Alex Newman ~ World Bank Insider Blows Whistle On Corruption, Federal Reserve

The New American May 22 2013

Photo of World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C.

A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve. The network has seized control of the media to cover up its crimes, too, she explained. In an interview with The New American, Hudes said that when she tried to blow the whistle on multiple problems at the World Bank, she was fired for her efforts. Now, along with a network of fellow whistleblowers, Hudes is determined to expose and end the corruption. And she is confident of success.

Citing an explosive 2011 Swiss study published in the PLOS ONE journal on the “network of global corporate control,” Hudes pointed out that a small group of entities — mostly financial institutions and especially central banks — exert a massive amount of influence over the international economy from behind the scenes. “What is really going on is that the world’s resources are being dominated by this group,” she explained, adding that the “corrupt power grabbers” have managed to dominate the media as well. “They’re being allowed to do it.”

According to the peer-reviewed paper, which presented the first global investigation of ownership architecture in the international economy, transnational corporations form a “giant bow-tie structure.” A large portion of control, meanwhile, “flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions.” The researchers described the core as an “economic ‘super-entity’” that raises important issues for policymakers and researchers. Of course, the implications are enormous for citizens as well.

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GE Christenson ~ Scandals & Economic Disasters!

Deviant Investor May 23 2013

There is no shortage of scandals in Washington DC, New York, and London; and, there is an excess of monetary heroin, Quantitative Easing, in Europe, the UK, Japan, the USA, and elsewhere. (When will they ever learn?)

The S&P 500 is hitting new highs, and gold and silver are sitting roughly at two-year lows. Strange and stranger every day…

What should we make of it? Let’s ask the really intelligent old guys who have seen it all.

Richard Russell on May 17, 2013:

“The CPI is manipulated, and I believe gold is being manipulated as well. The Fed’s QE4ever is inflating everything — school tuition, haircuts, food, gas, insurance, medicine. They’ve already “rearranged” the CPI, so what’s left for them to do to keep us from knowing about inflation? Oh yes, it’s gold, so c’mon, Bernanke, keep the lid on gold. Slam it in after-market trading in the thin paper-gold markets of the night.

I promise you, when the true forces of inflation finally break loose, the Fed won’t be able to disguise what they’ve wrought. When the true forces break out — it will be a national disgrace and an emergency. ‘Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ The rest of this year should be something to behold.”

Michael Snyder ~ Will It Be Inflation Or Deflation? The Answer May Surprise You

Economic Collapse blog May 22 2013

Is the coming financial collapse going to be inflationary or deflationary?  Are we headed for rampant inflation or crippling deflation?  This is a subject that is hotly debated by economists all over the country.  Some insist that the wild money printing that the Federal Reserve is doing combined with out of control government spending will eventually result in hyperinflation.  Others point to all of the deflationary factors in our economy and argue that we will experience tremendous deflation when the bubble economy that we are currently living in bursts.  So what is the truth?  Well, for the reasons listed below, I believe that we will see both.  The next major financial panic will cause a substantial deflationary wave first, and after that we will see unprecedented inflation as the central bankers and our politicians respond to the financial crisis.  This will happen so quickly that many will get “financial whiplash” as they try to figure out what to do with their money.  We are moving toward a time of extreme financial instability, and different strategies will be called for at different times.

So why will we see deflation first?  The following are some of the major deflationary forces that are affecting our economy right now…

The Velocity Of Money Is At A 50 Year Low

The rate at which money circulates in our economy is the lowest that it has been in more than 50 years.  It has been steadily falling since the late 1990s, and this is a clear sign that economic activity is slowing down.  The shaded areas in the chart represent recessions, and as you can see, the velocity of money always slows down during a recession.  But even though the government is telling us that we are not in a recession right now, the velocity of money continues to drop like a rock.  This is one of the factors that is putting a tremendous amount of deflationary pressure on our economy…

Velocity Of Money

The Trade Deficit

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Andrew McKillop ~ The Coming Collapse Of The Petrodollar System

ZeroHedge May 21 2013 (Thanks, A.L.)

Petrodollar War

The theory of Petrodollar Warfare can be attributed to US analyst and author William R Clarke, and his 2005 book of that title which interpreted the US-UK decision to invade Iraq in 2003. He called this an “oil currency war”, but the concept of the petrodollar system and petrodollar recyling dates back to the eve of the first Oil Shock in 1973-1974. The role of the petrodollar system as a driving force of US foreign policy is explained by analysts and historians as basic to maintaining the dollar’s status as the world’s dominant reserve currency – and the currency in which oil is priced.

The term “petrodollar warfare” as used by William R. Clark says that major international war, legal or not, was seen as justified to protect the petrodollar system. Over and above the loss of human life, the combined costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars for the US are controversial like the interpretation of these wars as “oil wars”, but analysts like Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes put the total combined war cost at above $4 trillion. This can be compared with – and totally dwarfs – the annual cost of US oil imports, which are now sharply declining on a year-in year-out basis as domestic shale oil output ramps up, and US oil demand stagnates.

Clarke’s theory, like the explanation of the role and power of the ”petrodollar system” depends on two basic drivers. Most major developed countries rely on oil imports, which are purchased using dollars, so they are forced to hold large stockpiles of dollars in order to continue importing oil. In turn this also creates consistent demand for dollars, and prevents the dollar from losing its relative international monetary value, regardless of what happens to the US economy.

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Paul Craig Roberts ~ Washington Signals Dollar Deep Concerns

Paul Craig Roberts May 18 2013

Over the past month there has been a statistically improbable concurrence of events that can only be explained as a conspiracy to protect the dollar from the Federal Reserve’s policy of Quantitative Easing (QE).

Quantitative Easing is the term given to the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing 1,000 billion new dollars annually in order to finance the US budget deficit by purchasing US Treasury bonds and to keep the prices high of debt-related derivatives on the “banks too big to fail” (BTBF) balance sheets by purchasing mortgage-backed derivatives. Without QE, interest rates would be much higher, and values on the banks’ balance sheets would be much lower.

Quantitative Easing has been underway since December 2008. During these 54 months, the Federal Reserve has created several trillion new dollars with which the Fed has monetized the same amount of debt.

One result of this policy is that most real US interest rates are negative. Another result is that the supply of dollars has outstripped the world’s demand for dollars.

These two results are the reason that the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing money with which to purchase Treasury bonds and mortgage backed derivatives threatens the dollar’s exchange value and, thus, the dollar’s role as world reserve currency.

To be the world reserve currency means that the dollar can be used to pay any and every country’s oil bills and trade deficit. The dollar is the medium of international payment.

This is very helpful to the US and is the main source of US power. Because the dollar is the reserve currency, the US can cover its import costs and pay for its cost of operation simply by creating its own paper money.

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GE Christenson ~ Gold And What I Know for Certain

Deviant Investor May 16 2013

What I Know for Certain

  • Death and taxes!
  • Fear and greed are powerful motivators.
  • Individuals, businesses, and governments do what they think is beneficial for them.
  • Businesses and governments protect their products and territory and resist competition and enemies.
  • Concentrated wealth creates power and corruption. The greater the concentration of wealth, the larger and more pervasive the power and corruption.
  • Gold and silver have been money for over 3,000 years.
  • Unbacked paper money systems have always failed.

What I Think is True

  • The basic product of a central bank is the unbacked paper currency it prints in ever-increasing quantities.
  • Central banks will fight all competitors to their currencies. The oldest competitor to unbacked paper currencies is gold, ancient money.
  • Politicians want to spend money and increase their power.
  • Bankers want to create money, lend it to governments, and thereby secure a permanent and increasing revenue stream.

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Yra Harris ~ Rising Stock Market False Positive [Video]

USAWatchdog May 15 2013

Renowned commodity trader Yra Harris says forget about talk of the Federal Reserve “tapering” money printing.  The real problem is the $3 trillion of junk the Fed has already bought.  Harris says, “So you are going to allow $3 trillion in cash the Fed created to sit out there in the economy?  That would be phenomenally inflationary.”  Harris thinks the Fed might make the banks hold much of that money to “slow the velocity.”  

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Paul Craig Roberts ~ Gangster State America

Paul Craig Roberts May 13 2013

There are many signs of gangster state America. One is the collusion between federal authorities and banksters in a criminal conspiracy to rig the markets for gold and silver.

My explanation that the sudden appearance of an unprecedented 400 ton short sale of gold on the COMEX in April was a manipulation designed to protect the dollar from the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy has found acceptance among gold investors and hedge fund managers.

The sale was a naked short. The seller had no gold to sell. COMEX reported having gold only equal to about half of the short sale in its vaults, and not all of that was available for delivery. No one but the Federal Reserve could have placed such an order, and the order came from one of the Fed’s bullion banks, one of the entities “too big to fail.”

Bill Kaye of the Greater Asian Hedge Fund in Hong Kong and Dave Kranzler of Golden Returns Capital have filled in the details of how the manipulation worked. Being sophisticated investors of many years of experience, both Kaye and Kranzler understand that the financial press runs with the authorized story planted to serve the agenda that has been put into play.

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Bill Bonner ~ The Greatest Lie The FedRes Ever Told

The Daily Bell May 7 2013

cartoon_fedres1

Public life bumbles along under a combination of false pretenses and self-imposed delusions.

At the start of last week, it was widely reported that US central bankers had gone as far as they were willing to go. There were voices in the Fed, said the news, urging caution. There would be no further monetary stimulus measures, said the commentators.

Investors grew cautious.

But by the end of the week, they were rolling the dice again. The Fed was working hard to fight the impression that it had either lost its nerve or recovered its senses. From The New York Times:

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that its economic stimulus campaign would press forward at the same pace it has maintained since December, putting to rest for now any suggestion that it was leaning toward doing less.

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James Hall ~ The Warren Buffett House of Cards

BATR November 8 2013

Now that the financial hype is celebrating a new all time high in the stocks, the time to exit the market may well be at hand. So what will that Oracle of Omaha do with all the insider information available from his compadre network?

The business press swoons all over Warren Buffett with every report, while only a few intrepid journalists would dare write about the dark side of Wall Street’s favorite equity cheerleader. The guru of sweet heart deals floats in the rarified air of a political cronyism ongoing honeymoon. So what is likely for his Berkshire Hathaway flagship company now that the ticker is breathing on pure oxygen?

At the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting, the forecast projects that the market will continue to rise. Berkshire Cash Hits Record $49.1 Billion as Profit Climbs, cites Bill Smead, portfolio manager of the Smead Value Fund, “Warren has organized the company around the rebirth of the United States economy over the next 10 years and this is the beginning of that rebirth.”

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Michael Snyder ~ 11 Reasons Why The Federal Reserve Should Be Abolished

The Economic Collapse May 6 2013

If the American people truly understood how the Federal Reserve system works and what it has done to us, they would be screaming for it to be abolished immediately.  It is a system that was designed by international bankers for the benefit of international bankers, and it is systematically impoverishing the American people.  The Federal Reserve system is the primary reason why our currency has declined in value by well over 95 percent and our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger over the past 100 years.  The Fed creates our “booms” and our “busts”, and they have done an absolutely miserable job of managing our economy.  But why do we need a bunch of unelected private bankers to manage our economy and print our money for us in the first place?  Wouldn’t our economy function much more efficiently if we allowed the free market to set interest rates?  And according to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Congress is the one that is supposed to have the authority to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”.  So why is the Federal Reserve doing it?  Sadly, this is the way it works all over the globe today.  In fact, all 187 nations that belong to the IMF have a central bank.  But the truth is that there are much better alternatives.  We just need to get people educated.

The following are 11 reasons why the Federal Reserve should be abolished…

#1 The Greatest Period Of Economic Growth In The History Of The United States Happened When There Was No Central Bank

Did you know that the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was between the Civil War and 1913?  And guess what?  That was a period when there was no central bank in the United States at all.  The following is from Wikipedia

The Gilded Age saw the greatest period of economic growth in American history. After the short-lived panic of 1873, the economy recovered with the advent of hard money policies and industrialization. From 1869 to 1879, the US economy grew at a rate of 6.8% for real GDP and 4.5% for real GDP per capita, despite the panic of 1873.  The economy repeated this period of growth in the 1880s, in which the wealth of the nation grew at an annual rate of 3.8%, while the GDP was also doubled.

So if our greatest period of economic prosperity was during a time when there was no Federal Reserve, then why shouldn’t we try such a system again?

#2 The Federal Reserve Is Systematically Destroying The Value Of The U.S. Dollar

The United States never had a persistent, ongoing problem with inflation until the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.

If you do not believe this, just check out the inflation chart in this article.

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Rick Ackerman ~ ObamaCare: Economy Can’t Survive It [Video]

USAWatchdog May 6 2013

Trader and forecaster Rick Ackerman says, “As far as the Fed getting off the easing regimen, it’s not possible . . . You’d kill the system right now. There’s no way out, and although we put off the day of reckoning, it can’t be put off indefinitely.”

ObamaCare is one of the biggest headwinds facing the economy. Ackerman says, “January 1st, everybody is going to get socked with at least a 30% increase in their insurance premiums . . . Obama Care is the worst bill ever . . . I don’t see how the economy can survive it.”

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GE Christenson ~ The Incredible Weight of Quantitative Easing

Deviant Investor May 6 2013

Skip the supposed theory and purpose of Quantitative Easing, and ask yourself what is its equivalent weight? Suppose we use the $85,000,000,000 per month that is officially acknowledged and round it to $1,000,000,000,000 per year and relate that $1 Trillion per year to items more easily understood.

  • What is $1 Trillion expressed in tons of $1 bills?
  • What is $1 Trillion expressed in kilos of heroin at “street value”?
  • What is $1 Trillion expressed in tankers of gasoline?
  • What is $1 Trillion expressed in cases of 18 year old single malt Scotch?
  • What is $1 Trillion expressed in days for the US government to spend it?
  • What is $1 Trillion expressed in truckloads of one ounce Silver Eagles?
  • What is $1 Trillion expressed in truckloads of one ounce Gold Eagles?

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