
And by coincidence, it's End the Fed day.
The G20-meeting held in Washington on November 14/15, 2008, is in its essence a historical indicator that the Western - above all Anglo-Saxon - monopoly on global economic and financial governance, is coming to an end. Nevertheless, according to LEAP/E2020, this meeting also clearly demonstrated that this kind of summits is doomed to inefficiency because they concentrate on curing the symptoms (banks’ and hedge funds’ financial difficulties, derivative markets’ explosion, financial and currency markets’ dramatic volatility, ...) rather than the fundamental root of the current crisis, i.e. the collapse of the Bretton Woods system based on the US Dollar as sole pillar of the global monetary system. Without a complete overhaul of the system inherited from 1944 by summer 2009, the failing of the current system and that of the United States at the center, will lead the whole planet to an unprecedented economic, social, political and strategic instability, and more specifically to a breakdown of the global monetary system by summer 2009. In light of the technocratic jargon and calendar of the declaration released after this first G20-meeting (totally disconnected from the speed and scope of the unfolding crisis (1)), it is more than likely that the disaster will have to happen for the fundamental problems to be seriously addressed and for the beginning of a reply to be initiated.But wait there's more!
The agitation that has seized global leaders since the end of September 2008 indicates that panic has struck at the highest level. Worldwide political leaders have now understood that the house is on fire. But they have not yet perceived something obvious: that the very structure of the building is involved. Improving fire-regulations or reorganizing emergency services will not be sufficient. To use a strong symbolic image, the World Trade Center’s twin towers did not collapse because firemen were late or because water was missing in the automatic fire-system, they collapsed because their structure was not meant to support the shock of two airliners hitting them in just a few minutes.Wrong. The towers collapsed because they were previously rigged with explosives. The airliners hitting the buildings provided a pretext to 'pull' the towers, allowing Larry Silverstein to collect on his insurance policy, allowing the enormous Patriot Act to be pulled out of the bottom storage drawer and shoved through Congress, allowing the demonization of Muslims, allowing the endless War on Terror, allowing the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq and the murder of over one million innocent civilians and over 4,000 US servicepeople, allowing war profiteers to rake in money hand over fist, etc. etc. etc.
Today’s global monetary system is in a similar situation: the twin-towers are the Bretton Woods system, and the airliners are called « subprime crisis », « banking failures », « economic recession », « Very Great US Depression », « US deficits », … a whole squadron.Well, if that's true, then perhaps we can conclude that the Bretton Woods system is being 'pulled' on purpose, and the squadron of problems crashing and burning into the Bretton Woods systems actually provide a convenient pretext for imploding the system and consolidating wealth into a few hands.
In his testimony before Congress, the then CEO of Bear Stearns, Alan Schwartz, said that the run on Bear's stock had been "induced." He went on to say that his company, while saddled with a substantial amount of bad paper in the form of these worthless MBS (mortgage backed securities), was not in such bad shape that it could not have recovered had not there been a "whisper" campaign insisting that Bear's collapse was inevitable. It was this which doomed Bear Stearns, Schwartz told Congress, otherwise they would have recovered in a year or two without the need of governmental intervention.Back to GEAB...
Instead what happened was that J. P. Morgan Chase (the Rothschild banking empire, prominent members of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank and other national banks), after the sell-off, came forward to "rescue" Bear by successfully offering pennies on the dollar of the pre-fall value of the company. JPMC also got the government to indemnify against potential losses from Bear's bad paper to the tune of thirty billion dollars. This sum to be borrowed from the Fed.
Crisis? Not for the Rothschilds. As Fed members they and other cartel members had their chairman and servant, Alan Greenspan, not only sanction these new mortgage-based derivatives but advocate for them as well. These MBS led to a general decline in the housing and credit markets which, in turn, accompanied by whispers, led to an investor confidence crisis and a large reduction in the share prices of investment banks. Then JPMC, like the cavalry of olde, rode in to offer help by buying Bear for next to nothing and infusing it with much needed capital. How magnanimous!
Today’s leaders, who all belong to the collapsing world (including Barak Obama (3)), cannot possibly imagine how to solve the problem, just like central bankers in 2006/2007 could not possibly imagine the scope the unfolding crisis could reach (4). It is their world which is disappearing under their eyes, their beliefs and their illusions (sometimes similar) (5). According to our team, a 20 percent renewal of worldwide leaders is required to begin to see sustainable solutions (6) appear. This is indeed, according to LEAP/E2020, the « critical mass » needed to permit any fundamental change of perspective in a complex not very hierarchical human group. Today we are still far from reaching this critical mass: in order to contribute to finding solutions to the crisis, those new leaders must accede power in full awareness of the crisis’ specific nature.Alternatively, one might conclude that today's leaders understand precisely what is happening, and allow it to happen anyway. Hmm? Let us give them a little more credit in the intelligence department and much less credit in the ethics department. I am willing to believe that some of them may be Deeply Troubled by this state of affairs, but unfortunately for them, they are apparently powerless to stop the train; and furthermore, most if not all of them have been bribed or otherwise compromised. For instance, here Christopher Story describes how collective treaties come about:
According to LEAP/E2020, if global leaders fail to realize that in the next three months and to take actions in the next six months, as explained in GEAB N°28, the US debt will « implode » by summer 2009 under the shape of the country’s defaulting or the Dollar’s dramatic devaluation. This implosion will follow closely a number of similar episodes affecting less central countries (see GEAB N°28), including the United Kingdom whose already huge debt is ballooning at the same pace as Washington’s (7). In the same way as the US Federal Reserve saw, month after month, its « Primary Dealers » (8) being swept away by the crisis before it was itself confronted to a real problem of capitalization and therefore survival, the United States in the coming year will witness the implosion of all countries too-closely integrated to their economy and finance, and of their allies financially too-dependent on them (9).
Successive European collective treaties are routinely procured by means of gross bribery. In that report, we exposed the fact that slush fund payments worth $100 million equivalent for each of the 25 EU 'Member States' had been 'bunged' to prime 'facilitators' of the (subsequently unratified) EU 'Constitution' Treaty. The normal procedure is for 50% of the available slush money to be paid to the national 'facilitators' on completion of the Intergovernmental Conference at which these odious anti-nation state EU collective treaties are 'negotiated', and for the second 50% (in that instance, worth a further $2.5 billion in total) to be paid to the corrupt 'facilitators' on ratification.Bribes. Half paid on negotiation, the other half paid on ratification. It's so simple a monkey can do it. All you need is a bunch of ethically challenged people in power, and as we all know, nobody in any position of power has achieved his or her status ethically intact. In fact, the very essence of success in the world today depends on functioning in a ponerologically sick environment. You must be compromised or you will not move up. It is simply too dangerous for the people at the top to have ethically uncompromised people around. Somebody could get caught! Perish the thought.
I had a chance to talk with my colleague Cliff of www.halfpasthuman.com about the major earthquakes that show up in his predictive linguistics work for the window around December 10-12 for a first major earthquake and then a couple of days later, perhaps as late at the 15th for a second large quake.
I know, I know, you come here for the insightful commentary on the financial markets, so what is this earthquake stuff all about? Well, Cliff's built a rickety time machine - that works by sampling huge numbers of posts on the internet, and then looking at the change in language which seems to have pretty good predictive powers in terms of spotting what's coming.
Michael Mukasey is helped as he begins to collapse during his speech Thursday night.
Christopher Story has the solution: Stop Paying the EU. - Ed.
The European Union is costing Britain a staggering £106,000 a minute, a think-tank has revealed.
As the UK teeters on the brink of what experts predict will be the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Government has surrendered £55.8billion to Brussels this year.
That is equivalent to paying a whopping £900 for every man, woman and child in the country.From Switzerland, home of many mysterious bank accounts. - Ed.
Almost immediately after Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, a flurry of speculation began over when and how he would use his executive powers to undo some of the excesses of President George W Bush.
Published reports indicate that over 200 Bush-era executive orders are currently under review by the Obama transition team.
A potentially deadly intestinal germ increasingly found in hospitals is also showing up in a more unsavory setting: grocery store meats.
More than 40 percent of packaged meats sampled from three Arizona chain stores tested positive for Clostridium difficile, a gut bug known as C. diff., according to newly complete analysis of 2006 data collected by a University of Arizona scientist.
Nearly 30 percent of the contaminated samples of ground beef, pork and turkey and ready-to-eat meats like summer sausage were identical or closely related to a super-toxic strain of C. diff blamed for growing rates of illness and death in the U.S. — raising the possibility that the bacterial infections may be transmitted through food.
As shown by our Media Report Cards, the American press tends to provide extremely distorted coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. There are a number of factors that contribute to this troubling pattern of omission and misrepresentation. One of them is bias. In this section, we will provide information about how bias influences media coverage of this topic, and where this bias originates.
The Archive is an independent research unit located at The Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy in Washington DC. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents about the Israel lobby, most obtained through Freedom of Information Act filings with law enforcement officials and US intelligence agencies. The Archive also serves as a repository for records that briefly enter the pubic domain but vanish into obscurity for lack of mainstream press interest.
The Archive is dedicated to preserving and contextualizing the historical records about the Israel lobby's operations in the US while educating Americans through enhanced access to both recent and older primary source material.
A bestselling author writing about America’s most secretive intelligence agency is raising eyebrows with his claims that Israeli intelligence has potentially gained access to sensitive American communications information.
Investigative writer James Bamford contends in his new book, “The Shadow Factory, the Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America,” that at least two high-tech companies with alleged ties to Israeli intelligence mined American communications data on a mass scale. The companies were hired to help major American telecommunications firms that were cooperating with the National Security Agency on its controversial eavesdropping program.
They instead pressed for an extension of the United Nations mandate authorizing US troop involvement in Iraq, which expires Dec. 31.
American constitutional law scholar Oona Hathaway said she believes the Constitution requires Congress to also approve the agreement. The Bush administration has labeled the pact a "status of forces agreement," which can be implemented without congressional approval.
Barack Obama and Robert Gates are negotiating terms under which the defence secretary would remain as Pentagon chief in the next administration, the Financial Times has learnt.
The president-elect has approached Mr Gates, who has served as defence secretary under George W. Bush since 2006, about accepting the position, which would place a respected Republican in his cabinet. According to a source familiar with the situation, Mr Gates is seriously weighing the option.
The two men are ironing out policy and personnel issues through an intermediary before a final offer is made.
(July 11, 2008) Booz, Allen & Hamilton (hereafter Booz Allen), a privately held corporation owned by about 300 senior executives, is the Army's accomplice in their attempted private property seizure in southeast Colorado. Their expertise, they declare, is strategy and public sector mission effectiveness.
Booz Allen contracted with the Army for $500,000 to maneuver the ranchers out of their property rights. Skillful facilitators (provocateurs), despite their friendly demeanor, very likely use an advanced version of the deceptive Delphi Method, mind-games developed by the U.S. Air Force's RAND Project, financed by the Ford Foundation.
Project RAND became the "premier think tank" and "purveyor of American imperialism" and facilitated the Cold War façade. Their activities contributed to the exponential growth of the military-industrial complex. RAND encouraged numerous U.S.-backed military dictatorships in third world countries.1
Booz Allen's professional provocateurs use psychologically-designed surveys in an alleged attempt to "gather opinions.
Such a registration could have changed the course of
Ah, Joe Lieberman.
The so called democrat.
The so called American.
Here is a short history lesson on Joe (big thanks go to Thinkprogress for their hard work compiling all this).
Thinkprogress.org - nice article, lets start there.
“I’m a Democrat with a 35-year record of fighting for progressive causes, for the middle class, for civil rights, for women’s rights, for human rights and a lot more. I voted with my Senate Democratic colleagues 90 percent of the time.” — Joe Lieberman, 7/6/06
Though the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is now immanent, Western media refrains from reporting about the emerging disaster. Apparently, there are far more interesting things to write about, much more interesting than millions of Palestinians who are being starved by the Jewish state.
November 17, 2008
"The BBC’s Tim Franks in Jerusalem says we have no clue as to when or where this video was shot and it is impossible to know just how frequently such incidents occur." — 'BBC: Israel army studies 'abuse video’
But right below this it says,
"But a leading Israeli human rights group says "many instances of abuse are not exposed because they have become the norm"".
But is this all this group said? Why isn’t the group named? Why is the source not identified? It seems the 'rules’ that allegedly govern reportage are as flexible as Mr Franks interpretation of events are.
Pile on, guys!! - Ed.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has agreed to pay for a private lawyer to defend former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales against allegations that he encouraged officials to inject partisan politics into the department's hiring and firing practices.
Lawyers from the Justice Department's civil division often represent department employees who're sued in connection with their official actions. However, Gonzales' attorney recently revealed in court papers that the Justice Department had approved his request to pay private attorney's fees arising from the federal lawsuit.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Gov. Sarah Palin, heralded by some conservatives as the future of the Republican Party, faces some cold political realities in present-day Alaska.
Within days of the McCain-Palin ticket's defeat earlier this month, the unsuccessful GOP vice presidential nominee capped her tumultuous two months on the campaign trail with a whirlwind series of national media interviews and a headline-grabbing appearance at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Florida.
Asked what it would mean if Lieberman kept his chairmanship, one Senate Democratic aide said bluntly: "The left has been foiled again. They can rant and rage but they still do not put the fear into folks to actually change their votes. Their influence would be in question."
I hope this puts to rest the notion that this is all some master stroke of kumbayah, of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.
Our centralized government representatives would like us to believe that the subprime mortgage crisis was not expected, however, the truth is that it was expected and authorities knew that a multi-billion dollar crime was being committed.
The Scam
In 1999 the New York Times reported that the easing of credit requirements on loans would mean that Fannie Mae would be “taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's… ‘If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.’” This was reported in 1999.
Nicolas Sarkozy saved the President of Georgia from being hanged “by the balls” — a threat made last summer by Vladimir Putin, according to an account that emerged yesterday from the Élysée Palace.
The Russian Prime Minister had revealed his plans for disposing of Mr Saakashvili when Mr Sarkozy was in Moscow in August to broker a ceasefire in Georgia.
Jean-David Levitte, Mr Sarkozy’s chief diplomatic adviser, reported the exchange in a news magazine before an EU-Russia summit today. The meeting will be chaired by the French leader and President Medvedev.
With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.
1. We, the Leaders of the Group of Twenty, held an initial meeting in Washington on November 15, 2008, amid serious challenges to the world economy and financial markets. We are determined to enhance our cooperation and work together to restore global growth and achieve needed reforms in the world's financial systems.
2. Over the past months our countries have taken urgent and exceptional measures to support the global economy and stabilize financial markets. These efforts must continue. At the same time, we must lay the foundation for reform to help to ensure that a global crisis, such as this one, does not happen again. Our work will be guided by a shared belief that market principles, open trade and investment regimes, and effectively regulated financial markets foster the dynamism, innovation, and entrepreneurship that are essential for economic growth, employment, and poverty reduction.
No mention of DHL owner, Deutche Bank, being up to it's eyeballs in international financial corruption. - Ed.
International parcel giant DHL plans to cut approximately 9,500 jobs and drastically reduce its U.S. operations, according to The New York Times.
Over 7,000 of those job cuts will occur in Wilmington, Ohio. With a population of 12,000, the impending job cuts are slated to devastate the community and account for the largest single point job loss in the country this year.
Oh sure.
Via: Daily Telegraph:
THE pioneering Australian scientist who discovered the cure for cervical cancer is on the verge of creating the world’s first vaccine for skin cancer.
Professor Ian Frazer, former Australian of the Year, has revealed the vaccine could be ready within the next five to 10 years.
A device that harnesses the power of the sea to push water uphill has been developed to provide cheap renewable electricity. The invention is designed to pump water hundreds of feet above sea level from where it can gush downhill to drive hydroelectric generators.
Pumping is made possible by the motion of waves lifting the device, Searaser, as it floats in the sea, and gravity bringing it down again in the wave troughs. A prototype has just completed tests in which it pumped water more than 160ft (50m) uphill through a pipe the diameter of a saucer. The full-size device is expected to pump water through a pipe the diameter of a dustbin lid up at least 650ft (200m) – or easily enough to clear the top of Beachy Head, which is 530ft (160m) high.