| From: Fizz | 7/6/2009 12:46:00 AM | | | | | | 13 recs there is no doubt that obama is a very intelligent and accomplished man.
however, he's on their team, just like GWB. don't be fooled by the smooth looking sheep suit.
i took micro and macro econ and i know this is one giant ponzi scheme and effort to bail out the banker losses so the public can eat their sh*t sandwich.
obama isn't an idiot. he *knows* *exactly* what he's doing and this is his intent.
a good con man will never tell you this, though.
you have to figure it out for yourself.
listen to obama's own words about how the bankers wouldn't be bailed out with public money... notice the promise and the emphasis put on their promise.
youtube.com
he's a liar and can lie with impunity so long as the democrats keep their mouths shut.
just like bush could pull his crap as long as the republicans kept their traps shut.
just like clinton could dismantled all the financial rules with a smile on his face...
globalresearch.ca
greenspan's sh*it eating grin is pretty telling.
obama isn't *fixing* anything beyond transferring wealth to the oligarchy. bush did it through tax cuts and then started the bail out. obama is wholesale looting the treasury for all he can get out of it - printing whatever he needs to and telling the america people to f* off when they want to know where the public fed money has gone.
it amazes me how obama can tell people to f*ck off to the tune of several trillions in under the table fed money and nobody seems to care.
even intelligent people.
obama is accelerating the demise of america, if anything, by keeping everything debt oriented and eventually destroying our currency. it need not be like this, but the oligarchy wants it like this. they want their losses back and obama is gonaa gift wrap them. just like bush would have done.
ponder this and don't let a political visceral reaction take hold. you know this is the truth by his actions.
as celente says, "by their deeds you shall know them."
a sociopathic liar that gives the treasury over to the thieving bankers and saddles americans with debt is not on the side of america.
Message 25760573 |
| | Highly Recommended Posts | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Fizz | 7/6/2009 12:55:23 AM | | | | | | 14 recs Sunday, July 5. 2009
market-ticker.denninger.net
Sarah Palin And The Republicans
Since its Sunday (and the 5th of July) I think I'll take a foray into somewhere that I know will generate much controversy.
First, let's start with Sarah Palin, who as everyone knows announced her resignation with 18 months left to go in her term as Alaska's Governor, sparking every possible theory imaginable as to why (including rumors that she was about to be indicted - rumors that led her attorney to make what I believe was a monstrous gaffe, and one that The Daily Kos immediately - and in my opinion correctly - jumped all over.)
Let's dispense with the realities here right up front: If Sarah's departure is followed by the eruption of any scandal, no matter what it is, she is finished on the national political stage. Period. If she doesn't understand this she has an IQ smaller than her shoe size; the only way you can win as a political figure in such a circumstance is to stand and fight, winning the battle - you come out scarred, but in one piece. If you run, especially if you run in front of the eruption, you're done.
So let's assume for the sake of argument that she's intelligent enough to know this and there is nothing about to hit the spotlight of a particularly-embarrassing nature (and by the way, I consider anything related to her children to be absolutely out of bounds, even though the media won't - during the campaign such snipes were good for instantaneous and permanent bans on my forum and will remain so.)
The other view, held by many, is that Sarah is setting up for some sort of political assault in 2012, possibly on the White House.
I will simply repeat what I said to John McCain's campaign through the summer and into the fall of 2008:
There is no possible path to victory for the Republicans until and unless the fraud and bad debt are both excised from the economic and political system.
It is a mathematical impossibility for the economy to recover on a sustainable basis until the bad debt has been either paid down or defaulted. Taking on more debt and shuffling around where the debt resides does not remove a single dollar of it from the economy; such policy decisions as taken by both Bush and Obama cannot and have not resulted in a positive outcome.
Increasing The Bezzle in the system in an insane attempt to further paper over the losses will not solve the underlying problem - that is, the fact that the debt service ratios are too high. There are only two ways to reduce that debt service requirement - default debt or pay down debt. The latter requires years, not weeks or months, and when it comes to mortgages (both commercial and residential) we're talking a decade or more.
The last time we took this path we had The Great Depression. The last time Japan took this path they suffered more than a decade's worth of economic malaise, and still haven't recovered.
There has never been a nation in history that has managed to get out of a credit-led recession through taking on more debt.
Someone has to eat these losses - someone with actual equity interest. Trying to force anyone to eat them who has to borrow the money is not only futile, its stupid - that doesn't cause recognition of the loss at all, it only refinances it, putting it on someone else's back. The bad debt is still there.
The people with equity interest are the bondholders in these banks another related institutions.
They, ultimately, must eat the loss if we are going to have a sustainable economic recovery.
Yes, this means that Pension Funds are in a lot of trouble. It means that bondholders of these firms who did imprudent things will be severely damaged or even wiped out, and many of these institutions must be closed.
It means that we must insist on a cramdown of these institutions as I have been calling for repeatedly.
The Republican Party was trounced not because we had an economic downturn.
It was trounced because The Republican Party refused to hold to account, over the space of more than a decade and two terms of George Bush's Presidency, those who intentionally created a property bubble to siphon off wealth from the average American citizen, and when that bubble exploded those who committed fraud upon the public were bailed out instead of being imprisoned.
The miscalculation of the Republican Party was that because The Democrats were not calling for imprisonment of the malfeasors (after all, many of them were Democrats!) the Republicans didn't have to go after "their friends" either. That was a serious mistake and it is why they lost. The mantra of "change" won not because The Democrats had superior ideas but because The Republicans had allowed their cronies to rob the American People repeatedly and nobody in their right mind votes for the guy who is wearing the ski mask!
The American People voted for the unknown getaway car driver because there was no cop on the ballot to vote for.
I have heard exactly nothing out of The Republicans since the election that shows me that they "get it." I receive beg-surveys literally every week asking for money and listing a litany of Obama's policies, asking if I support them, and get push-poll calls almost as often. Here is what the latest put forward as the Republican Agenda:
1.
Tax relief to stimulate the economy.
2.
Domestic energy exploration.
3.
Full funding for border security and missile defense.
4.
Support for small businesses that create jobs.
Nice rhetoric. Note that we did #1 under George Bush and it was ineffective in preventing the mess. Note also that #3 was claimed after 9/11 but in fact wasn't done, but there were multiple attempts to pass "in the dark of night" amnesty for the illegal aliens, when in fact it would take nothing more than computer verification of SSN records to start sending out THOUSANDS of ICE workers to arrest and deport illegals. #4 is a nice premise too, but let's face it - "small business" and "illegal immigrant labor" are joined at the hip, and this is yet another codeword for amnesty.
Oh, and this "missive" asks for a donation of up to $1,000 too.
What's important is what's missing from this missive.
* Any understanding or admission that it was fraud that fueled the economic mess, not "too high taxes", and yet The Republicans have steadfastly refused to demand that those who committed that fraud go to prison.
* Any understanding of the fiscal realities of a $2 trillion budget deficit that came about due to too much spending, and that cutting taxes, while it sounds nice, just makes that worse.
* Any admission that Gingrich promised among other things to rid us of the Education Department; instead The Republicans more than doubled its size and George Bush allowed Senator Kennedy to write the Education Bill in the last Congress.
* Any admission that Medicare Part D was the largest single entitlement program ever passed by any Administration in the history of the nation, and George Bush was its proponent and chief architect!
If The Republicans want to gain in the 2010 mid-term elections and have a shot at unseating President Obama in 2012, they need to do all of the following:
* Begin pushing hard for investigation and prosecution of everyone, individual and corporate, who did and still is falsifying any form of accounting or other financial matter. This includes all off-balance-sheet games, it includes all banks that are intentionally re-categorizing delinquent loans as "not delinquent" by changing the time they can be overdue before they're counted, it includes every member of any regulatory agency who knew of insolvency and either buried it or actively conspired with management to hide it (including in agencies like The Fed, OTS, et.al.) No amnesty, no games, no BS. The Republicans are supposed to be the party of law and order; if this is not just smoke and mirrors or a strict "war on some drugs" then let's see special prosecutors, investigations, indictments and prison sentences.
* Demand that those who made bad investments in insolvent firms be forced to EAT THEM. This means no more bailouts - instead, it means cramdowns. Lots of cramdowns. If pension funds are caught short by this (including PUBLIC pension funds) then they are.
* Demand that PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYEES be cut back to the same standards as PRIVATE SECTOR employees, both for retirement benefits and current working benefits and salary. The "gold-plated" games MUST END as WE DON'T HAVE THE MONEY. This includes but is certainly not limited to Representatives and Senators.
* Return ALL entitlement and education programs to the states and END THEM at the federal level. The Department of Education should be dissolved; there is no Constitutional mandate for same. Social Security and Medicare are not properly federal programs and it is their federal locus that makes them non-portable, unowned by the individual and impossible to fix. No citizen would accept a Social Security system at the state level that disappeared if they moved; they would instead insist on individual ownership, vesting, and investment of that account in actual assets (e.g. Treasury bills or notes) and they'd get it too. The Federal Government is able to steal the contents of Social Security annually (and does) precisely because it is cheating on the accounting - that is, the entirety of the program as currently constituted is a lie! STOP IT.
* Cut Federal spending to match the budget. Yes, I know, you'd have to lay off thousands upon thousands of "government employees" in Washington DC and elsewhere. So what? Let's cut The Federal Government back to 1990 levels of employment and spending - right now, today. "Spending cuts" are not decreases in the rate-of-increase - they are actual cuts! Practice what you preach - if we don't have the money, we can't spend it. Period.
* Push HARD to institute The Fair Tax. Yeah, I know some people don't like it. Here's the facts folks: It inexorably ties federal income to GDP and is the only way to do so transparently, containing the tax code for individuals literally in one line of text. It bankrupts nearly all of the lobbying interests on "K" Street immediately. It incentivizes capital formation (no tax on capital gains) and dis-incentivizes going into debt, as there is no tax advantage to taking on debt. It removes all federal tax burden from those who earn less than a poverty level income and eliminates hundreds of billions of dollars of embedded compliance cost in every good and service produced in this nation. It makes America the manufacturing and business tax haven of the world, and will bring millions of jobs back from overseas overnight.
* RE-INSTATE GLASS-STEAGALL IN ITS ENTIRETY and force the break-up of each and every financial institution that currently is in violation of what it would mandate. Commercial banking and lending is a public utility function; the regulations imposed post-Depression was exactly correct, and it is their dismantlement that caused this mess.
* STOP ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND SEND ALL OF THEM HOME. Period. This begins with MASSIVE enforcement against employers of these people; send them all to PRISON. We have some 16% of our population out of work (U6) and more than 20% of our youth. These are US Citizens who want jobs and can't find them - it is an outrage that we have illegals in this country taking jobs from these citizens primarily on the basis of working under the table for less than minimum wage, paying no taxes, then showing up in the emergency room for free treatment when they shoot a nail through their own foot!
If The Republicans want to win, this is the populist message that will win elections.
You've got 16% of the citizens of this nation, fifty-two million Americans, that are unemployed and will vote for you if you get rid of the illegal immigrants and send them home so the unemployed can find jobs.
You've got tens of millions of Americans who have lost their homes, retirement accounts and/or financial security due to the fraudulent and outrageous actions of people in the real estate, financial and insurance industries over the last twenty years. All of them will vote for you if you lock those fraudsters up, confiscate their ill-gotten gains, and make damn sure that this does not happen again.
You take those two blocks of people and turn them into Republican Voters and you win all 50 states, you win back The Senate and House, and The Democrats go home with their tails between their legs.
You fail to do so and you will continue to play at the margins picking off 1 and 2% of the vote at a time, and this time around The Democrats are in charge of the Census and both can and will guarantee you have no chance in The House post 2010, possibly for a generation, exactly as happened the last time.
The Republicans made promises with The Gingrich Revolution they failed to keep and thus far are utterly unapologetic in regards to their intentional misdirection and fraud.
They neither got out of the pocketbooks of Americans nor did they roll back the size of government. Their "tax cuts" were not balanced by what they promised, that is spending cuts and the shut down of government departments, but instead were fraudulently subsumed by huge budget deficits and borrowed money from China, enabling the off-shoring of more than half of our productive capacity and the decimation of virtually all of our industrial output - the source of the solid middle-class income that made America great.
The Republicans got away with it for more than ten years, but when the check for that outrageous and fraudulent behavior was finally laid upon the table the people said ENOUGH! and threw them out of office.
There is only one way to regain Americans' trust, and that is through the four pillars of Christian forgiveness:
1. Admit you have sinned, listing your violations of trust.
2. Show true remorse for your sins.
3. Make penance where possible for the harm you have done.
4. Promise not to sin again.
I've seen none of the four and neither has the rest of America.
It is The Republicans' choice to make, but until and unless they do the above, they will argue over the scraps that fall from the table instead of sinking their teeth into the meat thereupon.
Message 25760331 |
| | Highly Recommended Posts | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: KLP | 8/18/2009 1:05:22 AM | | | | | | Hopefully, everyone on SI will see this and pass it on...
This video is ten minutes and 35 seconds long, but it is worth taking the time to view. I got it in an email. Click on: The American form of government.
Message 25868745 |
| | Highly Recommended Posts | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Fizz | 9/2/2009 8:36:39 PM | | | | | | 15 recs
Audit, Then End The Fed...
Kudos to Shelia Bair for standing up and speaking out
against expanding the powers of the privately owned
Federal Reserve in her NY Times piece today.
nytimes.com
But, the WSJ couldn't let that pass, so it ran a negative
piece on Bair (including an unflattering photo) on the
coming FDIC crisis (which is no fault of Bair's).
nytimes.com
And to no one's surprise, the G-20 is marching in lockstep
to fulfill John Maynard Keynes dream of elevating the IMF
to the position it was created for, to bring all central
banks under homogenous global governance, and IMF control.
The G-20 in fact, acquiesced to this back in the March meeting,
and it's just a matter of individual nations selling it to
their citizenry.
telegraph.co.uk
"At the same time, politicians from the G20 countries are
planning to coordinate an approach over the next month
to redesign financial regulatory architecture in the wake
of the credit crisis.
*****************
So what happens if Shelia Bear, Ron Paul, and America wins
the fight against a final Fed coup d'état ?
Well, here's a video from Turbo Tax-Tim Geithner,
singing the same song the bankster-gangsters have been
singing since 1913... "if you don't have a privately
owned, unaudited, secret, and independent Federal Reserve,
then Congress would surely fall to the political pressure from
the electorate and continually inflate the money supply
and destroy the US Dollar."
online.wsj.com
As opposed to the independent Fed doing this...
See larger chart at link below. [thanks Bruce R.]
mises.org
And not surprisingly, Geithner echoed Ben Bernanke's earlier
threats on what would happen if Ron Paul's HR 1207 is passed
and the Fed is audited...
"If you audit the Fed, bad things will happen."
As opposed to - if you don't audit the Fed, worse things will happen?
I don't know about you, but I'm ready to call the Fed's bluff,
and not only audit them, but end them. And while were at it,
end debt based Federal Reserve Notes, and do what JFK started
to do... issue U.S. Treasury Notes.
We've seen what a debt based fiat system in the hands of
private bankers does... $90 trillion in debts and unfunded
liabilities, a US Dollar now worth .08 cents, a broken
banking system, and a bankrupt nation - looted to the tune
of $23.7 trillion dollars using TARP Inspector General
Neil Barofsky's numbers.
abcnews.go.com
We were warned what would happen to America if we ever let allowed
our money to be issued by a private central bank.
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our
liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever
allow private banks to control the issue of their currency,
first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations
that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people
of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the
continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be
taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it
properly belongs."
-- Thomas Jefferson
And it wasn't just the opponents of a privately owned
central bank that warned us, it was the proponents as well...
"Permit me to issue and control the money of the nation and
I care not who makes its laws."
-- Mayer Amschel Rothchild
Throughout the history of mankind, they've had a name for it,
when children are born into debt bondage.
It's called SLAVERY.
Today every newborn child in America inherits a debt of
$191,922 owed to the private bankers [see bottom of debt
clock chart at link below].
usdebtclock.org
And of course that interest acruing debt, just like a mortgage,
results in a tripling of that principle amount being paid back
over that childs lifetime.
Debt based money is, was, and will always be a form of slavery.
And it's always when, not if... it will bankrupt both a nation,
and it's people.
It's a simple mathematical formula that the private central
banks have always understood.
When will we?
SOTB
Message 25907822 |
| | Highly Recommended Posts | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Neeka | 8/7/2012 12:35:43 AM | | | | | | "I'd like to wish a happy birthday to my Marine Dad who turns 97 today. On this day in 1942 he landed on Guadalcanal. Always been the strong, quiet provider for his family during the depression, to his great grand children today. I love you Dad."
Message 28317275 |
| | Highly Recommended Posts | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Neeka | 10/14/2012 12:44:39 AM | | | | | | I had friends years ago who were a couple in their late 60s-70s. Is it possible that what Dr Wahl found could have helped them? Perhaps, but no one will ever know. Both have been dead since the early 90s. The wife spent her last 15 years going slowly from a robust, active woman who had most of her chores done by 7 a.m. to an immobile victim of MS. She was her husband's at-home patient till the end. One of the habits they had acquired in their marriage was reading to each other. The husband made good money as a summer resort business owner for 5 months of the year. They spent the rest of the year camping from Maine to Florida as the weather suited them. Instead of TV or movies, reading to each other was their main entertainment. In her last years, he did all the reading.
When she died she was unable to move voluntarily or speak an understandable word. Besides seeing what that poor woman went through as she deteriorated and her sorrow at being a burden to her husband, my big takeaway was total admiration for his unflinching devotion to his bride. As it says in 1 Corinthians 13, "Love bears all things." The husband died in '94, within a year after his wife.
Message 28460231 |
| | Highly Recommended Posts | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| |
