want to make commitments. They want to maintain their aloofness and autonomy.”

Italy paralysed as Grillo plots exit route from euro

Italy plunged deeper into political chaos this weekend after Beppe Grillo, who holds the balance of power in parliament, suggested that the country will have to abandon the euro and return to the lire. 

By Nick Squires: The rebel comic's warning came amid a growing rebellion among grass-roots supporters of his Five Star Movement, with 150,000 signing a petition calling for him to open up dialogue with the centre-Left Democratic Party, the biggest force in parliament.

In an interview with a German magazine, Mr Grillo warned that "if conditions do not change" Italy "will want" to leave the euro and return to the lire. The 64-year-old political activist also said Italy needs to renegotiate its €2 trillion debt.

At 127 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), it is the highest in the euro zone after Greece. "Right now we are being crushed, not by the euro, but by our debt," he told Focus, a weekly news magazine. "When the interest payments reach €100 billion a year, we're dead. There's no alternative."

AKALA's message to the youth via rap

theinvestigator100: AKALA dropping real science on youth in London Source

GREECE: From developed to emerging…..

…..how it all turned out in the end.

The Slog: One of the good things about having your economy spiral down the plughole of existence is that, rather than disappear forever into the sewers of depression, it can be transformed into something emerging…..perhaps from the taps of hope, I’m not entirely sure. Either way, this is now the fate of Greece, according to Russell Investments.  Russell advises funds with a grand total of £1.6 trillion in assets, and last week they advised Greece that it has ceased to be First World, and is instead Emerging.

My general take on that news is that the good burghers of Brussels-am-Berlin should be out there trumpeting this achievement on the same scale of decibels they oompah-pahed in relation to ‘winning’ a Nobel Prize; after all, it’s not every day you kill something, and then manage to have it emerge again. It’s the sort of breakthrough that would have a Buddhist spiritual leader green with karmic envy – or even the Creator herself suffering a fit of jealousy: what was once a chrysalis is now a butterfly. See how it flaps gently on the breeze, an entirely pointless creature unable to eat and likely to be dead again within twenty-four hours. But it’s a start. This is only the beginning, and time alone can teach us all those things which might be possible once you’re a member of the European Union.
Unfortunately for these gently blended analogies and metaphors, once one gets into the detail of the Russell verdict, none of them seem to work that well. You see, until last week Greece was developed, so it can’t have been a chrysalis. Now it’s emerging, but if it’s emerging from being developed, then it must be going backwards: or coming out arse-first, like some kind of breach-baby.

Bulls & Bears To Be Wiped Out 3 Times In Gold - Jim Sinclair

Sinclair:  “They are absolute masters, and if you are in conflict with an army which has excellent generals, you have to respect your enemy and strategize your success.  The machines that you’ve got to fight are, in a sense, a travesty, unless we are going to go into some sort of sci-fi world where people and machines merge....
“There are pros out there just like the old days and they are both bull and bear.  If you understand that, and if you have quality and value, and you conduct yourself with that respect, I think you have a much better chance of surviving the contest.  But how do you fight with a machine?”
 
Now, at the present people are moaning and groaning about gold, but I think it’s a hair over 10% change.  When gold goes into the $4,000 to $5,000 range, which I’m absolutely sure it will, be prepared for something very, very few people will be able to stand.

But this is what you’ve got to remember:  When I said, ‘QE to infinity’ a long time before anybody else got that idea into their mind, I did it because there was only one tool in any central banks’ tool box that could create infinite amounts of money in a computer instant.  And that would logically indicate that if what I expected to happen happened, then QE would be used, and ‘to infinity’ means until it no longer functions. Full KWN audio interview link

Seahorse: New Study Shows 59% of “Tuna” Sold in the U.S. Isn’t Tuna

By Michael Krieger: This is just the latest revelation in the stealth inflation and food fraud theme I have written about frequently in recent months.  The non-profit group Oceana took samples of 1,215 fish sold in the U.S. and genetic tests found that that 59% of those labeled tuna were mislabeled. It seems that “white tuna” should be avoided in particular as “84% of fish samples labeled “white tuna” were actually escolar, a fish that can cause prolonged, uncontrollable, oily anal leakage.”  Oh and if you live in my hometown of New York City, you should pay particular attention:

Big Apple has big problem with seafood fraud:  94 percent of tuna and more than three quarters of sushi samples in New York City mislabeled. 

Of the 142 fish samples collected in New York, 39 percent were mislabeled. New York City led the nation with the highest occurrence of mislabeled salmon as well as the highest amount of fraud among salmon collected from grocery stores and restaurants.

Iran launches two new TV channels despite Orwellian U.S. sanctions

UK and Europe Banned Press TV: Two new TV channels at Iranians' homes. Iran launches Salamat and Tamasha television channels. Salamat channel broadcasts programs having to do with health, hygiene and medication while Tamasha focuses on films and series. These channels are available across the country via digital transmitters.

This is while the West has tried to take Iranian channels such as Press TV, Alalam and Ifilm off air despite the fact that their act is against freedom of speech. Iranian president believes such problems are not going to end until Iran launches its own satellite.