Have you guys seen food and gas prices lately? U.S. $ will soon be worthless if the Fed keeps printing money!- Lindsay Lohan, Spokeswoman for the Austrian School of Economics
You May Be a Domestic Terrorist If:
- You have a Ron Paul bumper sticker on your car...
- You mention the US constitution...
- You engage in domestic food production...
- You own a gun...
- You mention the Fed...
- You own Gold & Silver...
- You criticize the Federal Government...
- You criticize multi national corporations...
- You criticize Wall Street bailouts...
- You mention Banksters or the NWO...
- You comment on Zero Hedge...
Money market funds have long been a popular haven for conservative investors, but they could become one way that the tremors of the financial crisis in Greece touch the pocketbooks of Americans - about 50 million of them.
For years, the funds in the United States have taken investors' money and lent it out where they can get the best returns. European banks have been a target lately - so much so that about 50 percent of the funds' $1.6 trillion in prime money market assets is in the debt of European banks.
Now that Europe is struggling to contain its debt crisis, these safe investments could be a tad less safe, especially if Greece's Parliament votes down a set of deeply unpopular austerity measures Wednesday morning.
While any losses on money market funds could be minimal, especially compared with the turmoil that could ensue in stock and bond markets, the possible effect on this corner of the financial markets shows how the ripple effects could reach far and wide if Europe cannot resolve its debt crisis. "A lot of them are exposed to a risk of a blowup somewhere in Europe," René M. Stulz, professor of banking and monetary economics at Ohio State University, said about money market funds. "It does present systemic risk."
Some experts and the funds themselves play down the risks, expressing confidence in the underlying safety of the European banks' debt that they own.While the author is correct that sovereign debt defaults will have a crippling effect on our global financial system, the most dangerous and biggest systemic risks are unquantifiable, due to the proliferation of over-the-counter, non-transparent trading of credit default swaps. Due to the high-leverage nature of said cds', when and if peripheral Euro countries default, the collapse of the credit markets will be catastrophic.
A primary fear is that if a European bank indebted to the funds is weakened in the crisis, then it might have a hard time repaying its loans. But even the perception of trouble could, in a worse case, cause financial markets to seize up and send investors rushing to withdraw money. That is what happened after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 hit one fund that owned Lehman debt, the Reserve Primary Fund, causing a huge run on all funds.
Billionaire investor George Soros said it’s “probably inevitable” that a mechanism will be put in place to allow weaker economies to exit the euro.
“There’s no arrangement for any countries leaving the euro, which in current circumstances is probably inevitable,” Soros, 80, said at a panel discussion in Vienna yesterday on whether liberal democracy is at risk in Europe. “We are on the verge of an economic collapse which starts, let’s say, in Greece, but it could easily spread. The financial system remains extremely vulnerable.”
With just days left until the crucial vote on passing the Greek mid-term austerity package, the assured destruction rhetoric used by the Greek status quo has hit fever pitch. Just to make sure the message is not lost on the broader population that Europe's banks will not admit defeat in a vote that could end the kleptocratic cartel's hegemony for ever, Greece's Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos has blasted suggestions that it would be better for his country to abandon the euro and return to the drachma as an "immense stupidity". He didn't stop there. For dramatic impact, the Greek vice PM also said that the country would devolve into complete anarchy, with tanks roaming the streets, a population on the verge of civil war, with mass suicides, just for dramatic impact, should bankers not get their way. More or less in line with the Hank Paulson script that is regurgitated every few years when the Ponzi system is on the verge of imploding yet again.
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The glittering buildings rise up from Spain's arid central plain.
Draw closer and there's something eerie about Ciudad Real's Central Airport. There's hardly a plane in sight. Nobody's around. Cars can only be heard faintly in the distance.
This is one of Spain's "ghost airports" — huge projects often funded by taxpayer money that helped drive Spain's economic boom and now symbolize the wasteful spending that contributed to its spectacular bust.
But signs abound that Spain has not fully learned the lessons of its profligate spending. Spain recently announced a high-speed rail link to the sparsely populated northwest region of Galicia, a plan many economists see as an extravagance. Bridge and highway projects are plowing forward in the face of criticism that Spain just can't afford them.
"We had great hopes for Central, we believed in it, dreamt about it, we thought it was going to be the region's salvation," said Ciudad Real taxi driver Enrique Buendia, who can hardly remember the last time he got a run to the airport.
"This is a country of fiefdoms, like the Middle Ages, you know 'I want my airport ... my convention center and my high-speed train,'" said Stephen Matlin, managing director of the Matlin Associates investment banking firm in Madrid.
Dear Extended Family,QE = Quantitative Easing = US Treasury Debt Monetization = Deficit Spending = Stimulus Spending = printing paper currency (and issuing credit reserves) out of thin air, backed by nothing
Today’s markets are exactly what you would expect as we enter illustration number three of the Skier.
Economic statistics are taking a hard fall.
Without QE who will buy US treasury issues?
Without QE where is the basis of world equity markets?
Without QE what do you think the chart of unemployment will look like?
Without QE how do you think the camouflage of the insolvent balance sheets of the financial industry will fare?
Without QE where is mortgage money coming from?
Without QE what do you think home prices will do?
Without QE how will the present Administration and the legislative be re-elected?
Without QE how will the States of the United States of America finance themselves?
Be prepared for a reversal of the decision to curtail QE at the end of June.
Be prepared for a snap back at a greater percentage of QE with a different name.
Be prepared for covert QE between July 1st and late August when stimulation goes wild.
Be prepared for gold to take out $1650 on the upside as magnets at $12,544 come into play.
Be prepared for the Inflationary Depression of all time.
Stand firm on your gold positions.
Stand firm on your discipline of NO margin.
Stand strong in your Swiss Franc and Canadian dollar positions.
Survive the MOPE and market manipulation that is so obvious today.
Respectfully,
Jim
Yesterday during his press conference, the Chairman uttered his latest lie: "We have asked the banks to essentially do stress tests and ask, looking at all their positions, all their hedges, what would the effect on their capital be if -- if Greece defaulted...The answer is that the effects are very small.”This is the same Fed Chairman who said the subprime mortgage crisis would not spill over into the overall mortgage market, that housing was in fine shape, that the auto companies were fine, and that the economy was in great shape--in 2006.
Such a move is widely seen by economists as resulting in a slower rise in inflation. That would impact an array of federal programs that are linked to CPI including the Social Security program and income tax brackets set by the federal government.
Are the gold bars in Fort Knox really made of the precious metal? Or has the U.S. government secretly sold off the nation's stockpile and replaced it with metal bars that are only painted gold?
Ron Paul wants to find out.Giving legitimacy to an Internet conspiracy theory that the gold in Fort Knox is fake, the iconoclast Republican congressman from Texas has asked adminstration officials to audit the purity of the nation's 700,000 gold bars held in Fort Knox, according to an internal Treasury document obtained by CNBC. Paul, a presidential candidate who chairs the House's subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy, had previously called for the U.S. gold reserve to be counted and for a return to the gold standard. He now appears to be going a step further in his request that representatives from the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Mint testify at a subcommittee hearing on June 23 about the authenticity of the nation's gold.The Treasury document says it would cost about $15 million to conduct an audit. The process would take about 30 minutes to verify the gold content of each bar, or 350,000 man hours; to do that would would take 400 people working for six months, according to the document. The Mint is audited annually by the Treasury's Office of the Inspector General. An audit of the "Schedule of Custodial Deep Storage Gold and Silver Reserves" was published in September 2010.A Google [GOOG 511.8257.095 (+1.41%)
] search of the phrase "Is the gold in Fort Knox fake" returns 623,000 results. Many of them reference a single, unverified report in 2009 that the Chinese received a fake shipment gold that, in fact, was tungsten.
One conspiracy theory says that no one has actually seen the gold since the 1930s. But in a letter to Paul in September, the Treasury Inspector General said he had "personally observed the gold reserves located in each of the deep storage compartments."As a postscript to the story, CNBC asked for a tour of Fort Knox to film the gold, since our only footage of Fort Knox is from 1974. An official at the Mint told us that not he was not aware that any member of Congress had toured the facility since that year. Fort Knox is "a closed facility," the official said.And so the conspiracy theory continues...
Apparently, a tunnel that leads from Lykavitos to the Greek parliament, and from there to the sea port of Piraeus, is being cleaned out by foreign workers in preparation for the possible evacuation of Greek MP’s in the event of a storming of parliament ahead of wednesday’s vote on the new memorandum.
The situation here is getting completely out of control. I really don’t know how much longer the people will be willing to wait this thing out. The mood here in Athens is one of intense disillusionment with a government that seems increasingly detached from its own people.
"In Greece, they're selling off islands. In Austria, it's the mountains,"
When adding in all of the money owed to cover future liabilities in entitlement programs the US is actually in worse financial shape than Greece and other debt-laden European countries, Pimco's Bill Gross told CNBC Monday.
Much of the public focus is on the nation's public debt, which is $14.3 trillion. But that doesn't include money guaranteed for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which comes to close to $50 trillion, according to government figures.
The government also is on the hook for other debts such as the programs related to the bailout of the financial system following the crisis of 2008 and 2009, government figures show.Taken together, Gross puts the total at "nearly $100 trillion," that while perhaps a bit on the high side, places the country in a highly unenviable fiscal position that he said won't find a solution overnight.
The proportions and the nations change, but the question remains the same. We here at The Privateer have raised this question before in relation to the US and we will probably raise it again. How did a US government “govern” a nation of 92 million people with an annual budget of $US 0.7 Billion and a TOTAL (funded and unfunded) debt of $US 2.7 BILLION one hundred years ago? The answer is very simple. For the most part, they didn’t. And because they didn’t, they didn’t indulge in economic make believe. They had no income tax to “fund” them and no central bank to print more money - if necessary.
Today, the US government “GOVERNS” 310 million people with an annual budget of nearly $4,000 Billion and a TOTAL (funded and unfunded) debt approaching $US 100,000 Billion. It takes about 5400 times as many Dollars and about 37000 times more debt to “govern” about 3.35 times as many people as it did a century ago. Why? The answer is equally simple. Today, the US government “governs” everything. It is all pervasive. It has taken over the economy from its people.
At the same time, the present government reassures the governed that the cost involved is not theirs to bear but can be perpetually shifted to future generations if only they will continue to go along with economic make believe. Officially, this is known as the “full faith and credit” of the US government.
Frankly, I don’t know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I’m not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we’re number one. There’s no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on “Macbeth”.
The three of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of speech. You don’t know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words.
One picture explains so much. One is the Comex Gold contract, the other is the Hong Kong traded one. One bid is above the other's ask.
A CHINESE ratings house has accused the United States of defaulting on its massive debt, state media said on Friday, a day after Beijing urged Washington to put its fiscal house in order.
'In our opinion, the United States has already been defaulting,' Guan Jianzhong, president of Dagong Global Credit Rating Co Ltd, the only Chinese agency that gives sovereign ratings, was quoted by the Global Times saying.
Washington had already defaulted on its loans by allowing the dollar to weaken against other currencies - eroding the wealth of creditors including China, Mr Guan said.
I disagree; I think Bernancke is a true believer, which is why he was selected for the position. The real players, who are descendants of those who first created the BoE, then the Fed, and many over CBs, know the true score.- B9K9, 6/9/2011
After all, from their earliest ages, they are schooled in the simple mathematics of usury & compound interest. Their heritage is one of ultimate predation - to lie in wait until thriving societies (republics) reach the point of exhaustion so that their corrupting influences can have greatest effect.
But that observation is repetitive and well known by any who wish to understand. My interest lies in why people want to believe Bernancke can have any effect. I think the best way to explain this phenomena is to consider the witch doctor: why did/do primitive cultures revere witch doctors?
I think the simple explanation is that people are afraid. In days of yore, a crop failure was a death sentence for the entire country. Since people had nothing to lose, why not put their faith in the rantings of some hocus-pocus spewing mumbo-jumbo? After all, if he was wrong, they were dead anyway.
That's where we're at today - what do we have to lose by letting Ben dick around with monetary policy? After all, once the Fed was created nearly 100 years ago, the American Empire was put on death watch. I mean, it was fait accompli; the only variable was time.
Like a python, once a society relinquishes itself to the soft embrace of the chosen, it's a goner. The tribe never lets go until the victim is dead, then moves on to search for other living, thriving victims. It's been this way for 5-6 thousand years, and I dare say it will continue for at least that long into the future.
After all, how many people read/know of the Founders' warnings regarding foreign banking interests consipriing against the young Republic? 200+ years from now, no one will care to understand what happened when the American Empire finally expired. It will be lost in the annals of time, allowing the vipers to once again spin their webs.
Whatever the outcome of “Weinergate,” I blame the women.
There, I said it.
China should guard against risks from "excessive" holdings of US assets because Washington could pursue a policy to weaken the dollar, a senior currency regulator said in comments published on a website that briefly pushed the dollar lower.
However, the comments by Guan Tao of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) were quickly removed from the website at his request. He told Reuters the comments had been made in private academic discussions and represented his personal view only.
“In the United States neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities. Intrinsically, a dollar bill is just a piece of paper, deposits merely book entries. Coins do have some intrinsic value as metal, but generally far less than their face value. What, then, makes these instruments - checks, paper money, and coins - acceptable at face value in payment of all debts and for other monetary uses? Mainly, it is the confidence people have that they will be able to exchange such money for other financial assets and for real goods and services whenever they choose to do so."
St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard told Reuters on Wednesday "the U.S. fiscal situation, if not handled correctly, could turn into a global macro shock.
Bullard's warning came just after Fitch said it would slash to "junk" the ratings on all Treasury securities, seen worldwide as a risk-free investment, if the government misses debt payments by August 15.
An idea once confined to the fringe of the Republican party is seeping into its mainstream -- that a brief default might be an acceptable price to pay if it forces the White House to deal with runaway spending.
An increasing number of Republicans do not believe the Obama administration's dire predictions of economic "catastrophe" if the debt limit is not increased. They argue a period of technical default can be managed without plunging markets into chaos.
The Republicans' theory is that bondholders would accept a brief delay in interest payments if it meant Washington finally addressed its long-term fiscal problems, putting the country in a stronger position to meet its debt obligations later on.
But interviews with government officials and investors show they consider a default such a grim -- and remote -- possibility that it was nearly impossible to imagine.
In fact, Cramer was going out on a limb here, he named Lehman his “screaming buy” for the last couple of hours of Friday trading. It “can’t get any worse there,” he said.
The federal government's financial condition deteriorated rapidly last year, far beyond the $1.5 trillion in new debt taken on to finance the budget deficit, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for.
China should guard against risks from "excessive" holdings of U.S. assets as Washington could pursue a policy to weaken the dollar, a senior currency regulator said in comments published on a website that briefly pushed the dollar lower.
However, the comments by Guan Tao of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange were quickly removed from the website at his request. He told Reuters the comments had been made in private academic discussions and represented his personal view only.
Yes, when the masses rise up, leaders see anyone who wants freedom as a traitor, anyone resisting authority is guided by an “Evil Plan.” And from Libya to Syria, leaders who believe they rule by a divine right also have the right to shoot anyone resisting their authority.
King George III must have seen our Declaration of Independence as an “Evil Plan,” right from the opening lines about: “All men are created equal” and “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another ...” Yes, “Evil Plans” can be treasonous, punishable by death.
MacLeod’s reference to “Black Swan” author Nassim Taleb’s warning is the perfect answer to Newsweek’s question: “Could club-wielding protesters be in America’s future too?” Ironically, the Bush Doctrine of spreading democracy has suddenly reemerged, shifting into high gear from an Arab Spring to European Summer and next to an American Winter.
So today, our world is witnessing a battle of “Evil Plans,” between rulers in Arabia, Europe and America, and the masses they have betrayed.
Bottom line: You really do need an “Evil Plan.” Now. For self-defense, for counter-attacks, for survival. Things are bad out there. And they are going to get worse. Trust no one. Believe nothing you hear. Nothing.
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul dismissed House Speaker John Boehner’s call for spending cuts to match any increase in the federal debt ceiling. A fiscal catastrophe is coming whether or not the country exhausts its borrowing power, he said.
“I don’t take it seriously,” the Texas congressman said of Boehner’s demand. Paul predicted Congress would “go up to the last minute” before the Aug. 2 deadline and then raise the nation’s $14.3 trillion legal debt limit, yet fail to solve the problems underlying the nation’s soaring deficits.
“The catastrophe comes regardless, because as long as they encourage more spending, then we go over a cliff,” Paul said in an interview for “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend. “So I want to stop us,” said Paul, who said he will vote against raising the limit.
“I think there will be a credibility gap” for the other contenders, Paul said, responding to a question about potential primary opponents including former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
Voters “know that I’m leveling with them, and I’ve done it all along, and I’ve expressed these concerns for 20, 30 years,” he said.
Paul, an advocate of abolishing the Federal Reserve, said while he doesn’t expect other candidates to rally around the idea, they “won’t laugh as much as they did last time” he ran for the Republican presidential nomination.
“Just think of the difference on the attitude of the people now about the Federal Reserve,” Paul said, noting that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke took the unprecedented step April 27 of holding a news conference to defend his policies. “It’s a failed system, and people are starting to realize this.”
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