Group items tagged

excerpt: "The year was 1997.  US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.  That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks.  It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels. Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game:  "derivatives trading."  JP Morgan alone would soon carry $88 trillion of these pseudo-securities on its books as "assets." Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers (soon to replace Rubin as Secretary) body-blocked any attempt to control derivatives. But what was the use of turning US banks into derivatives casinos if money would flee to nations with safer banking laws? The answer conceived by the Big Bank Five:  eliminate controls on banks in every nation on the planet - in one single move.    It was as brilliant as it was insanely dangerous. How could they pull off this mad caper?  The bankers' and Summers' game was to use the Financial Services Agreement, an abstruse and benign addendum to the international trade agreements policed by the World Trade Organization. Until the bankers began their play, the WTO agreements dealt simply with trade in goods-that is, my cars for your bananas.  The new rules ginned-up by Summers and the banks would force all nations to accept trade in "bads" - toxic assets like financial derivatives. Until the bankers' re-draft of the FSA, each nation controlled and chartered the banks within their own borders.  The new rules of the game would force every nation to open their markets to Citibank, JP Morgan and their derivatives "products." And all 156 nations in the WTO would have to smash down their own Glass-Steagall divisions between commercial savings banks and the investment banks that gamble with derivatives. The job of turning the FSA into the bankers' battering ram was given to Geithner, who was named Ambassador to the World Trade Organization. "

Greg Palast does good work. I'm reminded of a passage from Carl Oglesby's The Yankee and Cowboy War where he argued rather convincingly that conspiracy is the norm rather than the exception at the boundary line between government and big business.

Excellent thinking and a great presentation from "Utah". A must read if ever there was one. Conclussion: "This is where we are in government. Our Republican leadership is failing, even as the Democrats fail at almost everything, especially their big "achievements". Obama and his team are failing because they have refused to change after their ideas didn't work - the Obamacare rollout is a perfect example. Now they are telling America that the solution is more taxes, more borrowing and more intervention - in essence, they want us to paddle harder. Just trust them, they ask - they just aren't quite through fixing things yet. As many observers have pointed out, there are no rational people who think that the current levels of borrowing and taxation can cure our ills. There are only those, many exposed in these most recent government shutdowns, who simply want to delay Obamageddon until someone else's term. The fact is that we simply have enough fatal structural defects in our approach to our governance model that just working harder and spending more cannot fix it. You can't beat structural defects with performance. I've seen it all before in companies who were burning themselves out and wasting their resources by paddling harder against a current that was too powerful…and never recognizing that rescue was only a course change away. Simply paddling harder won't do it, especially when government has been taking paddles away from some through taxation and regulation and pulling some 47% of tax filers completely out of the canoe. This will not get fixed without pain. We need to get ready for it. No amount of avoidance will forestall the inevitable crash - we have to make sure that it is only a hard landing. Something will have to be sacrificed to save the whole; I have little doubt about that. Everything can't be given to everybody - there never was going to be a unicorn in every garage and Peggy Joseph never was going to get Obama to pay

I was going through my email, trying to clean things up, and hit on this post from a member of the Bay Area Patriots, Nina Ortega. Like many Tea Party patriots, Nina is a Libertarian. The letter itself though is stunning. Maybe the most heartfelt cry of an American patriot I have ever read. Using lots of Quotes, and some very colorful language, the author, Jim Quinn responds to the Edward Snowden controversy, arguing that this brave patriot's courgage is on a par with that of the founding fathers. And those accusing him are the real traitors. Great stuff. Take some time, and let it all out. intro: "There are weeks that change the course of human history. There are weeks when people must choose sides. There are weeks that expose the real American traitors. There is no middle ground in this debate. You are either on the side of freedom, liberty, truth, transparency and the U.S. Constitution or you are on the side of mindless obedience, oppression, deception, corruption and tyranny. A courageous young Millennial named Edward Snowden has risked his life and his future to expose the illegal, surreptitious surveillance programs being conducted by the United States government in clear violation of the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The NSA, with the full knowledge of Barack Obama and Congress, has been covertly collecting phone and internet records on millions of Americans with the full cooperation of Verizon and other mega media/data corporations. Our owners have been using the U.S. Constitution to wipe their asses. The 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is so unambiguous that any intelligent politician, bright journalist or fifth grader in Miss Sabatini's history class could interpret its meaning and intention. Our founding fathers believed in truth, clarity and simplicity. The traitorous sociopaths in control of our government today believe in obfuscation, ambiguity and complexity."

"Chase Bank has moved to limit cash withdrawals while banning business customers from sending international wire transfers from November 17 onwards, prompting speculation that the bank is preparing for a looming financial crisis in the United States by imposing capital controls."

Gresham provides us with a history of the Fed in charts. Relly cool charts!  Gresham's conclusion? - "the Fed has degenerated from a by and large passive institution (dealing only in high-quality self-liquidating commercial paper and gold) to an active pursuant of junk, an enabler of wars, a 'benevolent' combatant of the depressions of its own creation, a central planner of employment & prices and of course a forgiving friend to inconvenient market follies."   The Fed's Assets from 1915 to 2012 - Hover & Click to View Each Time Period…

Lots of comments posted on this page.  Search for "Econ101" and "garylyn" to find my comments.  I have posted here a surprisingly extensive explanation of how i became a libertarian. excerpt: "How's this for a simple GOP strategy to avoid blame for fiscal-cliff tax-rate increases and seize the public relations initiative from an overconfident president? Pass two simple bills in the House.  Bill A extends current tax rates for those with incomes of $250,000 or less.  Bill B extends current tax rates for all the rest.  Keep both bills just that simple - include nothing else in either one.  Both will pass in the House thanks to the Republican majority. As the bills are moving to the Senate, Speaker Boehner holds a press conference and begins with a short address to the American public to promote both bills. First, Boehner points out that Bill A should pass the Senate promptly and be signed by the president.  Reid and Obama have promised as much. Second, the Speaker points out that Bill B will be likely be blocked in the Senate and/or on the president's desk.  Reid and Obama have (virtually) promised to do that too. "

" Economic Reason has gathered together the Top 15 'reality' economic documentaries -"  This is an incredible list of YouTube documentaries discussing and describing economic realities - most dating from the September 11th, 2008 week of economic collapse. Lots of great historical context, including commentary from Nial Fergusson, Peter Schiff, Edward Griffen and many others.  What an awesome collection!

Libertarian Tom Woods addresses the Texas State Liertarian Convention, June 2012.

"Trump is staging a fierce comeback… Hillary Clinton's post-convention lead in the polls has nearly disappeared. Prominent pollster Rasmussen Reports now has Trump leading Clinton 40% to 39%. Trump also has a 3% lead (45% to Hillary's 42%) in the Los Angeles Times poll. And Hillary's edge in the polls in which she's still leading has narrowed sharply. There'll be more back-and-forth momentum swings in the horse race to come, but these new polls show one thing: The odds of a Trump presidency shot higher this week. And that means the odds of a Fed interest rate hike before Election Day got lower… The fix is in… Look, Janet Yellen isn't going to do anything to jeopardize a Clinton presidency. They're both card-carrying Deep Staters. They're both liberals who served under Obama. They both dress the same: Mao chic. And most of all, Yellen wants to keep her job when her term expires in February 2018. She's a lock to stay on in a Clinton administration. But it won't happen in Trump's. He's already told TheWall Street Journal that he wouldn't keep Yellen as Fed chair. I don't see how Yellen can raise rates between now and Election Day… if Trump can win. If she did, it would tank the stock market, nail the economy and give Trump the White House. When the Fed raised rates in December 2015, the stock market plunged, with the Dow dropping more than 1,300 points in the month following. A plunging market would wipe out trillions in paper wealth and slam the economy into recession."

excerpt:  Indeed, it is now clear that governments prevented a full-scale collapse of the financial system in 2008 by transforming toxic private debt into public debt. It worked then, but it cannot work now, in large part because it contributed to the new, looming crisis in financial markets brought on by countries' soaring public-debt burdens. We cannot blame today's emerging crisis solely on our current and recent governments' actions. For more than 20 years, the world's major capitalist economies have been led to borrow heavily and unabashedly, in large by a new rule, adopted worldwide beginning in the 1970's and 1980's, that tied monetary policy to targets for price growth. This dangerous idea - proposed in France by Jacques Rueff in 1958, adopted throughout Europe over the following two decades, and extended to the European Central Bank - was intended to limit the tendency of capitalist economies to aggravate inflation as soon as they hit full employment. But the rule ultimately had the terrifying result of obliging countries to borrow from private banks at market prices to guarantee their treasuries' integrity. This created powerful barriers to public investment, as government spending was siphoned into massive profits for banks and their shareholders.

OUTRAGE - Microsoft Uses Loopholes To Pay Just 7% Corporate Tax Eric Cantor Is The Hedge Funder's Best Man In Congress - Washinton Post The Road To Hell Directly Before Us - MUST READ Karl Denninger Obamacare Individual Mandate Battle Reaches Supreme Court DETAILS - Geithner To Announce Backup Plans With No Debt Deal In Place Fed Governor Speaks: More QE Won't Help Growth But Would Spur Inflation How The Two-Party Oligarchy Uses Left-Right Charade To Loot The Country Debt Ceiling Fights Going Back To Eisenhower Florida Rep. Demands Records On Ousted Foreclosure Fraud Investigators Publisher That Owns S&P Kills Ritholtz's Bailout Book Critical Of Ratings Agencies Did S&P flip flop on US debt target? - Reuters The "Solution" to America's Debt Ceiling Crisis: Looting What has Already been Looted

Outrageous rant from rapster Felonious Monk.  Very vulgar ghetto speak, but right on target.  Who would have guessed that Felonious is a Tea Party Patriot?  Balance the Budget!  Stop Spending money you don't have.  Stop spending money we have to borrow from the Chicomms!  Great stuff if you can handle the colorful expression.  This is one angry American, and i'm right with him.