February 13, 2014
Sickcare/ObamaCare is fundamentally broken at every level.
The incremental nature of change makes it difficult for us to notice how systems that once worked well with modest costs have transmogrified into broken systems that cost a fortune. Exhibit # 1 is higher education: 40 years ago, four-year public universities were affordable and two-year community colleges were almost free. Now students have to borrow $1 trillion to pay for the exorbitant privilege of higher education.
And no, the difference isn't that states don't provide the same funding--the difference is costs have soared while the yield on the investment has plummeted. Please read:
The Mafia State of Mind
Our Two Most Onerous Taxes: College Tuition and Healthcare Insurance
Our Middleman-Skimming Economy
America's Make-Work Sectors (Healthcare and Higher Education) Have Run Out of Oxygen
Longtime correspondent Ishabaka (an M.D. with 30+ years experience in primary care and as an emergency room physician) responded to this article with an insider's account of what happens when greed and cartels take over healthcare.After reading What's wrong with American hospitals?, a scathing deconstruction of for-profit healthcare, Ishabaka submitted this commentary:
I could have told you what was wrong with our hospital system by 1989 - nobody would listen to me back then.
Up til the '70's, almost all hospitals in the United States were not for profit COMMUNITY HOSPITALS. They were LOCAL. The Board of Directors was made up of some senior doctors, maybe the head nurse, and various other prominent local businessmen and professionals. Others (mostly Catholic), were run as non-profits by religious orders. A very few, mostly very small hospitals were for profit, usually owned by a group of doctors, or even one doctor.
The mission of these community hospitals was to provide for the LOCAL COMMUNITY - one and all. Payment was various - private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, self pay - and the idea was to collect just enough money to keep the hospital going, and provide care for the poor who had no money to pay. If your grandma got bad care - you could go - in person - to the local, say, banker, on the Board of Directors, and tell him - and he would CARE.
THIS SYSTEM WORKED, and kept costs DOWN. Remember, the hospital just needed enough money to stay in the black. Often local wealthy people would will money to the hospital in which they had been cared for.
In the '80's - there was the arrival of the for-profit cartels - and I use the world cartels specifically - these were run by people with the sociopathic Goldman Sachs type mentality - their sole goal was to acquire huge sums of money for themselves, their hospital directors, and their SHAREHOLDERS. They used a typical sneaky technique - they'd come into town, and tell the locals they could run the hospital much cheaper, because of their economy of scale. People believed this, and the cartels bought out most of the community hospitals.
I worked at one such for-profit hospital and had a 21-year old indigent man come in who'd been struck by a car while walking, and was rapidly bleeding to death. The hospital administrator refused to open the operating room, even though I had a surgeon right there, willing and able to operate for free to save this young man's life. The surgeon threw a fit, and he was a big wheel at the hospital and the administrator backed down - otherwise I firmly believe the young man would have died. This was LEGAL back then, before the EMTLA law was passed because similar abuses were rampant NATIONWIDE.
Around this time, the administrators of the remaining community hospitals found out the administrators of the for-profit hospitals were making tens of times their salaries - and bonuses based on profits - and started demanding similar salaries and bonuses based on PROFITS - a contradiction of the old concept of community hospitals (the article does touch on this).
How do you increase hospital profits? Number one - avoid any care for the poor you can weasel out of. Number two - cut staff to the bone and beyond (one of hospital's biggest expenses). Most American hospitals now have UNSAFE nurse to patient ratios because of this.
As far as patient care goes, nurses are the most important people in hospitals. I know of one lady who DIED while in a monitored bed, and wasn't found dead until several hours later due to the criminally low nursing staff ratio in a hospital I worked in. I HAD complained about the dearth of nurses, and was threatened with the loss of my job. Another side effect of this is, nursing in hospitals has become unbearable for nurses who really cared about their patients - many good hospital nurses have left hospital work for other fields. The results are appalling.
I saved the life of a patient an unqualified, under-educated nurse gave the wrong medicine to - a medicine that IMMEDIATELY MAKES YOU STOP BREATHING, because it was cheaper for the hospital to hire her than a knowledgeable and experienced nurse. The medicine is pancuronium bromide, if you want to Google it. The nurse didn't know one of the effects was cessation of breathing - this is Pharmacology for Nurses 101, this drug is used all day long in every operating room in America (where doctors WANT patients under anesthesia to stop breathing, and put them on breathing machines during the surgery - which is very safe if done correctly).
I could go on and on. Simple things, like the instruments you use to suture cuts - community hospitals used to buy Swiss or German made ones that were of the finest quality, sterilize and re-use them over and over. This changed to disposable instruments that sometimes literally fell apart in my hands. Bandage tape that didn't stick, instead of quality Johnson and Johnson tape - anything to save a buck.
It is not getting better, it is getting worse. The nurses I know tell me hospitals are cutting staff even MORE now in preparation for Obamacare.
I will end with a story that illustrates the difference between Old School and New School hospital administrators.
I had the pleasure of working five years in a real community hospital. One of the senior administrators (R.I.P.) was a gentleman who'd made his fortune in the grocery business. In his late 80's, he would arrive at the emergency department entrance every morning between seven and eight am, and proceed to walk throughout the hospital. He would ask various and sundry staff how they were getting along - everyone from janitors to senior physicians. If something was amiss - HE RECTIFIED THE SITUATION. Tragically, this hospital was bought out, and is now part of a chain.
I had the displeasure of working in a "community" (really for-profit) hospital with a middle aged administrator who NEVER set foot outside his office or conference rooms - he NEVER appeared in the (very large and busy) emergency department once. This was in the early 90's, and one year it was revealed that his compensation was $600,000 - and a brand new Lexus as a "performance bonus". He was on the golf course by three pm every single day. That was the hospital where the woman who was being "monitored" (alarms and all that) was found very cold and dead after a delay of who knows how many hours.
Thank you, Ishabaka, for telling it like it really is. Needless to say, ObamaCare (the Orwellian-named Affordable Care Act--ACA) purposefully ignores everything that is fundamentally broken with U.S. sickcare and extends the soaring-cost cartel system, essentially promising to stripmine the taxpayers of however many trillions of dollars are needed to generate outsized profits for the cartels.
Only those with no exposure to the real costs of ObamaCare approve of the current sickcare system. Government employees who have no idea how much their coverage costs, well-paid shills and toadies like Paul Krugman, academics with tenure and lifetime healthcare coverage--all these people swallow the fraud whole and declare it delicious.
Only those of us who are paying the real, unsubsidized cost know how unsustainable the system is, and only those inside the machine know how broken it is at every level. Greed + cartels = Sickcare/ObamaCare. Love your servitude, baby--it's affordable, really, really, really it is.
Refer back to this video and others similar to understand WHY we do EVERYTHING WRONG in healthcare.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Atlantic Council Speech: An “extraordinary crisis” is needed to preserve the “new world order,” #CrisisInitiation
Writing for the Atlantic Council, a prominent think tank based in Washington DC, Harlan K. Ullman warns that an “extraordinary crisis” is needed to preserve the “new world order,” which is under threat of being derailed by non-state actors like Edward Snowden.
In an article entitled War on Terror Is not the Only Threat, Ullman asserts that, “tectonic changes are reshaping the international geostrategic system,” arguing that it’s not military superpowers like China but “non-state actors” like Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and anonymous hackers who pose the biggest threat to the “365 year-old Westphalian system” because they are encouraging individuals to become self-empowered, eviscerating state control.
“Very few have taken note and fewer have acted on this realization,” notes Ullman, lamenting that “information revolution and instantaneous global communications” are thwarting the “new world order” announced by U.S. President George H.W. Bush more than two decades ago.
“Without an extraordinary crisis, little is likely to be done to reverse or limit the damage imposed by failed or failing governance,” writes Ullman, implying that only another 9/11-style cataclysm will enable the state to re-assert its dominance while “containing, reducing and eliminating the dangers posed by newly empowered non-state actors.”
Ullman concludes that the elimination of non-state actors and empowered individuals “must be done” in order to preserve the new world order. A summary of their material suggests that the Atlantic Council’s definition of a “new world order” is a global technocracy run by a fusion of big government and big business under which individuality is replaced by transhumanist singularity.
Ullman’s rhetoric sounds somewhat similar to that espoused by Trilateral Commission co-founder and regular Bilderberg attendee Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in 2010 told a Council on Foreign Relations meeting that a “global political awakening,” in combination with infighting amongst the elite, was threatening to derail the move towards a one world government.
Ullman’s implied call for an “extraordinary crisis” to reinvigorate support for state power and big government has eerie shades of the Project For a New American Century’s 1997 lament that “absent some catastrophic catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor,” an expansion of U.S. militarism would have been impossible.
In 2012, Patrick Clawson, member of the influential pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) think tank, also suggested that the United States should launch a staged provocation to start a war with Iran.
Ullman’s concern over failing state institutions having their influence eroded by empowered individuals, primarily via the Internet, is yet another sign that the elite is panicking over the “global political awakening”
- See more at: News Watch
Who is Dr. Harlan K. Ullman?
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Mr. Shock & Awe
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Ullman, Mr. “Shock and Awe” himself, is one of the Neoconservatives who planned the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He’s a retired U.S. Naval Commander who is known as the mastermind behind the U.S. “Rapid Dominance” strategy used in the bombing of Iraq in April, 2003. Indeed, he coined the phrase, “Shock and Awe”. He is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Atlantic Council. One of his books, a product of the National Defense University, promotes the doctrine of shock and awe. It technically is known as “rapid dominance” and is a military doctrine based on the use of “overwhelming decisive force”, “dominant battlefield awareness”, “dominant maneuvers”, and “spectacular displays of power” to “paralyze an adversary’s preception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight”.
All this reminds me of the Crisis Initiation speech from the Israeli lobbyist suggesting war with Iran.
Washington Institute for Near East policy forum luncheon Patrick Clawson, who heads the Washington Institute's Iran Security Initiative, went as far as to suggest the US may be best served by carrying out a false flag style attack so the President could take the US to war with Iran.
Clawson actually went as far as to suggest that false flag operations were "the traditional way America gets to war is what would be best for US interests"
He went on to give us a concise history of past "false flag operations" - the attack on Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Lusitania, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and ever the blowing up of the USS Maine - as giving past Presidents the excuse needed to go to war.
In the most chilling part of this speech he said, "So, if in fact the Iranians aren't going to compromise," the Israel lobbyist concluded with a smirk on his face, "it would be best if somebody else started the war."
Washington Institute for Near East Policy -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washingt...
ZOOM IN and use #NetworkLink Analysis to Compute the Crimes of the #Bilderberg http://t.co/8gaJDzWO10 pic.twitter.com/CNHDP2Nw64
— Flashback (@Flashback1984) June 1, 2014
Monday, February 10, 2014
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Message to US Universities, Colleges, and State Agricultural Agencies: Grow Hemp NOW!
I am working to procure enough industrial hemp to kickstart the new agricultural and industrial revolution - one based on hemp and energy efficiency. PLEASE share this article with all universities and colleges with agricultural, medical, or engineering departments.
We have a national and local economic and climate crisis (pollution and drought) on our hands that we can address, but there is no time to waste. We must get started now.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7, 2014 -- /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Vote Hemp, the nation's leading grassroots hemp advocacy organization working to revitalize industrial hemp production in the U.S., is excited to report that President Obama has signed the Farm Bill which contains an amendment to legalize hemp production for research purposes. Originally introduced by Representatives Jared Polis (D-CO), Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), the amendment allows State Agriculture Departments, colleges and universities to grow hemp, defined as the non-drug oilseed and fiber varieties of Cannabis, for academic or agricultural research purposes, but it applies only to states where industrial hemp farming is already legal under state law. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) successfully worked to retain and strengthen the hemp research amendment during the Farm Bill conference committee process. The full text of the bill may be found at: www.VoteHemp.com/FarmBill.
"With the U.S. hemp industry estimated at over $500 million in annual retail sales and growing, a change in federal law to allow colleges and universities to grow hemp for research means that we will finally begin to regain the knowledge that unfortunately has been lost over the past fifty years," says Vote Hemp President Eric Steenstra. "This is the first time in American history that industrial hemp has been legally defined by our federal government as distinct from drug varieties ofCannabis. The market opportunities for hemp are incredibly promising—ranging from textiles and health foods to home construction and even automobile manufacturing. This is not just a boon toU.S. farmers, this is a boon to U.S. manufacturing industries as well."
So far in the 2014 legislative season, industrial hemp legislation has bdddeen introduced or carried over in thirteen states: Arizona, Hawaii, Indiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey (carried over from 2013), New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington (two bills carried over from 2013), West Virginia and Wisconsin. The full text of these state hemp bills may be found at:www.VoteHemp.com/state.html#2014.
In addition to the Farm Bill amendment, two standalone industrial hemp bills have been introduced in the 113th Congress so far. H.R. 525, the "Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2013," was introduced in the U.S. House on February 6, 2013, and the companion bill, S. 359, was introduced in the U.S. Senate soon thereafter on February 14, 2013. The bills define industrial hemp, exclude it from the definition of "marihuana" in the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), and give states the exclusive authority to regulate the growing and processing of the crop under state law. If passed, the bills would remove federal restrictions on the domestic cultivation of industrial hemp. The full text of the bills, as well as their status and co-sponsors, can be found at:www.VoteHemp.com/legislation.
To date, thirty-two states have introduced pro-hemp legislation and twenty have passed pro-hemp legislation. Ten states (California, Colorado, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia) have passed industrial hemp farming laws and removed barriers to its production. These states will be able to take immediate advantage of the industrial hemp research and pilot program provision, Section 7606, of the Farm Bill. Three states (Hawaii, Kentucky and Maryland) have passed bills creating commissions or authorizing research. Nine states (California, Colorado, Illinois, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Vermont and Virginia) have passed resolutions. Finally, eight states (Arkansas, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota and Vermont) have passed study bills. However, despite state authorization to grow hemp, farmers in those states still risk raids by federal agents, prison time, and property and civil asset forfeiture if they plant the crop, due to the failure of federal policy to distinguish non-drug oilseed and fiber varieties of Cannabis (i.e., industrial hemp) from psychoactive drug varieties (i.e., "marihuana").
Vote Hemp is a national, single-issue, non-profit organization dedicated to the acceptance of and a free market for low-THC industrial hemp and to changes in current law to allow U.S. farmers to once again grow the agricultural crop. More information about hemp legislation and the crop's many uses may be found at www.VoteHemp.com or www.TheHIA.org. Video footage of hemp farming in other countries is available upon request by contacting Ryan Fletcher at 202-641-0277 or ryan@votehemp.com.
Acquire and read these books.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Conspiracy or Coincidence: Dozen Dead Bankers #SuicideBankers
What are we to make of this sudden rash of banker suicides? Does this trail of dead bankers lead somewhere? Or could it be just a coincidence that so many bankers have died in such close proximity? I will be perfectly honest and admit that I do not know what is going on. But there are some common themes that seem to link at least some of these deaths together.
First of all, most of these men were in good health and in their prime working years.
Secondly, most of these "suicides" seem to have come out of nowhere and were a total surprise to their families.
Thirdly, three of the dead bankers worked for JP Morgan.
Fourthly, several of these individuals were either involved in foreign exchange trading or the trading of derivatives in some way. So when "a foreign exchange trader" jumped to his death from the top of JP Morgan's Hong Kong headquarters this morning, that definitely raised my eyebrows.
These dead bankers are starting to pile up, and something definitely stinks about this whole thing.
What would cause a young man that is making really good money to jump off of a 30 story building? The following is how the South China Morning Post described the dramatic suicide of 33-year-old Li Jie...
An investment banker at JP Morgan jumped to his death from the roof of the bank's headquarters in Central yesterday.Witnesses said the man went to the roof of the 30-storey Chater House in the heart of Hong Kong's central business district and, despite attempts to talk him down, jumped to his death.
If this was just an isolated incident, nobody would really take notice.
But this is now the 7th suspicious banker death that we have witnessed in just the past few weeks...
- On January 26, former Deutsche Bank executive Broeksmit was found dead at his South Kensington home after police responded to reports of a man found hanging at a house. According to reports, Broeksmit had “close ties to co-chief executive Anshu Jain.”- Gabriel Magee, a 39-year-old senior manager at JP Morgan’s European headquarters, jumped 500ft from the top of the bank’s headquarters in central London on January 27, landing on an adjacent 9 story roof.- Mike Dueker, the chief economist at Russell Investments, fell down a 50 foot embankment in what police are describing as a suicide. He was reported missing on January 29 by friends, who said he had been “having problems at work.”- Richard Talley, 57, founder of American Title Services in Centennial, Colorado, was also found dead earlier this month after apparently shooting himself with a nail gun.- 37-year-old JP Morgan executive director Ryan Henry Crane died last week.- Tim Dickenson, a U.K.-based communications director at Swiss Re AG, also died last month, although the circumstances surrounding his death are still unknown.
So did all of those men actually kill themselves?
Well, there is reason to believe that at least some of those deaths may not have been suicides after all.
For example, before throwing himself off of JP Morgan's headquarters in London, Gabriel Magee had actually made plans for later that evening...
There was no indication Magee was going to kill himself at all. In fact, Magee’s girlfriend had received an email from him the night before saying he was finishing up work and would be home soon.
And 57-year-old Richard Talley was found "with eight nail gun wounds to his torso and head" in his own garage.
How in the world was he able to accomplish that?
Like I said, something really stinks about all of this.
Meanwhile, things continue to deteriorate financially around the globe. Just consider some of the things that have happened in the last 48 hours...
-According to the Bangkok Post, people are "stampeding to yank their deposits out of banks" in Thailand right now.
-Venezuela is coming apart at the seams. Just check out the photos in this article.
-The unemployment rate in South Africa is above 24 percent.
-Ukraine is on the verge of total collapse...
Three weeks of uneasy truce between the Ukrainian government and Western-oriented protesters ended Tuesday with an outburst of violence in which at least three people were killed, prompting a warning from authorities of a crackdown to restore order. Protesters outside the Ukrainian parliament hurled broken bricks and Molotov cocktails at police, who responded with stun grenades and rubber bullets.
-This week we learned that the level of bad loans in Spain has risen to a new all-time high of 13.6 percent.
-China is starting to quietly sell off U.S. debt. Already, Chinese U.S. Treasury holdings are down to their lowest level in almost a year.
-During the 4th quarter of 2013, U.S. consumer debt rose at the fastest pace since 2007.
-U.S. homebuilder confidence just experienced the largest one month decline ever recorded.
-George Soros has doubled his bet that the S&P 500 is going to crash. His total bet is now up to about $1,300,000,000.
For many more signs of financial trouble all over the planet, please see my previous article entitled "20 Signs That The Global Economic Crisis Is Starting To Catch Fire".
Could some of these deaths have something to do with this emerging financial crisis?
That is a very good question.
Once again, I will be the first one to admit that I simply do not know why so many bankers are dying.
But one thing is for certain - dead bankers don't talk.
Everyone knows that there is a massive amount of corruption in our banking system. If the truth about all of this corruption was to ever actually come out and justice was actually served, we would see a huge wave of very important people go to prison.
In addition, it is an open secret that Wall Street has been transformed into the largest casino in the history of the world over the past several decades. Our big banks have become more reckless than ever, and trillions of dollars are riding on the decisions that are being made every day. In such an environment, it is expected that you will be loyal to the firm that you work for and that you will keep your mouth shut about the secrets that you know.
In the final analysis, there is really not that much difference between how mobsters operate and how Wall Street operates.
If you cross the line, you may end up paying a very great price.
Tweets about "#suicidebankers"
From earlier last week:
Reminds me of Roberto Calvi back in the 1980's
Roberto Calvi: 'God's Banker' Being Ripped Off By 'God's Bank'
God's banker', the mafia, masons and Vatican fraud | The Observer
Has the Federal Reserve Foreseen an Economic Collapse?
Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market.com,
I began writing analysis on the macro-economic situation of the American financial structure back in 2006, and in the eight years since, I have seen an undeniably steady trend of fiscal decline.
I have never had any doubt that the U.S. economy as we know it was headed for total and catastrophic collapse, the only question was when, exactly, the final trigger event would occur. As I have pointed out in the past, economic implosion is a process. It grows over time, like the ice shelf on a mountain developing into a potential avalanche. It is easy to shrug off the danger because the visible destruction is not immediate, it is latent; but when the avalanche finally begins, it is far too late for most people to escape…
If you view the progressive financial breakdown in America as some kind of “comedy of errors” or a trial of unlucky coincidences, then there is not much I can do to educate you on the reasons behind the carnage. If, however, you understand that there is a deliberate motivation behind American collapse, then what I have to say here will not fall on biased ears.
The financial crash of 2008, the same crash which has been ongoing for years, is NOT an accident. It is a concerted and engineered crisis meant to position the U.S. for currency disintegration and the institution of a global basket currency controlled by an unaccountable supranational governing body like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The American populace is being conditioned through economic fear to accept the institutionalization of global financial control and the loss of sovereignty.
Anyone skeptical of this conclusion is welcome to study my numerous past examinations on the issue of globalization; I don’t have the time within this article to re-explain, and frankly, with so much information on deliberate dollar destruction available to the public today I’ve grown tired of anyone with a lack of awareness.
If you continue to believe that the Fed actually exists to “help” stabilize our economy or our currency, then you will never find the logic behind what they do. If you understand that the goal of the Fed and the globalists is to dismantle the dollar and the U.S. economic system to make way for something “new”, then certain recent events and policy initiatives do start to make sense.
The year of 2014 has been looming as a serious concern for me since the final quarter of 2013, and you can read about those concerns and the evidence that supports them in my article Expect Devastating Global Economic Changes In 2014.
At the end of 2013 we saw at least three major events that could have sent America spiraling into total collapse. The first was the announcement of possible taper measures by the Fed, which have now begun. The second was the possible invasion of Syria which the Obama Administration is still desperate for despite successful efforts by the liberty movement to deny him public support for war. And, the third event was the last debt ceiling debate (or debt ceiling theater depending on how you look at it), which placed the U.S. squarely on the edge of fiscal default.
As we begin 2014, these same threatening issues remain (along with many others), only at greater levels and with more prominence. New developments reinforce my original position that this year will be remembered by historians as the year in which the final breakdown of the U.S. monetary dynamic was set in motion. Here are some of those developments explained…
Taper Of QE3
When I first suggested that a Fed taper was not only possible but probable months ago, I was met with a bit (a lot) of criticism from some in the alternative economic world. You can read my taper articles here and here.
This was understandable. The Fed uses multiple stimulus outlets besides QE in order to manipulate U.S. markets. Artificially lowering interest rates is very much a form of stimulus in itself, for instance.
However, I think a dangerous blindness to threats beyond money printing has developed within our community of analysts and this must be remedied. People need to realize first that the Fed does NOT care about the continued health of our economy, and they may not care about presenting a facade of health for much longer either. Alternative analysts also need to come to grips with the reality that overt money printing is not the only method at the disposal of globalists when destroying the greenback. A debt default is just as likely to cause loss of world reserve status and devaluation - no printing press required. Blame goes to government and political gridlock while the banks slither away in the midst of the chaos.
The taper of QE3 is not a “head fake”, it is very real, but there are many hidden motivations behind such cuts.
Currently, $20 billion has been trimmed from the $85 billion per month program, and we are already beginning to see what APPEAR to be market effects, including a flight from emerging market currencies from Argentina to Turkey. A couple of years ago investors viewed these markets as among the few places they could exploit to make a positive return, or in other words, one of the few places they could successfully gamble. The Fed taper, though, seems to be shifting the flow of capital away from emerging markets.
The mainstream argument is that stimulus was flowing into such markets, giving them liquidity support, and the taper is drying up that liquidity. Whether this is actually true is hard to say, given that without a full audit we have no idea how much fiat the Federal Reserve has actually created and how much of it they send out into foreign markets.
I stand more on the position that the Fed taper was actually begun in preparation for a slowdown in global markets that was already in progress. In fact, I believe central bankers have been well aware that a decline in every sector was coming, and are moving to insulate themselves.
Is it just a "coincidence" that the central bankers have initiated their taper of QE right when global manufacturing numbers begin to plummet?
Is it just "coincidence" the taper was started right when the Baltic Dry Index, a global indicator of shipping demand, has lost over 50% of its value in the past few weeks?
Is it just "coincidence" that the taper is running tandem with dismal retail sales growth reports from across the globe coming in from the final quarter of 2013?
And, is it just a "coincidence" that the Fed taper is accelerating right as the next debt ceiling debate begins in March, and when reports are being released by the Congressional Budget Office that over 2 million jobs (in work hours) may be lost due to Obamacare?
No, I do not think any of this is coincidence. Most if not all of these negative indicators needed months to generate, so they could not have been caused by the taper itself. The only explanation beyond "coincidence" is that the Federal Reserve WANTED to launch the taper program and protect itself before these signals began to reach the public.
Look at it this way - The taper program distances the bankers from responsibility for crisis in our financial framework, at least in the eyes of the general public. If a market calamity takes place WHILE stimulus measures are still at full speed, this makes the banks look rather guilty, or at least incompetent. People would begin to question the validity of central bank methods, and they might even question the validity of the central bank’s existence. The Fed is creating space between itself and the economy because they know that a trigger event is coming. They want to ensure that they are not blamed and that stimulus itself is not seen as ineffective, or seen as the cause.
We all know that the claims of recovery are utter nonsense. Beyond the numerous warning signs listed above, one need only look at true unemployment numbers, household wage decline, and record low personal savings of the average American. The taper is not in response to an improving economic environment. Rather, the taper is a signal for the next stage of collapse.
Stocks are beginning to plummet around the world and all mainstream pundits are pointing fingers at a reduction in stimulus which has very little to do with anything. What is the message they want us to digest? That we “can’t live” without the aid and oversight of central banks.
The real reason stocks and other indicators are stumbling is because the effectiveness of stimulus manipulation has a shelf life, and that shelf life is over for the Federal Reserve. I suspect they will continue cutting QE every month for the next year as stocks decline. Will the Fed restart QE? If they do, it will probably not occur until after a substantial breakdown has ensued and the public is sufficiently shell-shocked. The possibility also exists that the Fed will never return to stimulus measures (if debt default is the plan), and QE stimulus will eventually be replaced by IMF "aid".
Government Controlled Investment
Last month, just as taper measures were being implemented, the White House launched an investment program called MyRA; a retirement IRA program in which middle class and low wage Americans can invest part of their paycheck in government bonds.
That’s right, if you wanted to know where the money was going to come from to support U.S. debt if the Fed cuts QE, guess what, the money is going to come from YOU.
For a decade or so China was the primary buyer and crutch for U.S. debt spending. After the derivatives crash of 2008, the Federal Reserve became the largest purchaser of Treasury bonds. With the decline of foreign interest in long term U.S. debt, and the taper in full effect, it only makes sense that the government would seek out an alternative source of capital to continue the debt cycle. The MyRA program turns the general American public into a new cash stream, but there’s more going on here than meets the eye…
I find it rather suspicious that a government-controlled retirement program is suddenly introduced just as the Fed has begun to taper, as stocks are beginning to fall, and as questions arise over the U.S. debt ceiling. I have three major concerns:
First, is it possible that like the Fed, the government is also aware that a crash in stocks is coming? And, are they offering the MyRA program as an easy outlet (or trap) for people to pour in what little savings they have as panic over declining equities accelerates? Bonds do tend to look appetizing to uninformed investors during an equities route.
Second, the program is currently voluntary, but what if the plan is to make it mandatory? Obama has already signed mandatory health insurance “taxation” into law, which is meant to steal a portion of every paycheck. Why not steal an even larger portion from every paycheck in order to support U.S. debt? It’s for the “greater good,” after all.
Third, is this a deliberate strategy to corral the last vestiges of private American wealth into the corner of U.S. bonds, so that this wealth can be confiscated or annihilated? What happens if there is indeed an eventual debt default, as I believe there will be? Will Americans be herded into bonds by a crisis in stocks only to have bonds implode as well? Will they be conned into bond investment out of a “patriotic duty” to save the nation from default? Or, will the government just take their money through legislative wrangling, as was done in Cyprus not long ago?
The Final Swindle
Again, the next debt ceiling debate is slated for the end of this month. If the government decides to kick the can down the road for another quarter, I believe this will be the last time. The most recent actions of the Fed and the government signal preparations for a stock implosion and ultimate debt calamity. Default would have immediate effects in foreign markets, but the appearance of U.S. stability could drag on for a time, giving the globalists ample opportunity to siphon every ounce of financial blood from the public.
It is difficult to say how the next year will play out, but one thing is certain; something very strange and ugly is afoot. The goal of the globalists is to engineer desperation. To create a catastrophe and then force the masses to beg for help. How many hands of “friendship” will be offered in the wake of a U.S. wealth and currency crisis? What offers for “aid” will come from the IMF? How much of our country and how many of our people will be collateralized to secure that aid? And, how many Americans will go along with the swindle because they were not prepared in advance?
Yet Another Banking Conspiracy Theory is Fact - Bank of England Implicated
It has emerged that virtually every major bank was manipulating currencies (and everything else) whether as part of the "Bandits' Club", the "Cartel" , even the oldest central bank - the Bank of England - and who knows how many other monetary authorities, were openly encouraging traders from these private banks to do more of the illegal activity they had been engaging in - namely manipulating currencies - with their explicit blessing knowing very well such behavior is undisputedly illegal.
Such as this report by Bloomberg which confirms that yet another conspiracy theory is fact, as at least one central bank has been exposed to not only have known about a criminal activity that is now costing the jobs of hundreds of traders (and should lead to jail time), but to have urged it on.
From Bloomberg:
Bank of England officials told currency traders it wasn’t improper to share impending customer orders with counterparts at other firms, a practice at the heart of a widening probe into alleged market manipulation, according to a person who has seen notes turned over to regulators.A senior trader gave his notes from a private April 2012 meeting of currency dealers and two central bank staff members to the Financial Conduct Authority about six weeks ago because of mounting media coverage of the investigation, said the person, who asked not to be named while probes are under way.Traders representing some of the world’s biggest banks told officials at the meeting that they shared information about aggregate orders before currency benchmarks were set, three people with knowledge of the discussion said. The officials said there wasn’t a policy on such communications and that banks should make their own rules, according to the people. The notes could drag the U.K. central bank into another market-rigging scandal two years after it was criticized by lawmakers for failing to act on warnings that Libor was vulnerable to abuse.If traders can show “they made Bank of England officials aware of practices in the FX market some time ago, then the bank will be at risk of being characterized as having endorsed, by its silence and inaction, the very practices which are now under investigation,” said Simon Hart, a lawyer at RPC LLP in London.
Wait for it, wait for it... Here it comes: "If the BOE did not encourage currency manipulation by bankers, then the world would have crashed" - did we get the excuse that the Bank of England (and soon after, the Fed, the SNB, the BOJ and all other banks as there is never just one cockroach) will use to justify their criminal behavior? Why, of course.
But for now the bank had this to say:
A spokeswoman for the Bank of England declined to comment about the 2012 meeting beyond what was contained in a summary provided to Bloomberg News last month. Those notes included a reference to “a brief discussion on extra levels of compliance that many bank trading desks were subject to when managing client risks around the main set-piece benchmark fixings.” No further details of the discussion were provided.“Allegations that banks may have been rigging the forex market are extremely serious, particularly for firms but also for regulators who had been telling Parliament that banking standards were improving,” Andrew Tyrie, the British lawmaker who led an inquiry into practices in the banking industry following the Libor scandal, said in a statement today....The Bank of England officials said they viewed the practices as positive to reduce market volatility and wouldn’t take the matter to the standing committee, according to the people with knowledge of the meeting. That body included a representative from the Financial Services Authority, the FCA’s predecessor, according to central bank records.By pooling information on client orders, current and former traders interviewed by Bloomberg News have said they could gain an impression of probable moves in currency markets, knowledge they said they sometimes used to place their own bets before the benchmark WM/Reuters rates are set at the 4 p.m. London close.
The details of the BOE's loathsome conduct:
Dealers at the April 2012 meeting with Martin Mallett, the Bank of England’s chief currency dealer, and James O’Connor, who works in its foreign-exchange division, were told not to record the discussion or take notes, one of the people said. One trader wrote down what was said soon after leaving because of concerns spawned by investigations of attempted manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, the person said.Two traders at the meeting -- Citigroup Inc. (C)’s Rohan Ramchandani and UBS AG (UBSN)’s Niall O’Riordan -- are among at least 20 employees of global banks who have been fired, suspended or put on leave since Bloomberg News first reported in June that dealers said they shared information about client orders to manipulate benchmark rates used in the $5 trillion-a-day currency market, the world’s biggest.
In other news, head FX traders for Goldman, JPMorgan, RBC and Deutsche have resigned in recent weeks, in what are clearly unrelated actions. Maybe they will want to also avoid flying in the coming weeks and months, as the last thing the market needs now are more revelations not only how manipulated everything is, but that the orders for such manipulation originate at the very top of the banker oligarchy.
Alternatively, maybe instead of perpetuating the "fair and efficient markets" lie, the world's central banks will be kind enough to just let everyone in on where they determine to close what once were "markets" at any given day so that everyone can benefit from a broken and corrupt system, instead of just a few not so good bankers. After all, with everyone profiting from the no risk, guaranteed return market all the time, at least inflation will finally go off the charts.
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