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What the hell just happened? 'Tyranny By Executive Order' | by Constitutional Attorney ... - 0 views

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    "What the hell just happened? That is the question that many Americans should be asking themselves following the news conference where Obama unveiled his plan for destroying the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. At first glance it appeared to be a case of Obama shamelessly using the deaths of innocents, and some live children as a backdrop, to push for the passage of radical gun control measures by Congress. Most of these have no chance of passing, yet, Obama's signing of Executive orders initiating 23 so called Executive actions on gun control seemed like an afterthought. Unfortunately, that is the real story, but it is generally being overlooked. The fact is that with a few strokes of his pen Obama set up the mechanisms he will personally use to not only destroy the Second Amendment to the Constitution, but also the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. It will not matter what Congress does, Obama can and will act on his own, using these Executive actions, and will be violating both the Constitution and his oath of office when he does it. Here are the sections of the Executive Order that he will use: "1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background-check system." What exactly is relevant data? Does it include our medical records obtained through Obamacare, our tax returns, our political affiliations, our military background, and our credit history? I suggest that all of the above, even if it violates our fourth Amendment right to privacy will now be relevant data for determining if we are allowed to purchase a firearm. "2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background-check system." This should be read in conjunction with section 16 of the order that says: "16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors
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The Obama Depression: Holman Jenkins Says Barack Obama's Ideas on the Environment, Soci... - 0 views

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    "Mr. Obama came to office without a conspicuous vision other than "bipartisanship" and a belief in the beneficent influence on America and the world of seeing a black man exercising the powers of the presidency. He wields his party's shibboleths like one who sees them mainly as levers for delivering the goods. His ideas about the exercise of politics, in fact, may be accurately reflected in the recent stimulus bill -- in office you supply the wish lists of those who put you there.

    His will be a fascinating presidency to watch, not least because of his inexperience, his intellectual agility, and the crisis in which he finds himself. But his presidency will get really interesting in a year or two, or six months -- whenever he finally realizes that everything he thought he wanted to do is irrelevant. He'll then have to adapt an agenda for the world as it is, in which many childish things no longer have a place.

    And, by the way, he kids himself if he believes he will be allowed, like FDR, to preside over a depression without being politically blamed for it. The public is different now -- the world is different -- and he will own the "Obama depression" sooner than he thinks.
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Lipsky: Obama Making Same Mistakes That Led to Great Depression - 0 views

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    Interview with Seth Lipsky, former Wall street Asia - NY Sun editor, and journalist.  Seth explains the constitutional requirements that Congress control and protect a hard currency.  He also explains his support for Ron Paul, the Paul-Perry-Cain "flat tax" proposals, and the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel.  Hard to believe Seth worked for the Wall Street Journal, otherwise known as the globalist bankster voice.  IMHO, no one has done more to confuse the public with free market - capitalism posturing while promoting outrageous banksterism, crony capitalism and a militaristic global corporatism that threatens the sovereignty of the USA than the WSJ.  Seth however is great. excerpt: The founding fathers named the U.S. currency after a coin called a Spanish-milled dollar, which represented 371.25 grains of pure silver, and put protecting its value in the hands of Congress. "They meant the dollar to be a measure of value and in fact they gave Congress the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof in the same sentence of the Constitution in which they gave Congress the power to fix the standards of weights and measures," Lipsky told Newsmax.TV. _________________________________________________________ Editor's note: To get 'It Shines for All' at a great price - Click Here Now. _________________________________________________________  "What the reform movement that we have been covering in The Sun wants Congress to do is to step up to that Constitutional responsibility to establish a proper value to the dollar, and then we wouldn't have to worry about inflation and rising prices," he said. "We would have to conduct the government's budgetary operations in a way that didn't result in a collapse in the value of our currency," said Lipsky. Under President Obama, the White House has enacted stimulus measures to incentivize job creation while the Federal Reserve has flooded the economy with money and swollen its balance sheet in an effort to spur
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Phil Gramm: Echoes of the Great Depression - WSJ.com - 0 views

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    Well written comparison of Roosevelt's Great Depression and Obama's Great Recession; and how the same policies and attitudes produced the same results of prolonged economic misery.  Good charts comparing USA Obama misery to the rest of the world. excerpt: This may not be your grandfather's Great Depression, but many aspects of today's situation would remind him of the 1930s. If the recession that officially ended a year ago feels uncomfortably surreal to you yet familiar to him, it's probably because the recovery went missing. During the average recovery since World War II, gross domestic product (GDP) surpassed the pre-recession high five quarters after the recession began. It has never taken longer than seven quarters. Yet today, after 11 quarters, GDP is still below what it was in the fourth quarter of 2007. The economy is growing at only about a third of the rate of previous postwar recoveries from major recessions. FDR rode the tide of history while President Obama strives mightily against it. The progressive vision that resonated in the 1930s foundered on the hard experience of the 20th century, and it has no broad appeal in the 21st. The recovery from the Great Depression did not occur until World War II was underway, but it appears, as of today, that voters will bring the latest experiment in American collectivism to an end on Nov. 2. A real economic recovery won't be far behind.
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Bradley Schiller Says Barack Obama Should Stop Comparing Our Financial Crisis With the ... - 0 views

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    This out of control Obama fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics. It is bad history because our current economic woes don't come close to those of the 1930s. At worst, a comparison to the 1981-82 recession might be appropriate. Consider the job losses that Mr. Obama always cites. In the last year, the U.S. economy shed 3.4 million jobs. That's a grim statistic for sure, but represents just 2.2% of the labor force. From November 1981 to October 1982, 2.4 million jobs were lost -- fewer in number than today, but the labor force was smaller. So 1981-82 job losses totaled 2.2% of the labor force, the same as now. Good stats comparing the Roosevelt great depression years, the Carter recession years and the Obama recession years.
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Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly | The Whit... - 0 views

  • Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly United Nations New York, New York
  • To summarize, the United States has a hard-earned humility when it comes to our ability to determine events inside other countries.  The notion of American empire may be useful propaganda, but it isn’t borne out by America’s current policy or by public opinion.  Indeed, as recent debates within the United States over Syria clearly show, the danger for the world is not an America that is too eager to immerse itself in the affairs of other countries or to take on every problem in the region as its own.  The danger for the world is that the United States, after a decade of war -- rightly concerned about issues back home, aware of the hostility that our engagement in the region has engendered throughout the Muslim world -- may disengage, creating a vacuum of leadership that no other nation is ready to fill. I believe such disengagement would be a mistake.  I believe America must remain engaged for our own security.  But I also believe the world is better for it.  Some may disagree, but I believe America is exceptional -- in part because we have shown a willingness through the sacrifice of blood and treasure to stand up not only for our own narrow self-interests, but for the interests of all. 
  • We live in a world of imperfect choices.  Different nations will not agree on the need for action in every instance, and the principle of sovereignty is at the center of our international order.  But sovereignty cannot be a shield for tyrants to commit wanton murder, or an excuse for the international community to turn a blind eye.  While we need to be modest in our belief that we can remedy every evil, while we need to be mindful that the world is full of unintended consequences, should we really accept the notion that the world is powerless in the face of a Rwanda or Srebrenica?  If that’s the world that people want to live in, they should say so and reckon with the cold logic of mass graves. But I believe we can embrace a different future.  And if we don’t want to choose between inaction and war, we must get better -- all of us -- at the policies that prevent the breakdown of basic order.  Through respect for the responsibilities of nations and the rights of individuals.  Through meaningful sanctions for those who break the rules.  Through dogged diplomacy that resolves the root causes of conflict, not merely its aftermath.  Through development assistance that brings hope to the marginalized.  And yes, sometimes -- although this will not be enough -- there are going to be moments where the international community will need to acknowledge that the multilateral use of military force may be required to prevent the very worst from occurring.
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    This just may be the speech in which Barack Obama's speechwriters managed to set a new record in presidential hypocrisy. It's long and a very depressing read for someone who is intimately familiar with the issues he discusses. I've tried to highlight only the tastiest meat of the beast. But it's worth reading the whole thing, from the traitor's pledge of undying allegiance to Israel through the announcement that nothing has changed in America other than a public that is demanding peace but won't get it from Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama's contempt for the U.N. Charter riddles his speech, a treaty that is enshrined in our own law through the Constitution's Treaty Clause, is remarkable. That charter of course forbids wars of aggression (and threats thereof) absent the authorization of all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.  
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    Related: the top 45 lies in Obama's U.N. speech: http://warisacrime.org/content/top-45-lies-obamas-speech-un
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The Daily Bell - Gerald Celente on Multinationalism, Breaking the Chains and Individual... - 0 views

  • Gerald Celente: As I said, they're in a trap and it's a tapering trap, the quantitative easing trap. They can't keep printing more money because it's going to devalue the currency. And by the way, this is complicated, because it's not only the United States that's doing it; most of the central banks are doing it. China, the Europeans – they're all pumping money into their systems to keep them afloat. They're all in a trap. A time comes when you just can't keep doing it anymore. You can only take heroin so much before it kills you. This is monetary methadone and it's not going to cure the problem so they're going to have to stop. When it stops, that's when we go back into a recession and/or a depression.
  • Is it a depression? Is it a depression if you live in Greece or Spain or Portugal? Is it a depression if you're among the over 12% unemployed in Italy? When you look at John Williams's ShadowStats, in the US we're looking at about 22% unemployment. So yes, it's a depression for a lot of people. And then again, median household income in the US, accounting for inflation, is 10% below 1999 levels. That's a fact. So if you're earning 10 percent less for your family than you were in 1999 and the costs have skyrocketed since then, particularly in healthcare, food, rent, property, gas and other costs, do you think you're living in a depression? Daily Bell: Is central banking an art, a science or just a fraud?
  • Gerald Celente: Neither. It's a criminal operation. Throughout the 1800s, one of the major issues of every presidential election was whether or not to have a central bank. They fought it successfully not to have one until 1913. These are private banks that are running our country and many others. This goes back to the scriptures; it's Christ chasing the moneychangers out of the temple. The moneychangers have just got new names – Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and, of course, JPMorgan Chase got that name because you're going to have to chase them to get your money because they just put a limit on how much you can withdraw or deposit each month in certain accounts, with a limit of $50,000.
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  • Daily Bell: It seems like people don't believe in central banking anymore so why does it continue? What holds it up in a so-called democracy where people have a vote? Gerald Celente: Most people don't even know what a central bank is and they still believe the lie that the Federal Reserve is a quasi-government institution when it's not. It's a totally private bank. Most people don't even know that. So most people are uninformed and like in all countries, they follow their leaders. Very few people rebel. There was an incident that happened in late October in the States. Hillary Clinton was speaking in Buffalo, delivering her model for what is required to solve complex problems. There was a heckler in the crowd who she admonished by saying, "... which doesn't include yelling. It includes sitting down and talking." What patronizing bullshit. You know what happened? The audience of 6,500 stood up and gave her a standing ovation that extended on and on. So it's the people. The people can blame the politicians all they want, but as I see it, it's the people's responsibility for the state of their nation.
  • Daily Bell: What's the employment picture like going forward in the US?
  • Gerald Celente: Lower paying jobs, less benefits, more temporary jobs and I think the question at the end is rather than going forward in the US it should be what's going forward in Slavelandia, because that's what it's become. You get out of college and you're an indentured servant. For the rest of your life you have to pay off your debt for your degree in worthlessness, for the most part. There are degrees that are worth something but not a lot of them. Where are you going to work? Name the company – Macy's? Starbucks? You can become a barista. Are they going to start teaching Shipping & Handling 101 in college? What are they going to do? Who are you going to work for? What are you going to do – stock shelves? This is better than slavery because when they had the plantation you had to take care of the slaves. Now you can just use them up and send them home. It's kind of like Bangladesh right here in the good 'ol USA.
  • Daily Bell: How about the rest of the world? Give us a global summary.
  • Gerald Celente: The global summary is this: Everybody can see what happened when the Federal Reserve talked about tapering several months ago. All of a sudden you saw the emerging markets start to crash; they dropped about 11% in a year before the Fed reversed its policy because all the hot, low-interest rate money that was leaving the US was flowing into the emerging markets, where you could borrow the money cheaply. So when they started to talk about tapering the hot money started flowing out of these countries, such as India, Brazil. They were really suffering from it and so were their stock markets. So without the cheap money flowing from the central banks, the entire global economy goes on stall and then it turns negative. You can see what's going on in China now; they're facing a banking crisis. Real estate prices in cities like Shanghai and Beijing have gone up over 20% in a year and no matter how the government tries to deflate it, the housing bubble keeps growing. The banks also have a lot of bad loans they're carrying. Now the Chinese government is trying to restrain that free-flow of cheap money, and what happens to their stock market when they do? It dives and the contagion spreads to other Asian equity markets. They all start dropping. It's all tied to cheap money and when the cheap money spigot begins to tighten up the global economy goes down. As I've made very clear, when the interest rates go up the economies go down – it's as simple as that. They've run out of this game. Compare this with the Great Depression, when it began essentially in 1930. This recession begin in 2008. It's now 2013 – we're only in 1935.
  • Daily Bell: China and the BRICS seem to be making noises about setting up their own monetary infrastructure without the dollar. Will that happen?
  • Gerald Celente: Yes, they are making noise, but reality is another issue, and the currency issue is complicated. The dollar goes down but where are you going to go, the euro? We were talking briefly about what's going on in Europe. There's financial market propaganda boasting that the worst of the eurozone crisis is over. They're bragging that The GDP of Spain was just reported to have gone up 0.1% and they made a big deal out of it. "The recession's over" is the B.S. message. No, the recession is not over! They're cooking the numbers to make a rotten situation look less rotten. In countries like Greece and Spain, youth unemployment is running above 50% and overall unemployment around 30%. The recession continues unabated, and there's absolutely no way out of this and they can't print their way out. Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland are doing terrible – what would anyone substitute euros for dollars? And what other currency choices are there, the yuan? As I mentioned, China has plenty of its own problems. They've been dumping a lot of cash into that society to keep it going. You know what China's greatest fear is? It's not the Spratly Islands or the South and China Sea territorial problems that are going on between them, the Philippines, Vietnam or the Japanese. China's greatest fear is its people. They've got 1.2 billion of them and if they're hungry or not happy there's going to be a lot of problems.
  • Again, what do you substitute the dollar for, Brazil's real or the Indian rupee? Remember, we saw what happened when the hot money started leaving the emerging market countries. The South African rand is also under pressure. The BRIC nations can speak as much as they want and they may have the greatest intention to create another reserve currency, but the fact is their economies are not robust or independent enough to create one at this time. As I said, talk is one thing, facts are another and although the world is less dependent on the dollar it is still by far the major reserve currency of the world and I don't see that rapidly changing unless there's a catastrophe that would cause it to happen. However, over the years, I do expect a new reserve model to develop.
  • Daily Bell: Let's talk about military action, particularly in Syria where Al Qaeda types have been fighting on the side of the US and NATO. Why does the US want to destabilize Syria and what country will be next – Iran? Russia?
  • Gerald Celente: We wrote about this in the Trends Journal going back to 2011. After Libya fell, Syria was the only port that the Chinese and the Russians had in the Mediterranean – the Port of Tartus. And also, Syria's only real ally in that area is Iran and, of course, Hezbollah in Lebanon. So with Syria out of the way there's nothing in the Middle East other than Iran to stop the continued spread of US influence and control in that area. It's really more about that than anything we see – again, having more control over that area for the US to do as it wants, with Iran really being the main target.
  • When President Obama backed off his red line threat and didn't attack Syria that was a tipping point. And, as important, the vast majority of Americans opposed the attack plan. That was a significant statement. The country said it was tired of war – and so are a lot of other nations.
  • Gerald Celente: Again, talk about morality and the recent Amnesty International report that said the United States was breaking international law in its use of drones to kill people that were convicted of nothing in addition to innocent people. How much more immoral could you get?
  • I can tell you how much immoral. How about starting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – in Iraq with the proof that a war was started that killed at least a half a million people that was started under fake reasons; lies that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda. An Afghan war that's the longest war in American history, the war in Libya that they called a time-limed, scope-limited kinetic action that's destroyed the entire nation. You want to talk about immorality? How about the "too big to fail"? The government mandated immoral act of stealing money from the American people to give it to the banks, financiers and favored corporations? They say the fish rots from the head down and that's it; the fish has rotted in America for a long time. It didn't start with Obama. It goes back to Bush, Clinton, and keeps going back. Society gets the message from the top and, as I see it, they're simply following their leaders. For example, if their leader can start wars, rob people, take their money, why shouldn't I? Why should I operate on a moral level when immorality is condoned at the top?
  • Most recently, the United States government, in virtually every fashion of behavior, has been fascist. I don't say that by throwing the word out loosely. It's called the merger of corporate state and powers. It goes back to "too big to fail." Under capitalism there's no such thing. You're not too big to fail; you fail. Big, small, medium, you fail – it's capitalism.
  • Not anymore. You have your money taken from you by government order and it's transferred to the people who are the most favored by those in power. That's the only reason why the stock market keeps going up and why the multinationals are doing so well. That's where the $85 billion a month that the Federal Reserve is using in their quantitative easing is going. Then when you look at the other levels of immorality, as I mentioned, why shouldn't people feel as though they can do anything the government is doing? That's why it just keeps getting worse and worse. It's reflected in the music, the politics, every element of culture – both pop culture and political culture.
  • Under the dictates of the eurozone and globalization, the love of one's culture and pride of nation is denounced as "populism."
  • Daily Bell: Let's talk hard money. Can you give us an update on the price action of gold and silver? How about equity? Where is the stock market headed? We think the big boys are trying to rev it up and go for one last killing. Your thoughts?
  • Gerald Celente: The stock market will continue to rise as long as interest rates stay low. That's the best estimate you could give. They keep all of this quantitative easing that, for example, benefits the big private equity firms. Look what's going on in the United States with Blackstone Group. They own 40,000 homes. Where are they getting the money? Deutsche Bank is loaning them tons of money because they're getting money with overnight rates near zero, and they in turn loan it to the "bigs" really cheaply so it is just another example of what's keeping the whole stock market scam going.
  • As long as the money stays cheap the stock market keeps going up. As the money stays cheap gold and silver go up, and you're seeing gold making a bit of a rebound lately because of, again going back to the employment numbers in the States – there is no recovery, the jobs stink, they're not creating enough jobs. The tapering keeps going on, which is a devaluation of the currency, and quantitative easing continues. As long as money stays cheap gold goes up. Now, gold may go down when quantitative easing and tapering slow down. However, that's only going to be temporary because when that happens the bond market's going to explode, when interest rates go up, there's going to be another financial crisis. My best analysis at this time is the second quarter of 2014. The 'experts' are saying the stock market is booming. It has gone from a 14,000 high in 2007 to mid-15,000 now. Accounting for inflation, the stock market has to be about 15,750 just to be back at the 2007 level.
  • Daily Bell: There are other trends, of course, ones you often mention. You spoke to us last time about the New Millennium Renaissance.
  • Gerald Celente: Back to the renaissance... To me, that's the only thing that's going to change the future. We need a cultural, artistic and moral redevelopment, a restoration. Every issue that we've been talking about so far is based on human behavior and the human spirit – morality or immorality. Until morality is restored and the human spirit rises, nothing's going to change. As I was mentioning before, the fish rots from the head down. If you see the people at the head acting immorally, and from the head all the way down, why shouldn't you or I act immorally? What license do they have to steal that we don't? What license do they have to kill that we shouldn't?
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Paul Craig Roberts-Obama Could Govern as a Dictator | Greg Hunter's USAWatchdog - 1 views

    • Gary Edwards
       
      If Congress is wooried about being black mailed into either voting for the an increased debt limit, or, facing an invocation of the Continuity of Government plan, why not opt instead to pass a resolution declaring the current "Continuity of Government" plan un Constitutional?  Which it is!!!!!!!
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    Interview with former Assistant Treasury Secretary, Paul Craig Roberts. He comments on the relationship between the Debt Limit Crisis, and the "Continuity of Government Plan" that would be triggered by a catastrophic emergency. The triggering of the Continuity of Government plan would result in the end of our Constitution. There is no provision in the Constitution for any kind of "Continuity of Government" plan. Especially a plan that would suspend or infringe in any way on the rights and liberties of individual Americans. Nothing!! "You can forget about any default in the debt ceiling crisis.  Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Dr. Paul Craig Roberts says, "The debt ceiling will be raised.  No government wants to lose its power or lose its ability to borrow.  So, if they don't raise the debt ceiling, it is just a way of Washington committing hari-kari.  It simply removes the United States as a super power."  Dr. Roberts goes on to say, "If they don't make a deal, one of two things will happen. . . . The Federal Reserve, on its own authority, lends the Treasury the money. . . . The other alternative, Obama . . . can simply declare a national emergency and raise the debt ceiling on his own initiative.  He could govern as a dictator." What would happen if the U.S. did default?  Dr. Roberts says, "The danger of default is the rest of the world dumps dollars.  If they dump dollars, the Fed loses control, the whole system blows up.  The banks fail.  The bond market collapses.  The stock market won't go down 1,500 points; it would be cut in half. " No matter what happens, there is still an enormous and growing debt.  Dr. Roberts contends, "The situation is unsustainable."  It will blow up at some point, and Dr. Roberts predicts, "It will be worse than the Great Depression because in the Great Depression, prices fell along with employment.  Now, prices will be rising and employment would be falling. . . . Gold and silver prices
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Easy Credit and the Depression - Judge Posner @WSJ.com - 0 views

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    What caused this recession? We still don't have a simple explanation. Such is the uncertainty sapping the country's confidence that in a recent Rasmussen Reports poll only 53% of Americans said they prefer capitalism to socialism; 27% were unsure and 20% preferred socialism. Before seeking political asylum in free-market Hong Kong, consider reading a new book that critiques what went wrong with capitalism, written in order to save it. Judge Richard Posner's "A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression" is noteworthy. As a longtime University of Chicago professor and father of the free-market-based law-and-economics movement, Judge Posner makes an unlikely critic of capitalism. But as author of some 40 books and as the most frequently cited federal appeals court jurist, he is also one of our most original and clearheaded thinkers. Who's to blame and who's responsible for the recession? Judge Posner, who calls it a depression, distinguishes between the roles played by government and the private sector. "Although financiers bear the primary responsibility for the depression," he writes, "I do not think they can be blamed for it -- implying moral censure -- any more than one can blame a lion for eating a zebra. Capitalism is Darwinian." A pragmatic explanation for behavior that looks irrational in retrospect shows that it was logical, based on incentives at the time. Blame lies elsewhere: "The responsibility for building the fences that prevent an economic collapse as a result of risky lending devolves on the government."
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The Liberal Apologies for Obama's Ugly Reign » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts,... - 0 views

  • My favorite story indicating the depth and degree of Obama’s loyalty to the wealthy Few comes from the spring of 2009. In his important book Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President (2011), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind tells a remarkable story from March of 2009. Three months into Barack Obama’s supposedly progressive, left-leaning presidency, popular anger at Wall Street was intense and the nation’s leading financial institutions were weak and on the defensive in the wake of the financial collapse and recession they had created. The new president called a meeting of the nation’s top 13 financial executives at the White House. The banking titans came into the meeting full of dread. As Suskind noted: “They were the CEOs of the thirteen largest banking institutions in the United States… And they were nervous in ways that these men are never nervous. Many would have had to reach back to their college days, or even grade school, to remember a moment when they felt this sort of lump-in-the-throat tension…As some of the most successful men in the country, they weren’t used to being pariahs… [and] they were indeed pariahs. The populist backlash against the financial sector—building steadily since September—was finally beginning to cause grave discomfort on Wall Street. As unemployment ballooned and credit tightened, the country began to look inward, toward the origins of the panic and its disastrous consequences.”
  • In the end, however, the anxious captains of high finance left the meeting pleased to learn that Obama was totally in their camp. For instead of standing up for those who had been harmed most by the crisis—workers, minorities, and the poor – Obama sided unequivocally with those who had caused the meltdown. “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks,” Obama said. “You guys have an acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem. And I want to help…I’m not here to go after you. I’m protecting you…. I’m going to shield you from congressional and public anger.” For the banking elite who destroyed millions of jobs in their lust for profit, there was, as Suskind puts it, “Nothing to worry about. Whereas [President Franklin Delano] Roosevelt had [during the Great Depression] pushed for tough, viciously opposed reforms of Wall Street and famously said ‘I welcome their hate,’ Obama was saying ‘How can I help?’” As one leading banker told Suskind, “The sense of everyone after the meeting was relief. The president had us at a moment of real vulnerability. At that point, he could have ordered us to do just about anything and we would have rolled over. But he didn’t – he mostly wanted to help us out, to quell the mob.” When “the bankers arrived in the State Dining Room,” Suskind notes, “Obama had them scared and ready to do almost anything he said…. An hour later, they were upbeat, ready to fly home and commence business as usual” (Confidence Men).
  • This remarkable episode happened in the White House in a time when, to repeat, the Democrats held the majority in both houses of Congress along with an angry populace ready with good reason for Wall Street and 1% blood. And what did the populace get from this seemingly progressive alignment of the stars? The venerable left liberal journalist William Grieder put it very well in a March 2009 Washington Post Op-Ed: “a blunt lesson about power, who has it and who doesn’t.” Americans “watched Washington rush to rescue the very financial interests that caused the catastrophe. They learned that government has plenty of money to spend when the right people want it. ‘Where’s my bailout,’ became the rueful punch line at lunch counters and construction sites nationwide. Then to deepen the insult, people watched as establishment forces re-launched their campaign for ‘entitlement reform’ – a euphemism for whacking Social Security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid.”
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Obama and 'Redistributive Change' - Victor Davis Hanson - National Review Online - 1 views

  • in the president’s own language, the government must equalize the circumstances of the “waitress” with those of the “lucky.” It is thus a fitting and proper role of the new federal government to rectify imbalances of compensation — at least for those outside the anointed Guardian class.
  • In a 2001 interview Obama in fact outlined the desirable political circumstances that would lead government to enforce equality of results when he elaborated on what he called an “actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.”
  • Instead, the notion that the state will assume control, in Canada-like fashion, and level the health-care playing field was the real concern. “They” (the few) will now have the same care as “we” (the many). Whether the result is worse or better for everyone involved is extraneous, since sameness is the overarching principle
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  • The president believes that a select group of affluent, highly educated technocrats — cosmopolitan, noble-minded, and properly progressive — supported by a phalanx of whiz-kids fresh out of blue-chip universities with little or no experience in the marketplace, can direct our lives far better than we can ourselves. By “better” I do not mean in a fashion that, measured by disinterested criteria, makes us necessarily wealthier, happier, more productive, or freer.
  • equality-of-results thinking
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    When radical leaders over the last 2,500 years have sought to enforce equality of results, their prescriptions were usually predictable: redistribution of property; cancellation of debts; incentives to bring out the vote and increase political participation among the poor; stigmatizing of the wealthy, whether through the extreme measure of ostracism or the more mundane forced liturgies; use of the court system to even the playing field by targeting the more prominent citizens; radical growth in government and government employment; the use of state employees as defenders of the egalitarian faith; bread-and-circus entitlements; inflation of the currency and greater national debt to lessen the power of accumulated capital; and radical sloganeering about reactionary enemies of the new state. The modern versions of much of the above already seem to be guiding the Obama administration - evident each time we hear of another proposal to make it easier to renounce personal debt; federal action to curtail property or water rights; efforts to make voter registration and vote casting easier; radically higher taxes on the top 5 percent; takeover of private business; expansion of the federal government and an increase in government employees; or massive inflationary borrowing. The current class-warfare "them/us" rhetoric was predictable. Usually such ideologies do not take hold in America, given its tradition of liberty, frontier self-reliance, and emphasis on personal freedom rather than mandated fraternity and egalitarianism. At times, however, the stars line up, when a national catastrophe, like war or depression, coincides with the appearance of an unusually gifted, highly polished, and eloquent populist. But the anointed one must be savvy enough to run first as a centrist in order later to govern as a statist.
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Two Very Depressing Charts for President Obama, Two Very Encouraging Charts for America... - 0 views

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    "What's really remarkable is that we've seen the biggest drop in the burden of government spending since the end of World War II. Heck, the fiscal restraint over the past five years has resulted in a bigger drop in the relative size of government in America than what Switzerland achieved over the past ten years thanks to the "debt brake." At this point, some readers may be wondering who or what deserves credit for this positive development. I'll offer a couple of explanations. The first two points are about why we shouldn't overstate what's actually happened. 1. The good news is somewhat exaggerated because we had a huge spike in federal spending in 2009. To use an analogy, it's easy to lose some weight if you first go on a big eating binge for a couple of years. 2. Some of the fiscal discipline is illusory because certain revenues that flow to the Treasury, such as TARP repayments from banks, actually count as negative spending. I explained this phenomenon when measuring which Presidents have been the biggest spenders. But there also are some real reasons why we've seen genuine spending restraint. 3. The "Tea Party" election of 2010 resulted in a GOP-controlled House that was somewhat sincere about controlling federal outlays. 4. The spending caps adopted as part of the debt limit fight in 2011 have curtailed spending increases as part of the appropriations process. 5. In the biggest fiscal loss President Obama has suffered, we got a sequester that reduced the growth of federal spending. 6. Many states have refused to expand Medicaid, notwithstanding the lure of temporary free money from Uncle Sam. 7. Government shutdown fights may be messy, but they tend to produce a greater amount of fiscal restraint. And there are surely other reasons to list, including the long-overdue end of seemingly permanent unemployment benefits and falling defense outlays as forces are withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan. The bottom line is that the past
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Is This the End of Capitalism? Hardly, but it's a great excuse for the antiglobalizatio... - 0 views

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    Daniel Henninger Says Blaming Capitalism for the Crisis Overlooks the Housing Bubble - WSJ.com: "Heads of state, perplexed finance ministers, inflated retinues and journalists from 20 nations arrived in London yesterday to address "the greatest financial crisis since the Depression." By 4 p.m. London time today they will hold a press conference and go home." "Beware of real-estate salesmen. The housing bubble that floated into view in 2007 is turning into the blob that ate the world. Real-estate mortgages and their derivative securities are a significant problem. That discrete problem, however, has been pumped up to an historic "crisis of capitalism." Capitalism didn't tank the U.S. economy. Overbuilt housing did. Overbuilt housing tanked the economies of the U.K. and Ireland and Spain. If little else, we've learned that artificially cheap housing sets loose limitless moral hazard." "In a normal environment, the problems revealed by the crisis in mortgage finance would produce fixes relevant to the problem, such as resetting the ratios of assets to capital for banks and hedge funds, or telling the gnomes of finance to rethink mark-to-market and the uptick rule. More energetic reformers might consider Gary Becker's suggestion that as financial institutions expand in size, their capital requirements tighten, so that compulsive eaters like Citigroup can fit inside their capital base." "Two signal events in history are shaping the politics of the current economic crisis: the Great Depression and the Reagan presidency (and in Europe, Thatcherism)." "The Depression put in motion an historic tension between public and private sectors over who sets a nation's course. After 50 years of public dominance, Reagan's presidency tipped the scales back toward private enterprise. The economic life of the ensuing 35 years became "the American model." Every waking hour of this economically liberal era, the losing side has wanted to tip the balance back toward public-sector
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POLITICS | As It Ought to Be - 0 views

  • Unfortunately, we can only go so far with this before realizing that the laugh is also on us. For just as the establishment right and center got Iraq and the economy wrong, the establishment left was indulging in its own fantasy world, and it was one which is now coming to bite us on the proverbial ass, namely the fantasy of Barack Obama. Plenty of ink has been spilled in recent weeks about “misjudgments” which caused the left to swoon over a candidate who rejected virtually the entirety of what the left (by any reasonable definition) believes.  And even more anguish is caused by the grim reality that Obama is now acting on his deepest beliefs: expanding the war on terror, torpedoing banking reform, extending Bush tax cuts, while demanding fiscal austerity in the midst of what appears to be a second great depression.
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    The "progressive" left slowly awakes to the fact that Obama is a long-time corporatist neocon. This article points to those few pundits on the left who saw who Obama's constituency really was before he ran for President. 
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Obama To Americans: You Don't Deserve To Be Free - Forbes - 1 views

  • President Obama’s Kansas speech is a remarkable document. In calling for more government controls, more taxation, more collectivism, he has two paragraphs that give the show away. Take a look at them. there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes–especially for the wealthy–our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty. Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.
  • Though not in Washington, I’m in that “certain crowd” that has been saying for decades that the market will take care of everything. It’s not really a crowd, it’s a tiny group of radicals–radicals for capitalism, in Ayn Rand’s well-turned phrase. The only thing that the market doesn’t take care of is anti-market acts: acts that initiate physical force. That’s why we need government: to wield retaliatory force to defend individual rights. Radicals for capitalism would, as the Declaration of Independence says, use government only “to secure these rights”–the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. (Yes, I added “property” in there–property rights are inseparable from the other three.) That’s the political philosophy on which Obama is trying to hang the blame for the recent financial crisis and every other social ill. But ask yourself, are we few radical capitalists in charge? Have radical capitalists been in charge at any time in the last, oh, say 100 years?
  • I pick 100 years deliberately, because it was exactly 100 years ago that a gigantic anti-capitalist measure was put into effect: the Federal Reserve System. For 100 years, government, not the free market, has controlled money and banking. How’s that worked out? How’s the value of the dollar held up since 1913? Is it worth one-fiftieth of its value then or only one-one-hundredth? You be the judge. How did the dollar hold up over the 100 years before this government take-over of money and banking? It actually gained slightly in value.
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  • Laissez-faire hasn’t existed since the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. That was the first of a plethora of government crimes against the free market.
  • The typical Republican would never, ever say “the market will take care of everything.” He’d say, “the market will take care of most things, and for the other things, we need the regulatory-welfare state.” They are for individualism–except when they are against it. They are against free markets and individualism not only when they agree with the Left that we must have antitrust laws and the Federal Reserve, but also when they demand immigration controls, government schools, regulatory agencies, Medicare, laws prohibiting abortion, Social Security, “public works” projects, the “social safety net,” laws against insider trading, banking regulation, and the whole system of fiat money.
  • Even you, dear reader, are probably wondering how on earth anyone could challenge things like Social Security, government schools, and the FDA. But that’s not the point. The point is: these statist, anti-capitalist programs exist and have existed for about a century. The point is: Obama is pretending that the Progressive PGR -2.02% Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society were repealed, so that he can blame the financial crisis on capitalism. He’s pretending that George Bush was George Washington.
  • What Obama is indeed responsible for is the injustice of robbing some to (allegedly) benefit others. To the extent that cronyism, not the free market, sets income, that is an injustice to be laid at the statists’ door.
  • There is no such problem as “unemployment” under capitalism. Prices fall to clear the market. Twice the work force could be employed if average wages dropped in half. But that’s nominal wages; with a constant money supply, prices would also fall in half–or slightly more than that. This isn’t just theory. America’s workforce has grown steadily decade after decade, yet the standard of living has risen at the same time. I grant you that the rise has slowed as statist intervention has grown. Think of the phenomenal progress between, say 1900 and 1920 as compared to the minor progress from 1993 to 2013. Most of the progress in the last 20 years has come in the freest area of the economy: electronics and computing.
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    Harry Binswanger defends laissez-faire capitalism, using Ayn Rand Objectivism.
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    The major problem with Ayn Rand Objectivism is that it's an "ism." The Utopian ideal it is based on has never existed in reality and likely never will; its principles have never been tested. Moreover, I will argue that Binswanger is incorrect in arguing that the anti-capitalist phenomenon in America began with creation of the Federal Reserve; it dates much farther back. The economic basis for the Revolutionary War was largely the Crown-granted monopolies granted to the first great British "companies" (corporations), which had the effect of forcing North American colonists to pay monopoly rents for common goods and kept American ship owners from importing those goods from elsewhere to sell at a lower price. The Founding Fathers were strongly against privately-owned corporations and government-granted monopolies, with only two exceptions, copyrights for literary works and patents for inventions. The Constitution's prohibition against government-granted monopolies is implicit in its allowance for only two narrowly-defined types. The Founding Fathers' writings explicitly discussed the difference between "natural" monopolies and those created by government or anti-competitive conduct. During the early years of the nation corporations were permitted by the States, but only for public purposes, usually for public works such as bridges or roads for which there was a need to amass capital. These early American corporations were usually chartered only for the time required to complete the public work and to recover the invesment and a small profit, e.g., from tolls for using a bridge or road. Many of the early state constitutions explicitly limited the lifetime of corporations. However, such early opposition to corporations gradually eroded; corporate purposes were expanded, corporations were granted perpetual life, and the corporate form of doing business became much more widespread. Here, it is important to recognize that corporations are market artificialities c
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New Trade Data Come at the Worst Possible Time for Obama | The Nation - 0 views

  • President Obama’s push for a massive new trade deal with Asia is predicated on the idea it will help everyday Americans: that it will “level the playing field for the middle class,” in Obama’s words. But as the debate over the Trans-Pacific Partnership enters its endgame, newly released government data about the US trade deficit shows recent trade deals have done the opposite of what was promised—and have inflicted added damage on American jobs. The Census Bureau’s annual trade data for 2014, released Thursday morning, shows the US trade deficit in 2014 jumped 6 percent to $505 billion in 2013. This increase received a late boost from the December 2014 numbers, which showed at 17.1 percent increase in the trade deficit—resulting in the biggest trade imbalance since December 2012. A country’s trade balance is a crucial economic indicator; a nation that is exporting far more goods than it is importing is generally in good economic health. Conversely, a country that is increasingly importing more than it exports—as is the case with the United States—is watching valuable dollars and jobs flow overseas.
  • The data shows a small, 1 percent growth in US exports for 2014, though the domestic oil and gas boom accounts for much of that. US manufacturing exports fell by more than $5 billion in 2014, and the US goods trade deficit rose to $736.8 billion. (More on that number in a minute; it doesn’t tell the full story.) There’s a simple explanation for the widening trade deficit: the US dollar is strong, and there’s weak growth overseas, which would naturally depress exports. But congressional critics of the TPP seized on a broader point on Thursday morning—robust promises about the benefits of past trade deals have turned out to be empty. “We signed those trade deals, and the result has been the opposite,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro on a Thursday morning conference call with reporters. “The administration continues to pursue the same failed policies of the past several years.”
  • Of particular note is the increasing trade deficit with Korea, which increased a whopping 20 percent in 2014, to $25.1 billion. Obama signed a free-trade agreement with Korea during his first term, calling the deal “a major win for American workers and businesses,” and it took effect in early 2012. But the US goods trade deficit with Korea was 81 percent higher in 2014 than in 2011. That translates to a loss of 74,000 jobs, by the administration’s own metrics for measuring job gains from trade. “[The new information] basically confirms a lot of our suspicions, and our positions and votes over the years about how these trade agreements have really been a bad deal for the American worker,” said Representative Tim Ryan.
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  • DeLauro also offered some broadsides about how the administration was spinning the Census report.
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Volcker: A "Little Inflation" Is A Terrible Idea - 0 views

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    Henry Blodgett picks up Paul Volkers comments on inflation ".....The government would quietly but desperately love to inflate our way out of this mess--destroying the dollar so the real burden of our mountain of debt shrivels to a molehill.  This remedy, of course, would punish everyone who has saved up a nest egg or lives on a fixed-income, but they're likely to be considered an expendable minority...." There is also a link on this page to the Aron Task interview with Peter Schiff, "The stimulous bill will lead to unmitigated disaster." http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/2/peter-schiff-stimulus-bill-will-lead-to-unmitigated-disaster Peter compares Bush to Hoover and Obama to Roosevelt, predicting an unmitigated disaster; a depression with hyperinflation. He argues that the great depression was tempered by the fact that government spending and intervention was limited by the godl standard. Today, the Federal Reserve has no such limitation!
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Billionaire Howard Marks On The Debt Ceiling And The Inevitable Decline In Relative US ... - 0 views

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     the underlying issue is that the U.S. has borrowed too much, and now has a higher debt to GDP ratio than it has ever -- and because the U.S. will inevitably borrow even MORE because 1. everyone believes that lower taxes and stimulus are needed to stimulate growth and 2. if we don't, growth in the U.S. will depress -- the reality is that our lifestyle (individuals and the government spending what they don't have) is unsustainable. He says: "In addition to balancing the budget and growing the economy, I think we have to accept that the coming decades are likely to see U.S. standards of living decline relative to the rest of the world. Unless our goods offer a better cost/benefit bargain, there's no reason why American workers should continue to enjoy the same lifestyle advantage over workers in other countries. I just don't expect to hear many politicians own up to this reality on the stump." His other big points: ..... "The dollar can no longer be the reserve currency" without unflinching adherence to the associated responsibilities. ..... The debt ceiling "solution" is unlikely to represent much fundamental progress; for the most part it'll just kick the can down the road because politicians are too concerned about getting re-elected to compromise....... "We have no choice but to raise the debt ceiling and keep borrowing in the short-term."....... "Washington's spending has recently been higher as a percentage of the nation's economic output than at any time since World War II. But by the same measure, Washington's revenues are the lowest in more than 60 years." ..... When asked about conservatives' insistence on a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, President Obama replied, "We don't need a constitutional amendment to do that [balance the budget]; what we need to do is to do our jobs." But clearly we do need some enforced discipline, because the years in which we haven't run a deficit have been by far the exception of late, n
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Porter Stansberry: Get ready... The worst is yet to come - 0 views

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    Porter discusses inflation and the disastrous impact the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel is having on the wealth of Americans.  An interesting chart he provides is the one pricing the Stock Market in GOLD.  Everything should be priced and evaluated in terms of GOLD instead of Federal Reserve paper.  The world would be a better place. there are only two repubican presidential candidates calling for an end of the Bankster Cartel; Ron Paul and Rick Perry.  The rest are with Obama, deep in the Bankster pocket.  Very sad.  But then, the Occupy Wall Street movement is camped out on Wall Street, while the Tea Party movement is Occupying the heart of the Bankster criminal empire - the Federal Reserve Banks.  Both movements seem to be protesting the same criminal Bankster problem.  But OWS has been fooled by the ol "nothing up my sleeve" illusion. excerpt: Here's the fact: America's standard of living is falling at a faster pace today than at any time since the Great Depression. Specifically, the real median income is down 9.8% since the fall of 2008. Additionally, Americans have lost roughly $5.5 trillion in asset value, or about 8.6% of their wealth. When you talk about a depression, what you're really talking about is a collapse in the standard of living. That's what's happening today, right now, in our country. But people continue to go about their lives as though nothing is happening. Certainly, our politicians don't want to draw attention to the problem. Instead, they are behind the campaign to "paper over" these losses with schemes like "quantitative easing." These schemes do nothing to make our economy more productive. They're designed instead to make prices rise so people (hopefully) won't notice how poor they're becoming. If you've been reading my newsletters since 2008, none of this is a surprise to you. I've been warning month after month, year after year, that the government's efforts to paper over our bad debts won't work. And they won't work for tw
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The Daily Bell - The Economist Hoists Its Battle Balloon? - 1 views

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    "The first world war... Look back with angst ... Thanks to its military, economic and soft power, America is still indispensable, particularly in dealing with threats like climate change and terror, which cross borders. But unless America behaves as a leader and the guarantor of the world order, it will be inviting regional powers to test their strength by bullying neighbouring countries. The chances are that none of the world's present dangers will lead to anything that compares to the horrors of 1914. Madness, whether motivated by race, religion or tribe, usually gives ground to rational self-interest. But when it triumphs, it leads to carnage, so to assume that reason will prevail is to be culpably complacent. That is the lesson of a century ago. - Economist Magazine Dominant Social Theme: Beware the coming wars ... Free-Market Analysis: You can't make this stuff up. The top men in the globalist community have been hard at work building wars and potential wars, and now it's time to let 'er rip. This is one dominant social theme we saw coming miles away. We've been writing about its imminence for years, and predicting war and more war as internationalists try to blunt the effect of the Internet Reformation. After the Gutenberg press blew up the Middle Ages and the Roman Catholic Church besides, the globalists of the era used economic chaos, war and the invention of copyright to fight back. We predicted they would use the same tools this time around and have no reason to revise our predictions thus far. The only thing we've consistently pointed out that has not yet been addressed is the inability of the top men to launch a full-out world war because that would involve nuclear weapons. And lacking a full-out war, we have questioned how successful the strategy can be. Obviously, the top elites see something we don't. Or perhaps they are willing to risk an all-out war anyway - as they retreat into reported fully-stocked, underground "cities." Here's more fro
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