Bullshit! How Can Someone Get Away With This?

I am as anti-socialism as it gets.  I am also all about people being responsible for themselves.  But this video pisses me off.  This lady owned her home, which probably has a value of 5-10k at most if you know the area (which I do).  Baltimore sold her water bill debt which at time of eviction was a little more than $700.  So no confusion can be had:  SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS!  And these fucking banks,  who wouldn't exist without the money they robbed us of, have the pretense to pull this shit.  Fuck that!  How can this be justified in anyone's mind in light of what has taken place.  Put it in perspective here.  For a fraction of the bailout, we could have bailed out every single mortgage in the country.  And it would have been cheaper than what we did and still are doing.  Anyone who thinks we live in a society with equal citizenship is blind, simple, or just plain ignorant. 

Greeks Paying Over $1,700 Per Ounce For Physical Gold

http://news.coinupdate.com/panicky-greeks-paying-for-physical-gold-0293/

"Bank officials estimate that at least 100,000 other coins changed hands on the black market.  The Bank of Greece has received as much as $409 per coin, which works out to a price of more than $1,700 per ounce of gold!  Prices paid on the black market are reckoned to be even higher.  A popular spot for street vendors to sell their coins is near the Athens Stock Exchange.  There the traders wait for citizens to bring payments received from unloading their paper assets like stocks and bonds."

"As each day passes, the risk is growing that owning any form of "paper gold" could turn out to be as worthless as the paper currencies used to purchase it.  While you still can, you should protect yourself by converting such "assets" into real physical gold."

The question is when this panic will come to America?

Where's deflation in my electric bill?

(click on the images to enlarge)

By the way, I got a letter like this 2 years ago with the same type of increase. I see inflation and not deflation in my electric bill.

Notice this is only in effect from May-Oct, the only months out of the year that the air conditioner is used. Although, we have had only 1 day above 100F this May vs. 15 days last year. The electric company does not like that. Off the top of my head, I think i used the heat 5-7 nights this past winter.

SP500:Gold

Where's the equity recovery when deflated by gold? (copy the link into a new tab/window)

http://stockcharts.com/c-sc/sc?s=$SPX:$GOLD&p=W&yr=3&mn=0&dy=0&i=t65820977414&r=7166

With the recent correction the SP500 and drop in the Euro, look around the May 6^th "flash crash" on how gold and silver decoupled. UUP is the US dollar and is the better of the bad fiat currencies for now. People should take this opportunity to buy gold and silver while the dollar is "strong". The writing is on the wall when you look at the Euro. Not only can you buy less gold/silver, but the cost of imports goes up.

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=FXE#chart2:symbol=fxe;range=3m;compare=^gspc+slv+gld+uup;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined

Wealthy investors are buying items of intrinsic value

http://etfdailynews.com/blog/2010/05/19/dan-sullivan-joins-richard-russell-in-bear-camp-moves-to-cash/

"Yet in the background big money, wealthy investors, are seriously worried. In their hearts, they don't trust fiat currency. They are familiar with the history of fiat currency, and they know that no fiat currency has ever survived for long. Therefore, these people are buying items of intrinsic value — gold, silver, platinum, gems, top quality art, rubies, jade, beach property, collectables"

The post also lists some gold/silver ETF's. I still like PHYS over GLD.

Do everyone agree that buying gold, silver, platinum, gems, top quality art, rubies, jade, beach property, collectables is a good idea? None of my coworkers are buying items of intrinsic value. There is no fear of the US dollar dropping. People are still in the mindset of buying a house to get "rich".

Bank Failures: This Speaks for Itself

Are the United States a Christian nation?

First, read the following quote:

"The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion."

To see who said this click here.


Another interesting quote:

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.

You can find who said this and the context here

Article 1 of the Bill of Rights:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The following is from the US Treaty with Tripoli in 1797 which "was sent to the floor of the Senate, June 7, 1797, where it was read aloud in its entirety and unanimously approved. John Adams, having seen the treaty, signed it and proudly proclaimed it to the Nation."  In Article 11 we find:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

It is pretty straight forward if you ask me.  Religion should be left out of political discussion unless it is to defend a group who is being oppressed in the free practice of their beliefs.  I am a little tired of the "radical" Christians politicizing if we are a Christian Nation and go off the handle when someone says otherwise.  And I have decided, since not all Christians fall in this camp, to call them "radical" Christians.  The same label to be used on the Evangelicals who look to accelerate the Rapture through political support to Israel.  This seems fair, since they also go off the handle if you won't call someone a "radical" Muslim.

Max Keiser: Attacking Banks on Every Level Possible

These are a few months old, but very informative and as always entertaining. The first is a very quick one, the 2nd is pretty long.

Bernanke: Prohibiting swaps will weaken risk mitigation of banks

Correct me if I am wrong, but I was not aware that there was risk mitigation taking place.  That is unless you take into account the put that taxpayers had shoved down their throat by the banks and governments.  I could mitigate risk too if I had a FREE PERPETUAL PUT!

Bernanke, in a May 12 letter to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, said the proposal, part of the Senate financial-overhaul bill, would harm the Fed’s ability to monitor systemic risk among financial institutions. He had previously spoken privately against the proposal crafted by Senator Blanche Lincoln, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

“Prohibiting depository institutions from engaging in significant swaps activities will weaken the risk mitigation efforts of banks and their customers,” [translation: much less $$$ for my pals Lloyd and Jamie] Bernanke wrote in the letter, according to a copy obtained by Bloomberg News. “Depository institutions use derivatives to help mitigate the risks of their normal banking activities,” he said in the letter, which was also sent to Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat. 

Out of Curiosity, What Country Needs the Next Bailout?

I say Italy, but Spain, Ireland and Portugal all are bad off and could take it.  I still say Italy followed by the three mentioned.  Greece will find its way back in, but eventually the entire Eurozone is defaulting and/or being bailed out.

And the Hits Keep Coming

We still have a long way to go:

UPDATE: Now 4 US Banks in 'Perfect 10' Club

This is what a government monopoly (the only kind that can truly ever exist) looks like.  This is unheard of.  A week straight would be unheard of, but 4 large banks with an entire quarter of positive days...preposterous!  And please, spare me the fool's paradise "they are the smartest guys in the finance world and are just riding the recovery."  If they were so smart, why were they all recently bankrupt and losing billions a quarter?  They are financial terrorists, to steal a line from Max Keiser.  Anyone who thinks this happened in an honest fashion has lost all sense of reality. 

‘Perfect Quarter’ at Four U.S. Banks Shows Fed-Fueled Revival
May 12 (Bloomberg) -- Four of the largest U.S. banks, including Citigroup Inc., racked up perfect quarters in their trading businesses between January and March, underscoring how government support and less competition is fueling Wall Street’s revival.

Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the first, second and fifth-biggest U.S. banks by assets, all said in regulatory filings that they had zero days of trading losses in the first quarter. Citigroup Inc., the third-largest, doesn’t break out its daily trading revenue by quarter. It recorded a profit on each trading day, two people with knowledge of the results said.

Read the rest here.

The Irrepressible Max Keiser

From January 2009.  It is old but he speaks on issues from the United States and Israel military connection to the financial markets and derivatives, all of which are still not out of date topics.

JPMorgan Joins "Perfect 10" Club With Flawless Trading Quarter, Morgan Stanley Loses Money On Just 4 Days

Yesterday we discussed the statistically impossible trading desk results of Goldman Sachs, which reported in its 10Q that it lost money on exactly 0 days last quarter, and was profitable on 63 out of 63 days. Today we find that the rape and pillage of the middle class was not isolated to Goldman, and that JP Morgan also had a flawless quarter.

Read the rest at ZeroHedge

 Also see:

Unfuckingbelievable: Goldman Has Zero Trading Loss Days In Last Quarter

If you ever wanted to see what monopoly looks like in chart form, here it is:

Peter Schiff on Bailouts, American Style

Great Article from LewRockwell.com

False Virtue: The Politics of Lying About History

by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Recently by Thomas DiLorenzo: In Defense of Sedition

In 1961 Life magazine invited the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren (author of All the King’s Men, and nineteen other novels) to record his thoughts on the meaning of the American “Civil War” on the centennial of that event. Warren responded with a long essay on the “symbolic value of the war” which was eventually published as a small book entitled The Legacy of the Civil War.

If Robert Penn Warren were to write this book today, he would be loudly condemned as an Enemy of Society (and a “Neo-Confederate”) by all the usual defenders of the central state, from race-hustling “civil rights” activists to beltway “libertarians” and of course, the Lincoln Cult. For example, he wrote (p. 7) that in addition to slavery, there was a “tissue of causes” of the war, including the dispute over the constitutionality of secession, “the mounting Southern debt to the North, economic rivalry, Southern fear of encirclement, Northern ambitions, and cultural collisions . . .”

There were also economic causes of the war apart from slavery, Robert Penn Warren believed. “The Morrill tariff of 1861 actually preceded the firing on [Fort] Sumter, but it was the mark of Republican victory and an omen of what was to come; and no session of Congress in the next four years failed to raise the tariff.”

“Even more importantly,” Warren wrote, “came the establishment of a national banking system . . . and the issuing of national greenbacks . . . plus government subsidy [to corporations].” “Hamilton’s dream” of a large national debt was also realized, and “this debt meant a new tax relation of the citizen to the Federal government, including the new income tax” [introduced by the Lincoln administration for the first time].

“Out of the Civil War came the concept of total war,” i.e., the bombing, plundering, and mass murdering of civilians. In this regard, Warren quotes an 1862 speech by Lincoln in which he said, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present . . . . As our case is new, we must think anew, and act anew.” That is, “we” must abandon the law of nations with regard to the criminality of waging war on civilians, and “we” must abandon the U.S. Constitution as well, since it is one of the chief “dogmas of the quiet past.”

A major theme of The Legacy of the Civil War is that the war left the North (which is to say, the U.S. government) with “a treasury of virtue” (p. 54). This is the “psychological heritage” left to the North, and it is an insidious heritage, wrote Robert Penn Warren. “The Northerner, with his Treasury of Virtue, feels redeemed by history . . . . He has in his pocket, not a Papal indulgence peddled by some wandering pardoner of the Middle Ages, but an indulgence, a plenary indulgence, for all sins past, present, and future . . .” (emphasis added).

Thus, this “treasury of virtue” would become the excuse for why the U.S. government would commence a twenty-five year campaign of extermination against the Plains Indians just three months after Appomattox; shamelessly rob the treasury for the benefit of railroad corporations; plunder the South for a decade after the war under the laughable guise of “reconstruction”; murder more than 200,000 Filipinos who opposed being ruled by the American empire after having escaped from the imperialistic clutches of the Spanish empire; and enter a European war that was none of our business to supposedly “make the world safe for democracy.” It was all done in the name of virtue, freedom, and democracy, or so we are told.

Robert Penn Warren called this “moral narcissism” (p. 72). It is “a poor basis for national policy,” he wrote, but is the “justification” for “our crusades of 1917–1918 and 1941–1945 and our diplomacy of righteousness, with the slogan of unconditional surrender and universal spiritual rehabilitation for others” (emphasis added).

Posing as The Most Virtuous Humans to Ever Inhabit the Planet requires that many “facts get forgotten,” wrote Robert Penn Warren. For example:

[I]t is forgotten that the Republican platform of 1860 pledged protection to the institution of slavery where it existed, and that the Republicans were ready, in 1861, to guarantee slavery in the South, as bait for a return to the Union. It is forgotten that in July, 1861, both houses of Congress, by an almost unanimous vote, affirmed that the War was waged not to interfere with the institutions of any state but only to maintain the Union. It is forgotten that the Emancipation Proclamation . . . was limited and provisional: slavery was to be abolished only in the seceded states and only if they did not return to the Union before the first of the next January (p. 61).

It must also be forgotten, wrote Warren, that most Northern states “refused to adopt Negro suffrage” and that Lincoln was as much a white supremacist as any man of his time. “It is forgotten that Lincoln, at Charlestown, Illinois, in 1858, formally affirmed: I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.”

Thus, after so much history is forgotten, and much of the rest of it rewritten as a string of fairy tales, “the War appears, according to this doctrine of the Treasury of Virtue, as a consciously undertaken crusade so full of righteousness that there is enough overplus stored in Heaven, like the deeds of the saints, to take care of all small failings and oversights of the descendants of the crusaders, certainly unto the present generation” (p. 64).

Warren quotes the historian Samuel Eliot Morison as commenting that one effect of this Treasury of Virtue on his (Morison’s) native New England was that “In the generation to come that region would no longer furnish the nation with teachers and men of letters, but with a mongrel breed of politicians” obsessed with “profiteering” through their political connections.

Among other effects are that “the man of righteousness tends to be so sure of his own motives that he does not need to inspect consequences.” And, “the effect of the conviction of virtue is to make us lie automatically and awkwardly . . . and then in trying to justify the lie, lie to ourselves and transmute the lie into a kind of superior truth.” This, I would argue, is a perfect definition of so-called “Lincoln scholarship,” especially the Straussian variety.

Warren believed that most Americans are content with all of these lies about their own history, the results of “the manipulations of propaganda specialists, and their sometimes unhistorical history” (p. 79). For they “are prepared to see the Civil War as a fountainhead of our power and prestige among the nations” (p. 76). They have been good and brainwashed as obedient little nationalists, in other words, who place a very high value on the “prestige” of the American state as bully of the world.

This is yet another dire consequence of the war: Americans came to believe in Alexander Hamilton’s notion that the “prestige” of the state through its pursuit of “imperial glory” was a legitimate function of government. Limiting the role of government to the protection of God-given natural rights to life, liberty, and property became one of Lincoln’s “dogmas of the quiet past.”

May 6, 2010

Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe and How Capitalism Saved America. His latest book is Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution – And What It Means for America Today.

Why Not Feel Sorry for the Oil Company?

By:  Murray N. Rothbard

To say that the oil spill has been blown up to hysterical dimensions is a grave understatement. Hysteria abounds everywhere, and everywhere the term "disaster" is freely used. Even Pat Buchanan, who of all the media commentators I thought would be most resistant to the wiles of environmentalism, used that term. The Idiotic Overstatement Award of the Year goes to Alaska Judge Kenneth Rohl, who opined about the oil spill, "We have a manmade destruction that has not been equaled, probably, since Hiroshima."

Hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese were massacred at Hiroshima; that's a disaster. Over the last several months, the Ayatollah's government has murdered thousands of political prisoners; a million Iranians and Iraqis were killed in their late monstrous war; the Pol Pot regime, in the mid-1970s, genocidally massacred one-third of the Cambodian population.

Those are disasters. That's "man-made destruction." In the Valdez oil spill, not a single human life was lost. Not a single person was even injured.
 
Furthermore, those disasters were intentional; the oil spill was, quite obviously, an accident. Who suffered the loss of the oil spill? None other than the Exxon Corporation, which lost ten million gallons of crude oil; in addition to the $5 million this loss represents, Exxon will be forced to pay cleanup costs, as well as compensation to the economic losses incurred by the fishing industry in Alaska. And so the only loser is Exxon, suffering from the negligence of its allegedly drunken sea captain. So is everyone feeling sorry for Exxon, as I do? Hell no; to the contrary, Exxon has been reviled every day by virtually everyone in the media and in public life. Contrary to government when it commits an accident or similar "externality," Exxon, as a private corporation, must pay the costs it inflicts on others.

So what's the problem? Once in a while, accidents happen. Are we to ban all oil tankers, because once in a long while, a tanker runs aground? Are we to outlaw all shipping because some ships sink? Are we to prohibit all air flight because once in a while a plane crashes?

The problem, of course, is that environmentalists don't give a tinker's dam about paying for external costs. They have their own agenda, scarcely hidden any more. Look at all their bellyaching about the poor birds, and the sea otters, and the salmon, etc. Look at their whining, too, about the beauty of the pristine blue water now befouled with black or brown oil slicks.

(Well, hell, maybe a coating of black on blue waters provides an interesting new esthetic experience; after all, once you've seen one chunk of blue water, you've seen them all.) The environmentalists are in pursuit of their own perverse and anti-human value-scale, in which every creature, animal, fish, or bird, heck even blue water, ranks higher than the wants and needs of human beings. The environmentalists welcome this trumped up "crisis," because they want to shut down the Alaska pipeline, which supplies a large chunk of domestic American oil; they want to reverse the Industrial Revolution, and get back to pristine "nature," with its chronic starvation, rampant disease, and short, ugly, and brutish life span.

Note the difference between the berserker reaction to the Valdez oil spill, and the response to the last great oil spill in 1978, off the French coast, when the Amoco Cadiz let loose no less than 60 million gallons of crude oil into the Atlantic – the worst oil spill in history. There was no hysteria, no screaming headlines, no bellyaching on television. The courts quietly forced Amoco to pay $115 million to compensate for costs of the accident, and that was that. The reactions were different because, in the meantime, the virus of environmentalism has deeply infected our culture. Arguing on the basis of private firms paying the costs of liabilities they impose upon others is all very well, but, as we see in the smears against Exxon, it is not enough.

We must no longer allow the environmentalists to seize, undisturbed, the moral high ground, and arrogate to themselves the good of the cosmos while the rest of us are portrayed as narrow, selfish, short-sighted, and immoral. There is no greater immorality than deep opposition to mankind per se, and environmentalism must be exposed as that kind of immoral and destructive creed. Only then will the party of mankind be able to take back our culture.



Published in the July 1989 issue of Liberty Magazine.

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) was dean of the Austrian School, founder of modern libertarianism, and academic vice president of the Mises Institute. He was also editor – with Lew Rockwell – of The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, and appointed Lew as his literary executor. 

Anyone Else See the Trend? Below are all very recent statistics or events...

I keep hearing about this recovery, but the governments behavior would indicate they are scared stupid.  It reminds me of the cartoons where in a sinking boat with multiple holes the character would never have enough fingers and toes to plug 'em all up.  This is an unorganized post of all cut and paste really.  Didn't take me long since there is really nothing good to find in terms of the economy if your honest with yourself. World Bank Reforms Voting Power, Gets $86 Billion Boost

WASHINGTON, April 25, 2010 - Historic Package Expands Capacity to Provide Finance, Gives Developing Countries More Influence, Sets Post-Crisis Strategy, Endorses Comprehensive Reform Program

April 15, 2010
For Immediate Release
Contact: Phil Cogan, +01 (202) 565-3200

Ex-Im Bank Doubles Export Loan Authorizations to $13.2 Billion; Record-Setting Pace of Export Financing Continues

Europe and IMF Agree €110 Billion Financing Plan With Greece 

IMF Survey online

May 02, 2010
Greece reached agreement with the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank on a focused program to stabilize its economy, become more competitive, and restore market confidence with support of a €110 billion financing package.

	USDA ANNOUNCES UPCOMING PURCHASES OF COMMODITIES FOR FEDERAL FOOD AND NUTRITION ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS
	WASHINGTON, April 30, 2010 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced USDA's plan to purchase $161.4 million in a wide variety of foods for federal food and nutrition assistance programs.

March 25, 2010 

 

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Freddie Mac Delinquency Rates March 2010

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Mortgage Market Share in Q1 96.5% of Mortgages Backed by Gov't Entities

Peter Schiff - How an Economy Grows & Why it Crashes

Peter Schiff talks about his new book, "How an Economy Grows & Why it Crashes," and more.