Global Revolution!

[LBDaoist]

... destroyed in the U.S.

 

How is it destroyed? That is the one part of the equation that I am still trying to come to grips with. What brought me to that point is why is it not being destroyed (in respect to the over priced mortgages).

 

Here are some of my incoherent ramblings on the subject as I was trying to come to grips with the loose threads of thought floating around in my own head...

 

http://lbdaoist.blogspot.com/2011/09/money-what-is-really-going-on-with-it.html

[ralis]

Thanks Sereneblue,

 

Excellent resources for those interested in educating themselves as to how the entire economic system has been created for the very few. 'Web Of Debt' discusses this at great length in terms of the derivatives market (bets on bets on bets etc.) which is nothing more than extremely insane high risk investments. These credit default swaps were insured by AIG. This is one reason why AIG and other financial institutions were bailed out by the last POTUS.

 

The total amount of the derivative market may be over 100 trillion dollars. I believe the total world yearly economy is around 60 trillion. Who pays when that market collapses? Everyone on this planet! Why has this been allowed to happen? In 1999, the U.S. Congress led by Phil Graham, gutted the Glass Steagall act. Glass Steagall was instituted to control banks investment practices with depositors money. When Glass Steagall was rescinded, investment brokers such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan et al, were allowed to become banks as well as investment brokers. Not only were banking regulations lifted by the rescinding of this act, investment brokers are now able to borrow short term money at close to zero % interest from the Federal Reserve to implement high frequency trading, shorting currencies and creating market bubbles. Market bubbles are created when excess money is allowed in the markets that create inflated values of commodities such as oil, gasoline, grain etc. Poor countries are especially hard hit by this kind of useless selfish speculation that produces nothing.

[ralis]

How is it destroyed? That is the one part of the equation that I am still trying to come to grips with. What brought me to that point is why is it not being destroyed (in respect to the over priced mortgages).

 

 

I have heard the arguments about the mortgages being the problem and how poor people who didn't deserve mortgages crashed this economy. That is more propaganda with no basis in fact. Those mortgages were sold through the banking system as derivatives with a AAA credit rating and insured by AIG in case the loans were in default. What happened was that the mortgages were bundled as investments (derivatives) an sold on the open market. That is nothing more than a bet on a bet and so forth. Now those derivatives are estimated to be in the trillions of dollars. The fault lies in a deregulated banking system and not poor people!

[LBDaoist]

I have heard the arguments about the mortgages being the problem and how poor people who didn't deserve mortgages crashed this economy. That is more propaganda with no basis in fact. Those mortgages were sold through the banking system as derivatives with a AAA credit rating and insured by AIG in case the loans were in default. What happened was that the mortgages were bundled as investments (derivatives) an sold on the open market. That is nothing more than a bet on a bet and so forth. Now those derivatives are estimated to be in the trillions of dollars. The fault lies in a deregulated banking system and not poor people!

 

I understand where the problem came from. My question is, if all of those CDS and derivatives are allowed to go belly up, so what? You have maybe a dozen major banks who are all leveraged to the hilt and if you trace the money, all owe it to each other anyway. Who cares if you "wipe out" 100 trillion dollars when in reality, the only people who really have access to that "money" are a very small subset of the overall population.

 

Put another way, if Wall Street fell into the ocean tomorrow, how long would it take to setup a replica of the system in Texas, or Chicago or Boise, Idaho for all anyone cares?

 

Or more importantly and what I don't understand is this. So what if you wipe out hundreds of trillions of dollars? It is all "fake" in the first place. If nobody can afford to pay $5 for a loaf of bread, the price of bread will fall. If a Wall Street broker can no longer afford to spend $250,000 on a Porsche, the price of the Porsche will fall. From that point of view, a balance will be achieved. In my neighborhood in the early 2000s, a home was about $200-300,000. By 2007, that same home was $750,000+. But see, it is really a only a $250,000 home. It was never, ever, ever really worth $750,000. There was not enough real earning power in the economy for those homes to be "worth" that much. So why not let them adjust back down to what they should be?

 

Would it really be so bad to wipe out all of the bankers and force them to take a haircut? Society will still have banks. People will need services like checking accounts and ATMs. Loans will still be necessary. But that whole generation of "financial professionals" who screwed the pooch... those people failed at life and they need to be fired. They already earned their 6 and 7 figure salaries. They had their time at the troth.

[joeblast]

Good luck trying to explain economics to ralis Apparently the government forcing banks to make bad loans had nothing to do with it and somehow a branch sprang forth from the ground with no root to speak of!

 

 

Complaining about these things (wall st, etc) is really complaining about the leaf and branch.

 

If you've got a problem with the entire tree, fine. But do you think by some insane chance you can just cut the leaves and branches and ignore the root, fix the problem?

 

 

Plainly speaking - the government created a market for bad loans. This is exactly the thing I am talking about when I say that government intervention in a market only serves to distort the market - and distort it in the fashion that the legislators feel will produce a good outcome. But when you have no farking clue of what you're doing (pointed right at you Bawney) you can make such claims as "this legislation will result in you, the consumer, paying less" when really all that happens is one business entity is punished while another gains a subsidy - the one punished recoups its costs elsewhere (i.e. "charging you for something that until then, they provided for "free," since it was paid for by other means") and gets demonized for "raping its customers" while the veritable recipient of the subsidy quietly pockets it and says nothing.

 

Gotta laugh at the "astroturf"-nature of these contrived wall st protests - they wouldnt exist if it werent for the bankroll of a certain ugly old gray individual that wants to install his version of Utopia everywhere possible. Really, calling for Obama to be reelected? The wonderful, loveable, Uncle George would love nothing more than a further weakened American economy.

[JustARandomPanda]

LBDaoist,

 

Your question is precisely what Web of Debt explains in detail.

 

 

Here is a

(1 of 5) that discusses Fractional Reserve Banking. Now let's add in some fancy Casino Gambling - also known as Derivatives.

 

Here is a

(1 of 10) that explains how Credit Default Swaps work. Now realize CDS are not the only "new and innovative" means used to make obscene amounts of money.

 

The second has a heavy reliance on math - statistics in particular to try to generate more money.

 

 

Now add those 2 together and you begin to realize why Nassim Talib was so scathing in his rebuke of modern Banking and Finance. Here's an article by Talib on the Limits of Statistics.

 

There are other reasons besides the reasons listed above as to why things get so bad but just these alone are devastating enough.

 

****end of part addressing LBDaosist****

 

 

***Beginning of my own musings to no one in particular****

 

A lot of the links I've been providing are to try to counter balance a lot of the over-emphasis online these days by and about the Conservative Love Affair of "Contracts Uber Alles" and "government is evil" or even "government is a totally unnecessary evil".

 

But whereas Conservatives/Libertarians are suspicious of injustices via the use of Kratos (power via strength of arms) Anarchists and Leftists are suspicious of injustices via the use of Arche (power of societal rank conferred via non-kratos means). The former is overt, the latter covert. But human ingenuity can and does use either to its advantage.

 

Americans as a whole are justifiably suspicious of the former but woefully uneducated (or a few just don't care) about abuses/injustice done via the latter. I have made it a point to familiarize myself with a lot of these debates because it's long pissed me off to see Conservative Parrot Heads point to their wonderful "guarantor of freedom" - the Contract - and how that will cure injustice - as if injustice can only be "true" if a threat of physical violence is immanent. Anything else doesn't count as injustice in their eyes.

 

 

I've spent time online occasionally arguing with Parrot Heads like these. They read their little circle of books that confirm their world view without really bothering to investigate why anyone anywhere would want to point out their perfect system leaves holes of injustice so wide trucks can drive through it. That's the seductive allure of models and theories. Especially if they are breathtaking in their explanations. It sucks even the brightest of minds in. That's why John Nash started criticizing the participants of a study that was designed to empirically test if people actually DID do what his game theory predicted they would under the conditions his theory described. They didn't. They acted far more co-operatively than the particular theory being tested said they would. He mused it was a failure of the Testees - instead of looking at what actually happened - his theory failed.

 

That's why I was shocked so many people at Amazon rated Ormerod's book so low. Ormerod's whole point is that theories, models and testing methods developed for sciences such as biology, complexity, chaos, etc are doing a helluva lot better at predicting how people actually behave economically (just look at what Mandelbrot showed with his fractal math applied to stock prices!). Fiscal and Monetary policy ultimately derive their justifications from Microeconomics - if the latter gets called into question that has serious consequences for Macroeconomic justifications for Fiscal and Monetary policy.

 

 

I'll give one example by Ha-Joon Chang (an economist in London):

 

Here's an excerpt from his book Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

 

It is a myth that central bankers are non-partisan technocrats. It is well known that they tend to listen very closely to the view of the financial sector and implement policies that help it, if necessary at the cost of the manufacturing industry or wage earners. So, giving them independence allows them to pursue policies that benefit their own natural constituencies without appearing to do so. The policy bias would be even worse if we explicitly tell them that they should not worry about any policy objectives other than inflation.

 

Moreover, central bank independence raises an important issue for democratic accountability. The flip side of the argument that central bankers can take good decisions only because their jobs do not depend on making the electorate happy is that they can pursue policies that hurt the majority of people with impunity - especially if they are all told not to worry about anything other than the rate of inflation.

 

 

I know it's a highly unpopular opinion but I actually think Karl Marx did a damn good job of describing the problems inherent in Capitalism (what will be really interesting is if these new sciences and computational math techniques actually bear out what he delineated). Where he went off the rails was in prescribing how to fix them. He got seduced by his theory but true to history people have a wonderful way of acting contrary to elegant theories and models (even ones that win Nobel Prizes).

 

 

Now from the links I've provided one might conclude I hate Libertarian thought. I don't. I actually think a lot of their criticisms are valid and agree with them. But I don't agree that markets and contracts are the panacea many of them believe to be. Sometimes in arguing with them I wonder if this is what old-timers used to feel back in the day when Communist theories were sweeping the world. It feels like you're talking to a brick wall - that True Believer - he's found THE model that explains it ALL. It's just so simple in it's beauty you must be an airhead to just NOT GET IT.

 

 

Back then it was the ever present True Believer of the Left distributing pamphlets and meeting in cafes. Today it is the True Believer of the Right doing the same via YouTube vids, posts on message boards and other forms of media (both MSM and alternative).

 

 

 

And that is just one reason why people are Occupying Wall Street.

[zerostao]

Koch brothers

 

whether the dow jones industrials sits at 13,000 or 13 cents it dont affect me none

ah, the simple life........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guh06NPgNmQ

 

taijiquan,baguazhang,selected chi kungs, shen gong damn if i didnt forage up cornucopia of herbs this year.

just another great day in the tao, however it goes

 

 

yeah i am uneducated, my opinion means nuthin, i swore off wall street and money october 2008

 

[ralis]

edit

Edited October 4, 2011 by ralis

[JustARandomPanda]

Here's another info dump just to give peeps more insight into how "iffy" the foundation of higher modern economics (and other sciences!) really can be. Most upper level economics is math. LOTS of math.

 

Let's say you are one of those Statisticians who does not buy Nassim Talib's criticisms of the Limits of Statistics (and they are out there).

 

You still have to contend with the critics within Statistics

 

I give you the book (yes, I own it):

 

 

The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs us Jobs, Justice and Lives (Economics, Cognition and Society)

 

Here's the book blurb

 

 

The Cult of Statistical Significance shows, field by field, how "statistical significance," a technique that dominates many sciences, has been a huge mistake. The authors find that researchers in a broad spectrum of fields, from agronomy to zoology, employ "testing" that doesn't test and "estimating" that doesn't estimate. The facts will startle the outside reader: how could a group of brilliant scientists wander so far from scientific magnitudes? This study will encourage scientists who want to know how to get the statistical sciences back on track and fulfill their quantitative promise. The book shows for the first time how wide the disaster is, and how bad for science, and it traces the problem to its historical, sociological, and philosophical roots.

 

 

Just to give a refresher on what Statistical Significance IS you can check out this YouTube Vid.

 

 

Here is the

of Dierdre McCloskey's talk on her follow up book to the above:

 

 

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World

[Birch]

"That's the seductive allure of models and theories. Especially if they are breathtaking in their explanations."

 

I especially like this one SB. And I believe it's one that has been of great help to me in my 'spiritual' experiences and various practices. Where I think I've gone wrong in many cases (and still continue to do so in some areas) has been in the handing over of my own understanding of (too?) many things to others.

 

If I am not an expert in every single field (which I'm not) and I need (to some extent) to rely on other people to make reasonable choices about things I neither control the conditions around nor have expertise in, am I then consistently setting myself up to get the short end of the stick? I suppose people might call me lazy for not knowing all the facts and I do find myself checking stuff out a lot more than I ever used to (pre-internet, I suggest it wasn't quite as easy to find them out and being raised and educated by sheep doesn't help:-)) but here's a fact. I cannot possibly know everything at the point of decision. And I find it hard to know things that are intended to be concealed from me. Not impossible, just difficult :-)

[gendao]

But, there are those who believe in universal healthcare, not for totalitarian control at home, but because it will improve preventive care, better outcomes in general then what we have now, save lives, save millions from bankruptcy paying giant medical bills, save businesses money (its 15,000+ an employee/family now).

Government universal healthcare has already been pilot-tested in a handful of US states:

HI - Keiki Care

MA - RomneyCare

MN - Dirigo Care

TN - TennCare

And quickly went bankrupt every single time.

 

The only money that PelosiCare will save is that of California's own debts by passing it on to the rest of the country.

 

Add that on top of the fact that we would be expecting a government $15 trillion in debt...to SAVE MONEY??? :lol:

 

And above all else, a government sold-out to Big Pharma will definitely not be saving lives, either!!! So, to HELL with empowering that cabal with more tax money!!!

Glenn Greenwald comments on the recent killing of the Yemen Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. These assassinations that began under the Bush administration and are continued by the present administration, are without due process which is a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution. There are many that advocate the reduction of the Constitution to almost nothing, especially, Tea Baggers, Libertarians and right wing Neocons. This is one example of the abuses that can and will occur when Constitutional protections are eliminated. Habeas Corpus and due process rights were discarded with the bogus war on terror.

Lol yes, the mainstream knife blade in our back has 2 sides: the Robin Hood Left & neocon Right. This has been proven by Obama's same core agenda as Bush. So, arguing over which side "alone" is cutting us is ultimately laughable..

 

Whereas, Libertarians are actually trying to pull the whole damn knife OUT!

 

And if you are a Constitutionalist, then you might actually be a Libertarian or Tea Partier - but not even know it! Libertarians are DEDICATED to adhering to the Constitution, reducing foreign military intervention and reducing Federal power (including centralized banking - hence Ron Paul's cries to END THE FED!!!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka1ym7S3F3w

Apparently the government forcing banks to make bad loans had nothing to do with it and somehow a branch sprang forth from the ground with no root to speak of!

Yup, that's pretty much what got the snowball started..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64

Edited October 4, 2011 by vortex

[John Zen]

While I support Ron Paul fully, not even he can stop the global financial tsunami that is about to hit.

 

The crisis of 2008 was caused by years, decades, of bad credit. We used more and more bad credit as a bandage, but the levee is about to break in Europe, and the floodwaters will hit America soon after.

 

Invest in Gold.

[ralis]

Good luck trying to explain economics to ralis

 

Are you implying that I don't have sufficient intelligence to understand economics? I have 50 hours of college level mathematics up to and including 800 level courses in decision theory. Decision theory courses include, game theory (John Von Neumann) and bayesian decision theory.

 

Are you interested in participating in a lively discussion in regards to the current economic problems facing this country? Or, are you more interested in creating divisiveness in this discussion with your anti-government propaganda and snide remarks towards certain persons who post here?

[JustARandomPanda]

"That's the seductive allure of models and theories. Especially if they are breathtaking in their explanations."

 

I especially like this one SB. And I believe it's one that has been of great help to me in my 'spiritual' experiences and various practices. Where I think I've gone wrong in many cases (and still continue to do so in some areas) has been in the handing over of my own understanding of (too?) many things to others.

 

You and me both. The one question I always ask myself whenever I hear someone give a talk about something (especially political, social or economic ones) is "what am I not being told?"

 

And then I try to go find out. In the past that sometimes meant spending a lot of time perusing info at the library. Today it means spending time hunting stuff online with occasional trips to the library as back up. But there's only a limited amount of time I can devote to that. And unlike most people I don't fault the majority of Americans for not bothering to take the time to do what I do. We all have different areas of expertise.

 

It's when people mistakenly think they also have the astuteness to get the gist of public policy or economic debates without investing more than a minimum amount of time in seeing if their 'gist' has holes in it or can be falsified that I occasionally get irritated (the science of heuristics deals with one area of this - See Sources of Power:How People Make Decisions for fast decisions made with limited amount of data - that's why society needs the Scientific Method imo).

 

But most of the time I don't. I just remember you're point. We can't be experts about everything we're always being asked to be in to be a "clued-in electorate/public".

 

This is especially true if they don't think about 'off-the-beaten-path' areas that can change the whole terms of a debate. See how Nassim Talib and Dierdre McCloskey have scathing critiques on statistics and thus it's truth claims as one example. Most people don't think that statistics itself as a discipline can be attacked or go off-track. If it can be shown that it can and has - anything that uses statistics for justifying something becomes a lot more rocky as well. (and don't get me started on the classic How to Lie with Statistics).

 

 

If I am not an expert in every single field (which I'm not) and I need (to some extent) to rely on other people to make reasonable choices about things I neither control the conditions around nor have expertise in, am I then consistently setting myself up to get the short end of the stick?

 

Honestly I've wondered that myself. My own admittedly non-scientifically-derived opinion is that sometimes I'll be led astray and other times my 'gist' will be fairly correct.

 

I suppose people might call me lazy for not knowing all the facts and I do find myself checking stuff out a lot more than I ever used to (pre-internet, I suggest it wasn't quite as easy to find them out and being raised and educated by sheep doesn't help:-)) but here's a fact. I cannot possibly know everything at the point of decision. And I find it hard to know things that are intended to be concealed from me. Not impossible, just difficult :-)

 

I don't know about other people but I don't think you're lazy. You're just doing what humans naturally do. Use heuristics and that's been shown scientifically to serve under many conditions to be a good way of deciding things. But it's not infallible.

 

I suppose my own bias is that I tend to like science and the scientific method. Done correctly it can go a long way to helping expose our own heuristic biases that might lead us to conclusions that later don't pan out.

 

 

Here's one example in the interests of being fair minded about the Money Issues discussed in this thread.

 

I was curious to see just who might have a critique of that massive tome The Lost Science of Money. And here's a pretty good one I found.

 

Again - I always want to try to find the weaknesses and/or holes in a theory/model/explanation I've heard - especially if I like said theory/model/explanation. Now I don't think he's shot down Zarlenga. To me it just means that in this particular area of Zarlenga's presentation the jury is still out.

 

 

For anyone interested here's a paper by the same author critiquing Hayek and von Mises.

 

And here is his conclusion.

 

[bTW - if this author really IS proposing to make Mises-Economics axiomatic (and thus potentially testable) my interest in this branch of economics just got renewed]

 

 

This does not address touchy areas mentioned by Talib and McCloskey of course.

 

 

Pst....

 

Engineers, I haven't forgotten how essential you are to solving many problems that have public policy implications either....

 

Review:

 

In this highly engrossing book, Petroski eloquently challenges a fundamental and profound bias in our society--the relegation of engineers and engineering to second-class status among professions. He traces to roots of the perceived primacy of science over engineering to the Western Platonic bias that "ideas are superior and prerequisite to things" and to the simplistic linear model of research-before-development promulgated by science administrator Vannevar Bush in the 1940s. Petroski uses examples such as the steam engine, powered flight and rocketry, to demonstrate that engineering often leads science, and also that science is a tool of engineering. He also compellingly describes the optimistic, challenging, rewarding nature of engineering, showing its satisfying creativity. And to demonstrate the richness of engineering, he takes the reader through a tour of technologies as seen through the eyes of an engineer, including speed bumps and humps, dams, climate change, "geoengineering" of the earth to combat climate change, renewable energy, nanotechnology, robotics, structural earthquake engineering, hurricane protection, airline accidents, the electric power grid, evolution of the automobile, and "financial engineering." This book is essential reading, not only for engineers and students, but for all of us who benefit from the vast wealth of technology that makes modern life possible.

 

 

**********

 

 

 

*edit*

 

*gulp*

 

Just saw Ralis' credentials. Yikes.

 

I have no where near that kind of college level, in-depth exposure to such topics.

[Birch]

I don't have enough smarts to understand economics. Forget about Ralis, explain it to me :-)

I think my brain went into suck mode the first time i heard "rational" and "free market". Somehow i felt neither of those to be the case but the econ folks insist on both of them. How can i contribute to the discussion if i can't get past either of those?

The money stuff i sort of get. The "where to lay responsibility" for any given market, I don't get. If it's "free" even less so.

I thought the idea of a new type of money was interesting.

[ralis]

I don't have enough smarts to understand economics. Forget about Ralis, explain it to me :-)

I think my brain went into suck mode the first time i heard "rational" and "free market". Somehow i felt neither of those to be the case but the econ folks insist on both of them. How can i contribute to the discussion if i can't get past either of those?

The money stuff i sort of get. The "where to lay responsibility" for any given market, I don't get. If it's "free" even less so.

I thought the idea of a new type of money was interesting.

 

Actually, mathematics and economics are really not that difficult. If you have anxiety around these seemingly difficult subjects, that can be eliminated. Most of us have been led to believe that learning math, is dreadful and difficult. That is the fault of the educational system here in the U.S. and not yours.

 

I have used the Silva mind control system as well as Win Wenger's teachings to jettison mountains of anxiety and BS. I highly recommend both.

[JustARandomPanda]

A bit more info dumping for those interested (pick and choose among my links of anything that interests you - or just let your eyes glaze over and ignore it all )

 

 

Some more as it pertains to the International Money Machine

 

 

Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System

 

Exorbitant Privilege is a book for anyone who has been perplexed why, despite the frequent predictions of the dollar's demise over the last fifty years, it has managed to maintain its position as the world's pre-eminent reserve currency. The book includes both a lively historical account of the dollar's role in the international monetary system and an incisive and balanced discussion of future challenges."

 

The Amazon page has 2 vids available of the author giving speeches about this subject

 

 

Here is a YouTube vid about China re-iterating its calls for the need for a new Global Reserve Currency

 

China's proposal - a Super Sovereign currency - one that supposedly would not be linked to any single economy.

 

I get the hunch the Chinese government is not particularly happy that they have nowhere else to dump all their population's savings. It wouldn't surprise me if they start trying to find a way (along with their allies) to quietly create just such an alternative.

 

If anyone thinks losing global reserve currency status isn't a big deal just ask the British what it was like after it happened to them.

 

Here is a bit about the man partly responsible for the the S&P Downgrade of the U.S.

 

 

 

 

The Dubious S&P Downgrade

Many commentators questioned the validity of the downgrade that threatened to collapse the market. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said in a statement:

 

"The Treasury Department revealed that S&P's decision was initially based on a $2 trillion error in accounting. However, even after this enormous error was corrected, S&P went ahead with the downgrade. This suggests that S&P had made the decision to downgrade independent of the evidence." [Emphasis added.]

 

Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, was also skeptical, stating:

 

"[E]verything I've heard about S&P's demands suggests that it's talking nonsense about the US fiscal situation. The agency has suggested that the downgrade depended on the size of agreed deficit reduction over the next decade, with $4 trillion apparently the magic number. Yet US solvency depends hardly at all on what happens in the near or even medium term: an extra trillion in debt adds only a fraction of a percent of GDP to future interest costs . . . .

 

"In short, S&P is just making stuff up -- and after the mortgage debacle, they really don't have that right."'

 

In an illuminating exposé posted on Firedoglake on August 5, Jane Hamsher concluded:

 

 

 

"It's becoming more and more obvious that Standard and Poor's has a political agenda riding on the notion that the US is at risk of default on its debt based on some arbitrary limit to the debt-to-GDP ratio. There is no sound basis for that limit, or for S&P's insistence on at least a $4 trillion down payment on debt reduction, any more than there is for the crackpot notion that a non-crazy US can be forced to default on its debt. . . .

 

"It's time the media and Congress started asking Standard and Poors what their political agenda is and whom it serves."

 

 

 

Who Drove the S&P Agenda?

Jason Schwarz shed light on this question in an article on Seeking Alpha titled "The Rise of Financial Terrorism" . He wrote:

 

"[A]fter the market close on Friday August 5th, we received word that S&P CEO Deven Sharma had taken control of the ratings agency and personally led the push for a U.S. downgrade. There is a lot of evidence that he has deliberately tried to trash the U.S. economy . Even after discovering that the S&P debt calculations were off by $2 trillion, Sharma made the decision to go ahead with the unethical downgrade. This is a guy who was a key contributor at the 2009 Bilderberg Summit that organized 120 of the world's richest men and women to push for an end to the dollar as the global reserve currency.

 

"[T]hrough his writings on 'competitive strategy' S&P CEO Sharma considers the United States the PROBLEM in today's world, operating with what he implies is an unfair and reckless advantage. The brutal reality is that for 'globalization' to succeed the United States must be torn asunder . . ."

 

Also named by Schwarz as a suspect in the market manipulations was Michel Barnier, head of European Regulation. Barnier triggered an alarming 513-point drop in the Dow on August 4, when he blocked the plan of Hans Hoogervorst, newly appointed Chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board, to save Europe by adopting a new rule called IFRS 9. The rule would have eliminated mark-to-market accounting of sovereign debt from European bank balance sheets. Schwarz writes:

 

"We all should be experts on the dangers of mark-to-market accounting after observing the U.S. banking crisis of 2008/2009 and the Great Depression in the 1930s. Mark-to-market was repealed at 8:45 a.m on April 2, 2009, which finally put a stop to the short term liquidity crisis and at the same time ushered in a stock market recovery. Banks no longer had to raise capital as long term stability was brought back to the system. The exact same scenario would have happened in 2011 Europe under Hoogervorst's plan. Without the threat of failure by those banks who hold high amounts of euro sovereign debt, investors would be free to move on from the European crisis and the stock market could resume its fundamental course."

 

Schwarz notes that Barnier, like Sharma, was a confirmed attendee at past Bilderberger conferences. What, then, is the agenda of the Bilderbergers?

 

The One World Company

Daniel Estulin, noted expert on the Bilderbergers, describes that secretive globalist group as " a medium of bringing together financial institutions which are the world's most powerful and most predatory financial interests." Writing in June 2011, he said:

 

"Bilderberg isn't a secret society. . . . It's a meeting of people who represent a certain ideology. . . . Not OWG [One World Government] or NWO [New World Order] as too many people mistakenly believe. Rather, the ideology is of a ONE WORLD COMPANY LIMITED."

 

It seems the Bilderbergers are less interested in governing the world than in owning the world. The "world company" was a term first used at a Bilderberger meeting in Canada in 1968 by George Ball, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs and a managing director of banking giants Lehman Brothers and Kuhn Loeb. The world company was to be a new form of colonialism, in which global assets would be acquired by economic rather than military coercion. The company would extend across national boundaries, aggressively engaging in mergers and acquisitions until the assets of the world were subsumed under one privately-owned corporation, with nation-states subservient to a private international central banking system.

 

Estulin continues:

 

"The idea behind each and every Bilderberg meeting is to create what they themselves call THE ARISTOCRACY OF PURPOSE between European and North American elites on the best way to manage the planet. In other words, the creation of a global network of giant cartels, more powerful than any nation on Earth, destined to control the necessities of life of the rest of humanity.

 

". . . This explains what George Ball . . . said back in 1968, at a Bilderberg meeting in Canada: 'Where does one find a legitimate base for the power of corporate management to make decisions that can profoundly affect the economic life of nations to whose governments they have only limited responsibility?'"

 

That base of power was found in the private global banking system. Estulin goes on:

 

 

"The problem with today's system is that the world is run by monetary systems, not by national credit systems. . . . [Y]ou don't want a monetary system to run the world. You want sovereign nation-states to have their own credit systems, which is the system of their currency. . . . [T]he possibility of productive, non-inflationary credit creation by the state, which is firmly stated in the US Constitution, was excluded by Maastricht [the Treaty of the European Union] as a method of determining economic and financial policy."

 

The world company acquires assets by preventing governments from issuing their own currencies and credit. Money is created instead by banks as loans at interest. The debts inexorably grow, since more money is always owed back than was created in the original loans. (For more on this, see here.) If currencies are not allowed to expand to meet increased costs and growth, the inevitable result is a wave of bankruptcies, foreclosures, and sales of assets at firesale prices. Sales to whom? To the "world company."

 

Battle of the Titans

If that was the plan behind the market assaults on August 4 and August 8, however, it evidently failed. What turned the market around, according to Der Spiegel, was the European Central Bank, which saved the day by embarking on a program of buying Spanish and Italian bonds . Sidestepping the Maastricht Treaty, the ECB said it would engage in the equivalent of "quantitative easing," purchasing bonds with money created with accounting entries on its books. It had done this earlier with Greek and Irish sovereign debt but had resisted doing it with Spanish and Italian bonds, which were much larger obligations. On Tuesday, August 16, the ECB announced that it was engaging in a record $32 billion bond-buying spree in an attempt to appease the markets and save the Eurozone from collapse.

 

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was also expected to come through with another round of quantitative easing, but his speech on August 9 made no mention of QE3. As blogger Jesse Livermore summarized the market's response:

 

". . . [T]he markets sold off rather rapidly as no announcement was made about QE3. . . . It wasn't until . . . the last 75 min of market activity [that] the DJIA gained 639 pts to close at a day high of 11,242. That begs the question, where did that injection of capital come from? The President's Working Group on Financial Markets? Or did the "policy tools" to promote price stability by any chance include the next round of Quantitative Easing unannounced?

 

Titanic Battle or Insider Trading?

 

There could be another explanation for the suspicious downgrade that was announced despite the fact that the government had just made major concessions to avoid default, and despite the embarrassing revelation that S&P's figures were off by $2 trillion. On August 12, MSN.Money reported that the downgrade "wasn't much of a surprise":

 

 

"Wall Street had heard a rumor early on that the downgrade was coming. News sites reported the rumor all day.

 

"Unless it was all a huge coincidence, it's likely that someone in the know leaked the information. The questions are who and whether the leak led to early insider trading."

 

The Daily Mail had the story of someone placing an $850 million bet in the futures market on the prospects of a US debt downgrade:

 

"The latest bet was made on July 21 on trades of 5,370 ten-year Treasury futures and 3,100 Treasury bond futures, reported ETF Daily News.

 

"Now the investor's gamble seems to have paid off after Standard and Poor's issued a credit rating downgrade from AAA to AA+ last Friday.

 

"Whoever it is stands to earn a 1,000 per cent return on their money, with the expectation that interest rates will be going up after the downgrade."

 

The Securities Exchange Commission announced on August 8 that it is investigating the downgrade. According to the Financial Times, the move is part of a preliminary examination into potential insider trading.

 

Whatever was going on in the market in the first two weeks of August, it was unprecedented, unnatural, and bears close observation.

[JustARandomPanda]

And now....

 

Lest anyone forget....

 

and especially because a picture is worth a thousand words

 

I give you some particularly fun and revealing maps to check out

 

 

I especially liked one in particular.

 

Here's how to duplicate it.

 

Go to theyrule.net

 

on the left hand side click the link that says Recent Maps

 

Then click the link near the very top that says Public Policy Think Tanks

 

Stand back in utter awe at the vast web of connections (supposedly purely in the public interest) all these hugely famous and influential Think Tanks (with their lobbyists) have to an equally huge number of multinational corporations. My jaw especially hit the floor when I saw just how damn many are connected to the Brookings Institute.

 

 

Here's another fun one

 

click on Popular Maps

 

Then click on War and Oil Media Machine

 

 

Still think U.S. news is "fair and balanced"?

 

 

 

 

Yet another one

 

Click Recent Maps

 

Click Media Financial and Right Wing Think Tanks

 

And yet another one:

 

Click Military Industrial Complex

 

 

Here's another revealing one

 

Click Popular Maps

 

Click TARP and Council on Foreign Relations Corporate Orgy

 

 

And finally my last fun suggestion

 

 

Click Popular Maps

 

Click Too Big to Fail Banks

 

 

And for those who for some reason might not have the opportunity to do this themselves I've added some attachments (hopefully you can make out what they are) of 3 Think Tanks.

[joeblast]

Actually, mathematics and economics are really not that difficult.

part of my point - its people's motivations. are you going to somehow wow me with insight, given the policies you support? I think not

[Birch]

Actually, mathematics and economics are really not that difficult. If you have anxiety around these seemingly difficult subjects, that can be eliminated. Most of us have been led to believe that learning math, is dreadful and difficult. That is the fault of the educational system here in the U.S. and not yours.

 

I have used the Silva mind control system as well as Win Wenger's teachings to jettison mountains of anxiety and BS. I highly recommend both.

Thanks for the suggestions for techniques Ralis. Yes, I'm doing what i need to to deal with the financial anxiety ( caused in part by honking a44holes who are about to have us go through a second wave of unecessary speculative panic. However, since i realised "i bring all misfortune to myself" i am being vewy vewy careful about how i perceive money and those with honking huge amounts of mine that they don't deserve in any way shape or form.) In fact, if we use the "money is energy" idea, I'm being vamped.

 

I used to be great at math. In fact it was one of my strongest topics.

But IMO math is only useful for this once we've figured out what we're counting. That's a people thing, not a math thing IMO.

[ralis]

part of my point - its people's motivations. are you going to somehow wow me with insight, given the policies you support? I think not

 

You don't know what policies I support. Stop pretending that you know anything about me!

[JustARandomPanda]

part of my point - its people's motivations. are you going to somehow wow me with insight, given the policies you support?

 

What policies do you think he supports?

[Everything]

How likely is Ron Paul to become president?

 

Just curious, cause you don´t hear many presidents say to reduce the size of government. Haha

 

I thought Ron Paul was like a small little guy who got 0,9% of the American population behind him.

Edited October 4, 2011 by Everything

[Taomeow]

Excellent research, SereneBlue.

 

I've been doing this for several years too, looking for connections between things, with an additional slant -- going back in time and uprooting the historic origins of our military-industrial-political realities. I always try to determine the source (taoist training I guess ) ...discovering where things come from is quite illuminating as to what they actually are. (They don't ever tell you what they really are, they advertize what they want you to believe they are. Doesn't matter which public figure "stands for" what. What matters is to understand that they all "stand for something" on a stage, and "do the real doing" behind the scenes. If you heard a name, it means you heard a commercial jingle.) Once you start uprooting connections, they call you a conspiracy theorist though. Be prepared.

 

No mistakes have ever been made is one thing I discovered. There's no spontaneous military-industrial-political process happening in the world, there's never been a war that just flared up accidentally because some accidental dictator started it, nor a revolution, nor an economic crash. We the people haven't done anything of any consequence ever since we agreed to divide and conquer for them. We express dissatisfaction only when we don't get our rightful crumb of whatever they have been dividing of late, but as soon as we find ourselves on the giving end of "conquer" and someone of no consequence on its receiving end, we're happy and free all over again. It's just a matter of whose turn it is to be on the receiving end of the crumbs and whose, of the bullets, respectively.

 

I envy everyone's innocence who "understands" what is going on from studying economic developments. Being an expert in that is like being an expert in the bloodsucking habits of fleas that live on a mammoth circa the time of its extinction.

[JustARandomPanda]

Thanks TM.

 

The more I investigate the more I begin to wonder if those Conspiracy Theory wackos might not be so wacky after all - or at least on some things if not all.

 

 

I've added 2 new attachments.

 

These connections interlocked so much I had to cut it into 2 halves.

 

Here they are:

 

Too Big To Fail Banks

 

 

****

 

More things that make you go Hmmm...

 

 

IMF-Style Austerity Comes to America

 

How China Buys Our Debt While Burying it's Own

 

Inflation Fears: Real or Hysteria?

 

Why QE2 Failed: The Money Went Offshore

 

 

The Global Debt Crisis: How We Got in It and How to Get Out